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Yoshi · Mar 22, 2017

Burny said:
And that's all that needs to be said. You think it's boring, others don't and would rather find it boring if the game makers build a world not by trying to model it to some decent accuracy and at least superficial believability,

You conflate different things. Believability is a nice bonus in game design, but believability and realism are very much different things.

The reasons you don't enjoy BotW as much, may be precisely the reasons others enjoy it in the first place,

I actually enjoy it a lot, I have played it for almost 90 hours and have completed all shrines, I just think that it could be improved a lot with a change in the general approach on how to model the world. The game also need not be much more dense with some content for that, but with meaningful challenging content. If you count Krogs and enemy camps in that way, then the density may stay, but throwaway content like enemy camps should be exchanged with handcrafted, individual content.

rather than thinking that it's just another over-formulaic and over-gimmicked entry in a game series that didn't get the message that the 90s ended 17 years ago and games like Morrowind and the Witcher happened since.

You again claim that handcrafted design is something that not only has happened in the past, but also is made obsolete and should not happen again. This is quite ridiculous, as I have already pointed out before. Claiming that emphasising a realistic world over gameplay mechanics is the only appropiate way of making games now and in the future in the same way as technological progress makes old tech redundant is unfounded.

Burny · Mar 22, 2017

Yoshi said:
You again claim that handcrafted design is something that not only has happened in the past, but also is made obsolete and should not happen again. This is quite ridiculous, as I have already pointed out before. Claiming that emphasising a realistic world over gameplay mechanics is the only appropiate way of making games now and in the future in the same way as technological progress makes old tech redundant is unfounded.

Note that I don't claim handcrafted content is a thing of the past. BotW is actually full of it, mixed with the generic "enemy camps" type of content and it shouldn't be any less. What's ridiculous is OP's notion that you even can build an open game world by today's standards, where every nook & cranny provides some unique authored playground for your game mechanics. By doing that, you limit yourself to the world you can actually hand craft to provide unique content with that density, which even for today's studio sizes is rather smaller than the worlds we see in open world games.

What's obsolete, is the notion that every corner of your world must be unique or handcrafted to be enjoyable.

maxcriden · Mar 22, 2017

Burny said:
What's obsolete, is the notion that every corner of your world must be unique or handcrafted to be enjoyable.

This notion was never universally held to begin with. As soon as 3D worlds arrived, or even expansive 2D games, there were sections lacking uniqueness and a handcrafted touch, and for some players, those areas (especially in 3D games) had intrinsic value. For others, uniqueness and handcraftedness are what appeals to them most in a game, and as such open world design to begin with may be less up their alley, and when a game previously known for carefully crafted dungeons and quest items is lacking those elements in the way the gamer is used to, it does feel like a loss to them (and I count myself among that group). To this group, formula and gimmick are interchangeable words for design and clever interaction. It's two very different sides of the same coin, and this dichotomy I think speaks significantly to the changing valuation of what players look for in games now vs. 15-20+ years ago, and also indicates in part why certain types of games (like 2D platformers) are significantly devalued. I would definitely not disagree with you that the majority of game consumers have voted with their dollar for open world gaming above many if not all other aspects, certainly the gaming populace is in favor of that vs. smaller handcrafted levels or areas when it comes down to it.

Yoshi · Mar 22, 2017

Burny said:
Note that I don't claim handcrafted content is a thing of the past. BotW is actually full of it, mixed with the generic "enemy camps" type of content and it shouldn't be any less. What's ridiculous is OP's notion that you even can build an open game world by today's standards, where every nook & cranny provides some unique authored playground for your game mechanics. By doing that, you limit yourself to the world you can actually hand craft to provide unique content with that density, which even for today's studio sizes is rather smaller than the worlds we see in open world games.

The size is limited through that, yes, but if the only thing that has to go as a consequence is a ton of generic enemy camps and empty pathways, then I would say this is preferrable, without neglecting the openness of the world.

What's obsolete, is the notion that every corner of your world must be unique or handcrafted to be enjoyable.

I'd say this is not obsolete, there have always been different opinions on that matter. Generic c&p content was all over some NES / SNES RPGs for instance and there were people who loved that. And the opinion (stated a bit less extreme), that a high density of carefully designed game content is signficiantly preferrable over distributing such content over an overly large field filled with redundancies, is one that has existed in the past and will exist in the future. Of course, trends exist and lead to a fluctuation on how many people prefer which approach, but this viewpoint will probably never be obsolete.

EDIT: As often the case, what Max has said I can only co-sign.

