Limits: Escapism on a Budget

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Original post by Wavinator For those gamers who are motivated to play for the sense of exploring and stepping into another world, do you think that limits enhance or hinder escapism?

I believe it enhances escapism, however it depends the audience 'demography' that you're aiming for as well as the style of the game. RPG's tend to encourage exploration, while say a tactical FPS game wouldn't as much (I don't put GTA in that category).

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If I were to tell you that you get to explore a strange, ancient world that's full of mystery, lore, puzzles and dangers-- but then I give you a time limit, either arbitrary or based on a resource (meaning you'll only be able to explore certain sites) what do you think that would do to your anticipation in terms of the experience?

It would potentially lower the experience for some people. However, setting such a limit to what you can explore within a given time could also add to reply value since some people would be enticed to play the game over and over until they discover all the available content.

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On the one hand, escapism almost seems like a virtual vacation. You're there to roam and see the sites and get into whatever trouble you want that the game offers. Having an itinerary seems to sort of spoil any hope of a leisurely pace, and as such would kill the enjoyment of escapism. On the other hand, having a limit can galvanize you into strategizing. If you only have X amount of time, then potentially each location you visit becomes all the more important.

A great example of this is Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion (as well a few other Bethesda games). You have the option to follow the main quest or go exploring for "whatever trouble you want that the game offers." I found that due to all of the options given when you weren't following the main quest, that it was easy to stay in the "virtual vacation." Once you decided to do a quest though or other various actions, they often required some kind of preparation.

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I've been thinking about this in terms of pure exploration centered around finding neat things and places or clues to where they can be found. I want to offer the fun of escapism but guard against aimless wandering. So I was thinking about creating a time/cost structure based around being funded for an expedition. This gives both a time limit and a monetary limit, both of which create strategy. Certain sites would require greater investment and offer greater potential rewards (including more time/money), but others could be dead ends or red herrings.

The way you can structure against "aimless wandering" is by having a world filled with various quests, scripted events, "clues" etc. However I'd still allow people the option to wander "aimlessly" if they choose to.

That said, based on this "expedition" style game you're talking about, I think it would provide for a lot of replay assuming the gameplay/story is enjoyable.

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This probably divides goal centric and self directed gamers. It would likely be possible to cater to both types, but if I do the strength of each type of gameplay would be diminished.

I think it does that quite effectively based on how you described it. Again, it gives explorers the enjoyment of traversing around your world, but it also gives some time/resource based strategy. Again, I think the biggest strength you're going to get out of this is replay value. Still, once again, you must make sure the gameplay/story is something that makes people want to keep replaying the game.

Back to where I was talking about Oblivion. I want to note that Zelda games have had a similar style. You could follow the story or just explore for the fun of it. The biggest attribute about games like this though is that they are story driven. If you make a story so powerful (and fairly easy to follow as in where you need to go next) that it doesn't make you want to wander aimlessly, then you can allow massive exploration without too many constraints except perhaps during a certain event. Such as "omg Samus, the place is going to explode! Get out now! No more exploration!"

I know that in Knights of the Old Republic, while you could chose "dark" or "light" decisions that had an effect on the overall story of the game, I never would have replayed it unless the gameplay matched up with the story. You're a mod here and obviously have a great grasp of game design, so I'm sure you understand the importance of this stuff... however I get into a habit of stressing it haha.

On a side note, I'll give you a really interesting game that did something to the extent of what you're talking about.

The game San Francisco Rush 64: Extreme Racing (obviously for the N64), was clearly a racing game etc, however it had a mode for exploration. The Devs put hordes of secrets offtrack. I remember on one level if you drove over this fence and drive on the edge of this mountain which had water below it for a while, you'd eventually find this hole in the mountain. Once you went in there was this pinball type of track you could drive around in. I spent as much time in that game exploring than I did the actual racing simply because the neat things I'd find were so varying and cool to me. Another example was a ramp that shot you up onto a track between buildings... it was just really fun to explore in. My point in this is that, even a RACING GAME, was able to pull of exploration in a fun way along with having the standard "time" mode for racing etc.

Hopefully that wasn't too ramble like and it was constructive enough to help out.

I think it is more common to interpret escapism as a virtual vacation of any length, since part of the common motivation of escapism is to escape control (being told what to do, having to do things within deadlines).

For my case of exploration of resources and treasures, I intend to show the conservative estimate amount of overall resources left in an area. The actual amount can only be higher. This gives the player some sense of where to go, and how much to look for.

Players who wants to strategize can budget how much time they want to spend locating resources on a map, so that they can cover many maps in a short time (get the bulk of the resources effectively). These players could be satisfied when they have identified, say, 75% of the resources

Players who don't want to strategize can spend extra time on a map to discover more. The satisfaction comes when, say, 150% of the resources are identified (more than estimated). A recognition that all resources are identified might shown, it might be obvious then that there is nowhere left to look. In my context I would add a time limit on the search, not because I want the player to strategize, but to remove the stress or the guilt in not being able to identify everything, this could keep the game more casual if the map is randomly generated. Say you only discovered 40% today, but there is still tomorrow.

