The analog world and its illusion

Typically, the choice in games looks something like this:



The situation is clearly outlined and clearly reports on possible options. Although this system is mainly used in interactive cinema, this type of choice exists in almost every genre. It is easy to direct and it easily creates a sense of moral drama. However, this overlooks a very important aspect of decision-making in real life: in it, you almost never know what your options are and what they will lead to.

Here is another selection example:



The player can escape the projectile by going down or going up. This selection is very similar to the one above. However, there is no obvious clue asking the player about their chosen direction. Instead, the choice is indirectly passed through the mechanics of the game. And unlike an explicit choice, the options here are not so clearly defined. In this case, the choice may not be enough of the ethical component of the previous example, but it is much more interesting. In addition, it seems to be an integral part of the gameplay, not an artificially created situation.

Super Mario makes this choice from the very work of the basic mechanics of the game. Another genre that creates a choice with the help of mechanics is a simulator, but it manages to add more philosophical depth to the options. For example, if the simulator game focuses on survival, then you may not have enough food for all members of the group, and you have to choose who lives and who dies. With the right design, such moments create an amazing impression, but more often than not it is not possible to achieve it. Starving members of the group rarely evoke the same strong feelings that in game scenes like Walking Dead. Let's see why this happens.

To make a choice, the player needs to understand that he really does it. In this case, the key point is providing the player with opportunities. The player must have a clear mental model in which he understands how various aspects of the world work, and what abilities can be used to influence them. The choice arises if the player is clear that he can develop in two or more different directions. That is, the player understands that he can create at least two different plans , and he needs to choose one of them. If this is perfectly clear, then the player can make an informed choice.

In most games, this choice arises constantly. "What ammunition to use?", "Which way to go?", "Sneak or attack in the forehead?". As I explained in a previous post,the choice of plans is a fundamental part of the gameplay . The choice has depth only if something important is at stake. Therefore, the player needs not only to understand that he is making a choice, but also that an important decision is being made. To cause the right emotional reaction, the choice must be properly arranged and prepared.

Games like Walking Dead can easily get ready for the game. Firstly, the game makes it clear that there is a choice. It is impossible to miss. Secondly, since so much attention is paid to the choice, it is clear that it is most important here. In addition, Walking Dead has a well-designed script, and its designers have worked hard on preparing the situation before making a choice. Such a game is relatively simple to create the player the desired emotional state.

It is much more difficult to do this in the simulator. Here the player constantly has to make a choice, and it is more difficult to distinguish between them critical and insignificant. The meaning of the choice made can completely slip away from the player. For example, take a situation in which a player needs to choose who should die. It may happen that the player does not understand that the members of the group are running out of food, or believes that they can survive in some other way. That is, at a critical moment, when a player solves issues of life and death, he can think about something completely different. But even if the player realized the meaning of this choice, the situation may lack preparation. The player may be in the wrong mood, or not sufficiently attached to the characters, and so on.

Of course, you can improve the simulation so that it takes into account more parameters. However, it is very simple to encounter the deceptiveness of the complexity that I wrote about recently . It is highly probable that adding complexity will go unnoticed and it will simply complicate the design and writing of the game code.

Therefore, you can use the middle ground. Instead of explicitly providing a choice, you can create a situation that develops by virtue of a gameplay mechanic. The situation is not created dynamically, so it is quite possible to correctly place emphasis in the script, preparing for it. Thus, the player can create the desired mood. Then, when the actual situation of choice arises, there is no need to show a menu with explicit options. Instead of explicit instructions, the choice may appear from the mechanics of the story (for example, the character can speak), or, better, from the very design of the situation. Then the player chooses the option, but not through the abstract menu, but through interaction using standard gameplay mechanics.

The best example of this design is the scene from Spec Ops: The Line. At one point in the game, the player is surrounded by civilians. These people are not too happy with the presence of the protagonist and begin to throw stones at him. This is a very dangerous situation and the player understands that you need to get out of it. At this moment, the player has at his disposal only one simple verb: “shoot”. What can he do? He does not want to shoot civilians, but he does not want to die. Here the player actually has two options. The first is to start shooting at civilians, kill a few, and make the rest run away. The second option is to simply shoot into the air and scare them away without killing anyone.



The subtlety here is that the game does not tell you about the options and shooting in the air is not obvious to the player. This is what makes such a choice very interesting and similar to the real one. If at this moment a clue popped up with the options “shoot civilians” and “shoot air”, the situation would be completely different, and it would lose most of its emotional impact. But since you make a choice through the mechanics of the gameplay, it is not only felt as an integral part of the narrative of the gameplay, but also means that the player is not sure about the possible options.

