Universal Game Design
I was sitting in my friend’s apartment, watching him play Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune, and ticking off the number of game design elements used. You duck and cover during the gun fights like in Gears of War. You climb around ruins like in Prince of Persia or Tomb Raider. You have rail shooting sequences. You have vehicle sections. What makes it interesting is that they are all competently sitting in one game. And it’s not just this title—many combat games are developing similar overlap in terms of their features. They are all marching towards being more realistic and giving the player all the options he could want in a fight. The question this raises is that if we are continually having our games mimic reality and allow the player to do whatever they would want to do in an actual fight, are we not basing this on a finite series of options? Isn’t there a point where you’re going to be able do whatever you want, where those features will be refined to the point of flawless? Could there eventually be one universal game design that competently lets you do anything in a game?
Lets not get into a semantics argument here, because I don’t mean level designs, stories, or weapons. I mean the basic physics and ways that you interact with the game environment. Nor is this really referring to an absolute recreation of reality. Games have already developed their own unique lore, as outlined in an excellent article in Popular Mechanics. Uzis are actually extremely accurate guns, but for the purpose of gameplay balance, most games make them much wilder. Pistols aren’t as useful at long distances as many games would have you believe. Not to mention the lack of recoil bruises and regenerative abilities of the average protagonist. I’m going to steer away from swords and sorcery for most of this essay, but I highly doubt many gamers would be pleased at having their sword get stuck inside an orc while swinging it either. But even deviation from the reality could merely be another choice for the player. Do you want to play on ‘real life’ difficulty, or set yourself up as a physics-defying super-human death machine? In either case, a big blow-out action sequence is still going to have a finite number of activities for you to do. Again, I’m not talking about weapons, plot, or basic environmental physics. This is just basic run, drive car, duck, reload, shoot, and electric slide actions becoming part of one unified standard.
With so many games copying and incorporating game designs from each other, the main difference between game options now really boils down to refinement. You might have a great FPS system in your game, but as soon as you jump into a vehicle your physics stop making sense and the cars become a pain to drive. Or, your great flight simulator becomes awful as soon as the kung-fu sequences break out. It’s a factor that developers have started to account for, and one of the most innovative ways is Midway’s method. All of the developers under that publisher share technology and resources. In the Gamasutra article cited, the developer explains that they actually borrowed the car physics and programmers from a developer who makes racing games for their free-roaming Vegas game. In return, they showed the other developer better streaming technology for their environments. Imagine a world where instead of a game being good at one thing and having a couple of mediocre sections, the mediocre sections were developed by an equally skilled group. Vehicles, gunfights, physics…these features would become so refined as to actually stream them all together. We would no longer distinguish a game about driving cars and one about shooting aliens. They would all become one game design, one epic experience.
A universal game design wouldn’t just stop with action games or titles where you’re directly in control of the protagonist. It could extend out to strategy, space combat, anything really. What else is Starcraft but an action game where you hover high above the battlefield? The concept has been experimented with before in games, but with the kind of refinement we’re talking about it’d be possible to mix completely unrelated players in one game. Take Left 4 Dead. One player controls all of the zombies, the others are all playing characters trapped in the fray. One is engaged in a strategic battle, the other is having a frantic shoot-out. A player who isn’t a huge fan of playing Halo may nevertheless buy a game where they get to control the battlefield while skilled players opt for FPS mode and try to take them out while they control armies overhead. Beyond the always promising broad economic perks of such a game, there’s the co-mingling of different players and preferences in one Universal Design. It’s not a game within the game, it’s a game that has every means of interaction possible in it.
Stephen Hawking once wrote that in order to create a universal formula for the universe, you’d need to design it like a series of maps. You need one kind of map to get around a park. You need another kind to tell you where a country is. One kind of map isn’t always going to suit your needs even if it’s just as accurate as another. It seems plausible that the same could be said for a Universal Game Design. You need a finite series of interactive options that change depending on what you want to do in the game. If I want to quantum leap into a space fighter and skillfully blast my way through a whole armada, it brings up a new series of options. If I want to coordinate a group of capital ships to surround that one pesky fighter, there’s a series of options for that too. A Universal Game Design doesn’t mean that there will be only one kind of game, it means that there will be one we can all play.