Ansatz · Mar 22, 2017

I think it's more effective when a game world conveys the sense of realism by behaving as expected when you poke it (arrows sticking to wood but bounce off stone walls) as opposed to actually being realistic like all houses having toilets, makes sense but does that truly lead to a better game?

If you let me inside an NPC's house free for me to inspect like BotW does, I will consider things like "huh, there's no bathroom or kitchen here" and while those details don't really bother me it is a bit of an issue. However, when you enter a shop in older Zelda titles you can only go as far as the counter, but is that necessarily a bad thing? It's possible to sometimes see a door behind them that leads to the rest of the house and that's when the imagination takes over like "ah yeah, there's probably a bed in that other room" even though in reality it's empty space, but the point is I'm more willing to suspend my disbelief when you show me less. Just add in a few details like a simple staircase you can't access and my imagination fills in the rest. Being clever like this both saves resources that can go towards improving other areas of a game and also makes it better if you ask me. This trend of rendering as much as possible in the world just because the hardware can now support it only hurts games.

Cymbal Head · Mar 22, 2017

I feel the OP is short on a key component in doing criticism: considering the goals of the work, and whether the design works for or against those goals. Absent this sort of examination, you can't really say whether a specific design decision works or doesn't work for the game; you can only say whether it works for you.

What did the developers want to to do with BotW? What kind of responses did they want to evoke in the player? Are those different from what the OP is trying to accomplish in his own work? Are they different even from other Zelda games? If so, then using those titles as a point of comparison simply isn't going to be useful.

(And no, "fun" doesn't count as a goal in and of itself -- "fun" is inherently bound up in personal preference.)

Looking at some of the things that Aonuma said during pre-release interviews, I think among the major goals of BotW were a sense of connection to the world and the world as a character:

”Even the subtitle itself is different from previous Zelda titles," Aonuma said. In past games of the series, he explained, Nintendo would use item names like Skyward Sword or character names Twilight Princess as the subtitle for a new game...”Really the world is the main character," Aonuma added.[/URL]

”It's a sense of discovery and as we're developing this, I thought to myself, "Maybe this is what it means to create a big world, to find out that getting lost is OK."

I think it's far more productive to discuss the world design in terms of these stated goals, rather than in terms of how much downtime a player will tolerate, or whether it's close enough to being LttP but in 3D, or even what the asset pipeline was on the project.

Editing to add:

thomasmahler said:
as a designer, I'm always trying to dissect things and try to get to an objective truth

I think this is the nut of my disagreement with you. There is no "objective truth" in design, there are intended effects on the user or audience and approaches to creating those effects. There are values of different sorts that designers can choose to emphasize or not, usually in service to the goals of a project.

Your statement is like a lamp designer whose life's work is to create the most energy efficient, brightest lamp possible, decrying the customer who prefers soft lighting for a romantic dinner. Clearly the goal of a lamp is to provide light, so why would anyone opt for anything but the brightest lamp available?

"Fun" is not an engineering problem.

Version 3.0 · Mar 22, 2017

thomasmahler said:
That said, Skyward Sword also has a 93 and Twilight Princess a 96 Metacritic. But listening to people today, years after the their releases, do we feel like that judgement was completely right? We probably get closer to the truth when the honeymoon period is over and people have fully analyzed what they've been served. If 5-10 years from now, people will still be swooning over Breath of the Wilds overworld, I'll be very glad to say that I didn't understand what people wanted and that they got it right, cause the design apparently held up.

How a game is rated at release and how it's looked at years later are two very different things. Of course.

But it's not as if you are looking back and saying "well, in fact, I wasn't having fun after all".

Times change. Tastes evolve. If a game doesn't "age well", that hardly means it didn't deserve its high review scores at the time. You can no more look back and remove a good game experience from your past than you can look back and decide a meal was not delicious.

So you found out the game design was all smoke and mirrors. And you found out the meal was made of <insert personal dislike>. You can't take back your experience, nor can reviewers take back their reviews. Nor should they. The immediate reaction is the more important one, in both cases. And in most mediums.

And no one, I hope, makes a game and says "I'd rather this game bomb, but be looked back on fondly in 20 years, than have it succeed now but be superceded by a later entry in a long-running series."

Makonero · Mar 22, 2017

Cymbal Head said:
"Fun" is not an engineering problem.

I feel like this should be engraved somewhere. Or lit up in lights. Or used as the NeoGAF subtitle instead of "BELIEVE."

You want objective truth? There it is.

thomasmahler · Mar 22, 2017

Cymbal Head said:
"Fun" is not an engineering problem.

I understand.

How do you know?

Cymbal Head · Mar 22, 2017

thomasmahler said:
I understand.

