The Insurmountable Foe

by Daniel Bullard-Bates

Minor spoilers for BioShock 2, Dead Space, and Half-Life 2 follow.

The Big Sister in BioShock 2 was terrifying, at first. I saw only glimpses of her as she exited rooms or passed by windows. I knew we would be brought to a confrontation eventually, and I had no idea what to expect. She was as sturdy as a Big Daddy, but faster and more agile. She seemed more intelligent, and had unknown powers. The first time I was alone with her, she flooded the room and escaped unharmed. Now this was a worthy foe.

It was a little longer before I faced her directly, and when I did the fight was a hectic one. I used every attack in my arsenal to fend her off, emptying my weapons and hurling explosives her way, trying to shock her to keep her in one place. By the time she fled, the edges of my vision were darkened and I was bleeding profusely. I barely made it to a healing station.

The next time we met, the ensuing battle was similarly difficult, but at the end something unexpected happened: I killed her. I stood above the corpse of my worthiest of enemies and paused to think. Was this disappointment I felt? I knew that this meant there would be other Big Sisters, but the sense of fear was gone. No longer did I wonder whether I was the equal of the Big Sister in combat. I knew I could prevail, and would prevail again in the future. In that moment, staring down at my conquered foe, I felt confident that I could face anything that came my way.

Unfortunately, this all happened in the first quarter of BioShock 2: I defeated the enemy I previously believed undefeatable, relegating the Big Sister to the status of just another enemy. Even worse, shortly after that battle it became clear that the Big Sister would only confront me directly at specifically designated times in each level, and I learned to anticipate those confrontations and prepare for them. For that first, glorious hour, the Big Sister was something special. Then she became almost mundane, a difficult foe, but one that I knew how to kill.

The insurmountable foe, when done correctly, can be a spectacular change of pace in a video game. In most action-based games, we have learned to operate under the assumption that if it is placed before us, we can defeat it. The sections in games that reject this notion are almost always a dramatic shift; instead of standing to fight, the player must run or hide from a foe they cannot hope to overcome. Perhaps later in the game a weakness will be shown, or a new weapon will allow for new possibilities, but the pacing and tension that results from a shift in power is incredible. Usually, the player has the power to kill and overcome. When faced with an unstoppable force, the player becomes powerless.

Dead Space includes one enemy who regenerates any damage done to it. When first encountered, it seems to be nothing more than a particularly large and tough necromorph and the player can, with some skill, render the thing unable to attack by removing its limbs. When it gets up again, regenerating its lost limbs, the player has no option but to run. The subsequent section of gameplay is terrifying in a very different way from the rest of Dead Space; instead of shock scares and steadily building tension, the player is put in the position of the hunted fleeing for his or her life. In a game built to inspire fear, the variety is welcome. Unfortunately, Dead Space makes a similar error to that made by BioShock 2: the moment when the tables are turned and the player finds a way to defeat the enemy comes too soon. As a result, the player can relax. Other monsters may be around the next corner, but that one is conquered.

Dead Space also telegraphs the fact that the player cannot defeat the regenerating monster; there is always someone yelling in the main character’s ear when he should run and when he should stand and fight. The tension and fear in the opening section of BioShock 2 comes from the fact that I did not know whether I could defeat this foe. This made it both more frightening leading up the confrontation and more disappointing when the first Big Sister fell before my onslaught. But BioShock 2 also didn’t really provide an opportunity to flee. Sure, I could run for a little while, but she would always catch up. It was clear that the developers meant for me to fight until one of us died or she fled. I had no other option.

Older games are not always so kind about telegraphing their intentions. Final Fantasy IV, for example, includes a button that allows the player to flee from combat, but our experiences with most modern role-playing games teach us that most random encounters and monsters can be defeated with some good strategy. There are several enemies, even early on in Final Fantasy IV, for which this is not the case. The only way to learn is to be killed by these foes which are clearly well above the power level of the heroes. The game quickly teaches the player, through direct punishment, that when these monsters are seen, running is the only option. It’s a harsh learning curve, but effective.