Comments
So Spore then? That’s effectively designed like a series of maps.
As for Midway and sharing technology, wasn’t that part of the reason Harvey Smith gave for the technical problems of Blacksite? Also look at some of EAs old James Bond games where the first and third person sections are designed by one team and the vehicle sections by another, the switch is often jarring. For another example consider the new Alone In The Dark title, even though Eden made their name with the Test Drive series the vehicle sections were terrible.
Such a unified game design can be done but it would have to be done with an eye towards the whole, and not simply by pulling a pre-build vehicle module off the shelf. The technical requirements on one section would need to be taken into consideration when working on the other sections and this seems unlikely when handled by two discrete teams.
If the intent is not for players switch between sections but to play seperate ones, then that brings up balance challenges I wouldn’t want to think about. Controller modes have been tried in some of the Battlefield games and they didn’t really work that well, the type of people who like being controllers don’t like having agents that can think for themselves, and the guys on the ground don’t much like being told what to do.
If the intent is to allow players to switch between modes such multi-modal gameplay can very easily frustrate, as it requires learning not one control scheme but several.
Consider Halo, it has first person sections as well as sections in both ground and flying vehicles but the controls remain basically the same, the left stick is always movement and the right stick always controls the camera. It still feels like one game because the control system and core design principles are consistent across all modes.
Comment by Justin Keverne — August 13, 2008 @ 10:04 am
I got the impression from the Midway piece that it was more just having programmers swap ideas. I didn’t pay much attention to Blacksite so I don’t know about its flaws enough but I could easily see it turning into a mess if teams were doing anything more than sharing tips.
The rest of your points are all good and valid ones. Balance is a huge issue, a consistent control scheme would still have to be developed, and co-op would be difficult as well. Honestly, I was more thinking have one team be in FPS mode and the opposing side be controlled by one person.
Despite all these barriers though, to me the most interesting games are always the ones that don’t let themselves get too bogged down with worry. Some of of my favorite games are flawed and convoluted, but just the fact that they tried to do something new is what enthralls me to them. A multi-layered game where different people are participating in very different ways would definitely be exciting to see, even if it took a while to get all the hiccups out.
Comment by L.B. Jeffries — August 13, 2008 @ 10:40 am
My critical faculties kick in a little too early sometimes. I’d be very interested to see something like this and in fact I’m sure I heard about a game that was trying to do so but I can’t remember what it was called.
When I first heard about EndWar I wondered if that was going to head in this direction. As Ubisoft have the Ghost Recon, Splinter Cell and soon Hawx franchies all covering different elements of the same Clancy-esque gameplay style.
As it stands I think the way we’ll see things like this emerge is either through developers building on smaller crossovers titles, like the RTS\RPG SpellForce, or the Natural Selection Mod for Half Life which is an interesting blend of FPS and RTS games. Or we’ll see something like Operation Flashpoint but where the vehicle sections as as heavily simulated as Falcon 4.
Comment by Justin Keverne — August 13, 2008 @ 11:36 am
well the issue is that companies want to feature all these elements for the sake of featuring them. They want to appeal to the widest demographic.
That’s the problem. the marketing and PR people have a lot of say in some of the companies and as a result you get weird things shoved into games where they shouldn’t be.
Comment by GeorgeR — August 13, 2008 @ 4:44 pm
Sometimes all those features feel like they should be there. Action adventure games have been steadily riffing off (or ripping off) Indiana Jones since their inception. It makes sense in the context of such titles to have ancient ruins, puzzles, gun fighting, hand to hand combat, vehicle chases. These are the core elements of the films that inspired served as original inspiration.
