132: Play Like a 3-Year-Old

[Wendy Despain]

Play Like a 3-Year-Old

"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 "X" button? Aunt Wendy got something right. He was thrilled. And when he heard the cheerful chimes, a signal to those of all ages that you've won something, there was jumping around and fists in the air and lots of shouting I didn't 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. 'I already won this level.'"

Wendy Despain cleanses her doors of perception, and sees games as they truly are: fun or not.


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[Fire Daemon]

Marble Blast Gold and nanosaur 2 are pre installed on macs. I know because my school as some macs and everyone just plays marble blast.

 

[Aglet]

Beautiful article! Absolutely brilliant. If more incidents like these happen, please post them. It is nice to see how really narrow-minded designers (and players alike) have become. This article revealed things I haven't thought of before and I will make sure to think about them further down the road.

Hope you make more experiments on your relatives!

 

[Stomp224]

Great article, i can really relate to that situation.
When I gave my Gamecube to my younger brother (4 at the time) I was surprised at how frustrated he got at supposed 'kids' games like Mario Sunshine and Sonic Adventure, in fact he demanded we got his Mega Drive back so he could play 'real Sonic. I often find myself feeling the same way, games just aren't fun anymore, but that doesnt stop me buying all the ultra hyped 'next-gen' titles

 

[StolenName]

Haha, Sonic for the win. Games used to be all about holding down right and pressing the jump button. Now they're about holding down everything but right and pressing a billion shooting buttons!

That was a really great article. Actually, that's one of the most annoying things in games, cinematics that can't be skipped. What the hell?

 

[Beery]

The writer of this article is a liar. There is no way to beat Star Wars Battlefront by turning in constant circles and pressing the X button. If you do that you'll be out of ammo in about ten seconds and you'll be dead about ten seconds later and you'll lose the level to the AI in a few minutes - even on the easiest difficulty setting.

As for the second level looking like the first, that can't happen either. The levels all look very different from one another. The only way it can look the same is if you set the game to give you the same level over and over again.

Somehow I think this writer is hoping that her readers have never played Star Wars Battlefront. Well I have, and it's a classic game that deserves better than to be outright LIED about.

Sorry, but if you're going to write an article, base it on some game's REAL flaws. Making up nonsense about a game you've obviously never played is called LYING. If you lie about the first game in your article how can I expect you to tell the truth about the second, third and fourth? How do I know your whole article is not just a big lie?

 

[Beery]

The writer is outright lying about the game. You cannot do what she says you can do to win the level. It can't be done! The point DOESN'T still stand because her 'point' is a LIE. She assumes that SW:BF allows you to have unlimited ammo and she assumes that you don't have to capture victory points. Clearly she's never played the game and she doesn't know what she's talking about. Even if you stand at a victory point on top of an ammo station you STILL can't beat the game by circling and pressing the fire button because even if you survive the AI will take all the other VPs and you will lose.

This is a clear example of a writer cynically writing an article based on fantasy because she doesn't have enough real examples from which to draw.

The rest of her article is on thin ice too. I mean cutscenes have been an accepted part of gaming for years. They are a way to carry the story forward. I personally welcome well-made cutscenes and intros because they set the scene. I love Assassin's Creed for the way it FORCES the player to watch every cutscene. I hate games where the developer thinks so poorly of the game's story that they allow the player to skip them. If a player doesn't have the patience to watch a cutscene he shouldn't be playing the game - games shouldn't be all about all-action all-the-time or maximizing the player's score. Players need to understand that games sometimes need to force the player to sit back and enjoy a cutscene just for its beauty and so he can gain a deeper appreciation for the story. Because that's what games are - stories. Sometimes it seems to me that some gamers want to remove the story altogether so that they can just shoot all the time, but to me that would just make games grindfests. Where's the fun in that?

