In praise of simplicity.

[black snoopy]

I spent most of this morning playing Left 4 Dead. Absolutely brilliant game. You go in, blow shit up, and an hour later you're done.

Meanwhile, it took me about three weeks of on-and-off playing to get through Bioshock. It was a pretty game, sure, but trying to figure out what I was supposed to do and how I was supposed to do it was a bit irritating. Switch to fire plasmid to melt the ice, switch back to the shotgun, hack the turret, switch to incendiary ammo, listen to the voiceover, check the map to find my target, follow the arrow, decide whether or not to save the little girl, turn it off and go back to watching TV, try again in a few days.

From a purely game-related standpoint, Bioshock is arguably far easier than L4D. Money and health boosts and vending machines were everywhere, to say nothing of the omnipresent Vitachambers. But it's more difficult to play. Too many verbs. My hands are all over the place for even the simplest of things, since I have to worry about juggling the weapons (and their different kinds of ammo) and the plasmids even for basic fighting. Left 4 Dead? Everything I have to do falls right under my fingertips. I might have to work harder at not failing miserably, but it's a lot easier to do so.

I think this is one area to pay close attention to when it comes to developing new experiences, game/notgame/otherwise. I have well over 100 things in front of me to push/spin/move, but I don't want to have to push/spin/move them all in order to make progress. Can I get by using a normal three-button mouse? Or a simple NES-style gamepad? If no, why not?

[ghostwheel]

I do agree it is complicated. I also think it is a very difficult game. I haven't played a ton of "modern" FPS games but Bioshock and Crysis are two of them. I suppose you could throw STALKER in there as well. I suck at them. STALKER I do better because you have more time to plan out what you're doing (that and I actually enjoy the atmosphere and story). But the other two, the controls are ridiculously complex and clunky to use. They are certainly a long way from the simplicity of the original Doom or Quake. I hated the environment of Bioshock. It's an unpleasant place and I have no desire to explore it. It's dark, claustrophobic and oppressive. And not in a cool horror movie sort of way, more a "damn, this place sucks, I don't want to be here" sort of way.

[Thomas]

I am also a sucker for simplicity in games. I think Shadow of Colossus and Ico also are great examples of this. My own goal is that the game controls should be told and learned with in the first 10 minutes of the game. Then any layers of complexity all emerge from applying the controls you learned at the start. Every time I find a new gadget requiring new controls in a game, I am drawn of the immersive experience and instead become "user trying to get machine to work".

[black snoopy]

I do agree it is complicated. I also think it is a very difficult game. I haven't played a ton of "modern" FPS games but Bioshock and Crysis are two of them. I suppose you could throw STALKER in there as well. I suck at them. STALKER I do better because you have more time to plan out what you're doing (that and I actually enjoy the atmosphere and story). But the other two, the controls are ridiculously complex and clunky to use. They are certainly a long way from the simplicity of the original Doom or Quake. I hated the environment of Bioshock. It's an unpleasant place and I have no desire to explore it. It's dark, claustrophobic and oppressive. And not in a cool horror movie sort of way, more a "damn, this place sucks, I don't want to be here" sort of way.

I felt like I should've enjoyed the atmosphere of Bioshock more than I did, mostly because I'm a sucker for the retro-future thing. But it was tough to really let myself get lost in the game when it felt like a bunch of corridors punctuated by the occasional room with a few doors in it (that led to other corridors). Or occasionally, you'd hit a building that felt explorable but was cut up into sections by clichés. Oh, the door leading into the room I need to enter is locked? I guess I'll have to investigate the very conspicuous vent that, against all odds or common sense, is just large enough for a grown man to crouch through. But I suppose my feelings on realistic worlds in games getting wrecked by video game logic is a rant for another topic ...

I think the thing that really drove home how poorly implemented the controls seemed was that I'd just come off a massive Fallout: New Vegas jag when I played through Bioshock. F:NV is undeniably a much larger, more immersive, and more complex game ... but it's so much simpler with regard to input. There were a few awkward parts (the merchants and gambling mini-games take a little getting used to) but still, everything can be done without having to move far from the WASD position.