Thanks to such choices, the gameplay feels more “analogue”. Inside the game, this choice is as discrete as the ones you make in Walking Dead, but it feels completely different. It seems that there is a wide range of options for action, a large selection space, and not just “one or the other”. This concept of the sensations of the “analog” choice is very important and I will talk more about it below.

In Spec Ops: The Line there are about a half dozen choices of this type. For example, in one case, a player must choose which of the two captives should die by shooting him. But the game does not inform you of another choice: aim the weapon at the people who captured these captives. Another example: a player chooses whether to kill a war criminal. Again, the choices are not exactly known. The game just puts you in a situation in which you can kill him. That is, the player himself needs to guess what options he has.

Another interesting aspect of Spec Ops: The Line is how it handles the consequences of choice. The solution is simple - nothing. She creates situations in such a way that any choice is logically associated with the further development of the plot. Although I don’t think that you can alwaysto get rid of the demonstration of consequences , this can be very useful for maintaining a sense of "analogy." Because at the moment you show the consequences, it becomes clear that the choice was discrete. But if you hide the consequences, then the space of possibilities is wider and the player can freely fantasize about what happened.

This should be dealt a little deeper. How does the choice in Spec Ops: The Line deny choice in a game with clearly shown options? The key difference is that in the first case, the player is in a position of uncertainty. There is no clearly transmitted information from which to proceed, so the player is forced to fill in the gaps with his own imagination. When options are explicitly listed, this is not required. The brain always wants to optimize, so any piece of information eliminates assumptions. Thanks to this, Spec Ops: The Line provides a richer mental model of the scene. Do not forget, we play the game on the basis of what is in our head, and not in-game systems, that is, the game itself becomes a more interesting experience.

This is what I call the “analogy feeling”. This is the creation of situations in which possible actions are not clearly defined, and the player can imagine a large degree of freedom. The purpose of this technique is to create the appearance of a greater space of possibilities. Thanks to her, the situation feels more real and organic. It partially eliminates the feeling that the designer controls every step, although in general the gameplay remains as controllable as situations with an explicit choice.

It is worth noting that this approach has disadvantages. As in the case of pure simulation, the player may not understand correctly the choice itself and its possible consequences. Explicit presentation of all options will always be better in this case. But it will not be felt analog. So there are very frequent situations where explicit choice is the right way of presentation. As always in design, you need not be attached to the style of implementation, but focus on the end results.

At SOMA, we aimed to make all choices feel analog and use the same approach as in Spec Ops: The Line. We created a situation, and then used standard game actions so that the player made his choice. The idea was to make the election feel embedded in the gameplay, and judging by the feedback received, the approach worked very well.

The only choice in SOMA, which did not work very well, was the episode with the decision of the fate of WAU (NRU). Here we were not able to create the right emotional attitude and we did not spend enough time on the implementation of the consequences. Mostly this happened because this choice appeared at a late stage of design, and they did not manage to polish it. A good reminder that you can’t just throw such moments of choice into the game. You must make sure that at the time of their occurrence, the player is in the right state, and that he will react to them in the right way. If something should feel analog, this does not mean that its implementation does not require a strict and consistent implementation.

Not only moral choices can benefit from greater analogy. There are many other types of gameplay that you can try to make more analog. A good example is interactive literature (for example, the good old text adventure). Usually the player controls them by simply entering commands into the parser. Examples of commands: “take the lamp”, “look under the carpet”, “sweep dust off the table” and so on.



That is, there are usually no obvious clues about which commands are possible. The player must speculate about the space of possibilities by reading the descriptions obtained by studying the current environment. He builds a mental model of the place and his character and uses it to determine possible actions. When this succeeds, then everything is wonderful. The game really feels like a living, breathing world with which you interact. It feels analog.

However, this system has difficulties, and the most important of them is the “guess the verb” problem. The player can know exactly what needs to be done, but cannot pick the right teams for action. This is very upsetting and destroying the feeling of immersion. This can be corrected by clearly indicating the available verbs. So we will solve the problem, but add a new one: the game loses the feeling of analogy.

I think you should check it out for yourself. To get started, try playing a regular game of the genre. I recommend something like Lost Pig , because it allows you to use a lot of commands, and shows (especially at the beginning) how exciting it is to play by typing anything into an empty line. After this game, try Walker and Silhouette and use only highlighted words in the gameplay. The feelings from these two games are very different. Of course, the latter allows you to move much faster and removes part of the irritation. But, on the other hand, in it disappears what is primarily interesting in such an environment.

I think this is a very good example of how important the sense of analogy is. In terms of implementation, these two interactive books are very similar, almost the same. But the way to create a user interface radically affects the player’s experience. When the game forces you to create an internal mental model of the world, the experience becomes much richer.

