Transparency in Video Games - Easy to Learn, Difficult to Master | Design Frame #5
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- Опубликовано: 3 мар 2020
- Design Frame #5: Transparency in Video Games
For players to engage with a game, it’s imperative they grasp a fundamental understanding of it. Whether revealed through difficulty options, mechanic or moveset descriptions, UI, feedback, or controls, a game’s information should be discernible and intelligible. The lack of transparency can obstruct the learning process or, best case scenario, induce an obtuse and frustrating experience.
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Such a really nice video !
I think I can add another two examples to this video from Bayonetta and Metal Gear Rising.
In Bayonetta : The dodge offset mechanic isn't explicitly explained despite it being such an important one in mastering the game, I'm sure there are a lot of players out there that finished the game without even knowing it exists. I personally wouldn't have known about it hadn't I stumbled upon it by chance while looking up some tips and tricks.
Also in MGR, the parrying is poorly explained in a way that misleads the player despite it being, IMO, the most important mechanic in the whole game.
I also wanna let you know that I love the Design Frame series and I hope you keep making more of it.
I had to consult a friend of mine about Bayonetta. I've played it but he's more familiar. He said it would have been perfect to tutorialize it during the first fight with Jeanne since you can't enter Witch Time. Dodge Offset is only important if you want to score well, but most players will enter Witch Time to finish their combos anyway. So the Jeanne fight was a perfect place for it.
I haven't played MGR yet but I'll take your word for it!
I'll be releasing more Design Frames soon; I'm super happy to hear you enjoy them :)
It really sucks that Indivisible is so unintuitive and frustrating when you can tell how much effort was put into the art and designs, the characters look amazing.
Oh for sure! The game looks great!
Mario odyssey's dive is so weird when you consider Mario 64 got it exactly right.
EXACTLY! They messed up the momentum too. Movement felt so much better in 64. I feel so sluggish even traversing areas like Sand Kingdom.
@@DesignFrameCaseStudies The dive having fixed momentum is done that way to make sure if you throw out your cap you always bounce off of it if you dive right after throwing it, meaning it doesn't take previous momentum into account so as to ensure you always hit it. I couldn't disagree more about movement feeling better in 64, feels way too loose and hard to determine where you're going to end up.
I won't deny it's mapping is terrible, though.
4:40 i had to do a lot of experimenting with "calibrate" to see what did and did not constitute as 'fire'.
seems charging your gun doesnt count as shooting, but does still break the cloaking effect of spectre but DOESNT remove its damage bonus from your next shot because the shot counts as being fired from when you started charging (which retains your not fired recently bonus)
Indivisible's issues somewhat come from being a partially incomplete game. I'm pretty sure every character should have at least one super. Iirc the company making the game kinda ceased to exist when Mike Z refused to step down after being outed as a sex pest and had a melt down in which he fired every employee from the company
That explains a lot... that very much saddens me. Thanks for sharing!
Yeah... Indivisible deserved better...
Mike Z was falsely accused by people he worked closely with for years because they wanted to grab the company out from under him. Do a little research before throwing accusations like that around. "The Unsolved Mystery of Skullgirls" goes into a decent amount of detail about the situation.
this video highlights something I wish more Gamers™ would get through their heads
available guidance =/= handholding
I shouldn't have to look online to learn how to target myself with a spell or learn what a parameter does. I'm looking at you, Dragon's Dogma
Exactly! Spot on!
I'd argue that hand-holding is more the opposite extreme, when a game shoves things in your face when they're obvious.
I think dynamic tutorials would help with this, such as if you choose a harder difficulty (assuming you stick with current conventions) it automatically reduces the tutorial to only data that's unique to your game and the way it functions, or simply not popping something on-screen if the player has already shown they know how to do it correctly.
Great and informative video! Keep it up!
Thank you very much!
I'd love to see you tackle the xenoblade gameplay, i think xenoblade is a mostly good series but I do think its more flawed than people usually make it out to be. Especially 3.
That's certainly a monster of a series to play and tackle, so I can't make promises on that, but I appreciate the suggestion! I've always been curious.
@@DesignFrameCaseStudies for sure its a huge undertaking. Thanks for responding to my message
I really like the general idea of the video and how you mentioned so many different games but... I think, 24+ minutes is a bit much for the message. Some games are mentioned for way too long in my opinion. I wouldn't use more than 30 seconds of the viewer's time for each game at this point. 7 minutes per game is way too much if you have that many games mentioned in this video.
Also: A Hat in Time doesn't have that many movement possibilities, does it? I mean, the strange mapping of some Odyssey actions could be just the product of having many moves in the first place. It's not always intuitive, yes. And I had the same problem with the dash as you had but I guess they just didn't have better possibilities for that?
Edit: Selecting difficulties before the game starts is a topic in itself. You could make an own video around that topic, seen that many times. ^^'
Hey! Firstly, thanks for the comment!