How do you know?

I think I outlined my perspective in the post you're quoting. Is there a specific point you want me to clarify?

I also think Hawk2025 made some very relevant posts upthread, including this one:

hawk2025 said:
As someone that works on means-testing human behavior every day -- This is quite an outdated view of human choice and human response to incentives.

Since the 70's, the literature in both behavioral and rational making has moved beyond the homogenous consumer model towards a heterogeneous one.

As an example: Logit models now have random coefficients, and consumer preferences are updated over time and inherently heterogeneous.

You are taking an inherently complicated subject (modelling human behavior) and applying a model to it from 40 years ago.

Now, there's nothing inherently wrong with means-testing without accounting for heterogeneity, if all you are interested in is the mean.
But the search for an objective truth of human preferences has been abandoned by researchers across the human and social sciences across the board for the better part of 40 years.

OrbitalBeard · Mar 22, 2017

MiamiWesker said:
Ahhh shhhh the one I haven't done. Not reading.

I read the first few words and I hope I feel the same way, I really do.

The entire Gerudo Divine Beast questline is the closest thing to a traditional Zelda game you'll find in BotW.

thomasmahler · Mar 22, 2017

Cymbal Head said:
I think I outlined my perspective in the post you're quoting. Is there a specific point you want me to clarify?

Well, so you don't know, you assume. And so do I. I assume there's a formula to fun that is 'mostly true'. I can't prove it yet, but I've been making it a goal of mine to get there.

I'm pretty sure once we're more knowledgeable, we'll be able to look back at a lot of current game designs and ask ourselves why in the world anyone ever thought this or that was fun and - and that's the curious thing - why this or that thing got rated so highly and was generally liked by people at the time when now they'd say they don't like it at all and would much rather play X.

And obviously, one important factor here is that some game designs stand the test of time while others don't. Is Breath of the Wild a game that we'll think of as a masterpiece even 20 years from now? I don't know. Right now I think it's a great game and I enjoyed my time with it a hell of a lot. But my current assumption would be that 20 years from now, people will say: 'No, it's not as well designed as a game like A Link to the Past was' and I think the move to Open World Design and the inherent issues that come with that will be part of the reason.

Cymbal Head · Mar 22, 2017

thomasmahler said:
Well, so you don't know, you assume. And so do I. I assume there's a formula to fun that is 'mostly true'. I can't prove it yet, but I've been making it a goal of mine to get there.

I feel quite comfortable that my assumption is justified up by the entire history of human aesthetic judgement.

Can I also assume that you think movies, novels, and sports are more fun/entertaining/exciting in 2017 than they've ever been before? It stands to reason, after all. There's so much more research and market testing being done.

thomasmahler · Mar 22, 2017

Cymbal Head said:
I feel quite comfortable that my assumption is justified up by the entire history of human aesthetic judgement.

Can I also assume that you think movies, novels, and sports are more fun/entertaining/exciting in 2017 than they've ever been before? It stands to reason, after all. There's so much more research and market testing being done.

No, but because of intuition and not because of science.

And you are asking the wrong question. Games are based on game design, which utilizes game mechanics.

So if you ask me whether or not I think that cars in 2017 are better then they've ever been before, I'd answer with a resounding 'Yes'.

Ansatz · Mar 22, 2017

Cymbal Head said:
"Fun" is not an engineering problem.

In a sense it is. I consider Nintendo designers engineers, not artists.

I always like to think back to Mario Chase (Nintendo Land) for this because it's so obvious to tell that if you keep the maps and everything exactly as they are, but mess around with the maximum run speeds of the characters then you're immediately in trouble: make Mario just a hair faster and the toads will have no chance to avoid him, thus ruining the entire game. Give the toads a slight speed boost instead, and Mario will be chasing forever. The fun of the game stems from the fact that Mario and the toads have an equally big chance of winning, if the game was one-sided then it's no longer fun right?

And if you mess around with the speeds and find that the game still isn't full, perhaps it's too easy for Mario to catch the toads, well then you fine-tune the map design in a way that opens up new possibilities for the toads to hide and move around in, or give them power-ups occasionally to help increase their chances. It's all about fine-tuning until it becomes fun.

jnWake · Mar 22, 2017

I don't think the idea of a "formula to fun" is so crazy. After all, music has, at many points in history, followed different formulas for different reasons. There are combinations of chords that resonate better with audiences and are very common in popular music for example. Some old styles of classical music also featured a common structure.

You can even see this in gaming to some extent with things like Mario 3D World following a certain design structure for most of its levels. Same applies to other platformers like DKCTF.

