Breaking Open the Black Box

The Secrets and Stories of Game Design

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Lesson 3. Response

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A dragon stands before you, your attacks against its skin bounce off it harmlessly. A pang of helplessness surges through you as you swing your sword wildly, narrowly dodging the beast’s claw. It breathes in deeply, the sinewy smoke tendrils waif through its nostrils as the mouth begins to glow. A moment later a fountain of fire blooms from its open mouth, searing the earth around you as you roll out of the way behind a rock.

All seems lost until you spy a glowing, red spot on its chest. You swing your blade at its glowing heart and the beast reels from the blow, lurching backwards.  The dance continues, but now you know how this game is played and victory feels close at hand.

Slaying the Beast

The sequence I just described has been played out hundreds of times in legends, games and the imagination for as long as anyone can remember. Little wonder then that so many games seek to recreate that exact experience. But what is it about the story above that hits home so deeply with people? 
The answer is not simple, but one piece matters heavily for today’s lesson:
There is always something you can do to handle the monster’s attacks. 

The Heart

The dragon has a weak spot. You must attack that weak spot in order to slay it. However, the creatures attacks prevent you from safely approaching it. Furthermore, the heart is only exposed at certain times. The bright glow draws your eye to its location.

The Skin

The dragon’s armor deflects your sword effortlessly. It is clear that attempting to attack any other location is useless. This is reinforced with a metal deflecting sound which is highly unsatisfying. 

The Claws

The dragon’s attacks swing fiercely, but slowly, giving you ample time to raise your shield or roll away. However, it can only claw in front of itself, giving you a safe area to completely avoid the claws while it is frenzied.

The Breath

The dragon’s mouth glows brightly for a time before the flames are hurled at you. You can either dodge the flames once they start, or take cover behind a rock to wait out the attack. 

A Masterpiece of Responsive Mechanics

Despite being a difficult, highly damaging and dangerous boss, you are solely responsible for your survival. The beast doesn’t attack you without warning, its most powerful attacks are clearly telegraphed and the exposed safe spot of the heart makes it abundantly clear where you should strike. 
These are the types of fights players like the most. The path to victory is clear, but fraught with peril. 
There’s a sea of details, exceptions, theme and nuance that I could delve into here, but the lesson here is clear:
Give the player a response

The Types of Responses

There are three major categories of responses:
  1. Reaction – I see it occurring and I take action to counter it now.
  2. Preparation – I know it can occur and preemptively take actions to prevent it.
  3. Recooperation – It happened and I take action to recover from the consequences.
What are your favorite examples of these categories of response?  
Next time, I will write some more about these three points and how I’ve put them to use.

Lesson 2. Care

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John McWhorter teaches linguistics. Long distance running is popular in Israel. San Pan Tong was renamed from Ban Mae in 1939. Pachycalamus brevis, is a species of reptile in the Trogonophidae family.

Q: What do these four facts have in common?

A: You probably don’t care about any of them. 

Sorry, guys!

Your hair is on fire. You were fired. There’s a bear under your desk. Your wallet got stolen.

Q: Do I even need to ask you the real question?

A: No.


Those statements are so intrinsically important to you that you are concerned, invested and ready to take action.

In order for a player to take action, they have to care.

Thanks Gamespy!

If you’ve been playing video games for a while, you probably recognize the three power-ups above this paragraph.  In fact, you would probably go to extreme lengths to pick one of these up while playing a game – even if it was a new Super Mario game you’d never played before. Why?

Because years of experience taught you to care about them.

… but do you remember the first time you saw one?

I do. The first time I saw a mushroom, I confused it with the Goomba monsters and tried to jump on it. My dad laughed and told me it was OK to touch that one – but that moment of confusion stuck with me.

Super Mushrooms had a Clarity problem. They were easily confused with the most basic enemy. However, once I eventually did touch a Super Mushroom, I consistently began seeking out Super Mushrooms and using them.  Why? Because they allowed me to make 1 mistake that would otherwise end the game.

Consequentially, I rapidly taught myself to overcome the clarity issue. Because I cared about what they could give me.

The Product of Iteration

Future Super Mario Bros. game went to great lengths to positively reinforce the beneficial effects of Super Mushrooms and reduce the clarity issues. After Mario 1, Super Mushrooms consistently had faces and were red and white – a different color scheme than Goombas who remained brown.

The mechanic of granting you additional hits went untouched until Mario 64. That was 11 years of importance that are now deeply ingrained in your psyche.

Changing gears a bit, let’s talk about the Invulnerability Star.  The first time you saw one, what did you notice?

