How Do You Tell Someone They're Going to Die? | Game/Show | PBS Digital Studios
HTML-код
- Опубликовано: 21 дек 2015
- Viewers like you help make PBS (Thank you 😃) . Support your local PBS Member Station here: to.pbs.org/DonateGAME
The mechanics of life bars. How they work, what they convey and which kind of life bar do you want in your game?
Subscribe to PBS Game/Show! bit.ly/1BPJ2VE Tweet at us! / pbsgameshow
↓ More info and sources below ↓
The threat of death keeps video games exciting and exhilarating, and can really affect how you play. Knowing the condition of your character is important for deciding strategy and urgency, but there is much debate over the best way to display this information. Some games rely on simple numbers and statistics to indicate health, while others choose to represent those numbers with visual cues. Both have their advantages and disadvantages, but what do you prefer? Voice your opinions in the comments!
--------------------------------------------------------------
Follow us on Facebook / gameshowpbs
Email us! pbsgameshow [at] gmail [dot] com
Follow us on Reddit / pbsgameshow
--------------------------------------------------------------
ASSET LINKS:
2:19 Super Mario Kart
nintendo.wikia.com/wiki/Super_...
2:19 Sonic The Hedgehog 2
sonic.wikia.com/wiki/Sonic_the...
2:19 Mortal Combat
199.101.98.242/media/images/34634-Mortal_Kombat_(Europe)-3.jpg
2:19 Dune 2 - The Battle for Arrakis
www.gamewarior.com/games/9684/...
2:19 Wolfenstein 3D
www.gamespot.com/articles/the-...
3:02 Doom Commercial for 64-Bit Jaguar
• Doom Commercial for 64...
5:03 Game Design Deep Dive: Amnesia's 'Sanity Meter'
www.gamasutra.com/view/feature...
--------------------------------------------------------------
MUSIC:
""Oh Damn!"" by CJVSO
/ cj. .
""Digital Sonar"" by Brink
""Mindphuck"" by Known To Be Lethal
www.youtube.com/watch?v=B-cyr...
""After Hours""
""Lakes"" by Chooga
www.youtube.com/watch?v=E8hns...
""Beautiful Days"" by Extan
/ beaut. .
""Spectrum Subdiffusion Mix"" by Foniqz
/ f. .
""Good Way Song"" by Electronic Rescue
""Alice y Bob"" by Javier Rubio and Parsec
archive.org/details/escala19_...
""Sleet"" by Kubbi
/ kubbi-sleet
""Toaster"" by Kubbi
/ toaster
""Patriotic Songs of America"" by New York Military Band and the American Quartet
freemusicarchive.org/music/New...
""Lets Go Back To The Rock"" by Outsider
www.jamendo.com/en/artist/440...
""Run"" by Outsider
www.jamendo.com/en/artist/440...
""Fame"" by Statue of Diveo
www.jamendo.com/en/artist/352...
""Freedom Weekends"" by Statue of Diveo
www.jamendo.com/en/artist/352...
--------------------------------------------------------------
Hosted by Jamin Warren (@jaminwar)
See more on games and culture on his site: www.killscreendaily.com
Made by Kornhaber Brown (www.kornhaberbrown.com)
Nobody is recognizing the original use of a diegetic health display which was in Super Mario Bros. where the character's physical appearance changed in ways which could indicate how much damage they could take.
From what I could recall one of the first creative uses of diegetic health display was in Resident Evil 2 where the character would move slower, limp, grab a damaged area of their body in a way which would immediately communicate to the player the status of their character. It is a narrative presentation of a mechanical element which would also affect the gameplay.
+RaySquirrel Both great examples! -jj
"The best life bar is no life bar" (in terms of immersion). Well, unless you're playing Dead Space where the RIG is a legit part of the narrative and I think that's pretty creative.
+Slapshot158 I just like that its the best in game explanation for the reason there is a life bar at all. Normally its the product of some visor or helmet put in front of the characters face that we're suppose to pretend we're looking through. This was way better.
""The best life bar is no life bar" (in terms of immersion)."
I'm going to disagree with this. When you stub you toe, you know it. You don't have a life bar flash in front of your face, but you know you've taken damage. You're not going to die from the damage, but you want to make sure it doesn't happen again, maybe fix the problem. This life bar is just a way of representing this in a visual medium. I don't see it as breaking immersion, as it's a non-intrusive way of displaying something you'd know in real life.
On the other hand, putting a life bar over the enemy is giving the player information they shouldn't have unless there's an in-game explanation for it.
I always find it funny how some shooter games give the player "realistic" effects like "tunnel vision" to indicate poor health, while the main method of regaining health is sucking sustenance from a chest high wall.
I was expecting a much more grim discussion in this video judging by the title.
