YOU ARE HERE: How games have become domesticated
 Image courtesy of Steven Ray Brown (@StevRayBro ) We don’t cry when we get lost in the mall anymore. We may very well try, but there is no need to: at the most all we have to do is press start and look up where we are. A map, a “You are here” indicator, and suddenly you are lost no more. Just like that. Try to remember the last time you were lost in a game. When you had to wander aimlessly, trying to find something – even if you were still unsure of what you needed to find. In fact, when was the last time you discovered something in a game? Something cool that was not already stated in your objective list? When was the last time you found something that truly surprised you, like a secret dungeon or an item whose existences wasn’t already hinted by the vacant spot in your inventory? Well, how far back did you have to go? I passed through a couple of Animal Crossings along the way, but was only able to find the “Era of Discovery” – when the blurb “Discover Planet X” on the back of a game box made sense – back in the days of the original Zelda and Metroid. Games during which we were asked to discover what we were supposed to be doing in the first place. Now, games are domesticated. Not only have we grown familiar to their bizarre lexicon (cracked walls were meant to be exploded) but we always have the information of what to do and where to go directly at our fingertips, sometimes even before we have any real use for such information. As a result, games have become to-do lists. The contemporary quintessential videogame is nothing but a laundry list of things to do in order to get the 100% complete rate. What used to be surprises to be found became mere tasks to be fulfilled: “Defeat Riddler”; “Stop the bomb”; “Find 35 pieces of arrows”; “Help the villagers”; “Become the master of fighter’s guild”. The more domesticated games are even worse. These games not only list what you have to do, but also how you should do it. The block you need to ground pound has the “ground pound” symbol on it. After pounding it, the game camera zooms in on whatever change that last action created so you know exactly where to go next. More “complex” puzzles will merely increase the string of activities you must complete before reaching that treasure chest. In which probably lies the exact thing your goal statement said you needed! Aren’t you lucky? Don’t you feel happy, boy? Now you can beat the level’s boss in a fashion almost exactly like the one we will now explain via this super tutorial sequence! Isn’t that nice, boy? Who’s a good boy? WHOSAGOODBOY?? You are! We now take this for granted. We expect our games to have mini-maps to pin point exactly where we should be heading next, as if my medieval hero had a smartphone with him. It’s either that of that looming golden arrow that acts like Jack Sparrow’s magical compass on the top of the screen. After getting the treasure, we expect to see our progress rate increase in 1%. That way we can measure exactly where we are and have a notion of how much I need before completing the game. In the world I’m from, this is called a project management tool.
As a result, even if the game doesn’t offer a to-do list – which is actually rare these days!, we can mentalize one with the information given. Item 1 would be “beat World 1”, item 2 would be “beat World 2”, etc. This domestication has little to do with the idea that games have become too complex, mind you. This trend comes even before the notion of casual gamers even existed. It’s not a question of making games easier or holding hands. We have some pretty good systems for that. Machinarium, for example, is a game with a help system that makes it impossible for someone not to finish it – and yet there is nothing in there trying to turn me into a project manager. The entire game simply unfolds as it happens and every inch of progress is a discovery. When we talk about the issue of complexity, we are basically assuming the posit that “any game should be finished by anyone”. When discussing the issue of domestication, however, the posit developers have been assuming is that “any game must be manageable and should be 100% completed by anyone” and we are against that. Basically, the domestication has to do with three things: the fear that, without direction, players will feel frustrated and abandon the game; the idea some publishers have that whatever resource used on something not discovered by the player is a waste, and the increasing desire from gamers and developers for tighter, better constructed stories. That last one tells us the process of domestication will only accelerate from now on, for more plot means more direction. With plots, the notion of having one event following the other will start to matter. You can’t go after the Final Boss until the plot introduces you to the Fallen Masters and gives you the Sword for Slaying Final Bosses – unless, of course, you are Chrono Trigger (and then you would be awesome). When plot didn’t matter, the discovery of an item, a boss or a new environment were themselves plot devices of the game’s emergent narrative. The only way games with strong plots can allow for that sense of discovery is when that plot either is flexible enough to allow not one or not two, but several sequences of events to take place or to incorporate that aimlessness as part of itself. The second item is the trickiest one, for it arises from a shift of paradigm. It’s not uncommon to read reports or interviews of game makers complaining that only a small percentage of players fully finished their games. Their answer was to make the game structure evident. They thought that if we knew how much of the game we had left to complete, the chances we wouldn’t stop playing it until the 100% mark would increase – and they were certainly right: I am less likely to drop a game if I knew there was only 0,5% left for me to complete. But then again, the idea of the money spent on a game only being well spent if the game was completely beaten is somewhat recent. Games weren’t expected to be thoroughly devoured back then.
