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'Losing For The Win' In Games
simoniker writes "Designer Ben Schneider (Empire Earth, EyeToy: AntiGrav, Titan Quest) has written a new article exploring the possibility of enticing your players through the power of defeat. From the piece: 'Some of the most memorable moments in games depend heavily on reversals to kick their dramatic arcs forward, from Planetfall to Fable to Beyond Good & Evil to Deus Ex. And yet, as an industry, we clearly have a lot to learn — and a lot to invent. So, then, how do you draw a clear line between player failure and dramatic reversal? It is a question well worth pondering.' In other words, if the game forces the player to get his ass kicked, can the player ever forgive it, or is it the key to some really interesting moments when used in a positive way?"
hara kiri for the win!
Sony ha
Designer Ben Schneider (Empire Earth, EyeToy: AntiGrav, Titan Quest) has written a new article exploring the possibility of enticing your players through the power of defeat.
This guy needs to play Ninja Gaiden. 1.
Wizard Needs Food, Badly
1. On whether you learn from your mistakes and enjoy learning that way.
2. On whether that portion of gameplay is well depicted with interesting consequences.
I learned a lot from crashing in flight sim games, for example...
You can't talk about Wikipedia's flaws on Wikipedia
Super Metroid: You either lose fast to Ridley, or you're super good and he doesn't kill you and he flys away. Either way he flys away.
Sam and Max hit the road(original for 386). If you ride the Cone of Tradjedy, you lose all your items. My friend loaded up a saved game after he rode it, and he couldn't complete the game anymore. I come over his house and ride the Cone of Tradjedy because he says not to ride it, and then I collect all his items at the lost and found.
I think loses and setbacks are ok in games. I mean if you can't lose, its not a game really is it?
God spoke to me.
Planetfall
I still get misty-eyed over Floyd.
What, like in Chrono Trigger where you had to let Crono die?
Actio personalis moritur cum persona. (Dead men don't sue)
I remember a old game called FreeSpace 2, a many of time you would lose a to a over powered mothership, but you would come back later with a squad of ships and kick some ass! i always loved being in the moment trying to servive the battle, and find out i was ment to lose, i love that feeling, they should use it more, (The FPS Games should do this alot)
WulframII - Free Online Mutiplayer 3D Tank Shooting Game
When you want all the kills: http://www.ctrlaltdel-online.com/comic.php?d=20070 212
He won with the most kills... but he lost his life...
Everything for the win!
The most evil end sequence ever.
This reminds me of sports drafts. For example, the Celtics are vying for the worst record in the NBA this year, and if they get it I'll be glad because they will have a high chance of getting the #1 draft pick. So it's just as fun to watch them toil and lose games.
Game Wins You!
There's always the indefeatable boss that you're supposed to lose to. But hey, surprise, instead of a game over screen, your hero is knocked unconcious and the game goes on.
I really hate those. I end up using all my consumables trying to stay alive and win, only to be meant to lose, and end up wasting all my potions.
Of course, the other side of this is when I suspect this is the token unbeatable boss, I don't waste any potions, and just lose on purpose -- oops, game over. I guess this wasn't the token unbeatable boss.
Absolute Zero was a great cinematic space combat game from, oh, ten years ago... It had, for its time, a whole lot of options - you could choose which vehicle to use to complete a level, how it was outfitted, etc... It also had several different characters that you could play as. There was one point where you blew up a giant alien mothership thing by crashing into its core (sacrificing that character) - I'm not sure if you had to do it that way, or if I just got tired of shooting at the damn thing, but it was the end of Wassem Bokai. Lots of fun.
Ugh. I remember how the Gold Box sequels -- Curse of the Azure Bonds, Secret of the Silver Blades, etc. -- used to do this to the player at the begiining of the game, so you wouldn't get any of the cool items they'd handed out like candy in the previous installment. It got old really quick. I'm trying to recall whether BG2 pulled this same stunt with imported BG characters. Does anyone remember this?
On the other hand, I rather liked Quake 4's use of the dramatic reversal.
Make cheese not war 8:)
Sounds like your Sam & Max playing friend played one too many early Sierra adventure games, especially ones where one stupid mistake will make it IMPOSSIBLE to finish the game and to pour salt on the wound, there's no "game over" when you do it. Typing "give [item] to [person]" usually resulted in the person saying "Hey, thanks a lot! But now you'll NEVER get it back!" If you gave away or forgot to pick up a plot critical item, you're screwed, and you probably wouldn't know it until several hours and saves later when you reached a critical point in the game and you have to use that item. Because you can't go back and get the item, you got stuck and continue under any circumstances and the only solution was to go back to an old save.
Poor game design elements such as this can sour the player on future games where any sort of loss or setback is considered to be the same as "game over."
