Ben Gonshaw: Digital Media Theorist & Game Design Consultant
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BEAT THIS

17th September 2004

Very few people would argue that playing an arcade game is a boring experience.  At least, not in the first few minutes or so, until you’ve grasped what is required of you and then you are away, repetitively passing various different interface proficiency tests.

Before those tests begin, you run/drive/fly around in a mostly familiar fashion using a control system that feels comfortable.  Most game literate players can pick up almost any title in the top 20 and feel pretty much at home with it.  We have fallen into control conventions not simply because of sales figures and marketing departments, but because we know what things we are good at making.  We have solidified those methods for interacting with our virtual worlds that make sense, or feel right.  I do not want to explore whether we have hit a local minima in this and that there are marginal gains to be made or whether, worse, we have become locked into a far from ideal paradigm with the control pads of today (that's for another day's musing).  There may well be better ways out there, but let’s face it, the challenge of working out how we can create an intuitive link between our movements with plastic and rubber controllers and the images responding on screen has been sufficiently met.

However, we have been so obsessed with making the interaction feel right, that we have made this one aspect into the entire game.  Can the player manipulate our finely honed control system well enough to perform all the leaps, sword swipes, dodges and blocks at the right time and in the correct order?  Let’s start them off gently and then make it harder and harder.  By the end of the game the player is forced to pull out those ‘special’ combos that you hid in there because a producer or designer realised that there needed to be extra depth.  Suddenly that showy, ‘because I can’ move becomes a necessity and the player no longer enjoys playing but is frustrated into wrestling with that bit of plastic and rubber to wring those combos out of it.  All the effort you put into making them forget they were holding a pad is dashed apart by unnecessarily complex levels or difficult enemy challenges.  Look at Ninja Gaiden on Xbox.  A sumptuous world married to a solid control system that completely falls apart.  The difficulty curve quickly reaches 1:1 gradients with the enemies being too numerous, speedy or merciless and you are left grappling with the controller.  The fun quickly disappears and the frustration sets in.

Surely there is a better way to make digital entertainment than simple dexterity tests?

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