There is a more elegant way of doing things, however. When looking for examples of spectacular game design, we often turn to Half-Life 2. Every time the player encounters a strider, those massive, spindly, and impossible tall tanks, the game changes into a game of cat and mouse, with the player’s shots pinging off the metallic hull until a weapon capable of taking the strider down is found. Running and gunning changes immediately into hiding, skulking and scrounging for ammunition. In Half-Life 2: Episode 2, one section in the antlion caves provides another desperate struggle. Faced with an enormous, deadly foe, Gordon Freeman’s only option is to flee from one small hiding place to the next, and hope that the enemy can’t fit in to chase him. These sections provide incredible examples of how to ratchet up the tension using enemies that can’t be stopped, even if the effect is only temporary.

One of the ways that Half-Life 2 creates this tension is by limiting the usefulness of certain weapons. Most of the guns in Half-Life 2 are entirely useless against the striders, so the player feels helpless until a rocket launcher or similarly powerful device is secured. BioShock 2 has a similar system, in which some ammunition does considerably more damage to Big Sisters than others, but a well-prepared player can make sure they are never caught at a disadvantage. Maybe this is just a sign that resources are too plentiful in the game; I only died once in the entire game, due to a distracting real-life cat. I’m not trying to brag, and I don’t consider myself an expert at first person shooters. Shooting expertise is unnecessary; you just need to manage resources well and have a sense of strategy. On the standard difficulty, resources seem abundant. Big Sisters don’t seem insurmountable; they just require a few more bullets and health kits than most enemies.

The basic benefit in including foes that cannot be stopped is the same that can be accomplished through creative level design, changes in pacing, and other tricks of design: it adds variety to the game. Sometimes the player must feel powerless so that they can feel empowered at a later time. Most video games opt for near-constant empowerment; the game may get difficult, but since the purpose of video games, for many, is escapism, the scenario is always winnable. Video game designers are so focused on making the player feel like a powerful, unstoppable winner that they forget that sometimes a great sense of triumph requires a series of failures, if only temporary ones. And everyone wants to feel, from time to time, like they achieved the impossible.

The Cutting Room Floor

by Daniel Bullard-Bates

With the advent of the DVD, it has become common practice to include deleted scenes with a movie. It is usually easy to determine why they were cut, whether it was due to the dialogue falling flat, problems with pacing, or simply because it was unnecessary to the plot or character development of the movie. Though it can be painful to amputate a scene that took a lot of hard work, the best directors know when to leave something on the cutting room floor.

It seems to be much more difficult for game designers to let go. Very few video games have no unnecessary sections, missions, or side quests. As Mitch Krpata points out in this post on Uncharted 2, part of what makes that game so fantastic is that there is so little fluff. But Uncharted 2 is the exception, not the rule, when it comes to game design.

Role-playing games provide some of the most blatant examples of unnecessary and unwarranted material. Often this superfluous content comes in the form of time-absorbing side quests. I understand the mentality that might bring a designer to include a few dull side quests: they’re entirely optional, so only the completionist will actively pursue all of them. I was once a completionist when it came to role-playing games, but pointless, hollow side quests have driven me to be considerably less thorough. Just because someone wants to experience everything a game has to offer does not mean that process should be completely mind-numbing.

There is one side quest in Dragon Age: Origins that asked me to collect twenty of a specific kind of mushroom. Here I am, trying to save the country and perhaps the world from an encroaching army of pure evil, and someone wants me to take some time off to practice amateur mycology. Even if this sounded like a fun pastime for my character, giving these mushrooms away for gold is completely counterintuitive to my character’s goals. These same mushrooms can be used to make useful potions to help in my battles against that evil army I mentioned. In other words, the task is boring and the goal is stupid. You get experience points for it, but how do I justify that to my party members? “I’m sorry you’re dying horribly because I traded in all those supplies, but I really wanted that next level up.” Most of the quests in Dragon Age can be completed on the way to more significant tasks or offer more substantial incentives for their completion, but a few should have been cut. Optional or not, boring gameplay is boring gameplay. I’m reminded of the uncharted worlds in Mass Effect.

