The Death Penalty

No, this is not going to be a discussion on Captial Punishment. Rather, we're going to look at death (and failure in general) in games today.

Death is really only a version of the general idea here: Penalty for Failure. In a game, you present the player with a challenge. Now, in most cases, you want some sort of penalty to occur if the player fails the challenge. Why would we punish the player? If there's no penalty for failing, there's no glory in succeeding.

Many recently, for reasons we will cover, have spoken somewhat against this idea. Their reasoning is: If the player faces harsh consequences for failing, they will be hesitant to take the challenge at all. These arguments of no risk/no reward vs too much risk/reward not worth it have risen to the surface recently because of the game Demon's Souls.

DS goes for a new take on death. The game expects you to die, a lot. It is quite hard. When you die, your health meter is cut in half, and you don't get it back until you defeat a boss monster. You are told this right after being automatically killed in a fight. As one of my favorite reviewers said, "Truly, a game that kills you twenty minutes in and tells you you can have your health meter back when you prove you don't need it is a game that does not f**k around."(Source)

This game has resulted in the controversy surrounding death penalties in games to become a main stream topic again. DS provides a harsh example, but you can continue playing the game, just at a major disadvantage.

Some games have basically no penalty.

Two Worlds: You reappear at the nearest shrine, where you can immediatly restore yourself to full. Note also that there are a lot of these shrines and that the enemies don't regenerate over time, meaning a war of attrition is possible on any encounter (including the final boss).

Fable II: If you die, the game shows you slow mo flipping through the air dead, and then you stand back up with a chunk of your HP restored. Oh, and you get an unremovable scar (somewhere) on your body, but the point of that is a little obscure. Apparently, it makes your uglier, but no one made any rude comments at my roommate, and she died a lot. Besides, your beauty has no effect on the core gameplay, and it only means you'd have to break wind a few more times to prove your undying love to a villager.

Some games have a penalty somewhere inbetween.

World of Warcraft: If no one is avaliable to resurrect you, you will have to release your spirit. You appear in spirit form at the nearest graveyard. You must then run back to your corpse. Once there, and the coast is clear, you can elect to resurrect with no further penalty. Your gear does take a large amount of damage when you fall, but it can be repaired at a cost that is trivial for most.

Neverwinter Nights: Lacking a powerful cleric to resurrect you, you may either release or Load a Saved Game. Releasing will cost you half your gold, and 10% of your xp towards your next level, but otherwise you suffer no consequences. Personally, I always load the game. I also save a lot.

Then there's the harsh penalities.

Everquest 1: This has changed since I played, but I will discuss the old style. Upon death, you are immediatly transferred to your bind point. You appear at that spot, completely naked (though you do have default clothes that you still have you dirty minded people). Your gear is on your body, and you've lost a significant chunk of your XP. If that loss would lower you below the amount of experience needed to be at your current level, then you lose a level. Your options are now one of the following: 1. Run back to your body and loot it so you can get your stuff back. 2. Find someone to cast a resurrection spell on your corpse. The second option is the best. Running naked is quite dangerous, and a second death would not be helpful. Also, a resurrection spell will return a percentage of the lost XP to you. The best (non-customer service) resurrection restored 96% of the experience lost. Despite the harshness, I loved this system. It encouraged players to work together and prevented any preschoolers from advancing through the content (a common complaint about World of Warcraft)

The ultimate penalty is called Perma Death, where perma is short for permanent. This usually takes the form of forcing the player to reload a previous save. In its more extreme form, all your progress is lost forever. Some of the old text based online games (MUDS) did this. In that situation, if your character died, they were gone forever, you had to start a new character. But, this brings up the previous point that players will then be too nervous to try anything. Character deleted = bad.

Perma death has often been called for more modern online games like Everquest and World of Warcraft. There is a group of players that would love that high type of risk. For my own online game that I am planning ini my head, perma death is included, partially. For one, it would be limited to clearly labled select servers, so the players may choose to play the game with or without it. Second, give the players a little leway. Nothing would be worse than hitting the top level only to get unlucky with a random orc. If no one heals them within five minutes, then their character is lost. Finally, give some work around to let players try the big challenges. Ask them to sacrifice some XP in return for death immunity for an hour. Something they won't want to do willy nilly, but will allow them to tackle situations where it is assumed many players will die frequently.

