Learning from Everywhere

I just returned from vacation in Orlando. My family and I visited Universal Studios, Universal Islands of Adventure, and Disney’s Magic Kingdom. As we walked throughout the parks and waited in line for rides, I couldn’t help but notice that theme parks have a lot of lessons that game designers can learn.

Both Disney and Universal spend considerable effort to ensure that every part of a ride works toward the overall experience. Placed throughout the queue area are television screens, posters, and animatronics to set up the story of the ride. Waiting in line for Universal Studios’ Jaws ride, you watch television interviews with the survivors of Amity, discussing the way they’ve coped with the trauma of a shark attack. Outside the ride, the park is set up to mimic Amity, complete with tacky shark souvenirs. At Disney, the path to the Haunted Mansion is littered with tombstones inscribed with cheesy jokes. The ride operators wear funeral attire and make terrible puns in somber tones. Once you get off Space Mountain, you take a walkway back to the entrance. The ceiling is covered in stars, there are alien landscapes built around the conveyor; the ride is over, but the experience isn’t.

Game designers need to remember that every part of a game should work towards enhancing the experience. The opening menu, the pause interface, everything needs to contribute towards the atmosphere the game is trying to achieve. I’ve played a number of games that shattered my immersion because the interface wasn’t as streamlined as the rest of the game, throwing the fantastic pacing down the toilet.

There’s more to establishing tone for a game than just the gameplay and the visuals. Game designers need to remember that they have lots of tools at their disposal, and they need to use all of them.

Pacing in Alan Wake

Lately, I've been replaying Alan Wake. It's a survival horror game heavily based around contrasting light and dark. Enemies are surrounded by darkness, which needs to be burned away with the beam of a flashlight before they can be hurt. I could talk for days about all the things Alan Wake does right, but I'm going to focus on one thing: pacing.

In order for a survival horror game to work, it needs to be scary. And in order for the player to feel scared, they have to feel threatened. Previous survival horror games, like the original Resident Evil and Silent Hill, did this by crippling the player's supplies. The player never really had the tools to fight back, so the best course of action was always to run. More modern games, like Dead Space, have tighter controls, but they still rely on giving the player too little ammo to properly protect themselves.

Alan Wake - I assume through incredibly strenuous playtesting - manages to give exactly enough for the player to fight their foes while still feeling as though they're lacking. Every time I run out of ammo, I turn the corner to find a checkpoint with an ammo cache. And while it was predictable, it didn't lessen the tension. I still felt like I could run empty and be left helpless.

Part of this is due to brilliant level design. Enemies generally require a very specific amount of ammo to dispatch; standard foes take three pistol shots, more difficult foes can take a whole clip. So when the designers build an encounter, they can know exactly how much ammo a player will need to face it. By stringing these encounters together cleverly, they can ensure that the player has just enough ammo to deal with the dangers they'll face. There's still enough wiggle room that the player doesn't feel that they have more ammo than necessary, but they never feel that they need to run rather than fight (unless the encounter is specifically designed that way).

Proper pacing makes or breaks a game. I wish more developers would play Alan Wake and see that.

Games I Love: Team Fortress 2

With Battlefield 3 just released and Modern Warfare 3 on the horizon, I'm often asked which I prefer. And my answer surprises more often than not: neither.

My favorite shooter - and the only one I'll play - is Team Fortress 2.

I don't like military style shooters. I find that battles between two players end in a second or two at most; either someone catches the other by surprise and kills them instantly, or the player with the better aim gets a headshot and kills the other instantly. The guns in military shooters all tend to blur together; there are the assault rifles with slightly different stats, the shotguns with slightly different stats, and the sniper rifles with slightly different stats.

Listening to the developer commentary in TF2 (Valve commentary is ALWAYS worth listening to) reveals a set of brilliant mantras.

At a glance, a player should be able to tell a.) what team someone is on, b.) what class they are, and c.) what weapon they are using. In military shooters, everyone is the same "soldier in camo", and I can never tell if someone is on my team or if I should be shooting them.

Only two classes have the ability to kill in one shot: the Sniper and the Spy. The Sniper has to get a headshot (no other class has that ability), and his laser sight will alert his prey that they need to beware. The Spy has to get a backstab with his knife, which requires him to be in melee range and sneak up on his target. Both classes have the least health in the game, so they pay for their power with fragility.

Balance between classes is, while not perfect, incredibly well done. All classes fit into a rock-paper-scissors configuration, but skill can trump class counters. Nearly all unlocked weapons are sidegrades, gaining strength in one area at the cost of a weakness elsewhere. One of my biggest complaints with military shooters is that they all have weapon unlocks that are clear upgrades to the defaults, making the barrier to entry incredibly high.

Most of all, Team Fortress 2 gets the pacing of combat perfectly. When combat starts, I have long enough to decide if I should engage or if the fight is a guaranteed loss. Once I start fighting, I know it's going to take more than one shot to kill either of us, so there can actually be a fight. And if it's clear I'm losing, I have the ability to escape while simultaneously allowing my opponent the chance to finish me off. Fights are (almost) never over too quickly or too slowly.

I've come to expect a lot from my shooters. I want fights that last, balanced weapons, and game modes that reward teamwork rather than mere deathmatching. And nothing has offered what I want like Team Fortress 2.