I think that it all depends on how you rationalize your limitations.

If a place is cold, heat is your limit. If a place is underwater or in space, air is your limit. If a place is full of a toxic gas that requires stimulants every 27.6 seconds, the limit is self-evident. But for all of these limits there is a temporary quality, because you can find more heat, air, or drugs in most cases. For a larger form of limit, one large enough to fit your direction, the reason is going to have to be even more logical, and enjoyable.

To take the heat/air/toxic concept to a higher level, it would probably take a few things. Each form of 'area' would have to be a large part of the game, 33.3% to maintain balance. In addition to this, you will probably have to make some form of concession, giving the player some part of the game that they can explore without limit, just to give them a "home base" of sorts.

From that point, exploration would be like currency; only have 100 'dollars' which means that you need to think about that choice in between air and drugs. Beyond this, you need to give some form of bonus to the player for choosing one area to explore over another. Focusing on areas that require air might unlock a unique skill, or weapon, while focusing on areas that require drugs might just make those diseased spiders help you. Which means, that exploration is like joining a faction, helping one means sacrificing another. And if the 'prices' increase as the game progresses, a player who focuses upon two 'factions' will progress along them much farther than one who tries to work with all three.

Okay, here is a simple idea, inspired by the NASA mars rovers.

Player is remotely controling a robot exploreing an alien planet. Robot itself is in the form of a sphere, to move around the player slides the mouse around not unlike in Marble Madness. Left mouse button fires a grappleing hook, holding down allows it to lock onto whatever it hits. this allows the player to climb bionic commando style, useing the mouse wheel to reel closer further from the grapple mechanism. Right mouse button when held brings up the "camera", the mouse wheel can be used to zoom in/out and tapping the space bar "takes a picture".

Any living thing (plant and/or animal) captured in a "photograph" vannishes leaveing behind only the rock and soil. Once a "photograph" is taken it takes about a minute for the camera to recharge.

The alien planet can be teeming with all kinds of exotic life. Some may attempt to eat the robot, others ignore it. Some life is common, others are rare or even very rare. When some photos are taken, the life captured and removed from the enviroment, it may uncover the remnents of an ancient civilization or a cave hidden under the overgrowth.

Might even have a simulation running in the game background adapting the enviroment to the sudden vannishing of life by the players photographs. Over time plants grow back or even other life forms go extinct from the players actions.

Photographs could even be uploaded to share with other players. Some players might prefer to act like zoologist trying to get a better understanding of the various lifeforms in the enviroment and contribute thier observations to some sort of shared game wiki. Photographs could contain the DNA of the life forms depicted, allowing players to import different creatures into thier own game world (not unlike Spore) lots of possabilities

I don't mind time limits if they can be restarted. If the limit is some sort of resource like fuel, air, food, light from a torch, hours in the day etc. then the usual way of doing that is having to head back to a base, fuel station, air pocket, inn etc. every once in a while to refuel.

However, if you are giving a single, non-restartable inflexible target (i.e. "You have ten days to complete this mission.") then for me that's a big crimp on exploring. Instead I'll be completing the key mission first. This isn't much of an issue if the timed missions are optional as I can always explore later, but I can only enter a zone once and with one of these limits on me then I'll be focusing on completing the mission to the exclusion of all else.

As a side-note: I hate adventure games that stuck time limits on you for the whole quest. I've played some text-based interactive fiction that have hard limits like having to complete the game in 250 moves, and then print which move you're on at every step. It's a huge dissensentive to experiment with anything, which for me is a big part of the whole fun of that genre. I usually quit the game before move 20.

Explorers, one of Bartle's player archetypes, don't play games to compete against typical Achiever-centric challenges such as the clocks you mention.

Exploration should be just that: exploration. When you introduce an external artificial game mechanic such as a timer, this aspect of the game is no longer geared toward Explorers, since they can no longer do what is natural to them, in their own time and capacity. What was once a toy has now become a game.

For me it depends on the type of limitation.

In The Ur-Quan Masters, I loved how you had to invest fuel (and sometimes defenses) in your exploration and discoveries - it made your discoveries all the more important. But I hated how there was an ultimate deadline in how much of the universe you could freely explore, before its brittle politics threatened to destroy everything.

It's good to give players a sense of investment and return, risk and reward, with some losses or nice surprises now and then to spice things up. But an ultimate deadline definitely makes the game less about exploration and more about achieving a goal.

I'd think it was demo and turn it off.

I like the idea of having to use a (perhaps limited) resource to do my exploration, it will add value to discoveries that allow more exploration (more fuel, better propulsion, etc).

Something that I like even more was done in Strange Adventures in Infinite Space (among other places), which is that the map is randomly generated for every instance of the game, and there's no going back and trying the same map again. So whatever you find is what you find, and you literally never get to see the things you missed.

I don't have much to add to the discussion except to point to this radical experiment on exploration vs constraints, Yuusha 30.