Borderlands is a refreshingly straightforward game, in that it makes no effort to delude the player into thinking that there is some higher purpose to their actions. The goals are to find more loot and reach the next level, but this dull premise is redeemed by addictive gameplay and a fun co-operative element. This makes it easier to justify embarking on inane optional missions, since there’s no looming threat to make one hurry. Even so, some of the missions presented in the game are ridiculous even for a lowly mercenary. Shooting fecal matter off of a giant turbine does not make me feel cool. Collecting used smut magazines out of dumpsters is not an enjoyable way to spend my time. I don’t begrudge a game the opportunity to have a laugh, but joke missions should be brief so the joke doesn’t overstay its welcome. By the time I’ve trekked halfway across the map to find my third porn dumpster, I am no longer laughing. I am wondering why this made it into the game.

These are minor sins, since they can be safely ignored without detracting from the game experience. What’s even worse is when a game has required sections that are dull or counterintuitive to the game’s goals. In Assassin’s Creed 2, at several points the player is asked to tail someone, keeping an eye on them from a distance while they lead the player to a specific place. Get too close, and they will notice you, lag too far behind and you will lose track of them. This would be simply boring if they didn’t throw in multiple obstacles to your success. Guards along your path might recognize you, requiring you to blend with crowds or hire groups to distract them. This means that you spend large sections of gameplay just walking along watching someone else walk along, and if you don’t do just the right thing, you are noticed, which causes you to fail and start over. Suddenly they’re not just boring, they’re boring and irritating.

Sometimes, important plot information is being relayed by the people you are following. I appreciate the fact that these sections could be seen as a break from the running and jumping and killing, and it’s even a clever way to relay plot information without taking control from the player. But if those are the goals, why not remove some of the complications? Be more lax about the distances; remove the unnecessary barriers to completion. These are not difficult missions, so let them just be breaks from the action. I find it hard to believe that no play tester for Assassin’s Creed 2 turned to a designer and said, “This part is not fun.”

There are lessons to be learned from the cinema. If something isn’t working or doesn’t help a movie, a good director will cut it or edit it until it works. Most video games, even excellent ones, have sections that should have been left on the cutting room floor. Maybe they just need harsher editors.

Hollywood Game Design: The Cinematic Experience of Uncharted 2

by Daniel Bullard-Bates

Uncharted 2: Among Thieves is the best movie-based video game of all time. While it isn’t based on a specific movie, it is an overt homage to the action-adventure cinematic experience in general. With well-written characters, riveting action set pieces, and jaw-dropping cinematography, the game’s ultimate success is that the player walks away thinking, “I just saw the best action movie of the year, and I played the star.”

Uncharted 2 offers interactivity in terms of how you reach your goals: you can use stealth or action, attack a situation in a variety of ways, and clamber over half of the environment. But no matter how you play the game, the results are always the same. This is always the case in games with linear plots, and the approach serves Uncharted 2 well. While the game doesn’t capitalize on the ultimate potential of interactive entertainment, the linearity allows the game an incredible sense of focus. The characters are likeable and well-defined, and each scene plays out beautifully. The mechanics of the game are all well-realized: the jumping and climbing functions just as well scaling a cliff face as it does jumping from truck to truck as they race along a snowy mountain side.

(Mitch Krpata, of Insult Swordfighting, makes some excellent points about the focus of the game and what they must have omitted here.)

Uncharted 2 accomplishes something that video game designers have been striving to do for years: it successfully captures all the drama, excitement and fun of a big-budget action-adventure movie. The additional interactivity makes it even better than a Hollywood blockbuster, because any accomplishment that Drake enjoys is the player’s, as well. Uncharted 2 is a fantastic game, but its power is in its execution, not any form of innovation. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with that, but I hope that it motivates other developers to branch off in different directions entirely.