  • It was bouncing
  • It was flashing
  • It was running away from you
If there was a lesson you had quickly learned from Super Mushrooms – it was that things which are running away from you are things you want to catch. Catching an Invulnerability Star was a pain in the ass – not only did it move faster, it bounced and frequently fell into pits!
So why on earth would you bother with risking your neck to catch a Star when a Mushrooms were more plentiful and easier to catch?
“Well, duh, Alex, it made you invincible and you could kill anything you touched!”
That answer seems obvious now, but it leads us directly to the tool which allows us to control how much the player cares about a game mechanic. 

Tuning

Tuning is a massive topic that I will only gloss over here. However, it is the fastest way to test if a player will ever care about your mechanic.  What made the Invulnerability Star better than a Mushroom, but still allowed both to coexist within the same game? Tuning. 
The Mushroom allowed you to take additional hits and break blocks. 
The Star allow you to kill monsters you when touched them.
What an amazing power up! It reversed the fundamental nature on which the game was built! No wonder players cared!
Watch this video at around the 38 second mark:
Why didn’t you stick with the Star the entire game? Well… because you can’t. The designers decided that invulnerability lasts for a limited amount of time. 

Invulnerability lasts about 10 seconds… then slowly wears off.

Why? Let’s pretend that had been forever. How would the game change? How would the game change if it only lasted 1 second? Exploring this space will be the topic of my next post…

Bonus points:

What does Super Mario do to reinforce and clarify how drastically the game experience has changed while you are invulnerable?  A quick glance above should reveal at least 3 major things. A skilled eye will catch a few more. Post how many you caught in the comments below.

Lesson 1. Clarity

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A man lies unconscious in a hallway. Does he need help or is he just asleep?
What should you do?
As humans, we frequently encounter ambiguous situations like this. Few people would want to wake a napping man and fewer still fail to assist a dying man. How quickly do we determine if we need to take action? It depends on the clarity of the situation. 
In the picture to the right, it’s unclear if he needs help – perhaps he’s sleeping, perhaps he just got hit over the head and needs to be rushed to a hospital.  
Now let’s change a few factors. What if he’s well-dressed, wearing a suit and tie and has a beer bottle in his hands?  Far more likely that he’s just unconscious, but still possible that he needs help. Crank it up another notch: he’s a coworker and you just had a party celebrating the launch of your new website.  Another notch – there’s a note on his head that his wife has been called.  Almost certain that he’s OK and help is on the way.
Poor guy. 
Let’s go the opposite direction – add in a knife in his side, blood dripping from a small cut on his head. He’s moaning painfully and you notice his wallet is missing. At a glance, it is instantly clear this man needs help. 
Just a few details completely change your behaviour in this situation. We would likely run for help, while someone trained in first aid tended his wounds. The braver of us might even pursue his attacker. 
A wide variety of responses, elicited rapidly and efficiently simply by adding a few crucial details to the situation.

Clarity

This is first focal point of improving any design. The clearer the situation, the more obvious the devices in play, the more rapidly we respond to the situation. There are thousands of ways to do this. In Starcraft 2, Nuclear Launches were made incredibly clear through the use of unique art, sounds and telegraphing. 
In Super Mario World, the importance of the game over timer was reinforced with a warning sound, a change of music and pulsating numbers on screen.
Portals were so pivotal to Valve’s Portal that they named the game after the concept. 
Clarity doesn’t just happen. Players don’t magically understand what you want them to do. In fact, increasing the clarity of the situation was so important that Hellfire Peninsula was redone three times until the threat of the Burning Legion was the in-your-face centerpiece the moment you began the expansion. 
If you can only take away one thing from this post, remember this: 
The tool to improve clarity is communication.

Communication

Why is a Fireball clearer than an instantaneous Heroic Strike? 
One is communicated. The other just happens. 
When facing down a Mage, it’s incredibly clear what they’re doing. They stop moving. Their hands glow with fire. A bar fills under their target flame and finally a fiery ball flies through the sky, warning you the damage is coming. 
A heroic strike instantly causes a number to fly over your head.   Is it any wonder people feel infinitely more frustrated with a Warrior in their face than a Mage? … is it any more of a wonder that Mages constantly clamor for their all of their new abilities to be instant? 
Keep in mind that what a player clamors for is not necessarily right. 
The clearer and better telegraphed the ability, the more powerful that ability can be. The Starcraft Nuclear Launch, Super Smash Falcon Punch and League of Legend’s Zigg’s Inferno Bomb are all amazing examples of this lesson in play.