The internet, of course, played a big factor in it. The moment information of what a game contained became public and rapidly available, instead of being confined to the back pages of a game magazine or the conclaves with your school friends, game makers figured that the feeling of surprise might be a lost cause anyways, that there wasn’t any reason not to expose the game consummation structure anymore. Unless, of course, there was some kind of gamer that purposely avoided information telling him what to do in its games. That gamer. That is our key. Truth be told, not everybody is ready for playing games in the wild. Our market only managed to increase as developers and publishers fought to have games domesticated. That fear of players abandoning games when bored or due to a lack of direction? It’s totally justifiable. Most players do, in fact, need to be constantly doing something or going somewhere in order not to feel frustrated. The “best practices” we have now, like always stating what the goal of the player should be, were born from that very axiom. Not everybody likes to be left without direction, crying in the mall. I certainly wouldn’t want ALL my games to be like the original The Legend of Zelda. Similarly, not everybody wants a game with plot, or a game with nothing but surprises or a game that unfolds before your eyes as your play it. But then again, the gaming environment would be very dry indeed if the only games available were the ones everybody wanted – the Greatest Common Denominator. That’s why we have niches. Because it is exciting not to know where we are sometimes. |
Fern, you need to play Dark Souls. More than any other game it really captures that original Legend of Zelda aesthetic. It places you in a world and tells you, “Okay, now go to these two places. How do you get there? Why, you fucking look for them! You can see them both from here, you twit! Get going!”
Then you proceed to die a thousand times but what’s important is that you’re experimenting.
I’ve had Demon’s Souls and Dark Souls since they came out, but haven’t started either once. Mostly it’s because I never touch my PS3 in general, but I keep seeing things like this which push me into finally playing them.
Would you believe it if I said I have never even seen Dark Souls in Brazil? 😛
Maybe I’m just going to have to include it in my next importing bundle from eStarland… or maybe I should wait until May, when I’m going to Vegas!
The only recent RPG I can think of that didn’t have any kind of waypoint system is Risen. Like the Gothic games before it the developers Piranha Bytes gave the players only partial maps of the world until right at the end, so you would only have maps of specific areas such as a city and the wilds were often unmapped. The maps were also drawn by hand and could be slightly incorrect. With only vague pointers to where the quest objectives were it gave the game a true sense of adventure and excitement because you had no idea whether you were about to find a new valley on the other side of the cave or a dead end.
Waypoint systems make sense a lot of the time as it can be frustrating to run around for 30 minutes and just missing your objective over and over again. But without them some kinds of games just become better. For RPGs that want the player to explore a vast world I think waypoints do more harm than good. Instead there should be characters or visual cues in the world itself that can help point to the right direction instead of a UI waypoint marker. Outcast which came out in 1999 had plenty of NPCs spread out in the world who could point the player in the right direction and depending on how far away you were from the person or place you were looking for the directions you got would be more or less vague.
It all depends on the type of game you’re making because when playing through Borderlands in 4 player co-op I don’t think any of us paid much attention to any of the dialogue or story and without waypoint markers it might have become a much worse experience. But for singleplayer games I wouldn’t mind more developers taking cues from Thief, Risen, Gothic 1-2 etc and removing waypoints and making the maps worse. That might result in moments of the player being lost, but on the whole they would be better game experiences.
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Good piece, Fernando, and I hadn’t really looked at it through that “project management” lens before. There definitely feels like there’s something lost there. Though it maybe isn’t all bad…I’m playing through both Skyrim and Daggerfall right now, and I can’t help but think that the early hand-holding in the modern game is preferable to the infinitely intimidating character creation and opening dungeon in the older title.
It’s far more straightforward for modern FPSes, where you really did have more elaborate, interesting level design before everything became a corridor. But with CRPGs, I think you can see what can happen if you go too far the other way.
As I once told Pat, this is not about being better or worse. It’s about a kind of game we rarely see anymore. I’ve read your post (you may have seen that I ‘favorite’d it) and from what I’ve heard about Morrowind, The Elder Scrolls is indeed a perfect example of a series being domesticated.
It it better now?
No.
It’s just different.
Though it is, sometimes, irritating. I feel a tingling down my spine whenever I start Arkham City up and see right in the initial menu that I’ve completed SE-VEN-TY-NI-NE percent of it. Jesus! I want to save Gotham, get that stat out of my way!
