Thinking Out Aloud: Borderlands, Designing for Addiction and the Onus of Game Quality Pt.2

May 19th, 2010

(This is the second part of my editorial. Please refer to the first for reference.)

Onto the Contrast

The point I’m ultimately trying to get to (alas the argument is mangled at this point) is that many games are trying to shift to onus of quality away from design fundamentals and onto other more peripheral things. Examples are numerous, prime suspects being presentation, narrative, authenticity, freedom of expression and the like. Here are some random examples off the top of my head:

Eternal Darkness

The “game” part is rather minimal with the importance placed instead on atmosphere and story. It doesn’t matter so much that the puzzles are weak and often require more running from A to B than, say, problem solving, so long as the other elements are strong.

Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune

As I will get to in a future post, Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune (I’ve actually wrote these articles a few months ago here) rips its source material straight from its contemporaries yet has many marks of ill-thought-out design. Landscapes aren’t very readable (this impedes platforming frequently), the level design don’t quite facilitate shoot outs as well as it could (the spacing of the landscape often works to de-equip players), etc. Yet we’re willing to overlook these issues at the heart of the experience in favour for Nate’s charisma and the impeccable visual and cinematic package.

Guitar Hero/Rock Band/Other

One of these games may be superior/inferior to the other (read: Guitar Hero is a complete train wreck, kill it!), however the genre’s most important feature, the track list, is a separate entity to the overall game design. To put it crudely again: it doesn’t matter so much if Guitar Hero has washy visuals and incomprehensible on-screen cues, so long as it has my favourite songs it will still be of greater preference.

Generic EA Sports game A

For the audience of sports games obviously “fun” is crucial to the experience, but authenticity is also of prime importance.

My point: core mechanics aren’t always the heart of the experience or, rather, we often place greater value in things which aren’t the core mechanics. From a purist’s point of view that’s rather unfortunate.

It’s also problematic too, I’d wager. It’s problematic because the gatekeepers of game specific information (ie. reviewers) rarely identify this difference in their reviews. With the same curiosity I had for Borderlands, I read reviews on Dragon Age: Origins, hoping the writers would distinguish what makes this story-driven title a fun game and not so much a fun choose-your-own fantasy novel. So far I still know very little about what actually happens in Dragon Age besides the fact that it’s based off the rules of Dungeons and Dragons and Baldur’s Gate, both of which I know nothing about—oh and you can engage in virtual sex too; this point was unnecessarily and frequently flaunted. With reviewers failing to elaborate on the strength of the primary game design, how is it possible for readers to easily distinguish between a game which is naturally, by way of good game design, a great game to a game whose assets lie elsewhere?

It’s this element of game discussion which has largely gone out of flavour. Ask any game reviewer/blogger to properly explain why New Super Mario Bros. is enjoyable for both core and casual players alike and besides positively noting good game and level design (which is surely an obvious fact considering?), I doubt most would come up with a reasonable explanation. It’s too difficult to talk design and mechanics because that requires too much brainwork and analysis: things that these folks don’t have the time for. It’s much easier to separate things that usually aren’t game-related (non-interactive narrative, graphical fidelity, track list, realism, raw PR stats) and talk about those instead, or even speak entirely on a surface level with unfounded generalisations (yah, the Mario games have great level design, it’s just Miyamoto and Nintendo and all that; it’s what they do…). Because we can’t explain it, the audience cannot quite appreciate it and we neglect it. This, I would continue to argue, is part of the reason behind the lack of good discussion and fair representation of games like Super Mario Galaxy and New Super Mario Bros as opposed to Mass Effect or Uncharted. People just don’t know how to talk about well designed games with any insight, whereas replicating renaissance Italy is easy to discuss because it has little to do with the medium itself.