For regular, non-online games, I feel the answer lies somewhere inbetween. There must be a penalty, to give satisfaction for completing objectives, and to penalize failure. But there must also be leway, so the players are willing to try things without fear of losing it all.

The Spirit Healer Welcomes You to Die!

The Back of Your Box

Video Games and movies all have something on the back of their box. Most of the time, a person cannot open the box and even if they could they can't play the game or movie there on the spot. So, the box is really your only chance to sell the game to the player if they have no prior knowledge of the game.

The job of the front of the box is simple: catch the player's eye. Make them look at it. Make them interested enough to pick it up. From there the back of the box will take over. But the front should be covered with something interesting that perhaps reveals a bit about the game and (of course) shows off it's name.

The Front of the Box for One of My Favorite Games: Golden Sun

Golden Sun's front put the name in nice big letters, so you catch the name immediatly. It's also quite colorful, and is detail packed. It demands that you pick it up and analyze it. If you get your player (to be) to pick up the box, the battle is already half won.

Compare to this Box Cover: Haze

So again, we know the name, but what else do we know? We know that it's for 18+ year olds, has guns, and that there are humans in those suits. Other than that... nothing. Now, remember, the main goal of the front is only to draw attention. Does this draw your attention? Except for the bright yellow on the otherwise grey cover, nothing jumps out at me here.

A Third Example: Alone in the Dark (Remember the famous Stone scene from the voice acting post?)

Kinda the same problem Haze had, but at least the name is quite distinct. The A in Haze could be confused as being something else.

Now for the back. Once the player has picked the box up, you have to win the second half of the fight: Get them to buy it. Now. And not buy that game next to it (unless that happens to be your as well, in which case you want them to buy both!).

So what goes on the back? The interesting stuff. Give the player something to be excited about. Make them want to take it home and save the world or whatever. You've got give them enough that they want to know more, so the cool stuff, but don't give anything away. Let's look at the back of these examples, shall we?

Note: In order to make the text legible, I had to make the pictures wider than will fit. The important stuff is there though, and you can click on the picture to get the full version.

Golden Sun, The Lost Age (I couldn't find the back of the first box, so here's the front and back of the second Golden Sun game)

Now, by nature of being a sequel, this back is a bit different that the back of a box for the first game in a series. Here, the player already has knowledge going in. We assume they've played the first, and that's why they've picked up the second. So, we give them a hint as to where the game is going from the first, and what has changed. More Summons! Continue Your Game! These same rules apply for an expansion pack as well as a sequel.

The Back Cover of Haze (Shows a different front as well, the first front I showed was the North American and Australian version, not sure what region this is for. Which front do you like better?)

Does this sell the game to you? Do you want to take this home and play it? Doesn't sound interesting to me, but then again I'm not big into First Person Shooters anyway. The only additional info I've gained is that this group has been sent in to quell an uprising and they use something called NECTAR.

Now, does anyone see the fatal flaw? Look again. Still don't see it? Let me give you a hint by telling you something that the box doesn't, you are one of these NECTAR using soldiers.

Give up? Look at the first of the three bullets again. "Use the powers of the rebels and the Mantel to..." wait a second! If I'm one of the soldiers, then how do I use the rebel's powers? There's no way to use the powers of both without....

Congratulations Haze, you have just given away your "major" plot twist on the back of your box. You wouldn't want to surprise your players with a faction change plot twist, no Sir! You should always tell your player that they will betray their friends and switch sides before they start playing. Otherwise it would be false advertising!

Now for Alone in the Dark to Face Judgement

Are you hungry to discover the secret of Central Park? That was the goal of that back cover. Not sure I'm sold, not really any info there. Though unlike Haze, it hasn't sold out any major plot points or been overloaded with info. So, perhaps the two represent the two extremes. Haze has "too much" info with giving away plot points. Alone in the Dark is the opposite, giving away only that New York is involved somehow.

Now, if you know me at all, you should understand that I've chosen these games carefully and what that means is that Alone in the Dark also sports a fatal flaw on the back of it's box. We've already covered that it's not a plot point, so what is it? Give it another look. Still can't put your finger on it? Go back over the features. None of them jump out as being less than feature quality? Take a good hard look at the one in the middle bottom. Read it over a couple of times and think about what it means.