I have an idea: use the environment to tel your player their health. Not a HUD indicator, not something in the pause menu, not something on the player themselves, but the environment. Things such as screens all around the city, your minion count, how enemies react to you, etcetera.
Spyro sort of did this thing, with Sparx, your dragonfly buddy, changing colours.
*tell
+Adam Van Der Hoeven
Also: Metroid Prime, and later Dead Space.
They have clear health bars, but the health bars exist within the game world itself.
+Adam Van Der Hoeven Bethesda games (SKYRIM, FALLOUT) includes random NPCs who tell you that you are looking sick, infected, etc.
Hire a barbershop quartet to deliver the bad news..?
I actually thought the video was about this subject at first. (how to tell to someone they're going to die not barber shop quartets)
+Paradox Acres Tried that, but they never know when to ask for a signature.
One game that does this in a way that feels like it hits a good midpoint between diegetic and non-diegetic health is Monster Hunter. You have your own health bar, a clear indicator of how hurt you are, but it isn't only that. You also have a small portion of the health bar that is slightly translucent after getting hit, which shows that if you don't get hurt for a while, you can recover from the damage you took to a degree. On the other side of the battlefield, you have the monster, who has no health bar, and you have no clear way to know how hurt they are. When the battle progresses, you can tell that they are hurt because they have parts of their body that are injured, or the can even start to drool and pant when fatigued. Then you really know that your efforts are paying off, because they start trying to run away to recover, they no longer want to fight, and while they are doing this, they are very obviously limping and yelping out. It's a good way to make the most important information (your own health) obvious, and the information that you would never be able to know realistically, exactly that. Loved the video by the way!
I hate when screens go fully black'n white or red. Effective, but I hate them. They make me screw up more while adding anxiety.
I prefer somewhere in between screen-effects and character illustration of lost of health.
I think there is a threshold where the effect detracts from the game experience more than it would help by informing the player. If the player has a way of controlling the visual effect to some extent, such as being able to use a stimpack for a quick health bump, the problem can be mitigated but not removed. It's the games where you can only wait for the effect to go away that are the worst offenders
+Tommy Lee Lynn I'm pretty sure they're supposed to make you screw up. The character is about to die and you get to experience that frantic clinging to life by having to deal with a stressful situation with poor visibility. I'm not really an FPS player so take what I say with a grain of salt but that's been my take on it.
Stephen Church I don't doubt you, but I don't like it all the same. Especially as a person gets very anxious to begin with.
The change of music when the health bar is red in Pokemon Black and White versions... amazing.
+DragoSonicMile it makes me feel uneasy, like the 'running out of air' sound effect from sonic 2
There's this survival game in development called _Lacuna Passage_ which says will replace health bars with a more abstract (and realistic) combination of measurements from your spacesuit rather than a single, magical HP number.
So you'll be able to infer how healthy you are based on how much glucose, potassium and sodium is on your blood for instance, or how quick your body is burning lipids. Yet none of these numbers is "the" health bar. Instead, they all represent things you have to take care of.
But until the game is released, I can't tell how much more compelling this system will be.
Sounds like that could just muddy the waters so that players will know less about the important aspects of the character (am I about to die? can I take on the next enemy/challenge?), despite a wealth of more specific stats.
Nick Combs I guess that's part of what makes this approach interesting
That depend. If there is actual game mechanic involved these separated stats. Then it will become meaningful feature and not just a gimmick.
BTW this is the first time I have heard of Lacuna Passage. It look pretty interesting. I definitely gonna follow it. Thank you very much.
DarkThug you welcome :)
Dead space brilliantly bridged the diegetic/non-diegetic gap by incorporating the life readout onto part of Isaac's "rig" on his back, so that it made narrative sense while minimizing HUD clutter and loss of immersion, while still providing the vital information. It's honestly one of the most brilliant solutions I've seen on how to incorporate a life bar without losing immersion in the game world
It's also interesting to note that some games have multiple health bars of sorts where upon depletion they don't necessarily lead to a fail state, but instead give a disability or handicap (e.g. the Fallout games and the use of locational health bars for arms, legs, head, and body that upon depletion give gameplay penalties).
It would be interesting to see more games play around with this idea of using your health level affect how you play since the depletion of the health bar in those situations have a very direct gameplay consequence that the player can "feel" as opposed to needing understand their character's health state by reading the numbers off the screen.
There is no ideal way to give feedback to the player, it all needs to be appropriate to the game itself. Some games are all about immersion, and minimizing non-diegetic feedback on-screen can become one way to minimize how many times the player is reminded they are sitting on a couch, holding a controller, playing a video game. Other games will find it more important to provide the player with a larger amount of data they can use for their decision-making. Game developers need to figure out how much information their players need to know at any given point of the game, and give it to them.
Its why a lot of horror games keep data tucked away in a pause screen menu instead of on-screen at all times. They don't want you to be thinking about the game in abstract terms of numbers etc, they want you to think about your in-universe situation, not to micro-manage small details about your life bar, etc.