Now, even if a "formula to fun" exists, it wouldn't mean it's the only way to achieve "fun".

hawk2025 · Mar 22, 2017

The question of whether or not a formula for fun exists is irrelevant.

The real question is, assuming it does, is it a bijection and invertible?

The implication of the OP argument is that it does, and it is.

I still don't see how that claim can gel with the idea that people learn over years what their real preferences are, but alas.

jnWake · Mar 22, 2017

hawk2025 said:
The question of whether or not a formula for fun exists is irrelevant.

The real question is, assuming it does, is it a bijection and invertible?

The implication of the OP argument is that it does, and it is.

I still don't see how that claim can gel with the idea that people learn over years what their real preferences are, but alas.

Disagree on bolded.

It's clearly not 1 to 1. There may be a formula for "mainstream fun", but definitely not a "definitive fun" one. As I said, the parallels with music are easy to draw.

Cymbal Head · Mar 22, 2017

thomasmahler said:
No, but because of intuition and not because of science.

So you agree that highly focus-tested movies aren't necessarily more fun than highly expressive and idiosyncratic movies.

And you are asking the wrong question. Games are based on game design, which utilizes game mechanics.

Film makers study film theory and the conventions and mechanics of cinema, and how they have developed and changed over time. I don't understand why you think games are categorically different on this account.

So if you ask me whether or not I think that cars in 2017 are better then they've ever been before, I'd answer with a resounding 'Yes'.

So games are more like cars than they are like movies? And yet they're also, as you said upthread, art.

Game mechanics are a form of design, which is necessarily an aesthetic enterprise. You use the word "better" in reference to cars as if we can all agree on what that means, but it isn't so. Absent a set of goals and values that we can use to evaluate what makes a good car, we can't have a meaningful conversation. I value fuel efficiency and reliability, but I know a number of people who put much more emphasis on ease of DIY repairs and maintenance, and in that respect they'd argue that cars are much worse than they were a few decades ago. And they're right, if we take them on their terms.

As I said before, it's much more useful to ennumerate the terms of evaluation and examine a work's success or failure at those goals rather than to just speak in nebulous terms of "fun" or "better."

xevis · Mar 22, 2017

If there is a function for fun I expect there should be some evidence for it. It's existence suggests a universal partial ordering which can rank games by fun. So while we might not agree if Zelda is better than Mario we should be able to agree they're both better than Wii Sports, or WarioWare or at least some proto game from the past. Yet I see no evidence for this. Every game is someone's favourite and that contradicts the existence of the universal order.

The whole idea strikes me as asinine. How much Pacman should I play to have the same amount of fun as Zelda? What say you GAF? An hour? Two? Ten? A month perhaps?

Cymbal Head · Mar 22, 2017

hawk2025 said:
The question of whether or not a formula for fun exists is irrelevant.

The real question is, assuming it does, is it a bijection and invertible?

The implication of the OP argument is that it does, and it is.

I still don't see how that claim can gel with the idea that people learn over years what their real preferences are, but alas.

I'm kind of disappointed the OP hasn't responded to your posts, because I think this is a very interesting line of inquiry.

Makonero · Mar 22, 2017

xevis said:
If there is a function for fun I expect there should be some evidence for it. It's existence suggests a universal partial ordering which can rank games by fun. So while we might not agree if Zelda is better than Mario we should be able to agree they're both better than Wii Sports, or WarioWare or at least some proto game from the past. Yet I see no evidence for this. Every game is someone's favourite and that contradicts the existence of the universal order.

The whole idea strikes me as asinine. How much Pacman should I play to have the same amount of fun as Zelda? What say you GAF? An hour? Two? Ten? A month perhaps?

it depends

how many chuckiecheeses (the official measurement of fun) do you rank pacman? I think it gets two megachuckiecheeses, but super mario bros gets a gigachuckiecheese

Cymbal Head · Mar 22, 2017

Ansatz said:
In a sense it is. I consider Nintendo designers engineers, not artists.

I always like to think back to Mario Chase (Nintendo Land) for this because it's so obvious to tell that if you keep the maps and everything exactly as they are, but mess around with the maximum run speeds of the characters then you're immediately in trouble: make Mario just a hair faster and the toads will have no chance to avoid him, thus ruining the entire game. Give the toads a slight speed boost instead, and Mario will be chasing forever. The fun of the game stems from the fact that Mario and the toads have an equally big chance of winning, if the game was one-sided then it's no longer fun right?

And if you mess around with the speeds and find that the game still isn't full, perhaps it's too easy for Mario to catch the toads, well then you fine-tune the map design in a way that opens up new possibilities for the toads to hide and move around in, or give them power-ups occasionally to help increase their chances. It's all about fine-tuning until it becomes fun.

