Ben Gonshaw: Digital Media Theorist & Game Design Consultant
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DEPTHS OF FUN

12th December 2004

Intro

Half Life 2. My hours are being sucked into it, although I am impressed, with heart in mouth most of the time, my feelings before its release have been confirmed. Is anyone interested in yet another personal opinion on Valve’s second release? Not, really, the net is saturated with them. Which one do I read, which one do I believe and which ones can I ignore? Mostly I ignore them.

The overload of information paralyses us. Historically we have had few choices to make in our entertainment. There were two or three TV channels, whatever films were on at the time in the cinema and a choice of radio stations. At first, as the choice increased, this brought more variety and it was welcomed. Indeed an amount of choice is useful. However, at some point a critical number of options is reached. Beyond this level we become unable to make a firm selection. From only being able to listen to a song on the radio, to selecting which LP to listen to, to flicking between tracks on a CD, we have spent more and more time making the selection rather than enjoying what has been chosen.

Today, with many people having several gigabytes of MP3’s, the variety is baffling. Many people will sit playing music as an active participatory activity. They load many songs into the playlist and switch from one to the next. Sometimes a song gets a few minutes listening time other times less than 20 seconds. They add more to the list, delete some and flick between tracks. It is the cable TV syndrome: there is something better out there to watch if only you could find it. After 45 minutes spent glancing at every channel, you discover that you have looped back around to the start and need to have another look.

Right now there is talk of enlisting Google to create a search engine for TV to combat this problem. This is the beginning of a slide into the abyssal depths of too much choice. Suddenly you must generate your own idea of the show that you want to watch. This means that you never see anything particularly new or interesting unless someone points you in that direction. This is because you won’t consider going there yourself, you would never make the search that generates that show as the result. That show is not really new, just new for you.

Get to the point already. . .

Now consider gaming, not the number of games that are available, but the number of choices that a single game makes available to the player. A good example would be GTA vs. Half Life. GTA provides a relatively freeform world to explore, whereas Half Life is linear in the extreme. However, the player’s choices in Half Life appear to have more meaning. The weapon choice, tactics within the space, which objects to smash and which to move or shield yourself with, all have a critical bearing on your success in that location. In GTA there is always the feeling that you are missing out on something. The car I’m driving is ok, but there is a better one, this rampage is fun, but there might be a more bloody one. The combination of not knowing and desiring the best entertainment leaves the whole experience wanting.

In fact, it is precisely because the choice is so restricted, that the results of a decision have a greater impact on the gameworld. In Wario Ware there is often only one button to press and one choice: when to press it. The timing becomes everything and that action is bestowed great significance and consequence. In an open game the individual choices and movements are devalued. If I swerve here or there, or knock over a pedestrian (or miss that pedestrian) then there are no real consequences to the game. This means that the bigger picture becomes more important, because aggregates of actions have meaning, whilst a single action does not.

The balance between freedom and constraint, linear and non-linear is a very hard one to attain. Essentially it boils down to what layer of the mechanics the ‘fun’ is in. Each layer should be fun, pressing a single button should be engaging and have interesting effects on screen and speaker. However, there are further layers, perhaps more abstract. In GTA driving the car is not the game, but winning the race, ramming the tank or creating a blockade of wrecks is. These actions are a layer above the control system. Even so, have the main fun emerging from too many different low level actions or by having too many layers of actions, and it ceases to be fun at all. Conversely, use too few and the game becomes throwaway.

This can be countered by what the task actually entails. A basic task, such as open a door can have many layers to it, aided by the simplicity of the goal. However, if a complex task was high up in the abstraction, such as orchestrating a simultaneous strike by 12 different parties, it would be too difficult for a player to manage. If the same timed strike was accessible from a command view on an overhead map through a few mouse clicks then it is not too difficult. The interplay between the goal and what mechanics stand in the player’s way creates the atmosphere and the level of intimacy between the game and player.

The challenge to developers remains: create an involving, lasting experience that invites replaying. The key to this is to create a game that has a deep goal through abstracted layers, but still lets the player have fun when bashing those buttons.

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