Food in videogames

[aozgolo]

As an amateur game developer I've been hung up recently on how to best implement food in video games. I've seen it done a variety of ways, the simplest being a simple health restorative which at it's best helps with immersion at it's worse makes you wonder how you have time to eat 4 whole chickens, 3 cabbages, a beef stew, 13 rat meats, and a sweetroll while bleeding to death and fighting off an army of zombies. Other ways I've seen it implemented are as a form of buff, a method of non-combat restoration, or as simply a trade good to barter with.

I've rarely seen any kind of system take into account varying tastes (This character doesn't like this food) and due to the tactile sensory element of food in general it's incredibly difficult to simulate in any realistic capacity through a pure audio-visual means that games offer.

At any rate I'm curious to start a discussion about the implementation of food in video-games. What are your favorite and/or least favorite ways of seeing it used? What are the most unique ways of using it? How could it be improved?

 

[Silvanus]

I've rarely seen any kind of system take into account varying tastes (This character doesn't like this food) and due to the tactile sensory element of food in general it's incredibly difficult to simulate in any realistic capacity through a pure audio-visual means that games offer.

Yoshi's Story (for the N64) had a realistic system encompassing this. Differently coloured Yoshis enjoyed different fruit (the yellow one rationally liked bananas, for example), all of them loved melons (which is realistic, because melons are delicious), but they disliked chilis. When the Yoshis managed to eat thirty melons, you'd get more points. It's about as realistic as you can get while we're restricted by technology and medium.

This is the kind of thing you mean, right?

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

At any rate I'm curious to start a discussion about the implementation of food in video-games. What are your favorite and/or least favorite ways of seeing it used? What are the most unique ways of using it? How could it be improved?

Odin Sphere has a fun system.

You're in the battleground. You plant a seed. You feed that seed 'phozons' (the magical-whatever of slain enemies), so that the seed starts growing into a plant. Feed it enough 'phozons' and the plant will give you 1-2 fruits (mangos, apples or grapes depending on the seed). You can take 1-3 bites from each fruit to restore energy. Apples and grapefruits heal the most health, but mangos leave seeds behind so you can plant them again and continue the cycle. There's also a kind of seed that grows sheep, and once the sheep-flower blooms you have to chase it around and cull it to get mutton chops.

Outside of the battleground, you can unlock recipes at a hub restaurant and eat special dishes for XP if you bring the right ingredients. It's not as fun as playing farmer while fighting, which I think has a nice RTS touch to it, but it looks fabulous.

 

[Zhukov]

I've always thought it would be cool to have a standard "survival game" food mechanic (eat every so often or starve, basically), but then layer on character preferences as a buff or debuff.

So any old food will suffice to stave off hunger, but if you manage to procure a plate of fried liver and onions for your meat-loving tank he gets +20% HP or something, or if you give some sugary sweets to your slightly hyperactive scout she gets some bonus AP.

It's probably been done.

 

[Steve Waltz]

Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles was one of those games that did food right.

They have 4 kinds of foods: Fruits, Vegetables, Fish and Meat. And, if memory serves, there are 3 fruits, 3 veggies, but only 1 fish and 1 meat for a grand total of 8 foods. Each of the 8 foods has a meter on status page showing how much your character likes that food. Every character starts off with a favorite food, but all the other foods have space to grow. The more they eat of that food, the more the meter will fill (unlike in reality) and the character will get better stats from eating that food. Eating your favorite types of food will restore a LOT of health and also add a temporary boost to a stat. Veggies are a buff to defense, Fruits give a bonus to Magic, and Fish & Meat will increase strength for a time. However, if memory serves, you lose health for eating a hated food? I don?t really remember the penalties of eating hated foods because... well... I never eat disliked foods. With that said, I don?t know if eating hated foods might fill up the meter so your character doesn?t hate them anymore? Might be worth testing.

It was also interesting on how you get food. You could find foods in chest or killing enemies. Or you could find a fruit or vegetable seed, send it to your family and they will grow a tree that will produce that particular food. Or, if your parents are fishermen or ranchers, then you get free fish or meat, respectively.


Food was important for multiplayer because usually only 1 or 2 people max would find a cure spell and emphasis of ?find" because you DID have to find them with every new level. And then you would have to have your friends cast a healing spell on you, and they might miss and have to cast it again. So, if you wanted any *reliable* healing in multiplayer, your favorite foods were important to keep around. But in single player, there?s not much use for food. I still carry around 1 of each kind of food in case my dad sends me a letter asking me to send him a potato, but other than that, foods are pretty useless in single player.

 

[SoreWristed]

I generally dislike food/hunger in video games. That's simply because most of the video games that have this also feature day/night cycles that are way too short. I don't like having to drop whatever i'm doing to hunt my inventory for food because my character is bawling for the second time that hour. Even more so if it involves cooking or having to find something my character likes to eat. It distracts me from my epic quest to kill all the dudes, because i have to actively click stuff to eat and sometimes backtrack to find more food.

If the premise of your games is being hungry (Don't Starve or any other survival games) then i don't mind so dearly. Because the goal revolves around the food mechanic.

I much prefer it in games if food is used as health items and temporary buffs of some kind.

