Making Your Game Smell Like a Bakery Revisited

I have been on a bit of a cognitive science and consumer psychology kick with my reading at the moment in order to get out of the habit of reading nothing but game magazines and nerd fiction.

I chose to get into some light psychology about decision making and such like because psychology is often over looked by designers and many games are released where you can tell absolutely no thought has been given to the player’s psychological experience. Granted, principles of psychology and cognitive science are hard to get into a game as it can often produce intangible results when you are focused on hitting milestones.

I do not profess to be an expert or even well read on this subject but something I read in Martin Lyndstrom’s (the world’s leading brand expert and neural marketing evangelist) book, Buy-ology, relates to an aspect of games that is often the poorest part of the game.

Did you know that the so-called ‘new car smell’ comes from an aerosol? Or that the smell of flame grilled burgers in burger restaurants is pumped in through the ventilation system? Supermarkets have taken to placing bakeries near the front of the store because the smell of freshly baked bread makes people hungry and leads them to make impulse purchases above and beyond what they came in for. Some supermarkets that don’t have a bakery pump the smell of a bakery in through the ventilation.

The point is that companies start engineering your experience to be enjoyable as soon as you enter their building or start using their product. Most videogames present several minutes of frustration before you start enjoying the experience.

Contrary to popular opinion the ambiguous term gameplay starts as soon as you put the disk in the tray, not once the first level has loaded. Think about what developers and publishers make you sit through before the proverbial rubber hits the proverbial road and you are blowing heads off dudes. You will be forced to look at (often unskippable) legal screens, company logos and will often have to endure a loading screen FOR THE FRONT END. Once those precious minutes have been lost you will probably find that the main menu is confusing, hard to navigate and unresponsive or uninspiring.

To tackle the first issue, can we developers just admit that 99% of people don’t care who made the game they are playing? They don’t want to see a logo screen and they don’t care which middleware we used. Maybe it is my anger management issues but I am instantly enraged by seeing logo screens and legal text. My rage subsides a little bit if you are allowed to skip these screens but the damage has been done.

We are wrongly taught about the Seven Sins. There aren’t seven, there are eight. Having a loading screen for a menu is the eighth. Menus are not made better by loading 3D graphics or FMV. A good menu is clean, easy to read and navigate and also loads quickly. The player is not impressed by a feast of moving objects on the screen; they are impressed by a menu that lets them efficiently get into a game.

There is no bakery at the front of most games, just a few minutes of annoyances before we are able to play the game. We need to start giving the player enjoyment as soon as they insert the disk and stop irritating them with nonsense. I understand that people think certain messages have to be shown and that developers want to show off their outsourced logo animation but let’s think about the damage that does to the player experience.

Anyone that has played The Darkness will remember the opening level. Starbreeze wanted the game to load the level and start the game immediately if no save was detected, assuming it was the player’s first time playing the game. This opening level is pretty incredible and this would have made the first play of the game much more enjoyable. The ESRB, however, made the developer display the online warning message first and scotched the idea. Why couldn’t that have been shown when the player goes into multiplayer instead?

Why can’t company logos be shown in a more artistic way as well? A better idea than the logos before the main menu is to have them integrated into the opening sequence. The first person execution level in Call of Duty 4 has scrolling credits and the Activision and Infinity Ward logo could easily have been placed as graffiti on the walls that the player character passes by. Perhaps a character can where it on his t shirt? Perhaps it can be on a flag? Perhaps it can just be shown on screen as a credits roll?

There is also a psychological technique known as priming and this is where before someone experiences something they are primed to feel a certain way by the use of suggestive words or images. I recently went to see Derren Brown who is a master of hypnosis and manipulation. The climax of the show (no spoilers, don’t worry) involves the audience as a whole making a choice. This choice had been primed by suggestive words being used throughout the act without us knowing. The ‘trick’ worked flawlessly and everyone was left in awe at what he had manipulated us into doing.

In games there is no positive priming. Before a user starts the experience they must suffer logo screens and legal text and then a loading screen for what is often an unhelpful menu. Instead of taking steps to prime the player positively we give them a group of annoyances that, whilst in the scheme of things are slight, negatively prime the player before they even get to control their character.

By trying techniques influenced by cognitive science we can prime the player before they start level 1 and we can also create the supermarket bakery effect by rethinking what happens the second after the disk tray closes. We have a short amount of time to grab the player’s attention and must do all we can to fully immerse the player in the experience we have worked so hard to craft.