In the old resident evils, they don't want you to always think, "I am at 70% health, I have 36 shots left" - - instead, they want you to think, "I was in ok condition, but I got hit recently, and now I'm being chased, oh no! I could be in trouble! But im not sure exactly how much trouble I'm in! I had a full magazine and I shot a few times since, how much ammo do I have? Do I have enough to take down this giant crocodile-man? I should check . . .. oh no! another monster!! FRICK" With the exact information not directly on-screen, but requiring you to check some menu that hides the current gameplay while its on.
Dead Space was a more even cross between horror and action, it was more about fighting and less about running away, so having more data available about your condition and ammo was important.They tried to make life bars and other important feedback be part of the world's technology with the color display on your suit's spine and your ammo count displayed on your gun itself, etc, as trade-off between immersion and feedback. It was a little bit silly, but it did its job pretty well.
Dead Space's life bar is one of the best ever!
It's very creative to display every information the player needs on the character itself.
Hmm, I don't know...I've always preferred Life Bars over the Diegetic way of showing damage.
I guess the Diegetic way almost always feels a bit..*_gimmicky_* to me. There are exceptions, but.they rarely actually add anything to the overall experience. But that's just me.
+Paradox Acres I agree, I wish all of those games had an option to switch on a life bar or number indicator because usually I would much rather have that.
badavis1992 Me too. A life bar just feels more natural, somehow.
Well part of the problem is most games that have screen changes don't work the same way. In some games they might just have the corners red when you are almost dead and another game might have that after you take one or two hits. So you never know how close you are to dying until you die a few times and get used to the game.
badavis1992 True.
Even so, I'd argue that even when they're done right..those "screen changes" indicators just never _feel_ right. They're more distracting than helpful.
+Paradox Acres
Yeah. I understand what they're going for; an injured person isn't going be moving as quickly or processing what's going on as well. It just always feels like a punishment.
"Oh, you're having difficulty with this part? Let me clog your vision, muffle the sound, and limit your charaters speed. That'll help, right?"
Then the change from the brink of death to full health after a quick breather just feels...weird. Like what immersion the damage indicators add is removed every time I heal.
Haha, Paper Mario had an annoying warning sound effect whenever the life bar got low. It's like the game's nagging you to use an item and heal yourself now! But the standard "danger" effect (which cues at 5 HP remaining) became much higher pitch when in "peril" (1 HP remaining). It caught me off guard the first time it happened, I still remember that. If a game can amp up feedback when approaching critical levels, that would be impressive.
I think Super Mario Sunshine also did something similar where 4 bars or less would start a warning sound, but as the meter drops the warning gets more pronounced and Mario starts to droop when standing still.
I've always loved/hated the way the old Resident Evil games did it, where your character would start to move slower and start limping the more damage you took. There was also an ECG-style wave that read "fine", "caution" or "danger" when you accessed your inventory. It did tie nicely into the game as saves were few and far between and health was always at a premium, forcing you to weigh up how much you valued movement/aim speed versus if you think you could take another hit. Coupled with the fixed camera angles and the sound design (ie the staggered footsteps, etc), it really enhanced the entire survival-horror feeling of dread and urgency.
The good old health bar is very good. Without it death feels far too random.
Adding some other reaction might be good but it has to be carefully implemented to avoid getting the way of the actual gameplay. If a game features black and white tunnel vision I have no other choice than avoiding it like the plague.
One great thing about scifi shooters is that they can add hard data about health to the UI, and it works as diegetic because it's a function of the helmet within the story. I really like it when games justify their UI by using their story; it means I don't have to sacrifice immersion to get precise data.
In the survival difficulty setting of Last Of Us you have no hud whatsoever so the only way to tell if Joel is injured or about to die is based on how he looks (so it kinda brings back the early 90's FPS method in a way). As he gets more injured he starts holding his side, maybe a little limp, and bleeding becomes more obvious. It creates a hardcore and immersive gaming experience that really puts you in Joel's shoes because Joel doesn't have some health bar to see if he's okay. And because of this, it makes you try to be 100x more careful when playing because the difference between more healthy than not and less healthy than not is very blurry.
It's a bit of a side note, but it's interesting to think about 'critical existence failure' here: The idea that in many games 1% health is identical to 100% health in terms of your character's abilities - it doesn't matter how beaten up you are, you can still fight as if you're completely fresh. Many people feel like it's one of the biggest problems with immersion in gaming and it's been a problem since before video games (i.e. dungeons and dragons has a similar issue). The alternative is of course to remove abilities from the character as they get injured, which then removes strategies from the player - this can lead to a snowball where when you start to take damage your ability to avoid further damage is avoided and is potentially not at all fun. It's a very direct example of the tradeoff between immersion and strategy that you talked about here.