 

[Lilani]

As an amateur game developer I've been hung up recently on how to best implement food in video games. I've seen it done a variety of ways, the simplest being a simple health restorative which at it's best helps with immersion at it's worse makes you wonder how you have time to eat 4 whole chickens, 3 cabbages, a beef stew, 13 rat meats, and a sweetroll while bleeding to death and fighting off an army of zombies. Other ways I've seen it implemented are as a form of buff, a method of non-combat restoration, or as simply a trade good to barter with.

I've rarely seen any kind of system take into account varying tastes (This character doesn't like this food) and due to the tactile sensory element of food in general it's incredibly difficult to simulate in any realistic capacity through a pure audio-visual means that games offer.

At any rate I'm curious to start a discussion about the implementation of food in video-games. What are your favorite and/or least favorite ways of seeing it used? What are the most unique ways of using it? How could it be improved?

I think the recent Pokemon games have taken into account tastes, if I recall correctly. I don't know about the most recent games on the DS/3DS, but I remember on the GBA games you had berry blending which to me felt productive. You grew your berries, and you blended them into supplements which made your Pokemon perform better in contests. I felt very involved from start to finish, and the results really made a great difference.

The problem with tastes is that it's a bit of a lottery, which isn't a fun mechanic to work around. If I'm remembering correctly, your Pokemon having a certain taste means it will refuse to eat certain items or supplements. Considering you can't ever change their tastes or the taste of the items there isn't really a way to work with this mechanic, it's just a thing which randomly walls off certain items for certain Pokemon. I think the key to implementing a mechanic like that would be to make it easy and engaging to work with tastes.

Food is different things to different people, and its purpose isn't just fuel. People eat for comfort, from stress, or random cravings caused by anything from hormones to vitamin deficiencies to nostalgia. People have vice foods they'll eat nearly neurotically--if I buy a bag of sunflower seeds, I will not stop eating them until I finish the bag or I absolutely cannot eat another one because my fingers are dry and crusty and my tongue is completely numb from the salt. Unfortunately there is a lot of randomness to tastes and cravings, and random mechanics aren't always fun to work with. So I guess your challenge would be to find a way to add a sense of predictability to it--your character is going to work hard today so they'll be craving something savory later, or something sweet to reward themself with. But there's a lot of potential micromanaging there too so it would have to either be one of the central pillars of the gameplay or a bonus feature which can be ignored without major repercussions (like the berry blending in Pokemon games).

 

[Objectable]

Personally, I don't really care, as long as it does something. Gives HP, Stamina, wades off a hunger meter, I don't care
With that in mind:
http://i.ytimg.com/vi/gEEurgZmCtI/maxresdefault.jpg

 

[CpT_x_Killsteal]

I know in Fable II it gave you health, but it also made you fat if you ate too much. That might be a nice mechanic I think.

 

[Neverhoodian]

Star Wars Galaxies had an interesting approach. Food gave players buffs that lasted for a specified length of time rather than a straight HP/MP gain like in most other RPGs. Certain buffs were more beneficial for some classes than others, so I suppose it could be interpreted as characters having different tastes. You also had to take into account how full your character was. You couldn't starve, but you did have a stomach that would fill as you ate and gradually empty over time. If your stomach was full you couldn't eat any more and had to wait.

 

[Sampler]

I think it comes down to the great game design question: why?

Why do you want/need food in your game? Many do without and immersion is just fine (if that's your reasoning to include), suspension of disbelief is enough to not think of your character eating and even then you're going to need a pretty fancy looking game for total immersions your aim.

Can you make it an interesting mechanic? Why should food be in your game? If you need to top the health up (and you don't want regen.) then health packs? What's the context of the game, is it even appropriate?

 

[Dirty Hipsters]

I've rarely seen any kind of system take into account varying tastes (This character doesn't like this food) and due to the tactile sensory element of food in general it's incredibly difficult to simulate in any realistic capacity through a pure audio-visual means that games offer.

Considering most games have you in some kind of combat or survival scenario I don't think the characters' tastes really matter. You're not going to starve to death just because "eww this burger has pickles on it."

I do think that using food as a healing item seems kind of dumb, but it's a system that works and people are so used to it that no one really questions it anymore and it doesn't tend to break immersion for people. I rather like it when food is used for stamina regeneration in games. I think one of the things that games could improve on would be some kind of mechanic for overeating, which would solve the problem of someone scarfing down 6 cheese wheels during a fight. Maybe make it so that if you eat too much it actually slows down recovery, or makes your character temporarily physically sick or something along those lines.

 

[Silentpony_v1legacy]

Gobble! Snarf! Snap!


That is all

 

[[Kira Must Die]]

The thing about eating in video games is that it's primarily a survival item. "Oh, I'm running low on health, better eat this burger." or "My guy is starving, I need to eat something to stay alive."

Eating food is certainly a necessity, but it's a luxury at the same time. It's not just something we do to survive, but something we love doing as well.

So if you're gonna implement it, try and do it in a way that make players not only need to eat, but also want to eat. Make it benefit the players in some way that's satisfying. Maybe eating increases a certain stat, or eating this type of food improves your immunity to diseases or increases your strength, perhaps increases to decreases your weight so you can move faster or be tougher. It can be another way to further craft a character you want.