I'm Reloading, Cover Me.

Warning: this isn't the most reasoned post in the world and isn't a necessarily a well thought out argument. I hope it makes my point though.

I've just put the bow on the ODST campaign (Normal difficulty on solo) and I feel like I can wade into to all the nonsense surrounding the reviews that all the internauts are getting so worked up about.

In summary for those who have not followed the parade of insanity, Halo 3 ODST isn't a valid game/worth the cost because:

1. It is around 6 hours long.
2. It doesn't bring much new to the table.
3. The adversarial mode is just Halo 3.
4. Looks a little bit rough.
5. Some other nonsense.

Leaving reviews out of it for the moment, I want to go through the list and talk about why I hate videogame ragenauts on the internet.

It is around 6 hours long

So we're judging art (which games are) based on length are we? You know, the problem I’ve always had with the Mona Lisa is that it only takes me a couple of seconds to look at it. Maybe if someone were to pad it out with more space I might like it more. Or maybe blow it up way big so I can't just walk into a room and see it. Make it so I have to crane my neck and take a few steps back. Maybe you could make it so big that you have to put it on the side of a building and I have to go outside and on to the roof of another building. Basically anything that adds length to the experience as that will be better.

To be blunt, anyone that judges a piece of art based on its length is missing the point.

It might only be 6 hours but what if those 6 hours are the most potent hit you’ve ever taken? Are these people saying that if it was longer and full of filler they’d be happier? Length does not mean better. ODST weighs in at whatever length it takes you to finish it and when I played through it (without counting the hours) it felt like a nice neat package. Small but perfectly formed. Sure, I could have gone for some more but that’s because I could play Halo all day.

If you say that you are only going to play through it once and be done and you feel cheated by that, cool. You are missing out on the coop, the collectibles and the harder difficulties in a game that can happily stand multiple playthroughs but good for you. I know some people don’t play online or have friends but that’s not the game’s fault.

It doesn’t bring much new to the table

Anyone that sits on an internet forum postulating that every game has to innovate needs to look at other entertainment mediums. My integrity as a designer was once called into question by someone who said they feared for the industry because I argued that Call of Duty World at War was still a good game despite not innovating very much. For every game that innovates I am more than happy to have a truck load that don’t because I play a lot of games and sometimes I am super cool with just shooting stuff in the same way people watch episode after episode of the same TV show.

In ODST’s case it may not bring much new to the table but by God does it do things right. I’m going to do a study on the level and combat design of the game soon so I don’t want to spoil that but I will say that Bungie have really honed their craft. Over the years they have experimented and iterated on their combat sandbox and every combat zone in ODST is the best they’ve ever done. The placement of cover, lines of sight to enemies and pick up placement is some of the best to ever grace a videogame. If you don’t like Halo’s combat model then sure, you’re not going to like this but for people that do enjoy Halo, the combat here is some of the most thrilling and fun Bungie have ever done.

I doubt you will ever get the feeling of the Silent Cartographer again but get over it.

The adversarial mode is just Halo 3

Do you ever stop to think about whether something is fun rather than how you can dismiss it in the comments section?

The adversarial may be Halo 3 but it is all of Halo 3. All the DLC is included. If, like me, you have already paid for all the DLC Bungie have put out then you are re-buying stuff but think of it like this: as angry as you are now, think back to all the fun you’ve had over the last two years with it and how it was money well spent. I can’t really offer an amazing argument that will change your mind about re-buying the Halo 3 multiplayer but there are poverty stricken children around the world who would do anything to be in a position to whine about the hardship of having the option to buy a luxury entertainment item. Grow up and get over it.

Yes, I realize the irony.

Halo 3’s versus multiplayer is still awesome and is still the multiplayer destination of choice for a lot of people. Just because it isn’t new, doesn’t mean it detracts from the product.

It looks a little bit rough

Ok, you got me there. The visuals are a bit jaggy and the textures a bit blurry. That being said, I adore the lighting in this game. In places it is literally stunning. It really compliments the art direction of the game and there were times when I just stopped and looked at the vistas. Other times I was having fun actually playing the game and wringing my hands about the fact that it doesn’t do native 720p couldn’t have been further from my mind.

Some other nonsense

This is the bit that really bugs me.