There are a few schools of thought on how to make video games. With Uncharted 2, Naughty Dog has conquered the Hollywood school of game design, focusing on characters, linear stories and epic action. Uncharted 2 is the new gold standard, and Naughty Dog has charted the path to success in games that feel like movies. There are other realms to explore and innovations to discover in video games, but they lie down different paths.

The Charming Sociopath

by Daniel Bullard-Bates

I recently played through Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune, and what the critics say is true: it is a very well constructed game, and the animations, characters and voice actors are superb. It did, however, leave me with an unsettled feeling in the pit of my stomach. After all, here was charming, likeable Nathan Drake and his lovely companion Elena, who moved and spoke like real, friendly people I might want to hang out with, looked more realistic than most other video game characters, and killed countless human beings without hesitation or remorse.

This problem runs rampant in video games: because of the genre of a game or the standards set by games that came before, all the hard work put into characterization is thrown out the window in favor of overused tropes. Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune attempts to bring an experience to the console that is as close as possible to a high quality action/adventure film, but even in Indiana Jones’s wildest adventures, he never killed as many thugs as Nathan Drake does within the first few hours of Uncharted. This works against all the hard work put into the character of Nathan. It’s hard to believe that a man who kills so easily is also charming and likeable.

But this is an action/adventure game, and action/adventure games generally pit the player against a lot of enemies. When the mass slaughtering is done by a character like Kratos or Marcus Fenix, it seems more natural because these men are ridiculous stereotypes of action heroes. They are grim, unpleasant, murderous clichés. With a realistic character in the forefront, however, this behavior strikes a more discordant note.

There are simple changes which could have made this disconnect less jarring. One solution would have been to cut down on the number of enemies Nathan Drake faced on his adventure. The game repeatedly recycles combat arenas by sending second and third waves of enemies into the room after each group is dispatched. This made many of the action sequences longer than necessary and increased the body count considerably. Even if every man he killed was actively trying to kill Nathan (and they were), you'd think that when a person loses count of the human beings they’ve killed it might affect their sunny disposition.

Another approach might have been to simply slow down the pace of the confrontations. Enemies do not hide behind barriers for very long, always pushing forward to flank Nathan and his companions. They do not hesitate, retreat, regroup or try to find aid. A group of enemies enters an area, takes cover, moves in to attack, and dies. If they behaved more like they valued their own lives, it could have extended the gameplay and added tension. Maybe they could have even, just every once in a while, presented a character who realized that twelve of his well-armed friends had just been killed and that he was all alone facing their killer. That would be an appropriate time to drop one’s weapon and run like hell, or even surrender, allowing the player an opportunity to show that he is playing a pretty good guy who doesn’t kill unless he has to do so.

I understand that this would make the game a less action-packed affair, and that this would be a concern for the developers. Many consumers look for constant, frenetic action in their games, and Uncharted delivers in that regard. But as games present more realistic, believable characters, questions are raised about whether the gameplay itself detracts from their believability. And when Elena goes from nervously joking about having never fired a gun before to calmly launching explosive rockets at strangers from the back of a jet ski, I must admit that I am a little less in love with the otherwise charming and intelligent leading lady.

There are two philosophies of game design at war here: Uncharted attempts to deliver a lengthy, action-packed experience as well as a fulfilling narrative with a likeable main character. Unfortunately, these two ideas work against one another. This conflict also arises in video game villains, especially those of the malevolently-scheming-behind-the-scenes variety. (Some spoilers for BioShock and Batman: Arkham Asylum follow.)

