by Dr Taliesin Coward
So, this essay will turn its eye to exploring a handful of serious, game-breaking design flaws. These are distinct from errors of implementation – such as poor optimization, glitches and bugs. Rather, these are competently executed design decisions, but ones which ultimately reduce (or in some cases even completely destroy) the fun of the game.
Of course, the point is not just to create a list of flaws, but to provoke thought in the hope of helping designers create better games. All of the mistakes listed are ones that I have seen made recently, and, in some instances, by massive AAA titles. While it is tempting to name the games in question, this would be indiscreet and benefit no-one. Suffice to say that if you’ve played one of them recently you will probably recognize it – especially if you found yourself actually getting angry, or deciding you simply couldn’t be bothered carrying on.
While it may be argued that some of the ‘flaws’ listed are more a matter of personal taste (fun after all being quite subjective), others are most definitely not. I have attempted to sort the flaws into several broad categories for ease of discussion.
These errors can be found across a range of games. In this article, all but two of the design mistakes mentioned actually come from one game. Without naming names, it was a multi-million dollar budget, highly polished AAA title, and one of only two games that has actually made me angry. In fact, these design problems so destroyed my sense of enjoyment, that I uninstalled the dratted thing and have never touched it again. While any one of these faults would be damaging in its own right – though not necessarily to the point of destruction – in combination they were utterly catastrophic. So without further ado, let’s start with one of the broadest categories, and home to some of the most prolific and serious design flaws: pacing.
Pacing
This is the longest section, and perhaps the most complex as problems of pacing are often the result of several design choices, the negative impact of which grows with time. Thus while a short 5-or-so hour game may get away with some of the things discussed below, a huge game which expects people to invest 50+ hours certainly will not (and from my experience, the cracks inevitably start to appear around the 12 hour mark).
Regardless of the apparent complexity, nearly all the problems stem from the designer attempting to control the pace of the game, rather than letting the player tweak it to their own inclinations (whatever those may be at any given time).
Boredom and travel
While one can easily point to several different things that contribute to this (of which we will highlight a few), in general this boils down to points of interest being too spread out with regard to time. For games with massive open (or semi-open) worlds, this is often due to the combination of having points-of-interest spread over vast differences, and poorly implemented fast-travel systems.
The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim is an example of a game with a well implemented fast-travel system. Provided they are not in the middle of combat, or some quest which prevents them from doing so, players can instantly teleport to any location they have previously discovered. Also, major cities that the player has not yet discovered can still be instantly travelled to provided the player finds one of the easily located horse-and-cart drivers and is willing to pay a fee. Additionally, major landmarks in cities (such as keeps) have their own fast-travel point, meaning the player does not have to trudge all the way from the city gate if they don’t want to. Contrast this with games that have limited fast-travel nodes, which then force the player to travel farther than they may want, and the difference becomes clear.
But what if there are points of interest the designer has scattered throughout the landscape for the player to discover? Well, this can help prevent the player getting bored, but only if the player is in the right frame of mind to go exploring. If the player has a single goal in mind, is not interested, or has seen or done those activities before, such points of interest may as well not exist. A good example of this is the gangs of hooligans infesting the streets in Batman: Arkham Knight or Arkham City. While they start as an amusing diversion and a way to gain some XP, after a few fights, I found myself simply avoiding them. That is, they became background noise to be avoided, rather than a point of interest that kept me engaged.
Some things may of course help. Having a highly entertaining and engaging traversal system is one. The early Assassin’s Creed games and Arkham Knight and Arkham City all require the player to be actively engaged in travelling from point A to B – looking for handholds, high vantage points, the best grapple-point and so on.
However, if travelling from point A to point B simply requires the player to hold down one button, or worse, engage a ‘follow the road’ autopilot, you can bet the movement system will, after 13 or so hours, descend into sheer tedium – no matter how lovingly rendered the game world is. As veteran designer Sid Meier noted, “neither ‘sit back’ nor ‘watch’ are features to be proud of in a game.”
At its core, this problem stems from not allowing the player to control the pacing. Yes, you may have created the most beautiful game world in existence, but no player is going to thank you for forcing them to look at it, especially if they’ve explored it a few times. Even slow-paced puzzle games like Myst and Riven — which were arguably the best looking games of their time — had a fast travel mode which you could enable. If you wanted slow and pretty, you could click where you wanted to go, and watch as the screen did a fancy dissolve-cut to the next image. Enable fast travel mode, and, if you had already been to a location you could travel as fast as you mouse-finger could click, making it possible to bounce from one side of the map to the other in a few seconds. Even movies showing you travelling from one location to another (such as the mag-train in Riven) could be skipped. After all, there’s no familiarity in scenery. By giving such control to the player, it lets the player choose: do I want to instantly get there (simply because I want to, or because I have real-world time pressure) and forego the chance of exploring, or do I want to explore? Boredom and frustration are avoided, by letting the player play the game the way they want.