Finally, I'm not a three year-old - I'm 45. I do not want the games I play to be designed for a three year-old. I have a four year-old daughter myself and she is lacking a lot of the dexterity and intellect that I have at my disposal. I doubt I'd find much of interest in a game that she would find challenging. Her favourite game right now is Backyardigans Mission to Mars. Somehow I don't think I'd find that too taxing, or much fun.

 

[Dom Camus]

This is an excellent concept, but I'm not sure I share all of the conclusions.

Long intro cut scenes for example... much as I don't want my games to be movies with minimal interactivity this can be a great way to set the scene. To insist that a game has no scene setting at all seems wrong to me. Some games need it. Likewise with the idea that a game can be picked up and played with no instructions.

Now sure, if I was designing for three year olds then these would be essential factors, but the games being played don't fall into that category.

Example from my own experience: one of my kids at age four was playing Armadillo Run and became frustrated at the tendency of long cloth strips to break. Does that make this a misfeature which should be removed? No, clearly not. It just means Armadillo Run is not ideal for four year olds.

 

[Lampdevil]

Um, Beery, you seem to be getting a little over-agitated at the implication that someone is "lying" about a game that is near and dear to your heart. It's one thing to call someone on "hey you may have gotten this wrong", but it doesn't accomplish much to pitch a fit at a percieved inaccuracy.

I think the point of this article is a good one. Just because something is "the way it's always been done", doesn't mean that it shouldn't be questioned. The untrained eyes of a 3-year-old don't know that games are SUPPOSED to have lots and lots of movie-type cutscenes, or that all these other little conventions exist. While the most immediate conclusion that you might draw is "keep this in mind when making a kid's game", there'd be merit to keeping this in mind when making games for anyone.

It's true. Experienced gamers that have been hammering away at the controlpads and keyboards for years are just going to gloss over rough spots that a non-gamer wouldn't notice. We've gone from hold right and press jump to... other stuff? A function for every freakin' button on that control pad, argh. So many games these days have complicated control schemes, and they operate under all sorts of assumptions that would make a non-gamer go "meh". It would do everyone some good, longtime gamers and newbies alike, if designers could take an association-free perspective when making games. There's merit in expanding the ol' market, right? Isn't the Wii proof of it?

 

[Beery]

I'm not getting over-agitated. I'm just getting agitated enough. The game she's talking about doesn't behave the way she claims it behaves. This calls into question her entire premise. I mean if she's wrong about that game doesn't that suggest that she might be wrong about other things?

While I'm sure there are games that fit her critique, why does she choose a game that clearly doesnt? I'll tell you why - it's because she's committed herself to her conclusion and she's willing to lie in order to support it.

The thing is, her conclusions may be correct, but lying about games is no way to prove her point. For a skeptic like me such underhanded tactics make me think twice about accepting what she says. Others may be more gullible.

 

[Joe]

Words. Not once, but twice.

OK, we get it, you disagree and can't be bothered to change much anything of your posts in the interim. Do us all a favor and at least vary things if you're going to attempt to take up one-third of the thread for its remainder.

Also, maybe you're just not very good if a 3-year-old can do it and you can't.

 

[Beery]

If you can't see that when an article lies it shouldn't be taken seriously I have a bridge to sell you.

And if, on a forum, a person can't respond to multiple posts with multiple posts then maybe it shouldn't be called a forum. I don't think a person should be berated on a FORUM for the amount of stuff written (especially by a person who has 890 posts under his belt). It's not as if I'm writing the equivalent of War and Peace in each post, and contrary to your assertion my posts all say different things. Read them and you'll see that.

 

[Joe]

At this point, you're the only one saying anyone's lying, and given your vehemence, you're just coming off like you're upset someone found a flaw in your favorite game. I think it's the multiple uses of the word "lie," since calling someone a liar is pretty much the internet equivalent of an 18th century challenge to a duel. Getting so binary about one level in one game (when God knows there's a plethora of games with this problem, and Battlefront isn't exactly a pinnacle of level or AI design) betrays some deeper emotion here. Or a lack of ability to see the big picture.