Most internet commenter posters and forum members are close minded and are either trying to look cool online or judge and comment about a game they either haven’t played or that has irked them for some random reason. I have commented before about the bizarre mindset some gamers have where they treat every game as something that has to justify itself to them and if the game doesn’t meet some arbitrary standard they have set they deem it offensive and proceed to tell the world about it as if anyone cares.

Someone once told me that Rainbow Six Vegas 2 isn’t a sequel as it doesn’t use a new engine, it recycles some assets and doesn’t add a whole lot new to the franchise. This is like saying that Episodes 5 and 6 aren’t sequels as they both used cameras, the same actors and some of the same props as Episode 4.

In summary

I realize this isn’t the most reasoned post I have ever done and I’m sure I come off as the ODST Defense Force or whatever but I wish more people would realize that 99% of people buying games are not the people whining about the review score and that these fools didn’t garner so much discussion on podcasts, news sites and blog posts.

It annoys me that at the launch of an excellent game, the discussions I’m having with people are about the comments section in the Edge review rather than how awesome the first time you meet a pair of Hunters is. I was basically asked to defend the game by people that haven’t played it but are aware of the reviews and people’s feelings about said reviews.

I’m not saying the game is without flaws and I am not saying that people shouldn’t be discussing all aspects of the game but I wish all close mindedness and immaturity on display on the internet could suddenly become intelligent discussion. Look at the Dyack/Neogaf debacle where a highly intelligent and interesting developer managed to get dragged into avatar wars with forum trolls and that became a news story that overshadowed the games launch.

We want to know why the ‘mainstream’ doesn’t discuss games intelligently. Perhaps it is because the fans of games can’t do it either. This is a quote from the comments section on the Edge review:

“As I haven't played the game, it's hard to comment accurately. But I must admit that my first response, after reading the text of the review, was absolute shock at the fact that the final score was a 9. The review read like a 7.”

Apparently commenting accurately about a game means debating which random number someone gave it.

Jesus wept.

The wine has worn off now and I don’t know if I have properly made my point so let me leave it at this: instead of judging games against random standards based on outdated preconceptions of what a game should offer for a certain price and how you are offended by stupid things like the time it takes someone that isn’t you to complete the game, how it doesn’t change the world and what number some dude wrote at the end of a block of text, judge a game based on how much fun you’ve had with it. And please stop acting so offended by it on internet forums. There’s a whole world out there to be really offended by and worked up about.

You Make Me Break Out

Time for some super niche game design folks!

I want to talk about the importance of animation breakouts in shooting games as some games still ship without them.

So what is an animation breakout (from now on referred to as an anim breakout)?

Anim breakouts are points in an animation that are flagged to allow the player to trigger the playing of another animation. This might be at set points in the animation or the entire animation might allow this. They are used to allow the player to react to situations in the game and change what their character is doing. Depending at which point the animation is broken out of, the benefit of the animation is still conferred to the player despite the entire animation not playing.

Example:

1. Let’s say that the reload anim for an assault rifle comprises the following actions:
2. The player character ejects the clip.
3. The player character draws a new clip from their body.
4. The player character puts the new clip in.
5. The player character cocks the rifle.
6. The player character returns the gun to normal position.

This animation will only take two or so seconds but in a fast paced shooting game, those two seconds can see you killed if you can’t react in time. If you can’t break out of the animation being played to return fire, throw a grenade or melee kill you will feel cheated and frustrated. For this reason, designers allow you to break out of animations like a reload to respond to the game as it changes states (targets present themselves, you come under attack etc.).

Breakouts also allow for a higher level of play as you can (for want of a better word) combo actions. In Battlefield Bad Company every weapon reload has a cocking animation but counts as fully reloaded as soon as the fresh clip is loaded. The heal animation of plunging a syringe of adrenaline into your chest also has about half a second of animation that is played once the syringe has hit your body and you count as being healed. Thanks to the anim breakouts you can hit reload and as soon as the new clip is in the weapon you have full ammo. You then hit the weapon swap button to bring up your syringe. This cuts the cocking animation short and shaves half a second off the reload time. You hit the use syringe button and as soon as the syringe hits your chest, you are healed. You can then hit the weapon swap button to get back to your assault rifle and cut the syringe anim short, losing another half second. In total you have saved a second from the total anim time and that second can cost you a kill/death/the game.


Many games still don’t ship with anim breakouts and this is one of the many reasons reviewers may refer to controls as being frustrating and clunky. Often titles with anim breakouts have controls that are called tight or responsive when they are being discussed and this can often make or break a title’s success. The simple act of being able to break out of a reload to throw a grenade in Call of Duty elevates the ‘fun’ a player has as the game responds in a way that they want.