What I call a "plot loss" in a video game works once in a while, but definitely needs to be done in moderation. For example, if it's obvious to a seasoned gamer that you will lose a given battle/challenge/etc (needed for a plot element), then it's not as much a hassle. As in, if it's clear from the get-go that you're drastically outclassed by your foe, he/she/it/they has/have no obvious weak points, and/or the battle is blatantly unfair and is over with quickly, it's cool, many gamers will understand this. Even if it's not so much an extreme outclassing, if it becomes clear that you seriously won't win this and this is the way the story unfolds, that's acceptable.
The problem comes if there's no hint to this. Or to put it in other terms, if the game is toying with you. As in, a battle seems to otherwise be fair and "normal", all your attacks and/or moves appear to be behaving properly (i.e. they appear to "hit", not "clang off harmlessly"), but whatever you're challenging just always seems to have a slight edge in that it plain and simply will not lose. Case in point: The field runner in Ocarina of Time. Link is challenged to a race across Hyrule Field. You're never given any impression that this is a fixed race, there's no way to "unfix" it (i.e. this isn't a plot situation where Link has to uncover a cheater), and the only way to discover this is by giving up, wasting your time empty-handed (or use a cheat device, which reveals the problem when he claims he won with a time of -1 seconds). Things like this could easily be taken as direct insults to the player, worse if the player unloaded all or most of a difficult-to-replenish or non-replenishable resource (expensive healing potions, stat-boosting effects, rare one-time attack items, etc) in the process.
So all in all, sure, it works once in a while. Just don't insult the player in the process.
Demanding constant attention will only lead to attention.
I thought it was pretty cool when the cleanup team managed to get Gordon into a closet and knock him over the head. It also made for a good transition to a different part of the game.
Resistance is futile. Your technological distinctiveness will be added to our own. You will become one with the morgue
Planescape had some sequences like this - seeing as how you're immortal, dying can be used as quite a useful plot device or puzzle element! It does take a little while to get your head around dying on purpose though.
This comment does stray a bit from the scope of TFA but I will say that growing up for some reason I've learned to enjoy the comeback win. I root for the underdog. If a game can be constructed to enable losing before the win then it could be very dramatic and enjoyable for anybody willing to give the comeback a chance.
My anecdotal evidence regarding my nephew (almost 15) that is an only child would probably give up on a game like this as would, perhaps, many gamers. It would be a good learning experience for anybody (especially a child) to continue through the loss to get to the win. Although not quite as dramatic and not the topic of TFA, a sports title could be a great example of the loss before the win to make an enjoyable game. When playing with my nephew Madden Football he will totally give up even if he's winning when I intercept or recover a fumble. To me, as with the author of TFA, I find much more enjoyment and fulfillment from a late 4th quarter comeback from behind to win in Madden Football. I also sometimes play as the lower ranking teams just because. Whereas many of the people I play against will refuse to play as any team other than the top ranked few. I would assume they would not like a retreat scenario in a dramatic game.
"A government is a body of people, usually notably ungoverned." - Shepard Book Quoting Malcolm Reynolds
At first, it sounds dumb. Why would you ever want to replay parts of the game again? For a long time, I resisted doing this. However, the game got extraordinarily difficult after a while, and I eventually got myself locked into an unwinnable situation: I had saved the game at a certain part of a mission, and there was literally not enough time for me to complete it in time, thus forcing a "game over" scenario every time. Grudgingly, I accepted my fate, and did the "save and quit" method.
Surprisingly, I had a blast going through the beginning part of the game again. Having your skills carry over (which in Dead Rising equates to some very important things such as health, stats, special moves, and item capacity) made the initial parts of the game a LOT easier. And since I had a good idea of what was going on, I could position myself to "be in the right place at the right time". Thus, this second playthrough ended up being a lot different than my first run.
I almost think that Dead Rising was designed so that the player would have to restart over at some point. However, it's too bad that this was not messaged appropriately. I have a friend who quit the game, complaining that it was "impossibly hard", since he refused to restart the game over.
-- jchenx
World of Warcraft does this well - the first up against a raid boss he utterly destroys the group, but one of our shamans stands up, resurrects another healer, they each rez another, and pretty soon we're ready for another go.
I vividly remember the feeling that this thing we were fighting was *huge*, but that as a group we were nigh on unstoppable. Good times.
Then the grinding really kicked in, and I quit, but that's another story.
Very interesting observations, and quite correct, there aren't many games I have played lately that incorporate an element of loss.
The one exception that springs to mind is, surprisingly, EverQuest 2; there are a couple of quests/events where I feel the SOE team have actually incorporated losing into the storyline very effectively.