So... not having to play the game is a point in its favor? Why play the game at all then? I thought that's what YouTube was for. Are there really so few good things about this game that this feature makes into the top five "Back of the Box Worthy" list? Personally, that just kills my interest in the game. If they dropped that one, the other four might have sold it to me, though I think I'd like something a little better than "Exhilarating Gameplay". Sure, Gameplay is the crux of a game's goodness level, but putting it there like that sounds like they're trying too hard.

To wrap this up, remember that your box is a key component in selling your game. Eye catching front, and informative back that tells the player why they want to now buy and play this game. Choose wisely. If you want players to invest in your game, invest in your box!

"Uuhhh... what did I come in here for?"

Cutscenes

As with the Voice Acting post, there are many videos in this one. So again, you may wish to start and quickly pause each of them to allow them to load. I'm also going to throw a disclaimer here so that I don't have to say it before each video: While the Voice Acting clips were usually short, many of these push YouTube's 10 minute limit. I do not expect you to watch the entire thing. I will point out any areas of particular interest and you might just watch up until then, but usually you can get my point within the first minute or two.


So... cutscenes. Almost every game has them in some capacity. Sometimes, they are simply moments where control is taken from the player while the characters do something. Other times, the game completely cuts to a full on movie. The latter was quite odd in appearance near the end of the Playstation 1. Final Fantasy IX for example had standard graphic for a PS1 game, but the cutscenes were amazing quality for the time. This meant that the characters could be jagged pixelated at times, but then suddenly full 3D rendered with complex shadows, and then back again. All in the space of a couple minutes. This was reserved for only the longer cutscenes, but it was jarring to watch.

Typical FFIX Graphics


FFIX Cutscene Graphics: This is the first set of cutscenes strung together. My personal favorite starts at 5:15


The main reason for bringing up cutscenes is that recent games have become rather bloated with them. Particularily guilty is Final Fantasy XIII. The game is on three discs, and despite this, I often feel that the game lacks any real content. Why? Because so much of my time is spent watching cutscenes that usually add very little to the moment. While you're walking around, the other members of your party will often spit out lines like, "I may be a L'Cie now, but I ain't getting any younger." Ok fine, but why not use this mechanic to tell some of the story. Why do we have to stop for five minutes to watch the characters do what I can summarize in the following line, "Hey, the army is trying to surround us." Instead we have to watch the characters watch the soldiers who are watching their radars for us. Too much watching.

The Cutscene I Just Mentioned

(Is it just me, or is it really odd sounding to have a Japanese voice coming out of a black man?)

Cutscenes have, frankly, become overused. Any time a cutscene is rolling, the player is not playing. Time the player is spent watching and not playing is bad time.This is not to say that we should throw cutscenes out, but rather keep them to a minimum. Use them to drive the story forward, quickly! Too often we run into three major problems with cutscenes. Either we have something really fun happening in a cutscene while the player wishes they could be playing this, or we have action sequences where the player has some control, but feel like they are just watching a cutscene anyway. And finally, the third type, cutscenes that add basically nothing, or add way too much useless info.

Cutscenes That Should Be Playable
There is no real way to discuss this without mentioning the Devil May Cry games. DMC is known for stylish combat and cocky, yet lovable, characters. The problem is, it seems the game is afraid that letting you play will cramp that style. Here is the last bit of the opening cinematic from DMC4. Mind you, we have already seen Nero(the main character who looks a hell of a lot like his predecessor Dante(the guy who comes in from the roof)) fight his way through four wave of demons to get here and it is not until after this that the player gets any control.

Devil May Cry 4 Opening. Things get interesting at about 2 minutes in.


Some More Dante and Nero Interaction. At 2 minutes (again) the movie hits scenes after the first video.


And (finally) The Fight Between the Two. Note the "Stylish Pts." meter.


What if we spent more of that time in the combat instead of the cutscenes?

Fights That Are Glorified Cutscenes.
I'm tempted to go straight back to DMC, but I won't. Instead I will start with a JRPG, The Last Remnant. JRPGs usually have turn based combat. Personally, I really like turn based fighting, but lots of people find it slow and complain that the characters look stupid standing there for five minutes while you figure out what attacks to use. Now, in this game you don't select individual attacks for each character. Instead, you give a general order to the squad (which you have multiples of) and "watch the combat play out before you". Sounds interesting, and makes strategy critical, but how does it actually look?

Like This

Mind you, the player did not do anything after confirming that they were ready. Also, that was one typical fight in this game.