There are instances of elements being somewhat forced into a game, the obligatory “stealth” missions are a fine example; or worse badly designed multiplayer modes. Aside from such things the inclusion of additional features is an attempt to broaden the palette of the game and allow the player to as many actions that are contextually suited to the situation as possible. Why wouldn’t we want to take cover in a gun fight? Why wouldn’t we want to climb that wall?
My concern is that just because two games feature similar mechanics doesn’t mean they will or should function the same way. The cover system in Gears of War and the cover system in Rainbow Six: Vegas might be similar in overall design but the different nature of the specific games (the weapons, the AI, the control schemes) means that the implementation is different. “One Design to Rule Them All” probably won’t work.
This really seems to be two different topics, a micro level unified design for all possible direct actions within a specific game style, ala a unified movement set for action adventure games (Running, jumping, taking cover, climbing ropes etc) and a macro level unified design for all possible actions within multiple game styles (First person combat, third person vehicle sections, top down strategy).
Comment by Justin Keverne — August 13, 2008 @ 5:35 pm
Hmmm…those are both good points going at the same issue. How do you inhibit the culture of design gimmicks if you’re making one finalized design and what’s the purpose behind merging large-scale and small-scale game designs? Essentially, what’s the point of one grand design?
When I was posting this piece I had the odd suspicion that I was missing something and I think that nails it: the motivation for this at all. So don’t mind me if I add a short footnote.
The reason for this is standardization. You’ll be able to appeal to a broader audience and maintain them if your game design is consistent across multiple games. Changing the controls and options repeatedly means players are learning new game designs rather than how to use weapons, interact, etc. I realize people get annoyed when you compare games to other media but in this instance I think it’s warranted: I tend to only read books in English, I tend to watch movies by sitting down and looking at a screen. Elements of standardization such as using dual-analog or the trigger buttons are already present in many games but there is still the merging of different game types and genres to be explored. Many series already do this, you can step right into a GTA game and know what’s going on, same with Halo. The idea is to take that kind of appeal for one game and apply it to all games
This is all years down the road and a lot of technology shifts that make games more accessible than the console climate will need to happen. There has to be a foundation for this kind game to exist in the first place.
Comment by L.B. Jeffries — August 14, 2008 @ 5:55 am
What’s missing from all this is the idea of craftsmanship. What you’re suggesting is that more is always good. The fact is that when designing a game, what you don’t allow your player to do is as important as what you do allow them to do.
A good example of this is Bionic Commando, where your character can’t jump at all. This encourages players to get comfortable and skilled with using the grappling hook to maneuver. I understand the 3D remakes will allow you to jump, but I somehow feel that its going to be at the sacrifice of what’s unique and interesting about the original’s design.
I understand the advantages of having standards, but it’s important not to carry that too far. Otherwise we’re going to get a lot of games that are basically clones game design-wise, with their only distinguishing features being their voice-acting, cg, texturing, and level design. That doesn’t really sound like game design to me anymore.
Comment by Charles — August 16, 2008 @ 10:00 am
I’m surprised no one has yet to mention Raph Koster’s Metaplace (www.metaplace.com). It’s essentially all about letting people share and sell game assets between one another - including game mechanics. So if you really like how that one side scroller’s trampolines work, you can pretty much just copy and paste the code into your own sidescroller.
Give it awhile, and people will be copy-pasting Portal-worthy code. Then we’ll really see an explosion in the number of games made - whether or not they’re any good, though…
Comment by David — August 16, 2008 @ 7:42 pm
@Charles: Bionic Commando Rearmed does not include a jump button, movement is still tied to the use of the arm itself. It’s a game about using the arm itself, so being able to jump or crawl or any other standard move set would be explicitly at odds with the game design.
However Uncharted, Tomb Raider, Beyond Good & Evil all of these games have very similar move sets and so would benefit from the standardisation a universal game design would bring. A game can be more than just it’s core mechanics.
Comment by Justin Keverne — August 17, 2008 @ 1:01 pm