There's a whole possible discussion on this, because by its very nature critical existence failure has spawned a lot of other gaming tropes - for example, if all gaming was fully realistic in terms of damage then rocket jumping would never have been a thing.
+James Bloomfield Great point! -jj
Dead Space handled health indication pretty well diegetically with the neon bar along Isaac Clarke's spine, green for all's good and red for less than optimal. Having a weapon's ammo counter displayed solely on the gun itself and holographic lines projected away by the weapon also helped to remove more of the glaring HUDs which are useful in a fast-paced shooter, but more distracting when you're trying to create a horror environment.
"True progress is not a one size fits all but the ability to make suitable choices"
This line reminds me of the debate I've seen going on about action rpgs and turn-based rpgs, in light of choices being made for the FFVII remake. Some people say action battle systems are the future of the rpg genre and that turn-based is a inferior, dying form. Others dislike action rpgs for various reasons and would like to see turn-based return in a big way. I think your quote about progress applies perfectly here -- developers can and should adopt whichever style works for their game. Progress is marked by more options, not necessarily the death of older ideas.
1997's Total Annihilation featured some really cool health features. In a game more about herds than about individuals, you had the option to turn on or off health bars. This helped you see the herd as a whole, as well as not get attached to single units in the game. They still had a feature very similar to the faces in the games mentioned. The robots would slowly begin to smoke more, and in some cases slow down. It was really interesting to see the robots actually respond to the amount of damage they took. Great episode!
The whole concept of "health" and how it relates to failure states is one of those issues I'd put in the category of the Design Uncanny Valley. I talk about on this episode of Extra Play with Dan.
ruclips.net/video/6viAQjxotfc/видео.html
(Jump to 8:40 for the convo about that specifically.)
+Josh Foreman Interesting, I suppose uncanny valley for health bar do really exist.
Skyrim is one of the great games that does diegetic and non-diegetic. It has a health bar that only appears when you are injured, and if your health gets low, the screen tints red and you start hearing a heart beat. If you health gets really low the heart rate quickens. It is a great immersive way to be notified about your health. In addition there are mods that add even more notification. Important Information Overhaul mod darkens the screen as your health gets critical. Exhaustion mod makes your character breath heavier as your health goes down. All of those of very immersive.
like others have said (and the video as well), it depends on the kind of game and gameplay. i have a kind of of appreciation for the "fading away" life meter. the one where the screen gets blurry or bloody. the immersion forces me to think differently about what i need to do. i can either, say, fire blindly or throw a grenade as my strength dwindles and vision fades, hoping i take down my attackers before they take me down; take that as a cue to put my gun down and grab a health pack; or bail all together and limp into cover while i regain my strength. it's reacting to the moment, which in many ways i rather like. bars and such, you have a level of strategy that sort of gives away how much damage you can endure before you're in trouble. useful when combat is frustrating or complex. i prefer games that employ the latter, but only if it serves the gameplay.
I think Smash Bros, which was shown in the video but not really discussed, is one of the best examples of a life bar reflecting a game's tone. Even if its by coincidence, the idea that your damage increases rather than approaching zero, aka death, shows the game's more lighthearted tone - it's a sumo match, not a death match. The idea that you don't "Finish Them" is perfectly reflected by the fact that there isn't a definite goal in the damage you deal.
i really like the "Dead space" sistem, and the "LA Noire" when the screen becomes monochromatic
I think Elite Dangerous does a great job of merging diegetic and non-diegetic means of displaying health. On the one hand, the player plenty of meters in your ship to tell them shield levels and hull integrity, but the game also offers several other clues. First, there is the classic sci-fi female voiceover telling the player the status of thier ship. This is maybe a mixture of both diegetic and non-diegetic, but it does help create an immersive experience and adds to the fantasy of being a star pilot. Additionally as player's ship loses hull integrity there will be cracks in the cock-pit and sparks flying from your dash. If the player checks their readouts they have an exact number relating to the health of their ship, but in the heat of battle it's not always easy to watch your ships dash. The voiceover notifications and ship destruction paint a picture and will give the player a rough idea of the status and health of the ship when there isn't necessarily time for checking gauges and meters.
I'm surprised you didn't mention the Super Mario Bros. style of "life bar" which excels use in platformers. In games like Mario, Crash Bandicoot and even Spyro, losing your mushroom, Aku-Aku or Sparx makes the player feel like their vulnerable, building a kind of tension, as you know in one hit, you will die.
Lifebars are great to showcase games on a ludo-narrative spectrum. Some games focus on the play aspect and require specific, explicit statements to gauge the proximity to a failstate, particularly in a competitive environment. This allows for strategic use of health as a resource and to make useful assessments of risks. Other games are more story focused and want to abstract game elements away where possible. In those cases stuff like tunnel vision or avatar model deterioration are smoother indicators.