Next up is Metal Gear Solid 4. We'll be coming back to this gem later. For now, let me introduce the video that inspired this post. I found this on a forum thread for "Most Epic Final Boss Fight?" and someone linked this video, claiming that this was it. This is the main character Snake VS Liquid Ocelot and is the final battle for the fourth game in the Metal Gear series. The briefly describe the plot, Snake is suffering from accelerated aging and is sent to kill his evil brother, who is dead, but lives on through his possessed arm which has been grafted on to a russian guy. I won't blame you if you need to reread that again. Here is the fight where the two brothers face off. By the way, if you don't know, you are supposed to root for the guy in the full body suit, not the shirtless one.

Final Showdown. I recommend hanging in until 2:40. Seeing Snake get slow-mo punched in the face never gets old.

Splendid, Brother! Also, is my head the only one that splits everytime Snake punches him so hard that his head bounces off the metal floor?

Maybe it's because I'm missing the background from the previous games, or because I havn't watched the hours of cutscenes in this installment alone, but I don't find that fight epic. Mind you, it's far from the worst I've seen, but I've seen better.

Cutscenes That Add Nothing or Too Much

I said that I would come back to MGS4, and you may have also noticed that I said "the hours of cutscenes in this installment alone." The MGS games are known for being poorly written, and MGS4 is padded with more exposition than is needed by any stretch of the imagination. Take for example the first cutscene in this movie. It comprises the first four minutes of this "Cutscene Walkthrough" (yeah, someone had to make a walkthrough for the cutscene alone). This is Act 1, Part 6... out of 5 Acts. This is one I'm going to ask you to watch all four minutes of. I'm not dealing with the other scenes in this video but feel free to watch them if you want. There are two things to note while watching: 1) How much of this moves the story forward? 2) The tone of the whole scene changes VERY suddenly and drastically at about 3:30. The first time I saw that part, I thought it was a joke someone was editing into the video, but apparently that's the real deal.

One of a Mini Series Worth of Cutscenes


After doing a little research (as in reading the comments on the video) I found that you helped the rookies' father in MGS2, who also had tummy trouble. Runs in the family, pun intended.

These last examples hits upon a point I have not mentioned yet, let the player skip the cutscene. There are few things more annoying than watching a five minute cutscene before a boss fight, only to lose and be forced to watch it again. Kingdom Hearts 1 did this to me, took me about 900 tries and just as many near Gorilla shootings, but I did finally kill Clayton. One of the games that was guiltiest was Golden Sun. One of my favorite games, the final boss was blocked by 10 minutes of unskippable cutscene, a whimpy fight, and another two and a half minutes of unskippable scene before the real fight. That last fight is HARD and so I was forced to mash the A button several thousand times. Here is a video, which leaves all but the tail end of the first cutscene before the fight, and then has the two back to back fights with the scene inbetween. Imagine having to listen to those voice effects over and over again? I suppose I should have turned the sound off....

Golden Sun Final Boss. Note that this player is extremely low level for this fight, late 20s in a fight I did at about level 50. This means the fights are long, notably the first one which I usually beat in two or three turns. The mid cutscene starts at about 5:00 if you want to jump ahead after the first fight starts.


Last, we have Valkyria Chronicles. VC took an interesting approach to letting playrs skip a cutscene. Whenever a scene would come up, the game would kick you to the main menu and ask if you would like to skip it. If not, you watched the whole thing because you passed up your chance. If you did skip it, the game said good day and left you on the main menu. You HAD to watch the scene to continue, so why did it bother asking? Here is the opening sequence from VC and while watching ask yourself, is this setting the scene of the game and establishing the characters? Or is most of this useless?

Valkyria Chronicles Opening Sequence

I wonder what would happen if the fish asked him how the air was?

When you make your cutscene unskippable you toss it into the pointless catagory. A player should never have to watch something a second time, unless they choose to. Your scene might be quite nice, but after a third attempt at the boss, it has lost its value.

Let's review: Always give your players the option to skip. Make your cutscenes drive the story onward in ways the gameplay explicitly can't. And remember that cutscene time, is not play time. Give the player the most play time you can.

And no, I don't think Assassin's Creed answer to this problem (no skipping, but able to walk around and change the camera angle) is a solution. Particularily since this is only possible in a few cut scenes, the rest are flat out movies.

Talking With Your Boss


And the biggest question AC raised, how does someone talk for long after their throat has been cut?