In the finale of BioShock, the manipulative villain of the game transforms himself into a superhuman monster, despite the fact that it hardly fits the character or the story at all. Why would an enterprising businessman and criminal attempt a direct confrontation? An otherwise excellent, complex and genre-defying shooter, BioShock fell prey to the idea that every video game needs an epic final boss to fight. The result was one of the few flat and uninspired moments in an otherwise stellar game.

Similarly, in Batman: Arkham Asylum, the Joker, who has made a career out of using people like pawns to accomplish his mad schemes, goes out of character and transforms himself into a huge, preposterous mutant to fight Batman directly. Other than in that moment, Arkham Asylum does an excellent job of conveying the Joker as a character, and the translation from comic book to video game was impressive. But the developers wanted a big set piece and an imposing enemy for the finale, so all that careful character development was thrown out the window.

Developers need to realize that it is okay to be different for the sake of a character. A huge, tough boss is all well and good in the right game, but when Batman thwarts the Joker’s plans and defeats his thugs in the comic books, the only thing left to do is to sock him in the jaw and throw him in a cell. For the narrative of a game to improve, the mechanics and gameplay can’t work against the development of the plot and characters. I’d much rather have a great story from beginning to end than have a boss fight just like those in every other game. And if there were a little less killing in Uncharted, I might feel like having a beer with Nathan Drake if I ever met him in a bar. As it stands, though, I think my best bet would be to run for my life.

The Digital Ground Beneath Your Feet

By C.T. Hutt

Look up. Now down. Look at the walls surrounding you or the landscape in the distance. Disregard the people and things and consider the space. If you were a stranger to the area you are in now, what would you think of it? Does it seem comfortable? Familiar? What was this space designed to do? Was it designed at all, or does it exist naturally?

The programmers who create environments are unsung heroes of the game development world. While we often overlook something as banal as the ceiling tiles in the head-crab-infested hospital in Half-Life 2, or the water stains on the walls of ruins in Fallout 3, these minute aspects of the gaming world add immeasurably to the experience of a given title. The environment of a game is a character unto itself and unlike many facets of the medium, I believe that environmental design has been one of the greatest successes in game development history.

Shadow of the Colossus stands alone as simply one of the finest games I’ve ever played. The opening credits set the story as one of love lost, and the desperate struggle of a young man to get it back, no matter what the cost to the world, or to his own spirit. After being handed the task of killing the mighty colossi that roam the lands, your character steps out onto a vast plane, devoid of any signs of human life save for some dusty ruins. Truly massive though the colossi are, it takes considerable time to locate them in the expansive world. During the search the player has ample time to take in the scene around them. Empty would be the best way to describe the land the developers created, as empty as a broken heart. With no other characters to interact with or enemies to fight, the profound solitude of the environment is overwhelming. It sets the scene perfectly for a game as sobering as it is beautiful. And the colossi are environments to themselves, walking, living landscapes.

The strange combination of futuristic technology and old-timey decor that surrounds a player in Bioshock is overshadowed with every step by the feeling of being underwater. Not comfortably underwater mind you, but suffocating. The environment of BioShock makes the player feel as though they are dragging out the last gasp of air in drowning lungs for hours. Everything, and I do mean everything, in the environment is affected by the water. The bolts in the walls look rusty and ready to snap, the woodwork is swollen or rotted through, and everywhere you look there are puddles of brackish seawater. All these things and more are none-too-subtle reminders that the ocean does not welcome intruders and that a watery death is only ever moments away. Even if you weren’t being stalked by mutated horrors and soulless abominations, the environment in BioShock is absolutely terrifying.

It doesn’t take a huge studio or a multi-million dollar budget to create an immersive and engaging environment. The expansive woodland in The Path by Tale of Tales is a stylized version of a few acres of pine you might find behind your house. Aside from the interactive aspects of the game what makes the environment in The Path truly interesting is its subtle enhancements to reality. The light streaming through the trees, the peculiar twists of branches, it all seems very common, very real, but at the same time enhanced, altered into something more than the everyday. It took me some time to identify the feeling, but after a while it came to me. The environment in The Path is like that of a memory, sharp as a razor here and there, but soft around the edges. For a game covering themes such as the pleasures and pitfalls of innocence lost I think this was an excellent aesthetic choice on the part of Tale of Tales.

