You know, I can watch programming videos all day, but this series has really helped me get great ideas on how to make a game that will be fun and engaging. Keep making these vids that outline the aspects of game design from a player's needs POV! I am going to watch them all and make sure it's all taken into account!
***** Well, until it's release, I recommend Steam for the best indie titles available. I'll be sure to put my apps on blast all over the internet when they become a reality.
Well, of course if you want to improve the design of your game, watching videos about game design will be quite more useful than watching programming videos lol
I think that it's very interesting how Portal 2 is broken up. They start with you wandering around Aperture with Wheatley trying to find a way out, until Glados wakes up and makes you go through all sorts of tests. The tests get kind of monotonous after a while, but that's the point. It makes the player experience what Chell is feeling in those moments. That feeling of "When is this going to end? I'm done with puzzles!" Then there's the sequence where Wheatley tries to break you out, and the next phase of the game is spent sneaking around Aperture while taking Glados' security systems offline. It's a really interesting change of pace where, while the gameplay is essentially the same, the context of the story is what breaks it up and makes it interesting. "Wait, Glados wants me to do WHAT? Won't that kill me? Like the last couple dozen tests that I've had to solve?"
you know what game mastered differences in kind? phoenix wright: ace attorney. you have the moments where you're talking to people: gathering information on them, the plot, your surroundings, and the current case. you have the moments where you're gathering evidence: finding small, minute details which will help you later on. and then there's the moments in court: presenting the evidence and information that you have gathered. there are these three very distinct kinds, and yet they flow together fairly well.
I think a great example of change in kind is Ninja Gaiden. New enemies where at every turn completely new: not merely stronger versons, they used different attacks, requiered you to come up with new strategies and combos, they felt compeltely different. Especially when chainging dificulty- one expects that a raise in dificulty makes you take more damage, only. Instead we got entirely new enemies which we had never seen before, in addition to the raise in dificulty. That kept it intresting- allowing you to replay the same game like 4 times in a row without getting bored.
Wait, is it just me, or could Call of Warioware actually be an entertaining mash-up if the Wario artistic direction was juxtaposed with COD style combat.
I remember reading that the developers of CoD were confused that they sold a bunch of games, but most of their players actually never touched the multiplayer aspect. The devs simply could not understand it. Perhaps this would explain it.
You perfectly explained how I feel about my video game library! I mostly play league of legends and my friends ask how I can play so often. The differences in kind are just so comforting. I am going to use your explanation of differences in kind to explain why I like or don't like certain games from now in. Thank you very much for all your videos!
As someone going to school for game design I sometimes come upon an article or a video that makes me think hey, my view point isn't going to be the same after watching this. I have to admit that I love, absolutely love systems in games. Seeing this really makes me think about making better levels and enemies by subtly changing the scale, AND subtly changing the kinds of things you do in the game. Thx for this one, should help to make better games for all of us.
You know, I've always noticed differences in kind, but definitely not to this degree. I always looked for vastly differing ways to play, but not differences in how the same mechanic is presented. I just chalked stuff like that up to progression in difficulty! There's always more to learn. Excellent video!
What I find interesting about diiferences in kind when it comes to League of Legends is that the differences are created by the players themselves: getting an item that gives you a destructive power over opponents, muscling in on team fights, picking off the low-health opponent that crossed your path, so on. It's all very different, but each scenario has been created by the player, his team and his opponents. That's probably something no developer can confidently rely on to make a good game and I reckon LOL got really lucky.
I'd love to see a more nuanced Differences in Kind, like differences in kind specifically in enemies, or encounters, or difficulty levels. In fact, I think most increases in difficulty are the cheap kind (more enemies with more health, shields, and attack power). I love a difficulty change (either in game settings or just from one encounter to the next) where the flavor of abilities changes. You don't have to just handle melee damage any more, you need to handle traps, ranged AoE damage, attacks from multiple sides, disabling debuffs, etc. The nature of combat has changed from 1-dimentional to multi-dimentional. Even better, maybe the AI or carefully crafted enemy layout has changed so that you aren't facing a simple rush any more, but heavy tanks screening for ranged damage dealers and backed up by healers and buffers. Debuffers hitting specific units with specific ailments, like silence on my mages and domination on my tanks, not the other way around. When the change makes you throw out your strategy and develop something entirely different, that's a HUGELY different feel than just having tighter parameters.
The problem with that kind of change is also its advantage - you need to rethink your strategy to deal with this new threat. If the change is significant, and the resulting metagame change is similarly significant, this basically resets the skill level of the player, which can be frustrating, as it may feel like all of the tricks you've learned up to that point have become worthless. On the other hand, if the new, different element of the game is later integrated with the old, it can make for an amazing payoff.
The Call of Duty example is interesting, since it shows minor shifts in kind rather than major shifts like puzzle to combat. I may harp on the CoD series for releasing mainly on the multiplayer platform, but if they can (occasionally) do pretty good things from a gameplay design perspective, they can't be the black holes of sameness I thought they were.
leventhefox I think that the main reason a lot of people harp on cod, is that from a viewing standpoint, all of the games look exactly the same, with a few improved graphics and more guns. And I must say that in several cases that is true. I really don't see the need to buy ghosts as opposed to black ops 2, and quite frankly I would be satisfied with just playing Modern Warfare 3. The main reason that I would buy the new games, is that after you exhaust the campaign and other single player modes in an old game, the only engaging thing left to do is multi-player. Often times, a massive portion of the community has switched over to the new game making it challenging to find full, or even really good games online.