I don’t agree that having plot-driven games necessarily requires games to be more domesticated. I replayed FF7 the other week, probably seven years after my last playthrough. This is the epitome of ‘linear’ JRPG’s. Yet even it manages to give the player some sense of freedom, secrets to discover (some of them plot-related, but not 100% necessary), non-plot-related challenges that aren’t pointed out, and so on. And even though the plot itself is linear, there are times and places where it isn’t 100% clear where you’re supposed to go or what you’re supposed to do.
It had me confused at first, especially after playing World of Warcraft or SWTOR, where everything is spelled out to the last detail and there are quest guides that point me to the exact places I need to be. I thought FF7 was the same way. I’m even so ‘damaged’ from WoW that I didn’t have the patience to explore and find my own way (as I had on my previous playthrough seven years ago). Any time I began to feel lost, I immediately googled for my next destination.
I’m not sure about the rest of you, but I’m not sure if I like the direction games have taken. Then again, I’m not sure if I could readjust to the idea of having to explore in order to progress the story in a game.
Well, I wouldn’t say FFVII is the epitome of linear JRPG. That would be FFXIII. Even Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII is filled with direction and way points. Though still with “some” degree of freedom – usually non-plot related – I can clearly see a trend.
This thing is that a good plot demand a good pacing and good pacing is derived from a deliberate sense of progression – and therefore, direction. Games where it isn’t clear where you are supposed to go have their pacing ruined. That’s why I said the exception will be the plots which already take aimless wandering into account.
I think the Fallout series strikes a nice balance. The main quest usually contains direct way points (though you can skip parts and complete quests on accident). Side quests generally have waypoints, but they’ll point to general locations (find this object, it’s somewhere in this multi-story building). There’s also tons of unmarked quests that don’t have more information than a vague description. The world is filled with “unimportant” locations that contain secrets, either items or quests or fleshing out the story or even just jokes, so you are encouraged to explore to your heart’s content. The world map is pretty good, but the maps of buildings just mark where walls are and are nearly useless when multiple floors are involved.
I LOVE that and I think the newer games (3, NV) had less of those ‘missions you don’t even realize are missions’ (unmarked quests, yes) – like an errant person mentioning they’re looking for something and then given no indication of where that thing might be or how to get it, but it still being possible to set out on that quest.
And it’s done in tandem with the structured quests (though the earlier games didn’t quite lay out EVERY SINGLE STEP you needed to do the quests).
Honestly there’s no bigger sense of achievement than putting together 2 and 2 in those early games, than figuring out how to solve something that doesn’t have an obvious, immediate solution and it’s truly your cunning and wit that solves the issue. Like that cyborg quest in Fallout 3.
Fallout 1…I won’t say it was too directionless, but I think most contemporary gamers would have a lot of trouble with it. The “find us a solution, bye” opening is pretty harsh (particularly since the player probably doesn’t realize they can go right back in the Vault!). But there is also something really wonderful about it, finding new places or missing them alltogether in a way you just can’t do with the Bethesda ones. Once you find a quest, you have markers, and even the “hidden” locations show up on the stupid compass, so it’s pretty rare to find something truly unexpected.
I agree with your opinions about Fallout, but I think there might still be a little bit too much hand-holding. Personally, I think the best balance was from another Bethesda title, Morrowind. Directions were all given by NPC dialogue, but you were pretty much left to your own devices when it came to exploring, finding landmarks, etc. The world map NEVER displayed objectives, but they had map markers for the biggest landmarks, like towns and the larger dungeons. However, they *still* managed to have a decent starting area in which you could get your bearings, experiment with some skills, and even earn some money to start off with.
I definitely miss the days when I could explore at will without having something on my UI telling me EXACTLY where to go.
Don’t have to go back all the way to Zelda! At the very least, Morrowind (2002) has no “quest markers” or compass or anything of the sort, and required quite a lot of exploration to find things.
Well, I was never a PC gamer…. 😛
Morrowind was ported to the Xbox, and I know plenty of people who had a good time with it on that platform (personally, I couldn’t survive without hotkeys).
That would explain why Minecraft (at least in the early beta, before an end boss and quasi-tutorial existed) or Terraria never came up as a game of discovery. Few I’ve played have really given me that fear/wonder of stumbling into a vast, waterfall and lava pool-ridden cavern, realizing I’m running low on torches, turning around and finding myself unsure on how, exactly, to get back to my home base with all the filthy loot I picked up.
I think one of the main reasons for this trend is the move towards “organic” environments in games. Think about Mario 3: that game never tells you what to do, but generally, each new level is about 90 seconds long and really only asks you to figure out one thing. Modern games don’t segment the experience like that, and they want every screenshot to look gorgeously detailed, so the pertinent game information is sort of “hidden” by the overwhelming mess of options and fluff content. So, they compensate by babysitting you through the game world, scared that you will get even the slightest bit frustrated.