While certain aspects of gaming have been slow to evolve (story, character development, etc.) the medium as a whole has produced some incredibly immersive environments. It makes sense: aside from interactivity the greatest difference between a video games and other art forms is the worlds they take us to. Many great directors over the years have been praised for using the settings of their films as characters. Think of Ang Lee’s long shots of rolling landscapes in Brokeback Mountain or Stanley Kubrick's careful, slow pans over bright, empty outer space in 2001. But a film can survive on good characters, a fine script, and an environment that doesn’t ruin the moment.

Perhaps what sets video games apart in this regard is that the player controls the shot, not the director. The environment needs to be so much more detailed, so much more fully realized, than that of a film, because the player will push the boundaries. They will try to get behind each façade, jump off every cliff, and explore every corner. Through necessity, then, setting and environment in video games has become one of the greatest strengths of the artform: whether it is the colorful spheres of Super Mario Galaxy or the burned-out, corpse-riddled wasteland of Fallout 3, video games have done a fantastic job of building compelling worlds and environments.

Jason Rohrer’s Metaplace Talk

by Daniel Bullard-Bates

I just attended a short talk with Jason Rohrer on the website community Metaplace, which shed some more light on his upcoming DS game, among other topics. Highlights below (edited for spelling and punctuation, and to make a chat window more readable):

On his goals when making games:

I'm not looking for answers. I'm trying to make games that explore these interesting questions. Now I'm thinking about how we know what we know about what other people know (and what they know about us and what we know). E.g., the classic philosophy puzzle of the "cheating wives" or "muddy children."

On whether the controversial subject matter of his DS game worries him:

Yeah, it is a bit strange to make a DS game like that... but I think the DS audience is growing up a bit. Also, I anticipate that the game will get an E rating... so it's not going to be filled with little kids carrying AKs or anything. But the backdrop is a little.... disturbing. Other than that, you might not realize that the game is controversial if you just sit down and play it. Diamonds are good, right? Everyone wants em! Get as many as you can!

I guess it's a bit like Defcon, which was a strategy game about nuclear war. So it gives you a bit of a creepy feeling when you play, but that doesn't stop you from getting into the strategy, which makes it even creepier. Anyway, the art in my game is not some ham-handed preaching about blood diamonds... it's in the exploration of the "know that you know that he knows that you know" stuff that I mentioned before. The diamond trade just happens to be a perfect setting for that exploration.

On clearing the DS game’s subject matter with his publisher:

In fact, they "red lighted" my first idea (about cheating spouses on the verge of divorce) because they thought it would be too controversial. So I came up with another idea that explored the same philosophical issues of knowledge chains, and surprisingly, they green-lighted that. No sex, I guess...

On the maturity of the DS audience:

As for the DS audience, what about Chinatown Wars? There are more and more M-rated games, when a few years ago, there were no M-rated games. So if the DS is ready for "mature" stuff like blood and boobs... well... maybe it's ready for intellectually mature stuff too! That's the hope.

On programming for the DS:

It's also a matter of scope and scale. On the DS, I can make an entire game by myself (small screen, low-res graphics) in 6 months or so. I couldn't possibly do that on an HD system like the Xbox 360... too many pixels to paint.

It all started when a publisher approached me. I would have never gotten into it without that. Later on, I learned that you can't get a DS dev kit without renting an office space... so I'm doing that now. I've been working from home for 6 years, so having an office is a big change.

And... I can't say too much about the DS platform (secret), but, it's weird! An embedded system, with all the stuff that goes along with that. Even the iPhone acts mostly like a "real computer" by comparison.