The first I can think of is a more minor one - if your character chooses to betray his home city of Freeport to go and live in Qeynos (or vice versa) you embark on a quest series that leads you into sabotage work against the city you wish to leave. The spying/sabotage missions ultimately culminate in your inevitable capture by the city guard. Your companions are killed and you are left for dead, eventually smuggled out and revived by sympathizers from your destination city. While not a final defeat, you progress through the increasingly dangerous sabotage missions knowing that eventually your actions will be discovered, and there is no way to complete the betrayal quest without this "failure".
The second quest involving failure was a special limited-time quest that ran last year prior to the Echoes of Faydwer expansion release. The EoF expansion reintroduced the influence of the deities to the game world, and as a foreshadowing of this, there was a limited time quest players could do for the prophets foretelling the return of each god. The quest for Innoruuk (god of Hate) involved a magic spell that sent you back in time to assume control of one of the key figures in an important historical battle during which the forces of good and evil were attempting to capture a particularly important magical scroll. The aim of the quest, you were told, was to alter history and retrieve the scroll for the benefit of Innoruuk. As you entered the quest, your class, level, equipment, everything was altered so that you appeared to be the dark elf shadow knight in the historical battle. The quest involved commanding your troops to attack the enemy, and fighting your way to the member of the "good" side who had the scroll required, and then escaping with the scroll.
The quest, however, was written so that it was impossible to win. It was not possible to alter history. While you could complete the first part of the quest and make your way to your target, reinforcements from the good side (extremely powerful, undefeatable ones) arrived before you could complete the mission. The quest forced you to watch as all your army was decimated by the arrivals, and then you also. Interestingly, one of the "good" gods gave the reverse of this quest, where good aligned players played an ally of the target the evils had to assassinate, and were equally unable to "win" the scenario (although reinforcements arrived, it was not in time to prevent the assassination of the guy with the scroll, etc.)
In these quests the EQ2 designers got around the feeling of personal defeat by setting the quest in a historical "flashback", yet also avoided the setback being entirely cut-scene narrative with no player involvement whatsoever. The resulting quest was very powerful and exciting.
These are just two examples of how current MMO's have incorporated failure scenarios into their play. It's challenging, but clearly possible, and the SOE team at least seem to be aware of the excitement and different perspective that it can bring to a game. I would hope that they will continue to push the boundaries of tradition further, and hopefully other designers will follow also.
All I ask is a warm bed, a kind word, and UNLIMITED POWER
One of my most memorable moments from any game that I've played was in Deus EX(which was mentioned in the article) when you are forced to die and wake up in your what amount to your enemies lair. From the very start of the game you are taught how good you should be and then, 10 hours into the game, the game forced you to become evil even though you might not have wanted you. At the time that really brothered me so I went back any played the level a few times and realized that I had to do it.. . This was one of the most original things that made Dues EX so much better of a game then a game where you just play the hero and it really made me want to play it more... just my $0.02
If you haven't played the game yet, stop reading. Stop reading anyway unless you are in the mood for a rant.
Okay, you were warned. In Neverwinter Nights 2 you have two "dramatic" moments. The opening act has you partnered with two childhood friends. A male fighter and a female wizard. Both like you start at level 1 and get maybe 1 or 2 levels during the opening act.
Your village is attacked because of you are the destined one. How original. Young farm person at just the right age to go out into the world has evil (wich for some reason has been laying low between the events of the opening credits and this moment) attack your peacefull village of your youth.
There are even in pulp fantasy variations of this you know. Conan was a slave his entire youth. Willow was a mature adult (well he had kids).
Oh well, you are attacked and for no very good reasing you get a cutscene were the girl suddenly decides to help her teacher out (who doesn't even look like he needs help) and gets herself killed. Drama!
Well no. It has everything wrong with it that the poster talked about. You first think it is your fault, then find it isn't and therefore feel only frustration. What a way to kick of an RPG that is supposed to have a influence system. Oh, and the lesson? Well listen to warnings and don't get in over your head. Good warning, except that it never has to be apllied in the rest of the game. You never meet anyone more powerfull then you that you can't handle. You never are asked to let someone more experienced handle a battle OR do a tactical retreat. So what is the point?
But that ain't the only one to snuff it. Later another girl joins your party and voila, she gets killed too. Again nothing you can do about it. Drama? No not really, hell the game doesn't even allow drama. If you really cared about her, you would be a little miffed you don't even get to kill her killer. At all, not even after you have no use for him anymore.
Oh, and the people from your village that survived the first attack? Well, they are killed off too. What? You are the desitned hero, so everyone you grew up has to die so that no stories of you running around with no pants as a kid can every ruin your heroic reputation. It is a rule!
Drama is nice and all, but the simple fact is that YOU are supposed to be in control. So if the game removes control, then anything that happens that you are supposed to be in control about just isn't "real".