Just for a bit of a view from the other side of this fence (and some judicial fence sitting), I grew up with, let’s call them “directionless” games, starting with the aforementioned Super Mario Bros. Since then I’ve moved from being effectively penniless but with tons of spare time to being relatively cash rich, but time poor (turns out children and jobs are real time sinks).
I’ve accepted more “guided” games because I get more bang for my buck (quid). I slightly resent the Bat-signal in Arkham City, but ultimately I accept that it’s allowing me to cut out what can be exploration or aimless wandering to get to the meat of the experience when I’m tight for time.
I’m 28, and I don’t think my experience or situation is at all unique, and I suspect there are marketing and research departments that are aware of this too.
I’d like to flesh this out more, but alas my life is again getting in the way.
Thanks to Penny Aracde Report for the link to this article too – I’d never have had the pleasure of reading it otherwise.
Glad you liked it! You should come back for more, I promise it’s always interesting ’round here. 🙂
The flaw with the author’s argument is that games are becoming more guided is because that’s what gamers want. It sells well. And sales are how we tell designers and publishers what types of games we like. If you don’t like that style of game (and it’s not hard to find out how free-form a game is through examining the box or description), don’t buy it. There are (as the author pointed out) still games being made to fit niche markets, and due to the increasing indie and app game scenes, those niche markets are actually growing. Flash puzzle games have been around for years now, some of them quite detailed and enjoyable. Celebrate what you have, rather than telling everyone else they have to share your taste.
I don’t think that the point of the article was to tell everyone else they have to share the author’s taste. That’s why there were bits like, say, the whole last paragraph, basically saying that not everyone has this taste in games, and that not all games should be like that. Personally, my interpretation of the article was that, well, there just aren’t very many of that type of game anymore these days. I’m a fan of RPGs myself, so I’ll use those for reference – So yeah, there are lots of good games coming out these days – Dragon Age, Kingdoms of Amalur, Demon Souls.. I could go on, except that, well, I’ve forgotten a lot of them – and that’s kind of my point. Chrono Trigger, Suikoden 1 & 2, FF7, Super Mario RPG, Xenogears, Breath of Fire… These are the games that I keep going back to. Maybe I’m just nostalgic, but somehow I don’t feel like there are games like those anymore.
Again, though, maybe I’m just nostalgic.
(And yeah, I got here from PA Report.)
There is still plenty of exploration in modern games. Take Skyrim, for example. While it’s true that Skyrim has a system that directs you to the next quest location (and thank heavens, because without it finding certain locations could take literally days of game time), there is a huge portion of the game that you won’t see if you just go by the quest arrows. The last time I remember that sense of exploration in a game was when I found whole dungeons in Skyrim that had no purpose in the story; that were just there to be explored. I think it’s telling that it’s also the last game I played that wasn’t a fighting game.
This sense of exploration is something valid to look for in a game, but there are games nowadays that catur to this need as their primary purpose. I feel like you’re also glossing over the frustration that it caused when games left you in the lurch with unclear objectives and no known path to the next objective. We’ve struck quite a bit of balance these days, and moved forward in a lot of ways.
Skyrim is a prime example of what he’s talking about. Quests are to-do lists. You are told where caves and locations are before you can actually see them on your, err, what’s it called? Compass thing? Like it’ll have the symbols for em, and they’ll get filled out when you actually “discover” them, just like the small triangles in Fallout.
I think the extent you can claim ‘exploration’ in Skyrim is that you don’t know what’ll be *in* these places, or know when a dragon comes up or whatever, but otherwise that’s about it.
I’ve spent about 75% of my time in Skyrim riding around the land looking for interesting locations, or being in dungeons that haven’t been triggered in quests. I call that exploration.
If you want the experience of not knowing where you’re supposed to go, you can play Skyrim without the compass, and without the direction spell. You don’t need to use them. Yes, they’re an option that most people will use, but that doesn’t mean you have to do the same.
I guess maybe I was missing the point of the article slightly, though. Looking back at it, the point is less exploration than mystery. The article doesn’t advocate games you can explore, it advocates games hiding information from the player. In response to that, I think it might be a good enough solution in mainstream games to allow you to turn off the help function (for example, turning off the compass in Skyrim).
