On the matter of “fun” gameplay, Walking Simulators, Visual Novels and the “No True Scottsman” of gaming
Quite recently everyone in our CS class has hit the midpoint of our projects and has had to make a video presentation on our progress so far. As a member of the “Text-Based Adventure Game” group I talked about the prototype build of the game and showed it running in a command prompt. For those unfamiliar, text based adventure games are some of the oldest and most basic story-based games that function by printing textual descriptions of environments and events on screen and having the users input textual commands in an attempt to interact with the word and progress the narrative. In its current state the prototype is only a handful of rooms you can go between, a couple of objects you can interact with per room and an exit behind a locked door. All in all reaching the exit can be done in about 10 seconds, faster depending on you typing speed. And this got me thinking, can our work so far be classified as a game? Clearly the answer is yes, you can interact with objects, pick up things and add them to your inventory and there is an obvious “win” condition. A short game, but a game nonetheless. Nevertheless, this kind of rationalization will serve as a good backdrop for this week’s topic: What makes a video game a game?
Let me set the scene. A major story-rich triple-A game just comes out. The critics are gushing about it, saying it breaks new ground and that all future games will look back towards it as an example of how one should craft video game narratives. The graphics are breathtaking and the way the music hits during the emotional zenith makes you want to cry. Nines and tens across the board. What about the user scores? Let’s say they’re also generally positive, some people couldn’t relate as much to the story or didn’t like a character or something, but most agree that it was worthwhile experience. But then, inevitably, without fail, there is at least one review to the tune of: “The story was all right I guess, but the game-play was just flat out boring. Constant hand-holding and I felt like I was watching a movie instead of playing a game. 0/10.”
OK, maybe the example is a bit on the extreme side, but this kind of thing does happen, all the time. People will pick up a controller, find that act of pushing buttons and pulling the joystick just doesn’t feel satisfying to them, and dismiss the game as a whole in spite of the fact that it does have a lot of positive things to offer. The game-play is bad, so the game is bad.
Actually, let me present a concrete example. Today, as if by destiny, my favorite game reviewer, a YouTuber that goes by SkillUp, posted a review of the newly released game Trek to Yomi. Trek to Yomi is an 2-D indie game about a samurai making a trip to the underworld. The first half of the review goes over the game’s positives, such the game’s focus on using carefully constructed camera angles and atmospheric sound design to set a haunting and emotionally charged mood. Or the purposeful use grayscale aesthetic reminiscent of old Kurosawa films to deliver a well-crafted tale of honor, love and betrayal. Sounds good so far. Well, what about the game-play?
Regrettably, the reviewer informs, the game-play is where the game falls short. The enemies are borderline untouchable normally so the only way to get damage in is to wait for them to attack first and parry. Consequently, he summarizes, you spend about 90 percent of the time waiting around and only 10 percent playing. Furthermore, turning around to deal with enemies behind you is a slog, separate parry animations for thrusting attacks don’t exist making them look unnatural, etc. At the end the reviewer acknowledges that there is a contingent of people for whom “the playability of a game is it’s most important aspect, and for those people, Trek to Yomi will be a disappointment.” Sound familiar? In spite of these flaws, SkillUp still recommends Trek to Yomi, saying it’s “less of an experience to be played and more one to be observed.”
The source of this separation of opinion lies in the different reasons people play games. One group of people are interested in games as a vehicle for delivering unique storytelling experiences similar to that of movies, books, etc. This can be referred to as the “narratology” approach towards game design and fit games such as Trek to Yomi, The Uncharted series, The Last of Us, Telltale games, etc. A secondary contingent looks at games solely as interactive systems and attribute the merit solely as a function of whether the games are fun or interesting to interact with: the “ludology” approach. Of course there are plenty of people who can view games through both lenses simultaneously, but many people do swing one way or the other. And it is the latter, ludology group that I want to focus on. In case you were wondering, the Latin word ludo appropriately translates to “play”
Although I don’t particularly have any research or sources on what kinds of people fit into the ludology group aside from my own observation, I will nevertheless try to give some summation of their outlook on gaming. For the most part, to them games represent a form of escapism or distraction from the real world. To facilitate this games need to provide some attainable objective that the players can focus their attention on and will feel rewarding once achieved. This can be especially true for people who have trouble achieving the results they want our of their job or relationships or health. For them being able to make progress in the realm of a game can provide some feeling of gratification and reward for improvement that they are missing in lives. Thus games need to be engaging enough so that they can focus all their attention on the game while playing. They need to provide some amount of entertainment while they are working towards a goal and they need to feel rewarding enough to give them a nice big dopamine hit at the end.
While somewhat restrictive, these feelings are understandable. Everyone craves some amount of distraction from their problems. Some people might not even care if the game is fun as long as they can grind away towards a concrete achievable goal. It give some structure in cases where they might not feel fully in control of things going on around them.
These feelings also reflect the textbook definition of what a game is:
game
noun
1. a form of play or sport, especially a competitive one played according to rules and decided by skill, strength, or luck.
Merriam-webster
Ignoring the sport part, games must be first and foremost playable. There need to be rules and (though not explicitly mentioned) there needs to be a fail or win condition that is decided through skill, strength or luck. And this all leads back to the idea that bad gameplay equals bad game. For this reason the ludology group often feels a sense of antagonism towards the current trend of modern day games to focus on creating bombastic cinematic experiences over focusing on their gameplay. If they wanted to see a guy dangling on shipping boxes suspended from a flying plane, they’d go watch a movie instead. Ironically, the movie was significantly worse than the game.
