Game design: What to do when the player is doing poorly

[avenger314]

This topic has been on my mind for a bit. Namely, the penalties for failure in gaming, how they work and how they evolve over time. Basically, what to do when the player screws up? Whether they’re consistently using a bad strategy (spamming the attack button in DW6) or not reacting fast enough (bullet hell), failing to see a pattern, (boss

Comments

[celdia]

Alright, since you took the effort to link me here the least I could do is post some kind of reply. While I'd love to get into it about any number of things you brought up in your opening, I'll try to keep my responses limited to your numbered design options.

#1: This would be one of my tangent rants about game length but I promised not to do that. Modern games really don't allow for this sort of thing because they try to jam in so much content to make for extended play time. Retro games followed this idea because it was the standard set by the arcade games. (Incidentally, I'm watching this series right now: http://jugglechainsaws.com/chrontendo/ and it details every Famicom/NES game ever made in chronological release order. I bring it up because you get to see the transition from arcade to console gaming in it and its very interested if rather dry to watch.) As games stopped being arcade ports to home consoles and started being made for those consoles the design changed and turned away from the 3-lives standard. Unless you're making an arcade game, this piece of game design shouldn't even be considered anymore.

#2: As it appears in most games today, this isn't even a setback though it is like the new 3-lives. You play, you try, you fail, you start again. just now instead of starting from the very beginning you start a bit closer to where you failed. This is an evolution of the Continue option that became popular in older console games that still followed the old arcade design - you don't have to go back to the very beginning of the game anymore, just the beginning of this stage. As for the save point variant of this, its a better option than the infinite saves. It leaves control of the checkpoints in the hands of the designers. An unexplored (as far as I know) variation on this would be perhaps giving the player a limited option of creating a save point somewhere in the game and letting them determine their own checkpoint without giving them the abusable system of infinite saving. I would like to point out that this isn't intended to follow the limited saving design seen in the Resident Evil series (which I also think appeared in Parasite Eve as well) which required the player to use limited, consumable items to save their game at all. That is just an awful design concept if it doesn't have a quicksave option because now you're just punishing people that can't sit and play for hours at a time.

#3: I disagree about the less said the better. Handled well, adjusted difficulty can be a wonderful thing. The problem is that it is rarely handled well. However, I shall endeavor to give a couple of examples of doing it well. The first would be Zanac for the NES, though this one doesn't follow the 'doing poorly' theme you're going for. Nevertheless I think it merits a mention. Its a seemingly simpler vertical shooter that gives you the option of various weapon types through numbered power-ups. What isn't initially apparent is that depending on the power-up you have, the game changes. If you pick up a wide spread shot weapon, a lot more enemies will start flooding the screen than if you have the base laser cannon or one of the other 'weaker' power-ups available. Zanac fails to benefit a poor player with what might be a programming error because if you die with a good weapon, the enemy spawns remain set to that weapon even though you start a new life with the basic gun. This can lead to situations where you simply don't have the firepower to keep up with the onslaught. I do think its a good design premise of adjusting difficulty with game play though. Knowing about it you can take a weaker weapon to make the game easier, but that would require being good enough to make use of the weaker weapon. A variation of this in a shooter format could easily be to make less enemies spawn if a player keeps failing on a certain stage. If its done subtly enough, its not really the hand-holding we see in some games. (I wish I could name the title but I forget what game it is. I just know there exists a recent title for the Wii I think that lets a player just skip levels if they can't beat them. If you have to resort to this, just go watch someone else beat the game on Youtube.)

Continued->>