When a player picks up a game and starts playing they are immediately given a world of choices and decisions to make. As this world changes with the state change cycle, players want to respond and act with total immediacy. Games that don’t let you break out of animations inhibit the player’s ability to react to new choices and decisions and this lets frustration creep in and the player will complain that the game has bad controls.

Not only is it important to have anim breakouts, it is also important that the purpose of the animation is applied to the player at the appropriate point. In the Battlefield example above, as soon as the player character has fully inserted the clip into the weapon, the weapon counts as being reloaded even though the cocking part of the animation may not have been played as the player has broken out of it. Sometimes games don’t apply the benefit of the action unless the anim has completely played out and once again, this is incredibly frustrating.

I’m sure to many people this article is fairly obvious and elementary but having played a number of games in the past few months that don’t have this basic user functionality in, I wanted to post something about it.

Box Arts

Here are some more box arts that I like. Come, gather round and Regard Things.

Katamari Forever (European flavour).


WET.


WET as a whole is very stylish and should you play the game/demo, take a moment to appreciate the licensed music in it. You can listen the track from the demo here. It is an unofficial Youtube version and most of the soundtrack appears to be there for good or ill. While searching for the title of the track I wanted in Google, I was surprised to learn that most of the hits for dodgy game OST sharing sites are Russian. I had no idea they are so into game OSTs.

My Guerrillas, Let Me Show You Themz.

Like a futuristic sledgehammer to your minds my Red Faction Guerrilla review is up over at NTSC-UK.

I had a lot of fun with this game and can't wait to see what Volition do with the series.

As always the rest of my reviews can be hit up here.

I head to PAX next week so if you're lucky you may be getting daily posts. I am also going to endeavour to write a proper feature about it.

Finally, Some Good Box Art

You may remember that a while ago I talked about box art. Heady times indeed.

2K has recently revealed the box art for Borderlands (a post apocalyptic shooter RPG for those not in the know) and it is probably the best box art ever.

Come, let us regard it.


This box art is beautiful and somewhat surprising. Where is the hero? Where is the gritty backdrop? Instead one of the low level enemies is miming shooting himself in the head and the blood splat shows a glimpse of vehicle combat from the game. It's nice to see someone doing something like this.

I'll also mention the Halo 3 ODST box art.


I really like this box art and not just because the word Halo features on it. I think it captures some of the atmosphere of a lone special ops trooper in a hostile city. It thankfully isn't like the Halo 3 box art where all I can see is Master Chief tipping over.

New Gadget Get!

I've added a new gadget to the of the old, heh heh, blog where I will list the games I'm currently playing. As I update it you will get a post like this:

I'm currently a fairly wide selection of games. I'm rocking import goodness like Blazblue with my girl and revisiting RV62 and SR2 with friends in coop. Sometimes you forget just how good some games are. Saints Row 2 is a total masterpiece and the fun me and Phil have in coop is just crazy. We are currently tearing it up in Ronin territory and the amount of fun we are having can only be measured in increments of 'hella'. Rainbow Six is a game that is have played a lot of at home and at work and I never get sick of it.

I have a weakness for anything that has "2D" and "fighter" in its description. Unfotunately that weakness usually involves me either buying them and playing them once or indeed, not at all. There are currently 3 different 2D fighters sat unopened on my shelves. Fortunately Rachel has taken a real shine to it and so our Sundays are spent taking the fight to Xbox Live where we encounter an ungodly amount of people playing Jin. It's like SF4 and Ken all over again. Except I'm still not adept enough at it to counter him all that well.

Dynasty Warriors 6 Empires is a game that is thoroughly excellent but will be over looked. People need to check out DW games and this is an excellent one to jump into.

And then there is Damnation. As a designer I take my gaming literacy pretty seriously and will always find time to play bad games. There is often a lot to learn from them and Damnation is a game with many, many problems but at the centre there is a small glimmer of genius. Blue Omega bit off way more than they could chew with the tech and the combat designer needs a guiding hand but there are many interesting things to take away from it. It also has the most gratuitous cleavage I have ever seen in a game (I own and have played both version of Dead or Alive Volleyball).

Anyone want to talk about what they are playing in the comments? It's strange saying this but I don't get to talk to people enough about the games they are playing.