This also puts them at great odds with genres of games known as Walking Simulators, games where gameplay is limited to mostly moving from point A to B in order to progress the story with little to no conflict and only a modicum of interaction. Examples include games like Firewatch, Dear Esther and What Remains of Edith Finch. While these are all quite fascinating from a narrative perspective, it’s hard to argue that there gameplay is particularly engaging. Some players would go so far as to dismiss them as being games altogether, summarizing the main issue with there being no fail state, no way to lose. How can gameplay be fun if you can’t fail?
Particular vitriol was given to the game Death Stranding upon release. This was due not only due to the fact that its central premise of moving packages from one location to another similar to an Amazon delivery man does put it in the walking simulator genre, but also because it delivers massive narrative exposition that makes it feel like a movie. Guilty on two counts! Having played this one myself, I can say that while it did have moments of combat and action, there were plenty of times where the central systems of deliberately hampering player movement do make it feel like a slog quite frequently and I can see how people can dislike the game despite it’s quality.
Arguably there’s an even greater offender than Walking Simulators for the games must have fun gameplay philosophy: Visual Novels, a genre I’m quite infatuated with. As the name implies visual novels are written stories that incorporate music and illustrations to accentuate the action. At the most basic level visual novels only have gameplay in the form of decisions made by the player to guide the story in one way or another sometimes leading to a bad ending or changing the outcome of the story. More complicated games like the Ace Attorney or Danganronpa incorporate some amount puzzle solving that does provide some amount of challenge. But for the most basic VNs where the only system in place is whether you pick choice A or choice B… does it even really count as a game? Where exactly is the gameplay? You’re basically just reading a book with illustrations. The reason Visual Novels receive less disdain from the ludology group is due to how their appeal is more niche, their fanbase being comprised mostly of Japanophiles due to how most VNs originate in Japan and have an anime aesthetic. Regardless of my admiration for these games there is quite a salient point here: if there is nothing to play, why are they still considered games?
The argument against a lot of these genres actually falls into the “No True Scottsman” fallacy. In short the fallacy tries to disprove counterexamples against broad generalizations by arguing that the example is not a legitimate case of the generalized topic. In terms of this discussion it could be saying that Walking Simulators are not “True” games because “True” games have victory and loss conditions and Walking Simulators do not. But who said that games necessarily need victory or loss condition? Could that actually be a personal belief rather than a fixed truth. And that leads back to the crux of the discussion.
What makes a (video) game a game?
I believe I have an inkling of an answer to this. And to do so I want to refer to one of the greatest examples of how NOT to make a video games: Big Rigs: Over the Top Racing
Whew boy. This “game” is something special. And I use that term very loosely here. It is unclear what happened during the course of development of the game, but the final product is so clearly untested and bug-ridden that it is a wonder they didn’t just scrap it before release. Let’s start with what they did right. You drive a truck, you can race your opponent to the finish line and upon reaching the finish line you win. What did they do wrong? WELL…
Nothing has collision; including bridges, so you just fall through. Not that that matters, because you can drive up and down any incline as if it was flat land, no matter how ridiculous it looks for a truck to do that. They correctly capped your speed for moving forward… but forgot to do the same for moving in reverse so you can accelerate to infinity backwards. God this sounds terrible, well at least you still have a clear win condition so it counts as a game right? Yes, you can win.. but you can’t lose because THE TIMER DOESN’T WORK AND YOUR OPPONENT LACKS THE AI TO MOVE. Oh yeah and that victory screen…
So this game fails on almost all levels to deliver a playable experience and has one of the lowest metacritic scores in the whole gaming sphere. And yet.. there are still people who like it. Not in a “this game is good” way, but in a so bad it loops around to being entertaining. It’s fun to mess around and to see what happens when you drive to infinity in reverse. It’s interesting to analyze what this games does wrong to understand all the checks and balances that go into competent games. There is some niche, cult appeal to a complete mess of a game like this. I’m sure the novelty does wear off relatively fast, and yet there is still some appeal here. Because you still get to mess around and interact with it.
Think of it like this, imagine a young child playing around with a ball. Maybe he’s with a friend or his father and they’re kicking the ball between each other. They don’t really have a specific goal in mind, or a victory condition or a way to lose, they’re just kicking around a ball. Nevertheless, they are having fun and bonding. Are they still playing? My common sense is saying that they are in fact still playing even if most of the hallmarks of gaming is absent. But by simply interacting with the ball and with each other through the ball they are still getting some enjoyment out of an otherwise incredibly mundane activity.
I would say that the key to play is the interaction. As long as the player can produce a different experience by interacting with the game in different ways it can be considered a game. Everything else, I think is secondary. A game can have a strong story but does not need it. A game could have engaging systems but does not need it. A game can have a way to lose but does not need it. A game can have a victory condition BUT DOES NOT NEED IT. As long as there’s different ways for different people to get value out of the game through different interactions then it is enough.
I can see now the argument that his definition is way too general and can turn a lot of situations in daily life into games. Something like doing something unexpected to see what kind of a reaction you can get out of someone. But couldn’t this kind of thing be referred to as “playing around”? And I’m sure there are at least a half dozen “life is a game” quotes out there. Let me give one.
Life is a game, play it
Mother teresa
In the end I suppose none of this really matters. Different people enjoy different things and it is the boon of having an open market that allows everyone to find something they find enjoyable or interesting. Even if games aren’t produced the same way you’ve always liked, there will be other new and engaging ways that you might like in the future. It’s just a matter of ignoring the purists who say that if you aren’t enjoying something their way then you shouldn’t be having fun.