On why his game is going to retail and not DSiWare:

That is a little weird, isn't it? If I was making DSiWare, I wouldn't need a publisher. So, it's because the whole thing started with a publisher that it's going the cart route. I may make a DSiWare game too at some point, though.

Advice on starting to make games:

Two words: Game Maker. Get Windows, get Game Maker ($20), and start making games. It's an amazing tool... I've been calling it "the photoshop for games"... it's really that powerful. You can pretty much make anything... multiplayer too. 3D might be more of a challenge, though some people have done it. But the core of game design has nothing to do with 3D, so it's just a distraction anyway.

So, learn how to make games with Game Maker. Before you know it, you'll know how to program, too... and then you can start learning to make games on other platforms.

The full chat log is available here.

Game Pitch: Meaningful Death Game

by Daniel Bullard-Bates

After reading Josh’s recent post on death and failure in video games, I found myself thinking that a game that treats any character’s death with a sense of permanence and resolution could be pretty incredible. My next thought was that this would probably also make the game incredibly difficult and barely any fun at all, as I would have to play from the beginning of the entire game each time my character died. So how could a game deal with death as a serious consequence without ruining the enjoyment of playing the game?

To answer that question, I’d like to pitch a concept for a game at you. If you’re someone who plays games, I’d like you to think about whether you’d enjoy this one. If you’re someone who designs games, I’d like you to make this one. If you’re a company that develops games, I’d like you to hire me to be the creative designer on this one. Let’s a-go!

The Opening Scene:

You’re sitting in the back of a bus traveling through the Rocky Mountains, looking out the window. The girl to your left is listening to her headphones, but smiles sweetly when you look at her. The bus stops in a small town to refuel, and the driver and a few passengers get out to stretch their legs and grab some snacks. After a few moments, sounds of a struggle and a scream are heard from the inside of the gas station. The window of the gas station breaks as the driver goes through it, and a strange, near-human creature leaps through and lands on all fours, with several others following it out of the building. Someone in the bus manages to close the doors and lock them as the creatures pound on the windows and panic breaks out.

The girl next to you throws her headphones down. She looks panicked, but she takes your hand and reminds you that you know how to drive a bus, and you have to get out of here. You work your way to the front of the bus, sit in the driver’s seat, turn the key and hit the gas. The creatures hang onto the side, keening and crying as you pick up speed. Suddenly, you see a woman in the middle of the road ahead of you, and you swerve to avoid her. You slam into a rock and go flying through the front windshield. As you lie on the pavement, the girl from the seat next to you runs up to you, crying, as a few others mill around outside the bus. They're talking, but they sound very far away. The girl holds your hand and caresses your face as everything fades to black.

Now you’re looking down at the body of a young man on the pavement. Your eyes are blurry with tears, and the people around you are trying to figure out what to do next. Not too far away, strange and hideous calls sound out in the night.

The Concept:

A survival-horror game with a large cast of characters, where each chapter of the game has the player taking the role of a different character. Each chapter would end when the character currently being controlled either reaches a specific goal or dies. Later chapters would have more or less of the cast remaining based on the survival rate throughout the game. Multiple endings would be possible: one where everyone dies, another where one or more people manage to escape to safety, a third where the story of the town and the monsters is revealed and the threat is wiped out forever. At points in the story it would present the option to give items or weapons to other characters who might have more of a use for them, and the player would have to balance their desire to have the items now against their desire for the other character to have them later in the game.

The Payoff:

Using a satellite phone given to you by a character now long dead, you manage to use your knowledge of electronics to fix it, hook it up to a larger antenna and get reception, contacting help and the outside world. It's a good thing he gave the phone to you to fix, instead of using up the batteries trying to find a signal on a broken phone.

In a later part of the game, another character has a brief, emotional moment where he recollects the death of a character you played earlier in the game. Or, if the character lived, he tells her how much she means to him before they leave the relative safety of the house the survivors have holed up in.

