Ludological thoughts

[vidarfreyr]

I've been listening to a lot of podcasts on game making and ludology. Questions that I found really interesting are: Why do we play games? What is a game? And what makes a game good?

I now have answers to these questions after a lot of researching. These are in no way my findings, rather my attempt at summing up something that others have said and I just happen to agree with:

Here are some statements:
1. We play games because we naturally like to build things and see progress in something we are working on.
2. Games are ancient. We play games because it improves strategic thinking, thus making us better at planning and winning wars with other tribes.
3. A game is an activity, a competition or a test of skills within strict boundaries or rules. An activity with no rules is not a game.
4. A good game is one in which meaningful decisions are made that affect the outcome of the game. Good decisions = good outcome. Bad decisions = bad outcome. Thus a game that is largely based on random or unforeseeable factors is not a good game. A game that has no decisions to make whatsoever and is not a test of skills (as in dexterity games or games of strength) borders on being a game and is more of an activity. Like throwing a frisbee with friends without any rules or competition.

Now how many games can you think of that don't apply to any of these statements?

How does Grimrock fall into this?

1. It has a definite builders element, where you can see progress happening on many levels. Most notably of course: leveling up or completing another floor.
2. There is some strategic thinking involved. Mostly positioning yourself during combat.
3. An activity for sure. Test of skill comes mostly in the shape of a dexterity game. You have to be quick with a mouse and keyboard to avoid attacks. That in my opinion is the most difficult part of the game. Then there are puzzles that require problem solving skills.
4. Meaningful decisions: not so many. Decision making is very straight forward. You always choose the best equipment available to you at any given time. It's more of a methodical process than a decision. Most of the numbers are there to make the mathematically best choice at any given moment. You don't really choose where to go next. Most of the time you have to go to all of the places, and the order in which you do it makes little difference. The procedure is usually: go to next unvisited place you have access to and kill everything that moves. No other choice usually makes any sense. An exception to this is if one path may be more difficult than another, then you might make a meaningful decision whether to push onward or return again later. And puzzles of course might have meaningful decisions, if they are solved by making decisions rather than random flicking of levers until you get them right. Making and leveling up characters can ofcourse call for meaningful decisions. But for what information is available to you it can be quite methodical. And considering all the information that is hidden to you (like what types of monster you will encounter or what items will be found) it is quite arbitrary really.

Now the point I am making is: I think Grimrock can be a better game if there are more meaningful decisions to be made that greatly affect the quality of the outcome. I have played a few mods for Grimrock and they all feel pretty much like being railroaded onto a path of no other choices. Aside from leveling up and puzzles Grimrock feels more like a dexterity game or an activity than a game. Is the answer: better backstory? I don't think that is enough to make it a better game. You can have the most elaborate backstory of all times without the player having any need to pay attention to it. For the most part, this is the case with Grimrock. You can go through the game and most mods easily without reading any story plots. Thus, the story does not matter to the game itself. It is there only as a flavor, like the color of a frisbee disk.

I really think that Grimrock can be a better game within the limitations of what it already can do. Add what the modding community is doing in terms of coding and assets. And I see great potential. I have a few thoughts on that as well, but I will post them in a later post. This is already too long. I look forward to hearing your thoughts on the matter.

[Duncan1246]

Is the answer: better backstory? I don't think that is enough to make it a better game. You can have the most elaborate backstory of all times without the player having any need to pay attention to it. For the most part, this is the case with Grimrock. You can go through the game and most mods easily without reading any story plots. Thus, the story does not matter to the game itself. It is there only as a flavor, like the color of a frisbee disk.

I really think that Grimrock can be a better game within the limitations of what it already can do. Add what the modding community is doing in terms of coding and assets. And I see great potential. I have a few thoughts on that as well, but I will post them in a later post. This is already too long. I look forward to hearing your thoughts on the matter.

Hi Vidarfreyr,
If the player can go through the game without readings texts and messages linked to the story, I think it's really a bad mod or an exercise mod (like arenas in some others games). If the story, the puzzles and the monsters are some how linked, the player progression is necessary impacted by the story. So I think if you have a good story AND if you build the mod with this story as the spine of the project, then you could have a good mod.

[Skuggasveinn]

I think Grimrock can be a better game if there are more meaningful decisions to be made that greatly affect the quality of the outcome.

This is the creme de la creme of game design, where the player has the freedom of choosing his decisions within the ruleset of the game and meaningfully affect the outcome. Something that I think has only been achieved in P&P roleplaying where a player can make a decision that is unforeseen by the game master, but the person playing as GM can react to it within the set of the rules, continuing the flow of the game and not throwing an unhandled exception like a computer.