There are many other cases in which a sense of analogy can be helpful. Another good example is puzzles. I recently played in 999 , which has puzzles in the style of "leaving the room". Although they are quite interesting to play, they are implemented incredibly obvious. The game wants the player to play some specific actions. In essence, it requires the player to understand the designer's intention and find a specific chain of actions leading to success. It does not feel particularly analog.



The main reason is that the game only responds to very specific teams. Most of these commands are not part of the standard set of actions. For example, you can use a screwdriver in only one place, and so on. That is, you actually never build a mental model of how the world works, because such a model will be unnecessary. It is much better to perceive each object as a question: “what should I have done to them according to the designer?” Therefore, the world is losing freshness and the player does not have his rich mental model. This is a very common trouble puzzles.

However, there are puzzle games that manage to cope with it. One of the best examples is Portal.. In this game, the user rarely feels that he is moving along a given path. He rather believes that he is looking for a solution. The game feels analog. And this despite the fact that the decision is no less directed by the designer than in the standard game of the "exit the room" genre. The main reason for the difference between Portal is the constant use of a basic set of mechanics to solve puzzles. You have a portal gun, the ability to lift certain objects and move around. That's all. Nothing else is used for the passage. In addition, the holistic design of the whole game stimulates the creation of a mental model around it.



To solve the puzzle, there can be only one certain sequence of actions. But playing Portal, you do not know about it. Most often, this is not clear even after passing through the section. Since puzzles are based on basic actions, it is always less obvious if there are other possible solutions. Often there is a feeling that it was possible to solve the riddle in another way.

Such integrity in actions also means that in the mind a player can simulate many possibilities. He knows in advance the types of possible interactions and can use them to perform the actions necessary for passing without mandatory interaction with the world. This means that the player can make plans. He can come up with steps in advance and be sure that all of them can be completed. As I said earlier, creating plans is a basic part of addictive gameplay. This is another reason why it’s good to make an analog choice - the gameplay feels much more correct.

Integrity in action is not the only thing that makes Portal feel analog. An important role in itself is the level design. He gives exactly the necessary number of tips so that the player never feels that he is being pushed to a certain path, but at the same time that he cannot completely get confused in what he has to do. Not pushing the player too much, the game makes him guess on his own. This gives a much stronger feeling of choosing one of the many solutions instead of the sensation of movement along a given path. Solutions never look too mysterious, so players do not have to solve the puzzle with a dumb search. Busting is a behavior that is very harmful to the feeling of the analog world, it forces the player to break the world into its main components, revealing its non-analog nature.

Correctly “holding the hand” of the player is not an easy task, and the way to achieve it is highly dependent on the particular game. However, the basic idea remains unchanged: the designer needs the player to understand what needs to be done, but not to understand the preferred route. In order for the player to begin to build a living mental model of the world around the situation, there must always be a certain amount of suspense. But it should not be too much, otherwise there will be nothing to build a model of the world on.

Another example of creating an analog world is hiding in cabinets from Amnesia. We decided to simulate this process using a physical interaction system, tried to make such behavior implied, and never explicitly reported how it should work. Despite this, a lot of players still climbed into the closets and opened the doors a little to make sure they were safe. We could add an explicit hint and special control when the player is hiding behind the door, but we thought it would be a completely different experience. Thanks to this approach, the world began to feel much more analog.

There are many game mechanics who would benefit from greater analogy. One obvious example is the answers in the dialogs. They would become much more interesting if the options were chosen using basic mechanics, rather than an explicit menu.

How to make the scene more analog? I believe that for this it is necessary to implement two main aspects:

• Choices should be made using a set of basic mechanics. The number of ways to use such a mechanic should be so large that the player could not easily determine all the possible options. For example, if a player can only push red objects, then when entering a room with a single red object, the situation does not look too analogous.
• Tips for going through the scene should not be too direct. A certain level of nebula must be present so that the player feels that he has reached the decision on his own. In addition, it is important to teach the player (if possible, then through the game process) how basic mechanics work. The idea is that when he comes to the moment of choice (whether it be a puzzle, moral choice, etc.), he must have an intuitive understanding of how to solve it.

It is also important to focus not only on current interactions, but also think at the level of all the scenes. Serious preparation is required in order for the player to be in the right state and have the right mental model. It is very important to think about such things comprehensively.

I think you can get many advantages by thinking about how to make the game world more analog. I also think that this topic is still far from a complete study. Very often, people take systems with explicit means of expression and stick to them. Creating scenes in an analogue way requires much more work, but it can also reward much more. In addition, this concept is good to keep in mind, combining a narrative approach with good gameplay. Analog worlds are a basic part of the evolution of interactive storytelling.