Finding a balance could be interesting, but isn't exactly necessary either.
3:29-4:17 I appreciate learning about the meaning of those phrases outside of soundtracks and music use
My favorite diagetic implementation of the health bar, though maybe cheating, is from the Metroid Prime series, which incorporates the entire HUD into Samus' power suit visor. Even the map and options menu were implied to be in the visor screen. You can also see Samus' face in the visor reflection if there was a bright enough flash, usually as she is wincing from an explosion. This is a lot like the the Wolf3D experience of being reminded who you are and how you are fairing both physically and emotionally.
I think that "health" bars were started on Wolfenstein 3D but there was still the idea of health back in Mario, having the ability to become big and then get small when you get hit and die when you get hit again, making you already know when you're about to die. Technically, this could be showing your health, at least besides the lives counter, so its health went further than the number of lives listed.
The Deadliest Warrior videogame probably benifited from the immersive factor of having a healthbar barely correlated to the damage you were about to take. Because the game registers things like severed arteries and limbs, one quick slash would have you bleed out before the health bar's animation caught up with the fact you were dead. You the player probably didn't realize you were dead either until your character had crumpled to the ground and that made fights awesome.
Personally, i like the way the Dead space series did life bars. The life bars are on not only the player characters back, but also on all the other characters and are directly referenced in the game as a part of the game world.
As someone who enjoys playing games competitively, I have a strong preference for purely informational displays. Precise numbers let you know exactly what's going on and what you can get away with. In games with very solid mechanics you can often see people trying to strip away the fluff and story for the "important stuff". You can see this in games like tf2 were people install custom huds and settings to simplify information at the loss of realism. Btw, was it a coincidence you included both tf2 and overwhatch? I would assume not. Perhaps an episode about new games replacing old ones.
Except overwatch is not replacing TF2
;-;
Mlkshke4 I agree. Tf2 for life. But it is what everyone's talking about.
It's a pretty new game but I love what Darkest Dungeon does with their life bar. First thing they have going for them is a Stress meter. Fill the stress meter up and the character's resolve is tested. The character can either be found virtuous, in which case they get a buff and their stress is reduced, or they could get afflicted and get a debuff plus stress out your party. The health bar is similar, when it hits zero the character is on death's door, suffer a debuff and any further attack has a percentage chance of killing them. It combines the hard numbers and bars useful for strategy with an uncertainty of what's going to happen when the shtf and believe me, in the darkest dungeon, the fan will be hit.
LOLZ. The respawn. Well played, Jamin.
+Shawn G GUESS WHO'S BACK
I kind of enjoyed what Wolfenstein: The New Order did with health. Sure, the way it was displayed was just a number, but what was cool about it was that it went down whenever you got hurt, even if it was in a cutscene. Basically, they used the HP display in non-played parts of the game to let you know that the explosion that just knocked Bill over still hurts, even though you weren't controlling him at the time.
I was always impressed by the way Doom indicated your life. It was very original and creative. Too bad we don't see that more often. But life-bars can become like an icon. For instance, I love The Legend of Zelda's life-bar hearts and I used it to indicate my phone's battery life through an app. When my friend saw it, he instantly recognised it. That's interesting, how video game features can be part of our life in ways you wouldn't expect!
Even in the future when we have fully immersive virtual reality, it seems like we might still use something like a life bar. Because even if you had perfect simulation of life, you wouldn't want to feel pain and bleed out in a game. Dying still wouldn't be a pleasant thing, so even if you could feel it, you probably wouldn't want to.
My fav lifebar is from Sly Cooper One. You either have one hit or two in that game, and it's shown by a lucky horseshoe on your back.
I think it doesn't make logical sense to describe something like health as a percentage, because of the somewhat weird nature. Let's say your character breaks a leg and loses 25% of his life. It would be obvious that a similar wound would do the same percentage of damage. So say your character breaks both arms and both legs, he loses 4*25%=100% life and is therefore dead? I don't think so, you have 4 broken limbs and a pretty tough time, but you're still alive. That's why I like the way Dwarf Fortress deals with this sort of things. Your Dwarf does not lose a certain percentage of life points, he keeps getting more and more injuries, varying between a bruise and an arm getting chopped off, eventually becoming fatal. But even wounds over time can be lethal, they can die by infection or blood loss.
Visual queues like tinted red, or shake tot he cam. Audio queues, slight ringing and so on. All of these IMO are the best health indicators as it really puts you into the character.
The Super Smash games are great at showing the characters' health. When you start to fly higher when hit, you KNOW you gotta be careful.
in Megaman X when X's health was low the avatar itself would begin visibly panting and continue until his health was restored
Deus Ex: Human Revolution has a perfect combo of diegetic and non-diegetic health/armour indicators. The indicators are apart of the story- necessary almost considering Jensen is half robot - and thus immersive, but they also provide exact numbers in a logical and non-distracting way. Obviously the kind of combination Deus Ex has is not possible with every game type, but I do believe being both immersive and informative is possible.