A designer of a video game needs to foresee every outcome by a player's decision and account for the correct response of that decision if it’s supposed to have a unique outcome, and therein lies the computational problem of causality and the biggest reason why fan made mods are on rails.
Even triple A titles fail in this regard, where the player can make a ton of decisions but in the end they had no real impact, they all got ignored, it was too complicated/costly to account for all the outcomes (yes I’m looking at you Mass Effect )

I have played a few mods for Grimrock and they all feel pretty much like being railroaded ...

When it comes to Grimrock modding many of the designers are simply fans that find the dungeon editor easy to use and it's easy to publish your mod and therefore find themselves in the position to be able to create something that they would otherwise be unable to do, the end result many times reflects their lack of experience.

But I believe that the ability to be able to do something in the first place far outweighs the ability to be able to do it perfectly or even good. The reason is that all people have the ability to be creative on some level, it's just the first threshold that most don't get over, that threshold can be programing, 3d design, painting, playing an instrument, writing a narrative and so forth.
Starting people on that road where they can create something and publish it to Steam or Nexus, where they can see the end results, should always be encouraged, even if it means we need to dig through a ton of mud to find the diamond, if you fail at something in the beginning doesn't mean you will never excel at it later, so if we shot someone down and that someone stops trying all together we have lessened the potential of the creative community that someone was apart of.

And since I’m ranting completely off topic, I've also often wondered why so many people started modding Grimrock, and especially people that are completely new to modding or any game design in general, and I think the answer lies partially in tools that are easy to use (dungeon editor) and one of the points above, and that's

3. A game is an activity, a competition or a test of skills within strict boundaries or rules.

I think it's the boundaries of Grimrock that make it accessible to new modders, the chess like movement, the structured building blocks of the dungeon, clear rules, and it seems doable to create something with a small learning curve, just like starting of with Lego’s and not scale modeling.
People are still making LoG1 mods for that very reason, and fewer new modders started modding LoG2 then LoG1 for that very reason as well, since it's a bit steeper to get into LoG2 modding.

But getting back to causality.

I went into creating my second mod for LoG1 with high goals. I wanted story, I wanted chooses, I wanted new locations, I wanted new gameplay mechanics, and like so many others I utterly failed achieving my goal, but I don’t look at the journey getting there a failure, far from it.

I started the mod with a premade character that was alone, your first task was to rescue someone you knew, if rescued then he would join your party, you would then find others to join you, filling up your party while exploring the landscape and the story. All sounded simple enough.
But what if you didn’t go and rescue your friend !, what if you went to the town instead, what If you did meet Carla before you found out her father was died, I then needed to change the conversation the player has with her, what if someone in the party is dead during some conversation, he can’t speak if he’s dead and should the one being spoken to not say something about this dead body I'm carrying around !, I then need to check who is in the party, are they alive ?, and I need to make a conversation option for every situation, I can’t have a reference in the narrative about a place you have yet to visit. I need to keep track of locations and where the party has been, I need to make this and I need to make that .

Needless to say after working on the mod for almost 2 years the list of things to do was longer than the list of things done, and I was losing interest in finishing it.
I saw 2 options available, first was to abandon it, the second one was to cut the scope, cut the complexity and get it playable and release it. I went with the second option and ended up with a good looking mod with a less than mediocre story and a dialog, the gameplay was on rails with a single ending that you could not influence. Was it a bad mod ? some say so, but many more enjoyed it. Was it all that it could have been ?, no , far from it.

So yes, Grimrock has potential but the road to getting to the point where you can have more free flowing explorations with the player taking decisions that affect the outcome is long indeed, longer still if you walk it alone, and I think it’s the biggest reason for all the unfinished mods that people publish, they saw this as a sprint and not the continental journey that it is if your are going to make a mod outside the bare basics.

But my hat goes off to anyone that starts walking the road

Skuggasveinn.

[Komag]

Nice read Skuggasveinn, thanks for that! I'm working on a small independent game that is like a poor-man's 2D Grimrock, and I'm facing some similar issues, so I appreciate your comments.

[Minandreas]

Interesting reads all around. I do think something has been missed though. Examining games as games and nothing more, I'd say this discussion is completely on target. But I don't necessarily believe that all games are designed purely as a game by the definitive factors vidarfreyr mentioned. People thoroughly enjoy a strong narrative. The movie industry is huge, and there are many out there who love a good book. I personally do not mind being on a railroad in a game, so long as it is taking me on the path of a great story that leaves me itching to know what comes next. Some games straddle the line between game and some sort of interactive novel, aiming to immerse the player in the story in a way a novel or movie couldn't by giving them a sense of participation. Even if not participating in the story driven events and the outcome, being in the thick of it, solving the puzzles, slaying the monsters; that's still a much greater feeling of participation than you get sitting on a couch and watching everything unfold in front of you as you eat popcorn.

