I am now convinced that when it comes to game design we get stupider as we get older. This was made very clear to me the other day when my 3-year-old nephew spent a sick-day at my house. Apparently youāre not allowed to go to daycare when youāre still contagious, and both his parents have real, go-to-the-office jobs. So little Carter got to play with Aunt Wendy, who works on videogames from home.
The day went pretty much as youād expect ā chase the dogs for a while, haul the cat out from under the bed, go for a walk, put a puzzle together, color in a Spider-man coloring book. We were having a good time, but I was starting to scrape the bottom of the barrel when I faced the inevitable āLetās do something else.ā Finally the obvious hit me. Letās play some videogames! I grabbed the first one off the top of the pile and put it in the PS2. Star Wars: Battlefront it is.
Carterās father is a proper geek and has instilled in his children an appropriate adoration for all things Star Wars, so we were off and running. I started a new game and set it to āeasy.ā This kidās too smart to try the old āHere, hold this controller while I play the gameā thing.
Did you know you can win the first level of Star Wars just by standing in one place, turning in constant circles and holding down the āXā button? Aunt Wendy got something right. He was thrilled. And when he heard the cheerful chimes, a signal to those of all ages that youāve won something, there was jumping around and fists in the air and lots of shouting I didnāt understand.
But then the next level came up, and things started to go downhill. The instant it began he looked confused. It took him a few seconds to put it into words, but then he said it. āI already won this level.ā
I looked at Star Wars with new eyes. This truly was level 2. He really had won the first level. No cheating there. But the lovingly-rendered background and setting didnāt look all that different from the first level. Honestly, how would I know this was a different level if I hadnāt read the words on the screen? I picked out some very tiny details and showed him how it was different. He seemed unconvinced and was even more disappointed when he ran out of ammunition and couldnāt figure out how to reload or change guns. It just wasnāt intuitive enough. He was done.
āHow about a different game?ā I tried. He was up for that, so I grabbed the next one on my pile and stuffed it in the PS2. Up comes Jak and Daxter.
The cute characters caught my nephewās attention immediately, and he was quite interested. For a while. Then his face clouded over and he looked at me like, who are you trying to fool?
āThis isnāt a videogame,ā he said in that accusatory tone only 3-year-olds can truly master. āThis is a movie. I donāt want a movie. I want a game.ā The interminable introductory cinematics werenāt even half over at that point. I grabbed the controller and started trying to figure out how to skip them. Every time I skipped one it just went to another section of the cinematic. Then another. He didnāt wait around for the gameplay to start.
āCome on,ā he said. āLetās go hunt worms.ā He knew the rain from last night would leave earthworms squirming on the sidewalks and he could count on the thrill of the (short) hunt and a satisfactory payoff, proving his bravery by picking them up with his own two fingers and depositing them in a pickle jar. Way better than any of the videogames in my stack.
Carter isnāt my only nephew who likes videogames. When I go visit my nephew Trevor I get to spend as many hours as I want playing videogames. We both enjoy it, and my sister considers it quality family time, so everybody wins. Heās not 3 years old anymore, but thatās when the tradition got its start. His drug of choice was Spider-Man on the computer. He sat on my lap and āhelpedā by telling me what to do and where to go. Then when we got to a fun part, he would take over the mouse and keyboard and do his thing.
His favorite thing to do was watch Spider-Man shooting webs and swinging around through the city. The physics and graphics were excellent, and you could really get a thrill from it. I liked playing that section, too, so I had no complaints. But this kid knew the game inside and out. Once, when weād gotten part way through the narrative and were swinging around for fun, I heard someone calling for help. āAh ha,ā I thought. āWeāre supposed to go that way and find someone and beat up the bad guys.ā So I turned in that direction.
Trevor was quick to correct me. āNo,ā he said. āDonāt go that way.ā
The rest of the conversation went something like this:
āBut it sounds like a lady needs our help,ā I said.
āYeah, some bad guys stole her purse on top of a building over there.ā
āWhy was she on top of a building with a purse?ā
āI donāt know.ā
āWell, shouldnāt we go help her?ā
āNo, nothing bad will happen to her if we leave them alone.ā
āAre you sure? Theyāre bad guys, and they stole her purse.ā
āYeah, but they just stand there and wait for Spider-Man to come. They donāt do anything else.ā
āDonāt you want to make Spider-Man fight them?ā
āYeah, but he doesnāt fight them very long and he canāt win.ā
āThatās dumb.ā
āYeah. Go the other way.ā
He was right. After he went to bed that night I went over and tried to save the lady with the purse. Spider-Man isnāt allowed to win that fight. After just a couple punches the cinematics take over, and these totally unimpressive thugs kick Spider-Manās backside into next week. What a downer. He and I both wanted to play that game for the rush of being a superhero. Not for forced failure.
Iāve been to a lot of conference sessions talking about how to make games better than they are. Iāve read a lot of books about it and seen even more books on Amazon about it. The game industry likes to talk about this subject ā a lot. And who knows? I may not have been able to identify what was annoying my little friends about these games if I hadnāt been studying the subject myself.
But I just canāt shake the feeling that all us game developers would learn these lessons better if we just sat down and played like a 3-year-old for a while. Even if weāre making games for grown-ups. As we get older we get jaded. We expect to be disappointed. We arenāt surprised by inadequacy and sloppy work. We tolerate mediocrity and even find comfort in the mistakes that have become tradition through repetition.
Why do I have to connect to the internet and wait for a long, boring download before I can play my game? Why do I have every line of dialog memorized? Couldnāt the designers be bothered to randomize Donatelloās barks a little?
I have yet another nephew ā yes, weāre a large family of game players. Caleb is only 2 years old, and we were playing something on my Mac the other day because he couldnāt believe I used a computer only for work. He knew there had to be a game buried deep in the hard drive somewhere. And to my surprise, he was right. The previous owner of my refurbished Mac had installed Marble Blast Gold and the demo version of something called Nanosaur 2.
Once again, I wasnāt allowed to watch the boring cinematic opener. He already knows you can hit the space bar to skip it. So I have no clear idea why the dinosaurs had laser weapons and robots were shooting at the little pterodactyl we could control. But he was 2 years old and didnāt need any explanation for why a flying lizard could drop cluster bombs. What he wanted to know was this: If that dinosaur has feet, why canāt we stop flying and walk over to pick up more green things that make the guns work? Why did we have to fly in circles until I could get close enough for the program to guess what I was attempting?
Sorry, Caleb, I donāt know. They gave us feet we canāt use and ladies on top of skyscrapers and movies instead of games and ammunition drops in weird places because they grew up. And they forgot what itās like to play like a 3-year-old.
Published: Jan 15, 2008 6:10 PM UTC