Drama can happen outside your control (that is really totally outside your control, rather then just having the game take control) OR because of a choice you made.
System Shock 1 & 2 and the first Unreal did it very effective. Every bit of "drama" had already happened. You were in total control of events in your own time but naturally NOT in control over things that had already happened before your time started.
Finding out that the person whose emails you have been finding has died a tragic dead WORKS when it is clear it happened outside your time. You couldn't have gone faster or anything. So you do not feel cheated by the game. It worked for me.
Do you want to know one of the most dramatic moments in games for me? Planescape Torment, the dead nations, has an undead NPC who has lost her name. You can help her find it or give her a new one. The way that extremely short non-combat, non-fedex, non-runaround, non-loot, quest is told just worked for me. The entire area is nothing short of brilliant, undeads who are not just cannon-fodder, but that element is just damned good as it impressed upon me the sadness of an undead existence, destined to only rot away further and further while only memories remain of your former live.
Brilliant. And nobody dies, no cutscenes take away control. Just you, and an NPC and a few simple lines.
From the days of Wing Commander games have attempted to get me to feel drama by snatching defeat from the jaws of my hard won victory. It don't work for me.
Games are NOT movies. LEARN this deve
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
It's a central plot device, so it's obvious that it's not the player screwing up. I was going through the game thinking "this is too easy" and then ... BAM. I loved it - it completely rejuvenated the game.
<spoiler>
The central character is taken out and the one character I had available to use hadn't been levelled properly for the tasks she needed to perform. When I got the central character back, he was crippled, and unable to use his most important power for quite some time.
</spoiler>
Haaa-leee-LUJAH!
I know some people who sure as crap won't ever forgive Myst.
Half the internet hates Myst, mostly because they're not clever enough to finish it. (It's lucky they never played Riven.)
The United States of America: We do what we must because we can.
Remember TIE Fighter, when you get to go clear a minefield in an unshielded craft... and then your wingmen turn on you? And you while you run for your life, you have to also identify who's on board that shuttle heading towards the Calamari Cruiser?
If you played it, you remember it. And it might even be one of your favorite gaming moments of all time.
I can think of a couple of other great dramatic reversals:
Ultima VI, when you realize that the Gargoyles aren't evil, but are after you because you're destroying their world.
Starflight, when you realize why stars are going nova.
A dramatic setback is all nice and good in theory, but more often then not it destroys any immersion instead of creating it. Games are after all about interaction and interaction implies having at least a little bit of freedom. If the setback however comes in the form of a challenge that is impossible to overcome it just comes of as fake, since it violates the very basic rule of giving the player a choice. This is especially annoying when it isn't clear that the challenge isn't beatable and you try and try again to beat it without success. Even worse of course if the challenge that is supposed to be unbeatable actually is beatable and the game then just runs into a void where the dialog and cutscenes completely fail to match the in-game action that just happened. Doing the setback in a cutscene of course doesn't help much either, since it again violates the rules of the game, after all why can't I just revive a killed character with a phoenix feather like it worked in all the rest of the game?
I doubt that this problem can be solved by just a few simple additional cues to hint what the game designer intended, I think the core problem runs much deeper. One thing is simply the consistency of the gameworld, if the game has bonus lives or phoenix feathers you simply can't kill an NPC to create a setback, since in a world where death is an easy problem to fix that just wouldn't be a problem to begin with unless the game violates its own rules.
Another problem, maybe the biggest one, is the hero centric nature of games. The player plays the hero, the man that can fix anything, the man that can accomplish anything. That guy simply must not fail, especially not when controlled by the player. But why should the player play the hero to begin with? Or even be fixed to a single character? The games which I find most interesting are those that don't fix the player to a single character, but instead let the player basically play the story itself, jumping from character to character. This little change pretty much completly removes the need to win, since even the characters death won't put a halt to the story. The only reason why the beginning of Half Life 2 worked was because in the beginning one wasn't the hero, one didn't have a gun or any way to defend himself, all one could do was run and due to the level layout there really was only one way to go. Such a situation wouldn't have worked if one would have had the crowbar, since even the tiniest way to defend oneself can be turned into a very powerful weapon with a bit of load and save (aka. save-cheating).
In the end I think games as a whole must have to change a lot to really make larger jumps in terms of how well a setback can work or in a broader sense in how much the player can get emotionally involved in a game. As long as the player plays a hero with a big gun who saves the world all of that just won't ever really work, maybe in a few limited situations here and there, but not more. The problem is simply that todays games are for most part analog to action-movies, no matter if its a strategy game, a FPS or some third person game, its always running, shooting and killing stuff. You don't see all that much emotional drama in the latest hollywood action movie either for basically the same reason, there simply is no time for that when all the focus is already on the action.
