Thoughts on Design - Nice Backdrop

One of the most interesting experiences I’ve had in playing a game is courtesy of The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. In this large, open-world fantasy RPG,I noticed how interesting and engaging the game world was changed massively, depending upon what type of character I was playing as.

For example, when playing as a noble and upright warrior, the game’s settlements feel rather sparse and tame. Sure they make for visually interesting backdrops, but there’s not a lot to do beyond visit the blacksmith and maybe head down to the local tavern to see if there’s any bandits nearby. All those characters, all those buildings simply become so much backdrop.

In contrast, the moment you leave morals on the table and play a thief, things become wildly different. Settlements are no longer pit-stops on your way to something more interesting, but filled to the brim with opportunities. Each character becomes a target to practice your pickpocketing skills on. Each locked door a chance to improve your lock-picking abilities. Every building holds the chance of enrichment (or a run-in with the law if you’re caught), and every guard becomes a potential threat. In short, the world becomes far more interesting.

This is something I’ve noticed in other games as well. Take games like Deceive Inc, for example. While I’ve played plenty of games with crowds in them, this was the first time that I’ve really, really paid attention to them. Why? Because any person in that crowd could be an enemy player in disguise. So not only are you watching like a hawk to spot incongruous behaviour, you’re also trying to learn how to best blend in yourself and mimic the behaviour of the NPCs around you.

Something similar also exists in games which use traps. Note that I don’t simply mean environmental hazards, but things designed to bring your game to an abrupt end if you’re not paying careful attention. Great examples are the traps in the Prince of Persia, Prince of Persia 2: The Shadow and the Flame, and Prince of Persia 3D games. Unlike the traps in the Sands of Time series which simply act as another part in an obstacle course, in these original games, running headlong through the level was the surest way to lose your head. See that recess along the path’s edges? That’s a flick blade waiting to take your ankles out. That ornate pattern in the ceiling? It could just be hiding a gigantic, razor-edged ceiling fan.

But what if you don’t want to viciously decapitate/impale/bifurcate the characters of unobservant players? Look no further than Cyan’s masterpieces Myst and Riven. Slow paced puzzle games, your ability to solve, and even find puzzles, depends entirely on your ability to observe – and hence engage – with the environment. As a direct result of this, despite the fact that I’ve spent far less time in these games than others, their levels are still indelibly imprinted on my memory. This is because it’s got nothing to do with the amount of time you spend in a game, but how intense the game was, and how engaged you were.

Worth noting is the fact that the level of engagement, and the length of engagement, changes depending upon why the player was engaged. Is the engagement, for example, an integral part of the game as in Prince of Persia and Deceive Inc? Or is it because there’s a particular goal the player is trying to achieve? In the first instance, the engagement will last as long as the game does, or until the player fatigues. In the second instance, it can only last as long as the goal in unfulfilled.

This is why stuffing large game worlds full to the brim with cosmetic collectibles or side-activities still results in empty feeling worlds. It’s not that there’s nothing to do, its just that it feels surplus to game requirements, or runs into the law of diminishing returns (even in Skyrim, when you’ve maxed out your lock-picking skills, the obsessive need to open every door wears off).

And while it’s certainly convenient to press a button and ‘scan’ the surroundings for points of interest, the flip side is that everything else becomes ‘points of disinterest’. You no longer have to observe your environment (the game’s taken care of that for you, so why bother?). That is, you only have a few seconds of engagement before the game world becomes meaningless space, a simple time consuming obstacle which you screen out as you travel from one point of interest to the next (hence the joy of a well implemented fast-travel system: it lets you skip all the boring bits).

Sid Meier once said that games were made up of interesting decisions. Perhaps one of the most basic of these decisions is what you give your attention to, and why. ■