Boredom – Over-long dialogue
Another problem is the length of dialogue. Note that here I’m talking about dialogue which the player simply watches and listens to. Not RPG style dialogue where the player has a lot of meaningful choices to make. For well paced games, ‘sit and listen’ dialogue serves to give a bit of context and set the player up for the next bit of the game, and often takes no more than 10 seconds. It may stretch to 30-40 seconds if it’s a really important plot twist, but it rarely goes beyond that. This holds true for both action games like Crysis and Assassin’s Creed II, and puzzle games like Myst and Riven.
Longer dialogue risks losing the player, especially if paired with a poorly thought-out travel system. Two large, AAA, open-world games I recently played (which will remain nameless) suffered from both of these. The first, I actually found myself groaning when facing yet another 4 minutes of exposition. For the second game (which largely served as the inspiration for these articles) the typical mission structure consisted of 5 minutes travel, 3 minutes dialogue, 2 minutes of fighting, 4 minutes dialogue, and 5 minutes travel again. Both of these games were highly polished, well implemented games, but the fun was diminished through poor design choices.
Fatigue
The flip-side of tedium is fatigue through demanding that the player either sustain an intense level of concentration, or repeat the same activity over and over again. Leaving to one side repetitive quests and tasks (which are discussed in Part 2 of this series), just about any game can suffer from problem simply by restricting when and where the player can save, or by having checkpoints that are too spread out. That is, the player cannot choose where to abandon a game and take a break without some penalty such as being sent back further than they want. They’re effectively being forced by the designer to play for longer than they want.
For example, many games do not allow the player to save during the middle of a fight, and as such demand the player concentrate for the duration of combat. Should the fight be too protracted, it will lead to fatigue. Again, it boils down to a matter of degree. Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance has some extremely protracted boss fights, especially towards the end of the game. It works, it’s fun, but its use is sparing, and it’s at the end of the game. Had each boss fight been as challenging as the last, I probably wouldn’t have bothered beyond the second level.
Of course, there are some genres and game modes which are deliberately designed to be challenging, and so restrict the player’s ability to save. Provided the game is up-front about this, and the player knows what they’re getting into, it’s not a problem. The player wants to be challenged and punished for failing. But that’s the important point: it’s what the player wants.
This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t control it at all, but it’s a question of when and to what degree. Well thought-out restricting of checkpoints and the ability to save can create a deliberate spike in difficulty, as was done in Blue Fire for its optional challenge rooms. Essentially a long obstacle course, these rooms required split-second timing, planning, and a deft hand to navigate. They also, initially, had no checkpoints. Fail any jump, or run into any hazard, and you’re sent right back to the beginning. While this certainly upped the difficulty, it did run the risk of making some areas too hard. In fact, following feedback, checkpoints were added in order to make the challenge rooms feel a bit fairer. However, the point here is not the adding or removing of checkpoints, but the deliberate usage of them to challenge the player without frustrating them.
Tempting as it is to continue, this article would then be at grave danger of committing it’s own pacing issue (if it hasn’t bordered on it already). Part 2 will leave issues of pacing behind, and focus on a more general range of broader design issues. ■
References
Camden Jones, 23 July 2019 “Bloodstained Ritual of the Night bosses had to be flawlessly beaten with only a dagger to make it in the game”
https://www.gamerevolution.com/news/571403-bloodstained-ritual-of-the-night-bosses-koji-igarashi-designer-dagger> accessed 12 Oct 2021.
Johnson, S., “GD Column 5: Sid’s Rules” (2009),
“Making Life Epic: A Look Back at Sid Meier’s Beloved Classics – Firaxicon 2015” (Gamespot, 4 Oct 2015)
Meier, S., “Sid Meier’s Interesting Decisions,” (Talk 2012, uploaded 28 Sept 2018, GDC)
Meier, S., “The Psychology of Game Design (Everything You Know is Wrong),” (Talk 2010, uploaded 17 Oct 2016, GDC),
Meier, S., & Noonan, J. L., Sid Meier’s Memoir! (New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 2020).