State of Game Design 2011

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Must have medpacks back...

Quote from Puddy

I'll happily join this discussion after work, in the meantime I'll post a brief summary PUDDY'S PROBLEMLIST

- Borderlands

I loved Borderlands. Guess not everyone did.

Quote from Zombie

In development these are the worst human beings ever made

Well, I say that jokingly because I have no professional experience of producers - it's just that in every promo-video I've seen they talk so much shit But that's part of the job, I guess.

Quote from Izuno

I loved Borderlands. Guess not everyone did.

I know a lot of people like it. I don't understand them.

Borderlands was fantastic in coop. It did many things right but also many things wrong.

Quote from Puddy

In development these are the worst human beings ever made

Well, I say that jokingly because I have no professional experience of producers - it's just that in every promo-video I've seen they talk so much shit But that's part of the job, I guess.

Quote from Izuno

I loved Borderlands. Guess not everyone did.

I know a lot of people like it. I don't understand them.

Yeah that's my general thing with producers. Some of the ones I worked for in the past were really good, the managed stuff well. But then you get other producers who take 80% of the credit for making the game, when all they did was manage the personal and sign off holidays

- Michael Bay syndrome.

The comments on this news post seem relevant to this discussion:

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I hear that skyrim doesnt have QTE’s at all. Therefore it cannot be considered “AAA” and I am hereby boycotting until bethesda has added said QTE’s. The sheer and blatant lack of QTE’s and the apparent use of “sandbox” reeks of cheapness.How you can cover such a title, with its lack of linear plot is appalling, you should all be ashamed.

Oh I love sarcasm! Also... no cover system?! Lame!

But QTEs are not bad. They are perfectly normal challenges that require timely reaction and performing a sequence of actions. Its same core mechanics that drives most games - press a combination of buttons in time - just packaged slightly differently, which is justified because QTEs are used in no-routine situations.

It had simply become 'trendy' to diss QTEs without any meaningful arguments why this type of gameplay is bad.

QTEs are generally used badly but they can fill a role if used correctly, yes.

However, you can't compare the standard gameplay of games with QTE's... it's night and day imho.

The only game that has the same mechanics as QTEs is Simon Says.

The purpose of QTEs was to make you feel like you are involved during a cutscene. But “press button now” does not actually make you feel like you are involved (and this is not how we play games), and looking for “press button now” prompts means you can’t really enjoy the cutscene. They don’t do anything but detract.

Quote from Erny

But QTEs are not bad. They are perfectly normal challenges that require timely reaction and performing a sequence of actions. Its same core mechanics that drives most games - press a combination of buttons in time - just packaged slightly differently, which is justified because QTEs are used in no-routine situations. It had simply become 'trendy' to diss QTEs without any meaningful arguments why this type of gameplay is bad.

You're kidding right... are you a bot or something? They aren't just bad.. they're really bad and a prime example of lazy game design mechanics. They're about as much challenge as counting to 10 and singing the alphabet.. The only time they've been used effectively is in Heavy Rain where they actually mimic the tasks that are being attempted.

One of my big beefs hasn't been mentioned yet surprisingly... invisible walls.

For fuck's sake, if you're going to stop me from going somewhere then at least block it with something... "Oh I'll just go over here because there's some houses a few yards away and they might have some supplies in them...HOLY SHIT WHERE DID THAT WALL COME FROM?!!!" Pisses me off so much.

I liked QTE's in Shen Mue

All good (PC) games in the 90ies was basically Quake with more or different colours in the textures...and bit masks.

QTEs really are just terrible. There are some things that are sort of blended in between "normal" gameplay and QTE, like Indigo Prophecy/Heavy Rain, where your buttons are associated with expected body movements/actions, so it's less "Simon Says press this random button shown on your screen" and more naturally integrated with expected player control of his avatar, and those are cool by me. Quantic Dream is basically the only company to actually think about the concept before implementing it, it seems. Any time it gets arbitrary, like "Press X to continue cutscene", or Simon Says segments to accomplish some task that could either easily be gameplay, or isn't even worth being interactive and should just be a short cutscene or not exist at all, it's just insipidly stupid and a complete waste of everyone's time.

qte's are also painful to develop - you need believable states to be in when it occurs, and you need good fail/success scenes, it splits up everything and cutscenes would be better without them - or maybe we could make video games that aren't movies and have the action not so frenetically cut between dozens of cameras that you can have the player take part in the action.

there's a few games that do this well - i think uncharted has got some great ideas hidden behind some less great ones. the chase sequences actively involve the player. remember the scene from uncharted 2 when you were being chased down that street by the truck, and you had to shoot at it - and then it crashed and exploded? that would have been a cutscene in a hundred other games. the fact that it's a polished mechanic is what raises that game above games where it's just a cutscene.

call of duty 4, the post-nuclear bomb section, beautiful piece of the game, completely the moment that made it my GOTY - could have been a cutscene, artfully directed by some amateur wannabe director in the cg department, the fact that it was made into gameplay using existing mechanics of the game is a perfect example of how to do it.

then the closing of that same game, where you are thrown a weapon and have to make the shot. that was utterly beautiful, a perfect note to end on, and could so easily have been a cutscene.

the fact that these games are high scorers and games like heavy rain aren't (HR got pity scores, it was a turd and you know it) is precisely because the player is involved in the highpoints of the story. they are given, in their eyes, the opportunity to make their own destiny. the fact that they care enough about the characters and the events that they will do precisely what the designer asks of them at a specific moment is another area of skill altogether.

tl;dr if you're going to have some section of a game that can't be played with the regular mechanics the make it into a new mechanic and make it work.

games liek metal gear are an exception to this, they have such completely movie-like cutscenes that QTEs simply aren't feasible, and the action is portrayed in such a way as to be enjoyable to watch, so you don't feel too frustrated that you aren't taking part. although MGS4 really pushed it and it was one of the biggest complaints.

the only game that does QTE's in any good way is god of war

I never actually played Heavy Rain, don't have a PS3. Indigo Prophecy was a great game, though.

BF3's ending actually reminded me of MGS4. In both games, it comes down to a melee between the protagonist and antagonist, except in BF3 it's just a QTE, pressing buttons to make your guy kill the other guy, while in MGS4 the game TURNS INTO A FIGHTING GAME HOLY SHIT AWESOME.

The trouble with videogames isn't the violence. It's that most of the characters are dicks.

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If I had a penny for every time I've spent the opening moments of a game sitting in the back of a transport vehicle listening to a soldier called Vasquez repeatedly use the word "motherfucker", I'd have enough money to buy the Sesame Street game instead. And even that probably starts with Sergeant Grover warning Private Elmo that "Shit is about to get real".Every soldier in every game I've ever played is a dick. A dick that sounds like a 14-year-old boy reading dialogue discarded from an old-school Schwarzenegger action movie for displaying too much swagger. They seem like a bunch of try-hard bell-ends, desperate to highlight their gruff masculinity.