[Michaël Samyn]

My own goal is that the game controls should be told and learned with in the first 10 minutes of the game.

My ideal is zero learning.
Probably because I was trained a designer.
One of the purposes of design is to make things easier to use, more intuitive, pleasant. I've always been confused by how this is at odds with the purpose of game design. Which seems to be to make things harder to do, in order to create challenges that need to be overcome.
Luckily, I don't need to make games.

My ideal is to figure out interfaces that people can already use before they even start the game. I haven't reached this ideal yet, obviously. I may never. But somehow I want to translate what people already know into the game so that they instantly know how to interact with it. One of the problems is that "what people already know" tends to be subjective. So you need to find things that are shared. And those things tend to come from outside of the sphere of computer use. And are thus hard to translate. Time is on my side, though, as more and more people become accustomed to computer interfaces.

As a transition, I hope to design interfaces that you simple discover by using your input media almost randomly. That way figuring out how to use the interface becomes part of the experience.
But I know some people dislike experimenting. There seems to be a gender-bias here. And I tend to like making games for the gender that prefers to be informed first. Dilemma! 

The basic interface should be ultra-simple and should allow you to play the entire game. Additional interfaces can be added for more demanding/adventurous players but should not be required.
Applied to Bioshock, this would mean that it should be possible to blast your way through the game with whatever weapon you choose.

[ghostwheel]

My own goal is that the game controls should be told and learned with in the first 10 minutes of the game.

My ideal is zero learning.
Probably because I was trained a designer.
One of the purposes of design is to make things easier to use, more intuitive, pleasant. I've always been confused by how this is at odds with the purpose of game design. Which seems to be to make things harder to do, in order to create challenges that need to be overcome.
Luckily, I don't need to make games.

My ideal is to figure out interfaces that people can already use before they even start the game. I haven't reached this ideal yet, obviously. I may never. But somehow I want to translate what people already know into the game so that they instantly know how to interact with it. One of the problems is that "what people already know" tends to be subjective. So you need to find things that are shared. And those things tend to come from outside of the sphere of computer use. And are thus hard to translate. Time is on my side, though, as more and more people become accustomed to computer interfaces.

As a transition, I hope to design interfaces that you simple discover by using your input media almost randomly. That way figuring out how to use the interface becomes part of the experience.
But I know some people dislike experimenting. There seems to be a gender-bias here. And I tend to like making games for the gender that prefers to be informed first. Dilemma! 

The basic interface should be ultra-simple and should allow you to play the entire game. Additional interfaces can be added for more demanding/adventurous players but should not be required.
Applied to Bioshock, this would mean that it should be possible to blast your way through the game with whatever weapon you choose.

I have virtually no experience with iPads or iPhones and their touch interface but they seem to be very close to what you're talking about. I mean, if a cat can figure it out http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q9NP-AeKX40, just about any human should be able to. It's a very intuitive way to interact and about as simple as you can get without somehow plugging directly into your brain.

[ghostwheel]

@Thomas: Speaking of interfaces, I remember around when Penumbra came out I read a review of a haptic controller that could be used with the game. I'm curious how that came about, how much you were involved in that and if anything else came of it - like possible use in Amnesia or other games you where/are developing.

[Michaël Samyn]

By interface, I was referring to the software design of the control system. Not the hardware. Though of course, the two are related. I don't need new hardware. I want to create simple controls with input devices people are already familiar with.

[Thomas]

ghostwheel:
We were contacted by a Swedish company that made middleware for haptic controllers and they pretty much funded the development of the haptic version. I was involved with implementing the basic prototype and then they took over development of it. They (and Novint that made (makes?) the cheap gaming haptic hardware) thought haptics could be a big thing, but it did not turn out that way.

Haptics is kind of interesting and for Penumbra, I think the game got even harder to play. Every advantage that the haptic had over the mouse came with some disadvantages. It is much more work controlling a game and it is easy to get stuck in the with your input "ball" (the haptical version of the mouse pointer). The force feedback, sense of other materials and extra dimension are all great, but it comes at a price.