Originals

Posted by: Stephanie Carmichael

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Bad games. They flood the market each month, causing impressionable buyers unforgivable frustration when sixty of their hard-earned dollars vanish without much “pop” or “zing” to show for it. Most retail titles nowadays ensure 10-15 hours of fresh entertainment, and that’s not counting role-playing games, which can tally two or even three times that number. So when gamers leave a large percentage of those hours untouched and instead throw down the controller in defeat, it’s worth asking how developers could fail so miserably so often.

The problem seems entangled between the creative process, the spark that sees a game through production, and the programming side, the magic and mystery of coding that few gamers understand but all recognize when on-screen glitches, buggy controls, and other unmistakable signs of a broken game stomp all over their hopes for a polished, enjoyable experience. Two factors that play a critical role in whether a game succeeds or flops are level design and guidance.

A perfect example is Scribblenauts, an innovative puzzle game that was later paired with a sequel. Flaunting the bold catchphrase “Write Anything, Solve Everything,” the first game dared players to take hold of a rooster-hat-wearing boy named Maxwell and overcome increasingly difficult and preposterous situations with only their imaginations and a dictionary of common nouns as tools. To complete a level, players might have to call into action, say, a ladder in order to reach the top of a tree, where their prize (a star) dangles. Although Scribblenauts promised near-infinite possibilities in puzzle-solving, it failed to deliver. Its sorely unimpressive reservoir of usable adjectives and wobbly, overly sensitive controls made thinking creatively an exercise in torture: The game, not the player, suffers from limited imagination.

Whereas Scribblenauts presented players with a supposedly bottomless arsenal and pushed them into a closed world, Oblivion, the fourth Elder Scrolls RPG, dropped them into an expansive fantasy realm without so much as a tourist brochure. The game, of course, makes room for a map feature that players can access at any point in their travels, but there’s startlingly little it won’t allow. From the outset, players can tweak almost every aspect of their characters, detailing the color of their hair down to the breadth of their nose, and once they set foot in the province Cyrodiil, their adventure knows no bounds. Players can journey in any direction, buy or steal whatever they choose, and exploit whatever resources they happen upon, including town libraries that house actual, readable volumes. Such unrestrained freedom might win a gamer’s heart, but when guidance disappears from a virtual world, a sense of fulfillment goes with it.

Through their faults, Scribblenauts and Oblivion prove the importance of level design and guidance in video games. A balance can be struck between the creative free-flow that Scribblenauts strove for and the open world that Oblivion pursued at ruinous costs. Games that make a closed world feel open are games that do well overall. An exemplary demonstration of such harmony is Batman: Arkham Asylum, the most successful attempt at a Batman video game to date. Stunning in its execution of both graphics and gameplay, the title hands players control of the Caped Crusader as he explores the treacherous asylum grounds, determined to stop the antics of the criminally insane villain the Joker. Although players eventually gain access to every building within the asylum limits, they can easily navigate the extensive terrain without feeling lost or pressured to follow one set course. Near the game’s finish, fireworks crackle overhead, exploding into shapes of glittering lights (the Joker’s doing): smiley faces, bats, and a giant arrow that casually guides players toward their next destination. The game makes it easy for players to progress without holding their hands every step of the way.

Guidance must work together with level design, and the Prince of Persia series juggles both with ease. As the Persian prince, players can swing across beams, run along walls, and sword fight demonic enemies—not to mention rewind time at the press of a button. While maneuvering through a minefield of deadly obstacles, players constantly require clues to help determine their next move, especially when multiple moves must be executed in rapid succession. The Prince of Persia games often accomplish this otherwise troublesome task through obvious shifts in camera angles. If the camera suddenly veers upward, experienced players will understand how to advance—jumping from wall to wall, for instance—before they even see the path laid out before them. Smart camera work allows players to traverse an area quickly, sidestep dangerous traps, and escape probable death without the technique lessening the difficulty. The level design has been carefully plotted, and visual cues direct players through the environment without diminishing gameplay value.

Though complicated at times, this craftsmanship doesn’t require excessive implementation and often works best with simplicity and grace. The popular and free-to-play computer game Spelunky, which has landed a downloadable spot on Xbox Live Arcade, begins in a distinct environment (a cave) and pits an Indiana Jones-type explorer against a distinct set of enemies (snakes, spiders, and bats, to name a few). What makes Spelunky so addictive is its successful randomization of those elements: its perilous creatures, surprise traps, and deadly spikes. When players start a new game, the cave and its challenges are arranged differently, but the variables, manageable in number, behave the same. Snakes might guard the exit in one scenario, or spiders might lurk in every corner, but snakes still bite, spiders still lunge, and players must react accordingly. After their first play-through, players can handle virtually any scenario. For this reason, Spelunky achieves what games like Scribblenauts and Oblivion couldn’t: creative gameplay, freedom from restriction, and a world that grows and changes each time players enter it.