A writhing horde of monsters teems down a hallway towards the few remaining characters. You hand off the keys and items you’ve found to the people you’ve grown so close to in the last few hours, and tell them to run. You stand your ground, shooting the beasts down as your friends escape. The first one reaches you and knocks you to the ground, but as they surround you, you see that your allies have gotten far enough away to make it. You know that they have everything they need to end this.

Other Applications:

A similar idea of a large cast of characters and meaningful, permanent death could be applied to a number of different game concepts. It could make for a more intense and realistic war game, where the player controls different members of a whole squad of soldiers. Or imagine a Batman game where you play as the rogue’s gallery of villains and try to execute a nefarious plan as Batman works to take you down, one by one. The possibilities are both varied and exciting. So what do you say, gamers? Would you play it? And game companies, am I hired?

How to Make It Last

by Daniel Bullard-Bates

Many game designers seek ways of either extending a video game’s play time or encouraging multiple playthroughs of a game. If done well, these strategies can add considerable value to a game. Here are some of the most common ways this is done, and a few pointers on how to make sure it doesn’t damage the game experience:

1. Add collectible items.

How to do it right: All the collectible items should serve some in-game purpose, either helping the player in some substantive way (Heart pieces in most Zelda games) or providing some narrative role (audio diaries in BioShock).
How to mess it up: Make the collectible items almost entirely irrelevant, apart from achievements and self-satisfaction (flags in Assassin’s Creed).

2. Add optional sidequests/alternate goals.

How to do it right: Make the alternate goals and sidequests either challenging (comets in Super Mario Galaxy) or interesting, unique experiences (vaults, areas and sidequests in Fallout 3).
How to mess it up: Make the alternate goals/sidequests dull, simple and repetitive (most of the uncharted worlds in Mass Effect, most of the quests given by random NPCs in The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion).

3. Allow New Game + (starting the game over with all characters at the same level and/or with the same equipment and powers as they were after beating the game).

How to do it right: Allow for new possibilities and outcomes with each additional playthrough in the form of secret areas to be accessed, alternate outcomes to encounters, and alternate endings (Chrono Trigger).
How to mess it up: Make it entirely irrelevant, keeping the game entirely the same, only easier as a result of the added levels/equipment/powers (Mass Effect, though playing at a higher difficulty adds some value).

4. Allow new playthroughs with new characters.

How to do it right: Make sure that a playthrough with a new character provides a new experience, either through alternate skills and focuses (Mass Effect, Fallout 3) or different control schemes and gameplay types (playing as Richter Belmont in Castlevania: Symphony of the Night).
How to mess it up: Make the new characters exactly the same as the old ones, just with a different skin or costume (Star Wars: The Force Unleashed).

5. Create complicated skill/power/upgrade trees.

How to do it right: If there are enough different powers to acquire, combos to learn, skills to upgrade and so forth, this can be a compelling reason to play a game again to learn and try them all (Ninja Gaiden, God of War).
How to mess it up: Make some powers clearly superior and others useless past certain points in a game, so that there’s really no need or impetus to upgrade them all (Star Wars: The Force Unleashed).

6. Provide alternate story/moral paths.

How to do it right: Add a major choice that can change the plot of the game or a morality system that can be played two or more ways with different results (Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic) so that players will want to play again to see the alternative options.
How to mess it up: Have few/no consequences to the choices made and/or make them too black and white (BioShock).

7. Add secret areas/levels.

How to do it right: Make the secret areas/levels interesting, fun, and non-essential (Super Mario World).
How to mess it up: Make a secret level/area required to finish the game (Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia).

8. Add greater challenges and difficulty ratings.

How to do it right: Make each difficulty ramp up naturally from the previous ones, providing a challenging experience (Gears of War).
How to mess it up: Make the normal difficulty setting way too hard for most players, discouraging them from learning the game’s systems (Ninja Gaiden).

9. Make an incredible game.

How to do it right: If you’ve got this one figured out, no tricks or additions will be required. People will be playing your game over and over again for years to come.