OK, this is from memory because I stopped playing NWN after this problem..
There's a demon I need to kill. He's way too powerful for me though. I tried blasting him then teleporting back to the temple. However, something happens where everyone in the temple goes hostile. So I'm already at low hit points when I teleport and then get immediately killed when I enter the temple. I've tried Tenser's Transformation, buffing myself with Stoneskin, globes of invulnerability, etc.. But no matter what I do entering the temple, or even the city of matter, and *everyone* is an enemy.
How the hell do I get past this???
What about games where losing in the short term is a perfectly viable strategy towards winning in the long term. Think about chess. That's what pawns are for. Though I am reminded of Overpower (the card game). The object was, over the course of "rounds" of battle, to venture and win 7 missions. A viable strategy near the end game was when you only had one character left alive, to venture the rest of your missions, land one large attack on your opponent, then accept your opponents next attack of lesser value. Your character would die, and the round would end. Your successful attacks would be greater than your opponents sucessful attacks, and you win the game.
UTF-8: There and Back Again
The best games will have a few moments where it becomes intensely difficult and losing is not Game Over but winning will change the story slightly.
This is akin to the stage clear mode in Tetris Attack (or Spa Service in Pokemon Puzzle League). There is a "bonus" level that's pretty much as difficult as the final boss if not harder, but if you fail it, you just go on to the next level.
In Fire Emblem GC, *minor spoiler* you can flee from the black knight if you're not up to it. It's pretty hard unless Ike has the Aether badge and Mist is on your team, but retreat only makes minor changes to the story, and affects who joins your party.
The SpiderMan/Venom Ultimate Carnage for Genesis/SNES has this part where you're ambushed by multiple boss characters at once. Not sure if you can beat it, but the longer you hold out, the better items you get.
Scripted losses are ok, but generally I only want one near the beginning of the game. Otherwise it gets to be a waste of time, considering your actions have no affect on the outcome. The optional losses are where the real money is though, and it gives developers an opportunity to make really hard parts.
"When the atomic bomb goes off there's devastation...but when the atomic bong goes off there's celebraaaaation!"
There was no unbeatable battle in Deus Ex, sure the hotel fight was tricky but it was doable and you can save Paul.
I'd argue that perhaps the biggest problem facing games today is the way in which developers implement the loss condition. Namely death.
Sure, death seems like a very big deterrent for the player. It sounds sinister. "You're dead." Scary stuff. But in games its not really like that. You're not dead, you're simply required to start over from some point before. "Respawn", so to speak. Its like a sort of digital "Ground Hog Day" without the laughs. Some games have dealt with the reason for this creatively, and Planescape comes to mind. Not every game can be in a weird and whacky plane of existence like Planescape though. What this tells me is that developers need to get more creative about loss conditions. In some games this will be easier than others.
For instance, in a WWII game, bullets are flying, bombs are going off - its war and people are killing each other. If you're a grunt and you get shot in the head or hit by close quarters grenade shrapnel, you're dead. Hard to get around that. You might have to make the player anonymous and have him keep "spawning" into new characters, or come up with something similarly creative.
Other games, though, might do better by implementing standard loss conditions where players only become disabled, rather than truly die. If you're hit in the leg, you might survive. Perhaps the enemy captures you, perhaps your buddies pull you out and get you to a hospital. Perhaps you're a jungle troll and you eventually heal yourself and wake up hours later when the battle is over.
The point is, not very many games exist who's primary player induced setback is anything other than death. This industry crutch will plague developers until the mold is recast, and that may never happen. As long as that crutch continues, it will be exceedingly difficult to present the player with unavoidable setbacks that don't feel contrived.
Disabling a player allows the developer to implement a different result in an unavoidable setback. For instance, perhaps normally the disabled player is rescued by comrades in the loss condition. But in the unavoidable setback, the player might wake up in an enemy prison. This works because the player was used to becoming disabled, but the true "setback" now sinks in when the player is presented with required escape from an enemy prison rather than the usual friendly hospital.
This sort of "oh crap" moment is only possible if you've trained the player to expect a certain result and then suddenly juxtapose it with a different one. It works in Half Life 2 because the player enters the game with a certain expectation of the way the game works. The "oh crap" effectively comes in when the player realizes the tables have been turned on them and they're out of their element. A word of caution: This Should Not Be Done Randomly. This sort of situation has to be handled carefully, and the situation that resulted in the true setback loss condition has to be clearly different from situations that the player has encountered before. This vital clue tells the player "Its not your fault, this is the way its SUPPOSED to go down". Without this information, players will feel unfairly penalized.