Ultimately this comes down to personal preferences and opinions. Some would say that the ability to make distinctly impactful choices in a game are the crème de la crème of game design as Skuggasveinn said. But I for one actually feel otherwise. To me, the crème de la crème is a fantastic story that time and again manages to surprise me in exciting and pleasant ways, and which provokes emotion and thought. If my choices can impact things, that's fantastic. But I would rather a great narrative on a railroad than a wishy washy one because they were having to keep everything vague and "eh" in order to keep from stepping on the toes of the players choices. And in virtually all games I've played that attempt a high degree of player choice and impact, I found it to only more drastically emphasize how little impact I actually had. Because the game was trying to highlight my choices as a thing, and time and again I would run in to situations where I didn't have a choice, but the game made me feel I ought to have. But as Skuggasveinn pointed out, you can only do so much as the developer.

I guess I just feel it's more realistic to drop the pretense of the player shaping the story entirely, and just focus on telling a great tale and polishing up the things they can impact, and making them feel great. You make party building through race and class selection feel very unique based on what the player has chosen to run with. You make skill choices feel meaningful. Spell selection fun and engaging. Give them options for how they want to approach combat. Do they want to bunker down and hold the line? Or be more mobile, hit and run style? Perhaps they want to rely on things like stuns, slows, blinds, and other crowd controls. Puzzles are another awesome way of achieving a feeling of interaction and impact, while still actually keeping the party on a railroad. Because the party and narrative was at a complete halt until you, the player, managed to figure it out. This is the method Grimrock truly shines in. It does a fantastic job with its puzzles and secrets. To put it in an unflattering way, you focus on making a really excellent smokescreen of choice and impact that aims to inspire feelings of participation, without actually changing a single thing on the rails of the plot. But in the end, if the player enjoyed themselves, who cares if it was a smokescreen or not? The entire thing is a fantasy of pixels and sounds to begin with.

I appreciate that this is all completely subjective though. Some will definitely disagree with me. There all manner of different genres and styles of game for exactly that reason!

[akroma222]

Needless to say after working on the mod for almost 2 years the list of things to do was longer than the list of things done, and I was losing interest in finishing it.
I saw 2 options available, first was to abandon it, the second one was to cut the scope, cut the complexity and get it playable and release it. I went with the second option and ended up with a good looking mod with a less than mediocre story and a dialog, the gameplay was on rails with a single ending that you could not influence. Was it a bad mod ? some say so, but many more enjoyed it. Was it all that it could have been ?, no , far from it.

So yes, Grimrock has potential but the road to getting to the point where you can have more free flowing explorations with the player taking decisions that affect the outcome is long indeed, longer still if you walk it alone, and I think it’s the biggest reason for all the unfinished mods that people publish, they saw this as a sprint and not the continental journey that it is if your are going to make a mod outside the bare basics.

But my hat goes off to anyone that starts walking the road

Skuggasveinn.

Completely relate and agree,

Its a long time to work on a mod (or anything really)... but not really. I spent ALL of my free time from the release of the LoG1 editor up until 2 days before LoG2 was released (2.5 years) creating Labyrinth of Lies (thanks to minmay for squishing bugs and getting me over the line). Its a 50+ hour mod and I am pretty sure without the tonnes of story line pieces found through out, people would have lost interest. Luckily this time around I have help, in the way of town builders, professional artistry, feedback groups, story line editors and a monster animator.
Im pretty sure this is the only way my team and I will get a descent mod together in a descent time frame (and have more than just a thrown together story)
Still, I am expecting another 2 to 3 year "JOURNEY" (last year has been spent scripting foundations, systems and custom stuff)

Story line is critical for immersion.... this is especially true for mods as we dont want our mods to be another lesser variation of the original game. We want players to feel a reason and need to keep exploring....and it is very easy for us grimrock modders to skimp on engaging elements such as story line (as grimrock in essence, is still enjoyable as a pure puzzle crawler)

Adding flavour through story via scrolls, scenery, NPCs (now hehe) is a lot of extra work, and yes, most of us a walking the path alone (with some expert technical advice from the forum kings).
Add in the fact that many of us are just learning how to code and model etc etc.... and yes, totally, this makes for bland mods or just plain old unfinished abandoned pieces of work

Having said all this, I dont think Grimrock is about spending hours in a town talking to 100 NPCs about all kinds of rubbish.
Grimrock, I feel, is a game about aloneness, scarcity and survival. NPC and Story line overload will kill the Grimrock vibe that we all love.

Luckily the modding possibilities and custom tools created by our resident experts will help modders with new avenues through which to create this immersion