A Typical Unskippable Assassination Monologue. Starts at 2:30


Thoughts?

Snake sneaks up on some well hidden gameplay!

Support Characters

We've all had one: the helpful fairy who tells us how to open the door we're standing in front of with a nice "Push A to Open" sign floating over our head, the arrogant bird living in our backpack who does little but state the obvious and irrate the bosses to attack us but at least can be used as a weapon, and of course the woman that you can't stand who follows you endlessly around and requires your help to save the world but after doing so dies and you must undo all your hard work to save her.

Support characters come in various forms, but their function is mostly the same form game to game. A support character is one who follows you around (sometimes they may not, but usually do) and serves to provide hints to the player on how to proceed. That would be the official description, a more realistic one would be: follow you around and irritate the hell out of you.

This may sound pessimistic, but unfortunatly this is usually the case. In many cases, what the character has to say is unskippable. This means that while it may have been useful on your first play through, if you play it again then  it will get annoying. The other common diseases support character catch are: annoying voices, stating the obvious, and getting in the way.

I've decided to skip spending much time on annoying voices, see last week's post for that.

Stating the obvious can be a good thing if you expect younger people to play your game. Something a teenager would consider obvious might not be so to a seven year old. All the same, such dialogue from a support character should be skippable, for the sake of those poor teenagers.

Another part of this problem is support characters giving control tutorials. Frequently however, we run into the problem where they are again unskippable and obvious. An example would be Enchanted Arms, where your friend tells the main character, "Walk up to the ladder and press A to get on." Enchanted Arms had a fourth wall problem.

Getting in the way is a problem that most often surfaces in shooter games. You will be taking heavy enemy fire, crouching behind cover. Finally, their gun fire ceases as they reload. Your chance to return fire is opon you! Nimbly, you hop out from the cover and proptly unload a full clip into the... back of your ally, who had also noticed the chance to return fire and captalized upon that chance by screaming "Vive Le France!" and bullrushing the opponent. Now he is saying, "Sacre Bleu!"and you are ducking behind cover again because you need to reload and the enemy has finished doing so themselves.

This takes it worst form when the game penalizes you for the death of such characters. In Red Faction Guerilla you lead a resistance group on Mars. Random rebels will occassionally take up arms to help you, but you have no control over when this occurs. Case in point is when you are driving around and accidentally hit a lamp post. The rebels then assume you have started the liberation and shoot everything in sight. Then they die, rather easily, and you lose morale. It's quite embarassing.

Finally, a mention of the most notorious support character of them all: Navi, from The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time.

Navi was the one I was thinking of with my first example at the beginning of this post (the other two being Kazooie from Banjo Kazooie and Elika from Prince of Persia (2008).). She has become quite famous on the internet for her two word catch phrase "Hey! Listen!" They're technically two sperate quotes, the first from when she has something to say and the second when she starts talking. Frequently at the beginning she skips the Hey! part and just starts rambling and you can't shut her up.

At least I have to give Navi some credit, she can be useful the first playthrough. She is the official reason you can target enemies and (if and only if asked) will provide information about the enemy and how to defeat it. This is more than I can say for her successor Tatl, from LOZ: Majora's Mask. The usefulness of Navi's info is debatable on some foes, but Tatl always says something along the lines of, "What? You don't know what a Like Like is like? How are you ever going to do anything if you don't know that?! Stay away from it!" The slighly useful bit "Stay away form it!" can be applied ot all enemies in the game, just for the record.

Navi will also provide hints on how to progress and will only offer them if asked after the first dungeon or so. For a first time player, this is actually pretty much required not too far in the game when Navi is your only source of the hint that you should contact your childhood friend for actual advice. You stumble into where you need to go, but some might not for a long time. Mind you, Navi hints you should call your friend on your Ocarina (no really) because if you meet her face to face she says nothing of value. Out of curiosity, I once called her from two feet in front of her and yes, she was helpful. And yes, she used mind speak instead of people speak from two feet away.

Don't believe how annoying support characters can get? Then I dare you to sit through this.


In short, support characters are usually not done very well. It is understandable to place them in a game, but their dialogue should be skippable... in fact, all dialogue should be skippable as well as cut scenes. Otherwise you will just annoy your players.

Every Ocarina of Time player has been pushed to this point.

At least you could skip what Kaepora Gaebora said.