 

[Beery]

Look, if she's not telling the truth about a game, that makes her a liar. I'm sorry that you don't like the word, but when a person lies I'm not going to use some lesser word for it. Political correctness is not my strong point.

Battlefront may not be the pinnacle of game design, but if the writer wants to make a point about that it should be based in fact, not in falsehood. If there are a plethora of games that meet her description why didn't she choose one of them?

If she's telling the truth about the game, show me how it's true because I simply don't see how what she says can be done can possibly be done in the game.

 

[Ace331]

The article makes an interesting point, but I'm not so sure my fundamental rule of gaming needs to be "intuitive enough a 3-year old can enjoy it." Yes, too many current games are caricatures of the "let's fit 200 different controls on a 15 button controller and another 25 icons on the screen" mode of game design, that many of us long for the days of "run,jump,shoot" (and has made the Wii so popular) and extravagant cut scenes and excessive loading times have often ruined games ever since the days of grainy FMV on Sega CD. And of course game play issues, where failure and constant frustration is part of the equation - i.e. dying 50 times to beat a level or not being able to save a game in any place you want, thus forcing you to to take 20 minutes to replay a section of a game you've beat already, etc. have also made current games not as fun as they could be. But let's not throw out the baby with the bath water.

When done right, its possible to create a complex gaming experience that's also not needlessly complicated. Can a 3 year old pick up BioShock and enjoy it? Should they? Many consider it the best game of 2007, but I don't think it matters whether its "better" than say a classic game Space Invaders. I've had fun playing both, they are just different experiences. A good game doesn't need to cater to all - I'm perfectly happy with the occasional easy-to-pick-up game with simple, arcadey controls and other times I'm looking for something that takes a little longer to master, but might provide a more realistic or more intense experience.I'll play Burnout and Forza 2 or even go back to RC Pro Am. I'm really into NHL '08 now, but I'll go back to NHL '94 on genesis every now and then. There are games when I played when I was maybe 5,6 years old that I was content with having ran around the first level or so, that I've gone back as I've gotten older and beaten the difficult levels. Although I still can't beat Eco the Dolphin.

I think a lot of time, game makers get into trouble when they try to be all things to all people. Which unfortunately becomes the case when there is so much pressure to maximize profit as games become so expensive to make, and small developers are swallowed up by huge corporations. Sometimes choices, when possible, make a game better but plenty of times uneven difficulty levels, or sometimes just the overwhelming variety and # of decisions in a game leads to a poor overall experience. (It's like going into a restaurant with 100 different things on the menu, when all you really want is one good piece of steak.) However, diversity among games in the gaming market is good. Although I can certainly understand how many of today's games are imposing on young kids or older gamers who haven't really played since the days of Pac Man. (Try even explaining the xbox 360 controller to a non-gamer for instance.) Maybe it was a luxury for many of us, who grew up learning games within the confines of 2-dimensions and simple control pads like atari, nintendo, or in the arcades. Maybe the Wii is a good return to that.

But for me, I'll play games that are fun to me - not necessarily to a 3 year old or to a 30-year old reviewer. If anything, gamers should be demanding games are fun for themselves, and thinking critically about it, rather than trusting the industry or the gaming press to make their choices for them.

 

[Lampdevil]

I think a lot of time, game makers get into trouble when they try to be all things to all people.

This does say a lot. While game designers should not feel obligated to make everything they create simple enough for a 3 year old, they should try to remember to not overcomplicate matters, either. We old-timey gamers DO have the luxury of having all these years to adjust to more and more buttons, more complex modes of play, and repeated tropes that seem to exist from one game to another. And y'know, it works. We old-timey people who grasp the medium (and hug it and love it and call it George) have created a market for some fantastic games that yes, have complicated control schemes and cutscenes and no end of fiddley-widdly stuff. Bioshock? Oh hell yeah, that's great. But not every game is Bioshock, and not every game has to be Bioshock. There's room in the lives of hardcore gamers to peel back all the layers of cruft and knowledge, and both play and make games that are free of that.