I also think that there are still games that withhold information and don’t give you the option for help. They just aren’t mainstream games. This is for good reason: withholding information rewards players with the time and patience to dig deep, something that most people aren’t willing to put up with. For me, deliberate obfuscation of content has lost its appeal as I’ve gotten older, and less of my time has gone to hundred hour RPGs. I understand that people want the reward of having put in the extra effort, and that’s fine, but you shouldn’t expect it of a title that is meant to be for an audience that may not have the same amount of time to devote.
I’m not sure if mystery is the right word. What I got out of the article is not that the author likes games that hide things from him, he just doesn’t want everything to be so explicit. I am sympathetic to his desires, as some of my favorite games of all time are ones where you spend a few hours trying to figure out what to do and then when you figure it out, that geyser of dopamine that washes over you is, well, frankly, the feeling is f*ckin’ fantastic. It’s not just about getting to progress, it’s about having figured it out on your own. It’s similar to the way you feel when you get a high score in a game like pac man, except instead of pride in your reflexes, you have pride in your problem solving. A magic compass that tells you where to go in an RPG is like playing pac man without the ghosts; your victory is hollow. I know that I’m in the minority, but I want games that challenge my brain, and don’t just prey on my OCD fantasies of full progress bars.
I wish you guys stopped calling me “the author”… geez! 😛
I have not yet played Skyrim (sorry! but the time commitment scares me!), but I did play Oblivion. Can you turn the map and quest markers off? Because here is the thing: if it’s there and I can’t turn it off, I’ll use it. Ideally, it should be optional like Metroid Prime’s hint system – or any Super Guide-like initiative really. From what I’ve heard in a comment at Kotaku that’s not what happens in Skyrim as the quests were designed with the quest markers in mind. The example given was the quest for Molag Bal where you the only info you get is the quest marker – and there is no practical way to complete it without that.
Now, does this really happen?
If you can’t turn it off, avoiding it is futile. You can say you do, like a meta-game of sorts, but I won’t believe you. It would be like saying you play GTA in a non-violent way, just saving people with ambulances.
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I concur with Tom. I thought perhaps this article was inspired by Dark Souls’ refreshingly unfashionable design. Dark Souls is a love letter to games like the original castelvania, zelda and metroid games. Old school Japanese design sensibilities at their best.
This man has clearly never played Minecraft.
I have. I just forgot about it. 😉
Indie games are more likely to be like that for they are the ones who need to rely on niches the most to survive.
That game offers so much opportunity for unguided discovery, it is insane.
While I think you’re right that main-stream/big-budget games have become domesticated, I think the “niches” that indie games appeal to have become bigger and bigger, showing that there is definitely still a lot of appeal out there for more undomesticated games.
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I only had to go back to Shadow of the Colossus, which was excellent about exploration. Finding each colossus was a task in and of itself, and while you had a map, it certainly didn’t fill in until after the exploring–nor did it have all the interesting things you would find on your way–lizards and trees. I spent hours just exploring and basking in the beauty that game had.
You are, of course, absolutely right. I did sense I was setting up a trap for myself when I was writing that particular paragraph, but my memory was too obscured by the Dark Side for me to see it. Actually, now I can think on other gems, like Metroid Prime with hint system off, that did this as well.
In fact, the moment I mentioned Machinarium should have made me rewrite that “Try to remember” paragraph!
Fern, thanks for the link, man! (And the fantastic piece!)
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Isn’t that nice, boy? Who’s a good boy? WHOSAGOODBOY?? You are!
Fucking. Dropped.
This is an interesting article, especially when you consider it in the context of Jane McGonigal’s thesis in Reality is Broken: that gamers turn to games because fundamentally games make them feel productive and the real world simply does not give them that feeling of productivity. The domestication of games is really the implementation of tools that allow players to feel more productive and efficient.
So maybe when real life and real work improves to the point where gamers are getting that from their real jobs, gamers will then look to games for that feeling of exploration and discovery that you describe here.
I think Metroid Prime 3 really perfected the balance between having the maximum number of people get 100% completion and letting people who wanted to do it the hard way avoid all forms of help. Not only was there the traditional optional hint system, but you also got another 100% optional system that marked the location of every missable pickup without any indication of how to get the pickups, for people like me who like 100% completion and the challenge of solving every puzzle on our own but hate getting to the room before the final boss (or the point of no return before the final battle) and discovering that we have to search every room we’ve ever been to and possibly a few unmapped ones that we haven’t for five items that have no individual value to us. Ironically, Arkham City provided an ideal framework for getting that kind of thing into more plot-driven games- the side mission list made it obvious how many side missions there were without any details about them, which would be awesome in something like a Tales game where the side quests are scattered all across the map with nothing to hint at their existence until you’ve already started them (and even then, it’s not always clear where or when the next step is).
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