// harborpirate
// Slashbots off the starboard bow!
takes me back to final fantasy 4: while the script is admittadly sophomorish, your friends drop off left and right and the final battle is unwinnable without the 'crystal' item. it adds dramatic impact.
Onii-chan's bad ending Yeah, sometimes you have to go down the bad route to get at all of the game content, especially in Japanese dating-sims and their eroge counterparts.
Yeah but then they all come back in the end. It was pretty corny.
This is the problem with Oblivion. The game is always tuned so it's the same level of difficulty. There is no loss... and thus no sense of accomplishment with coming back and kicking ass later.
what good is a game if it doesn't try to toy with your emotions by developing a character and then killing them?
sophomorish, i know. a few of them actually stay dead.
I remember in WC III when Angel gets her heart ripped out by the Kilrathi. I was convinced that this happened because I didn't succeed at the mission. I must have replayed it tens of times trying to save her. That was a game defining moment, and it's still stuck in my head today.
www.eissq.com/BandP.html Ball and Plate System. Amuse your friends. Crush your enemies.
Half life 2 mod: source forts - http://sourcefortsmod.com/ [sourcefortsmod.com] -
while playing this game i noticed that as soon as you take out your own defensive fort it will give your team no way to keep alive behind the wall and start attacking the enemy. Alot of time you win this game by giving up on your defensive structures.
To bad alot of time this is called griefing. http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=invalid123 [youtube.com] shows some of that!
Yeah, yeah, I always whip out the SS2 when people are talking about what makes a game good. Anyway, --spoiler alert-- for anyone who hasn't played it through before.
SS2 has one of the biggest "reversals" in a game ever. You go through the first half of the game clinging to the hope that Polito, the one human who's spoken to you, will be able to help you get out of this mess of mutated humans and haywire robots. That's all shattered when it's revealed that Polito was dead all along, and it's really been SHODAN egging you on the whole time. The second half of the game involves you being her (now witting) pawn as you follow her instructions to destroy The Many.
It's an ingenious plot twist that makes you feel, despite your success in finally reaching Polito('s rotting corpse), like you actually lost. And every success you have ends up feeling a bit hollow as well, because SHODAN told you to do it. It makes the voice logs you find lying around that much more valuable, as you try to cling to whatever humanity you can, because that's the only real victory in sight.
Anyone remember Warhawk for the Playstation? The game had several different endings, most of which were achieved by losing the game. In fact, there is no way to win the game without sacrificing the lives of either your pilots or the lives of the larger ship that launches and supports them. One ending even results in the enemy's leader choking to death on a chicken bone as he laughs at your defeat. It definitely made things more interesting...
It would've been nice to know that was the intention in the first scene in MOHPA - you do a beachhead assault, get to the beach and are hiding under a bridge, and no matter what you do, a grenade frags your ass. This is, I think, the first in the MOH series that used that tactic, so I wasn't expecting it and got a little pissed that the grenade was unavoidable.
It was better done in FEAR when the main badass thumped you round the head in the opening mission - shame the end of the game sucked.
-- Intelligence is soluble in alcohol
For example, in many games some boss shows up early and you're *supposed* to lose, he is strong enough that you'll *definitely* lose.
So, if you're smart you just kick yourself in the groin and go down early.
If you, on the other hand, play your very best, use all your buff-items, quaff all your healing, hold out for aslong as humanly possible. Then guess what ? The game "rewards" you by letting you lose anyway, only now you've wasted all those useful items for no effect whatsoever.
I *hate* that. If I can't win -- waste me in the first attack and make it obvious. (it's fine if it's merely -very-very-hard- to win. It's when it's flat-out impossible that I object)
And what about Wing Commander I and II???
They even designed a game tree that allowed you to lose certain fights and still ending up winning the whole game. It was an amazing game series, which I liked even more than X-Wing due to this tree.
I find it quite charming when I read an article by a game developer, such as this one, where they apparently seem to have uncover some secret or special technique that gives them a newly found insight into how to make games more fun or enjoyable. More often than not, these wonderful, brand-new pieces of knowledge are actually commonplace in other art or creative media, specially the age-old, well seasoned, creative outlets, such as literature and storytelling, where most techniques have been honed to perfection for centuries.
But even those bits of insight that appear to be unique to gaming or gameplay still seem obvious and primitive, as humans have been devicing ways to amuse themselves for ages. I recall when I read the article on the game "fl0w", and could not help but think in a very condescending and sarcastic way "you mean games should try to match the players skills and offer a winnable objective, and try to avoid frustrating them? Amazing!"
