Rethinking endlessness

[Michaël Samyn]

One of my hopes and desires for video game experiences has always been to create a virtual world that is always there for you, that you can go to whenever you want and spend as much time in as you like. This was in part born out of a frustration with how linear media pieces always end (I've been known to decrease my reading speed at the end of the novel in an attempt to stretch the experience).

But recently I've been rethinking this position as a result of experiences with different video games. I love wandering around in Assassin's Creed, but I need the treasure hunts and the little exploration rewards to keep me going. And I stop playing after I've exhausted these. Technically, it would be trivial for the designers to add more treasures and things to find. But then I would suddenly realize how stupid and meaningless this activity is. And this realization would be accompanied with rejecting the entire experience.

I think a more desirable response is achieved when a game seems like it could be endless, and then it ends, leaving me, the player, with a fond memory of something that I -naively- wish would go on forever. Instead of actually going on forever and ruining the memory and making me regret the time spent with the game.

Drop 7 was such an experience for me. It's a puzzle game that you can play forever. Like Tetris it doesn't have a winning condition: you always lose, all you can do is play well so the game lasts longer. But next to this depressing structure, the thing that happened to me after playing it many many times, is that I realized how empty it was, how much my life disappeared while I was playing the game.

I think this can happen with any game (or even any activity?) when it is done too much: it becomes empty. And when it does, when it starts feeling empty, I dismiss the entire time I spent playing, including the time before it felt empty. That's why it is good for a game to end when it still feels great (and could go on forever). Finity seems at odds with the nature of the medium. But it is not at odds with the nature of life, I guess. Maybe that's why. Maybe our games should end because life does.

[ghostwheel]

Is any activity we partake in worthwhile or not? Why is a game (or notgame) any more or less pointless as anything we do? The closest thing to an "endless" experience I've had is with Second Life. Granted, 99% of the content is crud but that's the nature of Sturgeon's Law.

Speaking of endless, why hasn't ToT ever returned to Endless Forest? I think that is a concept and game you should have explored and expanded further. It's a cool experience but it's so small, there isn't much of a reason to spend much time there as you can explore everything in a few minutes and find out all there is to know in an afternoon. It says on Wikipedia you had problems with funding. Did you ever look for commercial backing? I think there's so much more you could do with it. I also find the similarities between The Endless Forest and Journey to be, interesting.

[Utforska]

I think doing the same thing - anything - over and over the same way is always going to end with the empty feeling. Discovering a new favourite food, then eating it so often that it becomes uninteresting. I've felt like that with music from time to time, "why do this, I know all the notes and timbres and chords and ways to put them together into melodies and songs and recordings, what's the point in doing that again". Of course, the real problem there is that I for some reason have been "stuck" in a certain style, a certain type of music or approach to music. It becomes an uninteresting dead-end, yet backtracking doesn't seem very attractive.

But leaving music altogether for a few months and coming back can make wonders. I see new problems, want to investigate new patterns, and see even those old things in a different light.

Most computer games probably aren't flexible enough to allow that. The possible actions are often quite limited, and trying new combinations of them is not very rewarding once you learned and used them all for a while. Highly abstract games like boardgames, cardgames etc may be different, as the focus is so completely on these actions and their possible tactical combinations. With the right rules the depth of possible discoveries - strategies and counter strategies - can be huge. Even if you tire of a certain aspect of the game for a while, you can come back later and discover new things.

But when the game is very atmosphere based, like I think Assassin's Creed is (didn't play it, but it seems like a lot of the attraction is in the atmosphere of playing), then the whole game becomes a dead end. Once you reach the end, you're likely to reach that "what's the real point of this" feeling, and the whole thing can seem like a waste in retrospect even though you actually liked the experience.

Question is, how could a not/game be devised to allow you to come back with fresh eyes and see something entirely new?

[Booger]

I usually get addicted to open-world games for a few weeks, then after I exhaust all the situations in my head (e.g. lining up 20 cars and making them blow up through chain reaction, or trying to see all the animations of the npcs) that's when I'm done with the game and dare not go back unlike more linear games.

Have any of you used procedural generation?  I haven't played Endless Forest but I thought The Path seemed to have the locations somewhat random.

Having a perpetually endlessly procedural environment will just be pointless since even though it's random, the experience is as fresh as when you encounter a heightmap -- yeah, very fresh (/sarcasm) or unless you can chip away to create your own structure like in Minecraft.

It's the lovingly crafted nooks and crannies that make me fond of a virtual world, that's why for my current game I crafted set pieces for these nooks and crannies, before procedurally placing them into the world at random.

There was an article in Gamasutra where one blogger described Fallout and how it was ideal in that you have a towering "Point of Interest" which just beckons you to explore it... and you can have many of those placed randomly in a world as long as it doesn't take too long to travel from one point of interest to another.

The goal could simply be exploring that point of interest and marking it on your map.  And also have an exit strategy so the player has a goal to follow before boredom sets in.

[Michaël Samyn]

Speaking of endless, why hasn't ToT ever returned to Endless Forest?

We do, all the time. Well, once in a while we add something.
It's a free game and I don't really see how we could make it commercial.
We're happy it's there and that it's thriving.

It's a cool experience but it's so small, there isn't much of a reason to spend much time there as you can explore everything in a few minutes and find out all there is to know in an afternoon.

Many players who have played the game for years would disagree.

Even though it was never intended to be a long experience. It was designed as an online social screensaver originally.

I also find the similarities between The Endless Forest and Journey to be, interesting.

Yes, Jenova and Kellee and Robin admitted that they were quite inspired by it. But it's really not such a big surprise. Anyone who sits down and thinks about the nature of social gaming online outside of the realms of money-making will quickly come to similar conclusions.

[Michaël Samyn]

But when the game is very atmosphere based, like I think Assassin's Creed is (didn't play it, but it seems like a lot of the attraction is in the atmosphere of playing), then the whole game becomes a dead end.

I think that's far too negative way of looking at this. The experience of beauty and immersion in atmospheric games far outweighs the potential of endless strategic variations in conventional games for me. And the fact that something ends is good: it leaves more time for life.

[ghostwheel]

Many players who have played the game for years would disagree.

Even though it was never intended to be a long experience. It was designed as an online social screensaver originally.

Oh, I know! It has a serious cult following. If you do a search for "endless forest" on deviantART you get tons of fan art; I stopped counting after 10 pages. There's even a Endless Forest club! I understand the social attraction and non-verbal ways one can communicate but I'm more for exploration so it didn't have long term appeal for me - I wish there was more! And aesthetically, its beautiful and I see how it sticks in people's heads.

[Utforska]

But when the game is very atmosphere based, like I think Assassin's Creed is (didn't play it, but it seems like a lot of the attraction is in the atmosphere of playing), then the whole game becomes a dead end.

I think that's far too negative way of looking at this. The experience of beauty and immersion in atmospheric games far outweighs the potential of endless strategic variations in conventional games for me. And the fact that something ends is good: it leaves more time for life.

I agree with you, atmosphere, immersion and esthetic beauty is one of the most powerful offerings the video game medium has. The finiteness of these experiences don't have to be a bad thing, as you say, but it's a pity if the end consists of "okay now I feel fed up with this" rather than being a thoughtfully designed part of the experience. What I meant was that that fed-up feeling is likely to make the whole experience less positive in retrospect.

[Michaël Samyn]

I agree. So we should carefully design our end games!
Something like "and then the prince kisses the princess and she opens her eyes after centuries of sleep"?