I really liked in the Dead Space games where you have your health on your back. Obviously, it wasn't much use to Isaac but it was pretty cool.
Some games that i believe do it very well are the dead space series, the rig is a great tool that actually makes sense as a HUD, the Metro series, where there isn't any HUD, and Eternal Darkness, where the game uses its HUD as a mechanic and not a data projection.
Dead Space is great at world building and immersion where all information is displayed on the characters themselves while being relevant within the context of their actions. This device has a readout for when people in the game world use it, therefore the player can use the same readout and have it be natural. All of the relevant data is displayed the way it would be displayed in the "real" world and not how it would be displayed in a game.
Metro 2033 and last light have the ability to loose all of its non-diegetic info entirely. The way the game is designed makes visual and audio queues seem natural. Guns are designed with visible magazines so you can see how many bullets are left. Its as accurate as far as you care to count. My gas mask is low because i can hear my character wheezing and see my watch flashing. Its all accurate, but the meters are in game objects. Each magazine is a bar graph of how many bullets i have and my watch is a literal timer.
Eternal Darkness, just doesn't care about hiding its data. It recognizes its there and manipulates it to tell a story. It has all the standard information, but when your sanity is low that information is treated as a part of the characters story. The entire game doesn't mind breaking the forth wall to let the player know how their character is feeling.
Id say none of these compromise the ability to create strategy. Something like Smash brothers where damage is a unambiguous % value is more unpredictable than these games in terms of KNOWING what your character can do.
One of my favorite life bars in any video game isn't even yours. In Trauma Center, the victim you're operating on has a heartrate monitor. Depending on how poor a job you're doing, it will start to flat line. This caused me panic which did nothing for my nerves, but is a drastic reminder that you need to do a better job.
I would say Dead Space's spinal indicator was one of the best uses of a health bar in video games. The spine lights gave you a general idea of how much health you had without giving you an exact number, and it also doesn't take your attention away from the action/combat in the game. And there is an in lore use for those health indicators that everyone uses. Watch the Dead Space movies or even pay close attention to DS1 and DS2 as NPC's get attacked and killed. With every hit they take you see their health bars drop drastically but it realistically doesn't give you an 'exact' health indicator. Honestly I dont think a health bar has been as revolutionary since Doom/Wolfensein with the face. Yeah other FPS's have the screen blurring, tunnel vision and loss of color, but the information given to exactly how healthy/unhealthy you are is very lacking. I would also say that the Fallout series comes a close second with how body parts can get crippled. Arms dont reload or attack as fast, you legs get crippled and you cant jump or walk very fast. Your head gets crippled and you vision blurs and you have to rely on V.A.T.S.
Personally when it gets too in game, like when a character will limp or tunnel vision occurs, I can find it really frustrating. It's cool at first, yes, but then if you're trying to beat a really hard part it can snowball. I distinctly remember one section in Eternal Darkness (blast from the past, I know, but trying to prove a point) where you have to time it so you walk by spinning blade in a temple. They're pretty simple if you're at full health, but if your walk is slower because you were damaged, chances are you're going to get chopped and take more. Then the next set you won't be fast enough to get through at all, and you lose another chunk of your health.
Speaking of immersion (also Fallout 4 Spoiler ahead i guess):
in the beginning of Fallout 4 you have to witness the murder of your spouse. The first time it really hit me and with this episode in mind: in addition to being totally powerless, you don't yet have a Pib-Boy and therefore no HUD, no lifebar, no sign of this being a game. Guess that explains it for me.
Excellent segment!
I always loved Dead Space's health bar on the character's spine (and Dead Space's UI in general)
I've been waiting for someone to make a first person view MMORPG that takes the diagetic elements and immersion to the next level for over a decade, but the opposite has been happening instead. I guess the saying "you can't always get what you want" is quite fitting in this instance.
The problem with the whole face by the life bar is that it's also non-diegetic, as the character can't see their own face. also, you don't want to take your eyes away from the screen to look at your own character's wounded face when you have the health in big numbers just beside it.
Before amnesia, Eternal Darkness had a sanity meter and mgs4 had a stress meter. That was cool because mental health is another kind of health, and because any human being would be affected by what those characters went through, and because, in mgs4's case, low stress wouldn't result in death but 'nonlethal incapacitiation'
Red smears on the screen are annoying because they block the screen but are more diegetic than a simple lifebar, lots of games have both, however.
Perhaps the best kind of health bar today is Fallout's: not only do you have general health but you have specific limb-based health which actually affects the gameplay (which, imo is the biggest flaw with the lifebar, not that it quantifies something which is not actually quantifiable, but that a low health character often plays exactly the same as a high health character) and the rad meter. Survival mods also add hunger and thirst and you could also add a 'fatigue' mod which requires the player to rest frequently just like real life. That's probably the most realistic version of a healthbar you could get today, and bethesda would probably have that built into the game except that it would likely turn away casual fans of the game if Fallout because more survival-focused.