So, the same as when a Hollywood screen writer "comes up" with something like "Hey, you know what? perhaps we should let the good guy win; I think people will like that.", whenever a developer of games talks about how video games should use dramatic twists to advance the story in an emotionally involving way, my first thought is: Well, DUH! And my reply to such person is as follows: Perhaps those games you cite, along with the many others which have succesfully used such techniques, did not stumble on it by accident, but were a conscious decision of a good creative writer or designer. Perhaps that's why those games are classics and memorable, *because* they did things right. Perhaps you should go out and see the world more, read more books, watch more movies, play more games, and more importantly, talk to gamers more, to find out how other fellow humans interact or integrate with creative works, including games.
-dZ.
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One fish, two fish, red fish, blow fish. [KABOOM!]
Carol vs. Ghost
I remember overhearing two kids talking about that.
One complained who he was just stuck in that dark room.
The other kid then instructed him to turn off the god mode.
I swear to god - kids just keep getting dumber and dumber.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
MOH:PA had this dumb feature. You were supposed to get killed on the first level then game flashed back to pearl harbour... Dumbest idea ever. Just like those stupid stealth levels that are out of sync with the game style (RTCW), and totally unnecessary jumping puzzles (JK:JO).
If the dev wants to "kill" me do it in a cut scene and not in place where I have control as it ruins the game otherwise.
NOLF - "No One Lives Forever", a wonderful parody of the 1960's spy genre. One of the most enjoyable FPS's I've ever played. Mostly due to HUMOR being a major element of the game. However, it definitely fits the mold of 'losing for the win'.
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You proceed through a long series of misadventures - ultimately failed missions. By the end of the game it turns out that the agency had a mole who was sabotaging your missions. The agency knew about this and set you up, in order to find the mole. A final surprise awaited at the end of the credits. Overall, a GREAT game. Alas, followed by a very disappointing sequel.
[Insert pithy quote here]
The article mentions Diablo II, which to me was an extremely effective example.
SPOILER WARNING!
About halfway through the game, you are sent on a quest to Tristram, the town that your character saved in the original Diablo (you play as a different character in the sequel). During the mission introduction, you find out that the town was destroyed, and that it was caused by the actions of your character after he defeated Diablo in the original game. When you get there, the town is in flames, with corpses strewn about (including a few familiar ones); Griswold, the friendly blacksmith from the first game, is there, but as a mindless undead that you have to fight; and to top it off, the background music is the same as it was in the original. Despite being incredibly depressing, it was one of those moments that made me think, "Wow, this is a great game."
There's 2 common screwups lately.
First is that games take the tack that "Failure is not an option!" and that you have to replay the level or scenario or whatnot if you fail the objective. This is ridiculous. Back in the Good Old Days of Wing Commander 1 and Dune 2, failure *was* an option that changed the game board and sent you on a different line of scenarios (with a diminished reputation, but with a chance to continue on towards your delayed ultimate objective). Me, I want failure to be an option. Having to reload every time something goes wrong sucks.
Secondly, the "Despite the fact that you've bee pwning all over in God-mode (cheater!), the Bad Guys beat you up and take all of your hard-accumulated stuff" is done to death. It was annoying in Half Life, it was trite in Red Faction, and since then it's bloody well *expected* that as soon as you're full on weapons and ammo, you're going to get some jerk-ball narrator deus-exing you out of commission. It's a plot device of somebody who isn't clever enough to write a real challenge.
I liked how you got stuck in jail in Fable and stayed longer if you failed getting the key to get out. It made you a bit more pissed off and ready to kick Jack's ass. :)
I haven't played it in a while, but I don't recall "losing for the win"...
Was it when you found out you were on the wrong side, and the UNATCO Forces started turning on you?
I never actually thought I was losing, I just thought it was an interesting part of the story. Any good story will have setbacks for the main character. For instance, when Neo fails to jump over the buildings, or when the Agents kidnap Morpheus.
In games that allow it, does everyone try for the "Menace to Society" endings like they had in all the episodes of the Enchanter series and the first Streets of Rage?
"MIT betrayed all of its basic principles."
The classic 'autolose' battle usually involves some guy who was supposed to be too powerful for you to handle. But then you've to ask the question: why doesn't that guy kill you? Suikoden 3 comes to mind where there's something like 5 or 6 battles you're supposed to lose against Luc (you could win them but it has no effect on the outcome), and after a while you wonder why this guy who can cast a spell that instant kills your party always failed to actually kill your party, and it's not like you're falling into some elaborate scheme he's setting up. It is clear that your party is in the way of whatever he's planning, and yet despite his considerable powers he always fails to kill you.
Another problem is that a lot of the auto-lose battles isn't actually very easy to lose, which is brought up in a lot of examples where people thought they could win so they kept trying. But I'll give two examples where you can't win but it looks like you can still fight. In Skies of Arcadia, you cannot win the first fight against Ramirez (all attacks miss him) but you can actually keep up with his damage output quite easily by burning through crystals. Problem is that the game expects you to burn through consumables anyway to all boss fights (far more efficient than actually using MP) so you might be thinking you're supposed to just survive for X turns. Of course eventually you give up and let him kill you but you might have tried for a while before quitting. In Grandia 2, when you first fight Malfice he's immune to damage and cannot be canceled, but again, his damage output is not higher than any other boss and can easily be outhealed.