For this reason, well designed games are losing ground to games that excel in other areas less related to the medium itself. I don’t make this assertion because renaissance Italy, Eternal Darkness‘ atmosphere or the fact that my favourite song of all time is only on Band Hero are detriments—because they’re not—they’re fantastic qualities, but shouldn’t our eyes first be judging the game followed by the window dressing, not the other way around?

Thinking Out Aloud: Borderlands, Designing for Addiction and the Onus of Game Quality Pt.1

May 16th, 2010

(I wrote this editorial ages ago and didn’t post it because it’s kinda dribbly and a mouth piece for my purist tendencies. However, as a rough-edged piece of writing it’s quite good, so after re-evaluating the piece I’ve decided to post it. There are two quite different arguments here, so I’ve split the editorial into two pieces for clarity.)

Lately I’ve found myself flustered and annoyed at the MMO-esque FPS grind-fest commonly known as Borderlands. I hold this game in contempt not because I’ve legitimately played and evaluated the game and through my play time found something to bother over. No. I’m just picking on Borderlands because 1) It’s the ideal wannabe game currently on the market at the moment and by which is easy to pick on 2) What, in my mind at least, it’s come to represent.

Allow me to explain. Here are three like ideas that I’ve inferred from everything I’ve read on Borderlands:

Borderlands is intrinsically grind-orientated whereby time spent grinding generally acts as a currency for players to exchange for game progression and player development in the form of sifting through the spoils of downed fauna in the improbable hope for quality loot.
Borderlands is aware of its design and knowingly keeps the player interested in its offering by adding new areas, upgrades, NPCs and so on when the progression may slow into a lull period. These devices are part fundamental, part peripheral to the core playing experience.
Grinding draws on some innate part of the human brain which demands all patterns be crunched and all stones be turned. Borderlands by its very nature savagely feeds on this fact and even though such games of this nature (ie. Chinese MMOs) can be considered unethical in the way they straddle the mental urges of the player (I’m basing this assertion on Jonathon Blow’s evaluation of World of Warcraft as similar to drugs and the likeness of WoW to Borderlands), we still find this enjoyable and fun.

There’s something discomforting about these observations. Borderlands isn’t a bad game, nor is it poorly designed. People have clearly got a lot of fun out of this game and Gearbox Software appear to have designed the experience in a way that gives the player drive to continue. What bugs me is two things: Isn’t there something wrong with a game that has the player assuming the habitual nature of a bin scab? And although this role is designed effectively, is it responsible design?

I’m trying to take an objective stance here, it’s probably not working, so let me just concede and say that the answers to those questions will determine which side of the argument you’ll likely fall on.

So, if I were to answer these two questions, I’d say: Borderlands uses a model of game design which I consider subordinates players into slavery. It plays on their natural tendencies and there is something bad and impure about it. Perhaps that’s a little harsh, I’m honestly not sure.

This style of design leans heavily on MMORPGs and I wouldn’t dare say that Borderlands stoops to such lows. Nor is it really a low, to be fair. People enjoy what they want out of MMOs and that’s fine, I shouldn’t criticise them for their interests. The player’s mind space that it preys on and the addictive “qualities” of this design are what concern me. I know for a fact that designing for addiction is a topic frequently discussed socially in the MMO-heavy Chinese markets. Discussing this issue with friends and having experienced and been introduced to such games myself, it’s easy to empathise with the belief that developers can in fact design with such malicious intents for the obvious means of profits.

Putting it in such light probably makes my reference to Borderlands moot since the shooter is probably removed from this sort of practice (again, this editorial is fueled by rife assumptions), however it does use the model and for the basis of my argument and something about that bothers me.

My ideas can neatly be summarised by a quote from show Good Game where they begin by commenting on the way players are persuaded into lowly forms of play with a big emphasis on grinding and loot scavenging and then conclude by justifying the first clause with something along the lines of “but it’s just so fun and addictive”. I’ve probably laboured the point by now, but it’s a point I needed to make. I just see it as a rather low way to get your gamer kicks. I’m probably being somehow hypocritical there, but oh well.