I wouldn't argue that there aren't better and worse ways to achieve a desired effect on the audience, but that there are a lot of underlying assumptions that are best unpacked if we're going to discuss something critically. To take your example: the goal of Mario Chase is to create a thrilling chase with close shaves and narrow escapes. The relative speeds of the characters are designed in support of this goal.

If you were making a game where the fun was in the feeling of power over others, or of overcoming tremendous odds, perhaps you'd adjust the characters' speeds differently.

The OP is treating fun as a monolithic construct that holds across conditions, which is not a productive means of critical discussion.

wanderingprostheyltite · Mar 22, 2017

Cymbal Head said:
I'm kind of disappointed the OP hasn't responded to your posts, because I think this is a very interesting line of inquiry.

Agreed, OP is certainly choosy with what arguments they wish to address. This is one of the most interesting posts in the thread and I hope Thomas considers tackling it:

Edit: Nm I see you already reposted it earlier xD

Cymbal Head · Mar 23, 2017

Makonero said:
it depends

how many chuckiecheeses (the official measurement of fun) do you rank pacman? I think it gets two megachuckiecheeses, but super mario bros gets a gigachuckiecheese

We can call it a 'chuck' for short.

e.g. Super Hexagon is 4 megachucks of fun

Makonero · Mar 23, 2017

Cymbal Head said:
We can call it a 'chuck' for short.

e.g. Super Hexagon is 4 megachucks of fun

that means that stuff like Sonic 2006 is like 19 picochucks

or is it chuck per square inch that we should measure?

xevis · Mar 23, 2017

Makonero said:
that means that stuff like Sonic 2006 is like 19 picochucks

or is it chuck per square inch that we should measure?

Well, the amount of fun someone has doing something seems closely related to how much time they spend doing it. So perhaps we should measure things in Chucks Per Second? Hmm, maybe thomasmahler was onto something after all! What if we now compute the derivative at various points? Then we'll be able to find the ~~sweet spot~~ fun spot for every game!

Do you realise what this means? No more arguing about whether this or that person got far enough to really appreciate the story or the mechanics. Reviewers and GAFers from all corners can just be like "well, I played until I hit maximum CPS and I'm not really feeling it. 7/10"

correojon · Mar 23, 2017

Ansatz said:
In a sense it is. I consider Nintendo designers engineers, not artists.

I always like to think back to Mario Chase (Nintendo Land) for this because it's so obvious to tell that if you keep the maps and everything exactly as they are, but mess around with the maximum run speeds of the characters then you're immediately in trouble: make Mario just a hair faster and the toads will have no chance to avoid him, thus ruining the entire game. Give the toads a slight speed boost instead, and Mario will be chasing forever. The fun of the game stems from the fact that Mario and the toads have an equally big chance of winning, if the game was one-sided then it's no longer fun right?

And if you mess around with the speeds and find that the game still isn't full, perhaps it's too easy for Mario to catch the toads, well then you fine-tune the map design in a way that opens up new possibilities for the toads to hide and move around in, or give them power-ups occasionally to help increase their chances. It's all about fine-tuning until it becomes fun.

What I like most about making videogames is that it mixes technique and artistry and this shows in most aspects of a game. There was a recent Miyamoto and Aonuma interview where they addressed how the young devs at Nintendo come from Game Design Universities, while in their time they were just learning along the way as they created new games and genres. Miyamoto and Aonuma complained that younger devs tend to follow design rules and tendencies too much and that one thing they always try to instill into them is to use their instinct and follow their gut (which is somethng I also remember a guy from Retro saying when being asked about how they tackled the level design in DKC Returns). Also, that it was important to make a game you want to play and put the focus there, not something you think others would like. Ultimately yes, you need to people to test your game and make adjustments with that feedback, but it shouldn´t be the main driving force behind the project, because that way the creator´s passion won´t be there and it´ll show. I´ve done myself some experiments in game creation and have deeply analyzed a fair share of games and I think there´s one common trail in the GOATs: even if they follow a certain design ruleset you can see how they also derive away from it at certain parts or try to twist it in others. It´s mixing technique and artistry: demonstrating mastery about the rulesets but also straying from them to show your creative side. This is a critical aspect in Tropical Freeze when making each level feel memorable and easily recognizable: even if most follow a very similar structure they deviate from it enough to feel different and unique.

So in conclusion, I think OP´s claim of there being a universal formula for fun goes frontally against what recognized creators like Miyamoto, Aonuma or the Retro guys say and do in order to maximize CpS.

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