How about games like Metroid Prime, and later Dead Space?
They show a health bar, but the bar itself indicates something that exists in the game world, and the bar you see also exists within the game world.
When you started talking about health bar. I thought you were going to mention how we keep using the same magical life bar for decades now with no improvement whatsoever.
There are many game out there that use more innovative/creative health system than this single be all end all bar. Dwarf Fortress foregoes such numerical health system altogether. Bushido Blade also has limb damage with no health bar.
A midpoint approach is those who still retain numerical bar but divide it among many parts to make it more logical/less magical. Stuffs like limb damage in Fallout 3,4 or sub module damage in many flight sim and space sim. Some still have central HP bar. When this one reach zero, you explode regardless of other sub bars. Other foregoes main bar altogether. You will be fine as long as your head (and heart and lung) is still intact even though enemies keep crushing your limbs over and over. There is also an approach with limb damage and a separate pain bar. The pain itself won't kill you. However, if it's filled, you pass out. You'll become sitting duck. For all purpose and intent, pain bar become your life bar. However an injury to some body part may cripple you permanently or kill you prematurely before pain bar even filled out. Such system usually found on rogue-like survival game, NEO scavenger to name one.
Another approach is one that has stamina bar with real consequence. Dark Soul, for example, badly manage your stamina can quickly kill you. In Arcanum and Morrowind, if you run out of stamina, you pass out. And it's used to cast magic as well. There is even unarmed skill that focus on reducing 's opponent's stamina to knock them out.
What do you think about this topic ? Should we change the way we look at life in video game ??
PS. Not to mentioned, death in most game is non consequential nowaday.
I like the Mega Man X series on SNES. It wasn't overdone, but when you were around a little under half health - X would start gasping for air. At a little under a quarter health, additionally he'd start smoking.
I'm rather surprised he didn't bring up Super Mario Bros. as one of the first "diegetic" vitality display, because Mario/Luigi is at his weakest when he's little, and healthiest when he's big (super).
Also, the ten second countdown at the end of the video totally needed the countdown/escape music from Super Metroid.
5:53 Assassin's Creed is a strange choice for showing off non-diegetic health bars, because that series is an excellent example of how it's possible to blend a numerical health bar into a game's story in a diegetic way. I haven't played the later games, but in the earlier ones it wasn't a health bar at all - it displayed how closely your/Desmond (the player character)'s actions "synchronised with" those of Altaïr/Ezio. As Desmond's ancestors were flawless assassins, any mistakes you made like taking hits or failing missions reduced your synchronisation, and too much of that caused you to "die" because the simulation failed. Immersion is preserved because that bar is something characters in the game universe would actually be observing.
Strange you didn't mention "Peter Jackson's King Kong" game, by Ubisoft. I remeber it notable because of it's very VERY light on screen indications.
Much of the time, the titles of these indicate one thing, but then the video is only related. On any other channel this would really annoy me, but PBS game show / idea channel is just too interesting
I donno if the Doom/Wolfeinstein head count as diegetic information. I've always heard that to be diegetic, it has to exist in a form the characters can experience it, e.g. Gunshot wounds in Res Dead Redemption. Non-diegetic information is only information the player can experience- like a HUD Or a mini-map. The Doom head kinda tows that line...
I'm surprised you didn't mention Mario's version of the lifebar (also featured in Maximo), where your avatar's size and equipment are the only indication of your stamina.
I'd be interested in seeing a video that covered procedural narrative as you've already covered procedural generation, emergent narrative, and many other topics associated with narrative design in games.
Excellent video.
Insurgency is one of those games without a lifebar.
Ratchet and clanks health is nanotechnologly, so microscopic tape robots which 'rebuild your body inside and out'.
*nanotechnology
Havel the Rock is a pretty great way to tell someone they're about to die.
PRAISE THE SUN!
smash bros does exactly that, no life bar, though because of the percent and it's color shows how your fighter is doing similar to a life bar
I think something that would have aided in this discussion is to have started it out away from video games - even their earliest forms. Rather to look at what inspired a lot of basic video game mechanics - RPGs. Not video game RPGs but old pen and paper ones like DnD. That whole medium deals with this RP vs Game dynamic all the time and has been doing so longer than video games. Indeed, you can look to inspiration from classic www RPGs and see that they were directly inspired by Dungeons and Dragons. So the language they used to express the physics of the world (life totals, damage, etc) is influenced by those early Pen&Paper games. Then there was the switch to percentile totals which has been done before in some RPGs.