I talk about Nova Drift and Indivisible for longer because they provide so many different examples of differing levels of transparency so I wanted to cover them all without being redundant. I discuss the details of the game's design and why it does or doesn't work as I usually attempt to do while also tying it into the bigger picture of the topic. Normally my Design Frames don't strictly tie to a topic like this (last episode was loosely based on Fear instead, while the first 3 episodes don't tie together) and instead center on 3 games, each with their own narrowed-down design aspects, so tying this episode into a central topic forced me to expand the scope a bit. I had to make sure I covered all of the topic's bases without forsaking the individual games' design, if that makes sense. For example, I could have just mentioned how Indivisible doesn't contain useful Character Info but I wanted to make it more comprehensive with the game's varying degrees of information. I don't want to linger too long though, so I only provide 1-2 examples per point I'm trying to make for the game, yet the points themselves relate to Transparency in some way and flow from one to another.
I understand your concern and I do agree there's a line to cross but it's a tough balance. Although the line has some arbitrary variation in its lenience, I certainly would agree that adding more would be too much. I actually have more examples I'm writing in my notes for a potential follow-up video somewhere down the road. Maybe it'll be a shorter video since the foundation is already laid and I won't have to redefine Transparency.
Odyssey is filled with weird controls that are unintuitive, non-transparent, or inaccessible (in regards to forced motion controls). With the forced motion controls, the Action Guide and on-screen controls only displaying some of the controls, and only half of the buttons on the controller being used, I have a hard time believing the controls weren't something that was skimped on during development. Not only are just half of the buttons used but there's no way to remap them. A Hat in Time has less moves but they're more intuitive, re-mappable, easy to learn, and I personally think they feel much better and are more fluid to use (although unrelated to transparency).
I agree that the difficulty selection stuff could be its own video, but I included it since I'm not gonna make a separate video on it and I think it serves as a very strong Transparency example that we see every day. I may revisit dynamic difficulty though since it can vary quite a bit and I find it fascinating. I previously didn't correlate dynamic difficulty with racing games so my mind was blown when I came across some info about dynamic difficulty online. You could also argue that the dynamic difficulty bit could be removed and I don't think I could argue against that, but I feel I'd rather offer two possible solutions than one, even though dynamic difficulty is quite a big topic.
Thank you for this very well-structured, informative and useful essay!
Thank you so much! Thanks for watching :)
whats the game on 9:48 ?? it looks cool
Iris.Fall. I recommend grabbing it on sale.
@@DesignFrameCaseStudies thanks a lott
She turned into a puddle, funniest shit I've ever seen
As much as I adore Oxygen Not Inxluded this game suffers from a horrible lack of transparency and counter-intuitive mechanics that make its midgame borderline unplayable without watching long fan tutorials on it's core mechanics. It's a very mechanically deep game but it only gets away with how nightmarish opaque it is by the virtue of being in a genre where being confusing nd requiring a degree and long dives through wikis and old reddit threads is acceptable
Ah, interesting. I've only seen gameplay so I wouldn't know, but thanks for sharing!
I knew I'm not the crazy one when saying that Odyssey's controls are abysmal in comparison to AHiT :D
124 likes and 24 comments?
My FNaF video recently blew up, but other than that I'm still a small channel :)
I don't think I've played a game worse then indivisible. That game was so shit it turned me off from indigames all together
I can't believe I finished the side quests. It was absolutely horrible. There are great indie games though! I want to cover some more down the road.
@@DesignFrameCaseStudies I would appreciate it if you did some time, you seem to have good taste in games and I'm a junky for games that feel like a piano to play like nioh 2, eldin ring, nier:automata, DMC5. As long as it's got TIGHT controls AND a RPG level up/ upgrade system, Id love to see em
I love NieR:Automata! It was my first video essay too. I'm afraid to revisit that video lol. I still want to play the original NieR. I have DMC5 but haven't played it. I'm looking forward to the Nioh dev's next project, 'cause it looks like the best one yet. I didn't end up playing much of Nioh. Elden Ring... I want to make some shorter videos on, since I'd burnout making a 5 hour video. So I'm hoping to make that soon-ish. And also Kena.
Yeah this is taking your own preferences and treating it as gospel.
The game does not have to tell you everything. You say you can't "experiment" with mechanics if rhe game isn't "transparent" when that is the exact opposite of experimentation.
You want to k own everything without ever trying. You want to know how to know how a character works? *Use them*
And the Mario odyssey example is pure "git gud" they wanted diving to be more difficult
Transparency and experimentation are two different things and you're conflating the two. The former is mostly about controls and information that can be used to make informed decisions, and if the systems are deep enough, then experimentation can blossom from those decisions and information. There also must be a reason to engage with systems to encourage experimentation.
This video seems pretty heavily influenced by the book Rules of Play: Game Design Fundamentals, chapter 3, which goes over discernability in video games in much of the same way you did.
Cite your sources
Hi Addison! I appreciate your concern over cited sources; however, everything here is my own and my own alone. I take the time to learn from other sources every once in a while but that's of course supplementary to my analyses. I do enjoy looking into developer quotes if they're available and, if I quote them, I cite them in the video itself. I've never heard of that book you've mentioned though; I'd be glad to check it out if it's one you recommend.