And the annoying thing is that later when you fight them, they pretty much have identical stats minus the invincibility, and you could've beaten them even when you're supposed to lose to them if they're not somehow totally invulnerable. At least give some explanation, like in Star Ocean 2 there's 2 or 3 autolose battles that involves the Wiseman but at least they tell you that you cannot harm them because they're protected by anti-matter shields or something. Therefore it actually makes sense that they stay at the same power when you do get your antimatter weapons that can break through their shields.
I played lots of "strategic/tactical" games over the years. Best games allow you to lose many times and still win Newest one: Total War Series (Medieval TW, Rome TW, Mediaval 2 TW) I was looking forward to some hard opponents/battles. Currently in Mediaval 2 campaign my lands were invaded by Timurids, I lost 2 first battles - then won one, lost one, won one - keeps the game very exciting. I am wearing the enemy down through attrition. Oldest one: SWOTL (Secret weapons of Luftwaffe) allowed you to fail multiple missions and still bomb germany into surrender. Other: Panzer General, Allied general series. Hearts of Iron XCom RTS: Few RTSes allow for reversal of fortunes. Age of Empires 2 - multiple times were were on the loosing side and we still won. - I don't like that game Company of Heroes Total Annihilation
> from Planetfall to Fable to Beyond Good & Evil to Deus Ex
Vanguard: Saga of Heroes is an excellent example of "lose to win". I'll be in the middle of battle vs. a monster or something, when suddenly the monster casts a spell on me -- the world turns into a swirl of colors and my character is frozen, unable to move. My sight cannot even see what is going on -- there's nothing but bright colors striping across the screen and crazy sounds coming out the speaker, but I know the monster is still beating on me.
Eventually I get bored as the spell never wears off, so shut down my computer. I log back on, and I am dead, standing back in the village at my bind spot. The strangest part: every single monster has this spell, though I only seem to encounter one that casts it every 15-45 minutes or so, rarely any longer than that. I've even seen monsters cast it on me from behind when running around in town, at least I assume so though I have never seen them.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
What the article suggests already seems pretty standard in the more straight-forward games that are already heavily scripted. What I would like to see is for developers to making losing fun in games where there is no scripting- like Civilization. In games like Civ a game can take a long time, and losing completely can take a long time- and it's hard to tell sometimes whether you've just experienced a minor hiccup or that one city you lost is going to be followed by another and another- so you should reload and save that one city, and after reloading a few times you realize you just can't win, you might as well quit and restart.
With strategy games like Civ your playing skills are not going to dramatically improve over the course of one game, and your AI opponents don't start out smart but then sometimes become stupid, everything is pretty even- so any early indication that you're not going to win means starting over- there's no real chance of some dramatic reversal where you are fought back to one city but by some miracle can turn it all around.
It also takes a long time to win, the enemy never has a dramatic reversal either- if you know you're going to win and everything is going your way it can be very boring actually following through to victory.
But it would be interesting to try to address that. The game could cheat, altering the rules to make the game more interesting- maybe it wouldn't do it everytime, but would be unpredictable. Or success would be redefined.
There are some spoilers below (although that game is _so_ old).
When I was playing Dragon Warrior IV as a kid, I remember having to fight some boss duo (Balzack, and then Keeleon) in Chapter IV (where you play with Mara & Nara). So you had to fight these boss, it was part of the storyline. Problem is, when you died in that game, half of your gold disappeared, so everytime I tried to fight the second boss (Keeleon) and failed, I reset the console to avoid the drawbacks.
So for weeks I leveled up the characters up to level 18 (while I fought the boss for the first time at level ~11), and kept retrying to beat Keeleon. And then I forgot to hit reset, and found out that it was part of the storyline. Very frustrating moment.
Later in the game you had to fight that boss again, this time with more characters (four instead of two), and I found out that it was actually weaker.
That said, I recently found on YouTube a video showing what happened if you beat the boss, the encounter restarted.
So, as a conclusion, I don't believe making the player lose is a good idea, unless it is pretty obvious that it is part of the storyline. The player should understand that something is happening in those situations.
I think loses and setbacks are ok in games. I mean if you can't lose, its not a game really is it?
That reminded me of the game Loom (LucasArts) where past some very early (and easy) point, it is impossible to die in the game. Mind you, it's been a while since I played it, but I think it's impossible to *lose* past that point either.
Mind the frickin' laser...