But just as video games have struggled with the representation of mechanical effects with story elements, Pen&Paper RPGs have, too. There are a variety of strategies that go back as long as the genre in regards to expressing states of being in expository description rather than hard mechanical expression. The tunnel vision you mention is a parallel directly of such activities. I know I have GMed games and been in games where the GM says something akin to "You feel yourself getting tired. The warm blood from the gash in your head drips from the side of your brow. You notice then that the room's elegant colors begin to show a crimson hue." In that kind of sentence the player hasn't been given mechanical data but rather story-telling elements that express: Your health is low, etc.
I state the above because I see modern video games trying to embrace that kind of story dynamic in preference to mechanical expression. Thus we have the bloody tunnel visions. We have the warping of the game reality as displayed (a common feature in horror games), we have the audible sounds of heartbeats being played. All these things take strong cues from a long history of gaming in another medium.
All that said, though, these of course are only paralleling the even longer history of actual story telling in books or things like campfire stories.But I think that Pen&Paper RPGs are the leading edge in how we perceive our characters in video game RPGs as they have had even longer time to learn to deal with this issue. Plus the barrier for entry to such things is much less since not everyone can program but everyone can talk. ^^
+Dillon Wyatt (出蘭) Good call on D&D. Such a hugely influential game! -jj
Aerith's death and suddenly Phoenix Down and revive spell became useless.
In my best Mr T voice: You gonna die, fool!
I say rather than deciding if the health bar should stay or go, we should instead look at ways to make it matter more to the story. I want your health actually determining your effectiveness in combat. When it comes to final bosses in games, it always annoyed me that as their phases progress they get stronger and stronger, the more damage you do to them the harder they become to defeat. I would feel it to be more immersive and also more fun if both you and the enemy got weaker and more exhausted as the fight dragged on. This should also be translated over to dialogue and cutscenes. It bothers me greatly when I end a fight and the dialogue or cutscene discards all of that information in order to progress the story in its chosen direction. Acting wounded when you are not, and acting healthy when seriously injured. It would be nice if it actually reflected your health, and changed how things played out based on your health.
As for the health bar itself, though. I feel it should be totally based on player choice. All health bars should be defaulted to "Off" in options in most games, but with the ability to chose if you want an actual health bar or a bloody screen in the options menu. Giving the player the ability to use what they feel best entertains or benefits them.
Anyone else notice that subtle No Man's Sky footage?
I think you should end all episodes with an explosion.
I recommended you talk about this ages ago
Thank You for the Primal Rage note!!!!
The interesting thing about Assassin's Creed is that, in some games, the health bar isn't quite health but synchronization for the player/Desmond, which means some of them might be diegetic and might be seen in the animus. So does this make it diegetic on one level (Desmond's/whoever's in the animus) but then non-diegetic on another, since it's kind of a video game within a video game? #gameception
+Emileigh Radcliff Huh? That's a super interesting thought! -jj
U want immersion? Make something that shocks you every time you get hurt :)
0:56 ARE YOU NOT ENTERTAINED?!
i think non diegetic health indicators have been overall declined in use in all games except highly competitive games. Games such as counter strike or league of legends require precise representations of a situation so that a player can change strategies, and as a result they have stuck with non diegetic health indicators. Meanwhile, non competitive games such as single player campaigns can do a way with these non diegetic health indicators because it can afford to sacrifice accuracy in status portrayal for immersion as it is not entirely required for casual play.
Huh? You did not really talk about how death doesnt matter to the characters actual vitality.
For example, in a game my character is about to die if he gets but a scratch, yet he can do everything he previously could.
This is super annoying in fighting games where you have a sliver of health left and you can still dish out a comeback but alas you got jabbed on your foot and you are KNOCKED OUT, but its games and its the fun of it where it lies mostly.
0:30 thank you so much ah that much better
What about Arthur from Ghosts 'n Goblins or Mario? Having armor or being big absorbs being hit once.
Avoid global health bars and focus on localized health. Why does getting shot in the foot somehow hurt you in the same way a shot to the head would? Instead, take a Deus Ex approach of limb damage, where a fully crippled foot causes you to slow down significantly. Either that, or stick to 1-hit-kills where a health bar would be irrelevant.
Was that gunshot at the start taken from Ace Attorney?
104 likes. Fred confirmed. Whoever gets this reference gets a kiss from Black Box.
Super Meat Boy and the absence of health. Kind of. Really, the replay of all the failed attempts create a kind of shame for the player. (shame or motivation to die a bunch more times in ridiculous ways)
in robocraft if you get shot the place that you get shot onlt is damaged so we can se our hp bar by how broken our vechicle is
Anybody know what game is shown at 6:32?
The title of the video is rather morbid and sad.
just say "dude, you're brown bread.'
we shiet
i thought this was going to be a talk of how to tell some one his going to die
haven´t seen the video yet but try use Hank Greens new song
How many houses does Jamin have?