In my personal opinion, CoD4 was the best of the series, WaW and MW2 being good games in their own right, but now the series it just too bloated. The CoDs before the modern shift were good too no less. The newer ones just seem to be money snatchers to me at this point; nothing new and really inventive coming from them. It's good for some, but not for me.
The bloatedness of the newer CoD games touches on a point he brought up in his "punishing vs. difficult" games - when they're all wildly-different setpieces, the rules of play change so often and so much time has to be allowed for players to figure out the new rules... the game is much weaker overall. MW was still all shooting but had great differences in the kind of shooting.
Thank you. I was unable to put a term to the concept but this is one of the top 10 untouched subjects I've been hoping you would talk about. I was well worth the wait and an excellent exploration of the subject. I first realized this concept with SRPGS. A good chuck of these games is customizing and organizing your units between combat. I think this is one of the reason's Shining Force with its exploration for hidden items and unit conversations remains one of my all time favorite SRPGs.
This is a really late comment, but I really appreciate you taking us through the game to make your point! In a lot of your videos, you use examples from games to paint the picture for the topics your discussing, but actually getting to see gameplay made it so much clearer!
What I love is how all of this applies to every form a media. Look at music albums. A good album will have the same style of music, but each song will have different tones so that when you listen to the whole album you never get bored. It also applies to writing, movies and really everything else.
XCOM does these both really well. there's a huge difference from when you're doing things in the base, to in a random fight. and then the random encounter fights are very different than say, the terror missions. all the while giving you bigger, tougher enemies to fight, and to learn something new about.
Even when you discuss a mildly controversial topic as an example, knowing that many would just not want to hear it as "game design", you do it in such an unbiased and perfectly reasoned way that explains your points. Everything just fits when you guys are writing, voicing, and animating it.
I haven't played any CoD game, but "Call of WarioWare" sounds awesome to me, what's wrong with that? lol To me, WarioWare games feel like a splash of the raw concentrated essence of gaming.
Golden Sun. The epitome of differences in kind mixed with differences in scale. Puzzles that get both more complex and simpler as you obtain new powers and enemies that go from spam attacks to use everything you've got. Not to mention towns-dungeons-world map-cutscenes changes. I didn't realize just WHY Golden Sun was my favorite game until just now.
I thought the differences kind would be something like enemies using a different techniques, but I was surprised to realize all those different subtleties in tone through simple placement, location, and event changes. Also, I really like it when Extra Credits picks a subject, and then successfully points it out in a game(s). I hope Extra Credits will keep that style of showing through examples.
GTiszaczac111 If you watched the movie, it goes from mechs dozens of light-years big throwing galaxies at each other to two dudes beating the shit out of each other.
Tsundere Shyvana "it's not like I wanted to get a penta or anything...b...b...Baka!" And a fundamental example of differences in kind. Goes from small community of people living underground that has never seen the sky, to giant robots fighting each other on the surface, guerilla style, to reasonably organized military campaign, to doomsday prophecy, to unsteady futuristic utopia, to space battles and random attempts to add quantuum physics, and then we get giant mechs several light years across throwing galaxies at each other. That anime series has more kind swaps than most games.
Your videos are very educational for me as an aspiring game designer. For example, I've learned from this one not to make a game that's the same most of the time (like Mario) nor to make one that's constantly different (like Call of Duty).
If you look at SCII singleplayer every single mission has a different mechanic like "get to the scourge nests before the big enemy ship comes" or "fly the battleship and blow up the star base" or "get the larva to make the giant army of banelings". But it keeps the core elements of gameplay so it still feels fluid.
That subject of puzzles in God of War actually reminded me of something a Let'sPlayer said about the evolution of action games. He talked about how they evolved from beat-em-ups and how the larger scale required a greater level of complexity, describing the addition of things like puzzles as "fleshing out" the game.
Wow, I'm new here and this was incredibly insightful. As an aspiring game designer this was incredibly interesting to me and very well explained and with good examples. Instantly subscribed when the video ended. Keep up the awesome.
I think Medal of Honor Single Player is quite a good example for difference in kind. It has you changing from one militairy unit to the next, all delivering different kinds of playstyle. (For example the infantry against the helicopters.) I really liked that.
I've actually told people in the past "from a design perspective, the Werehog areas are responsible for Sonic Unleashed feeling good when its not playing those sections". - Not to say the same gap wasn't filled vastly better with Colour Powers in Sonic Colours but still, its funny to think about.
I don't know how many of you played Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker, but when I was a kid, I found it to be awesome how the beginning of the game gave you a taste of the combat by fighting in the forest, but they make you sneak around the forsaken fortress right after. Finally completing the fortress after (im not even kidding) years of trying to pick it up and beat it as a kid made the rest of the game soooo enjoyable, because I finally got to fully experience the combat.
I like to think this is why the best Rush maps in Battlefield 3 (e.g metro) are so popular. Each stage is so different from the last one and requires completely different ways of playing them
This was a really well done and interesting episode but it was also made glaringly obvious that you're not an avid FPS player during the modern warfare walkthrough. "Military sounding things" and the rest of your terminology was really hilarious, made the show that much more enjoyable.
This is without a doubt the number 1 thing I look for in games, Phase Changes. It is when the rules of the game change without a change in the underlying mechanics. For example: The basic mechanical rules of Monopoly remain the same throughout the entire game, but the late game is very different from the early game. In the early game sitting in jail is insane as the board is chock full of opportunities. However in the late game paying to get out of jail is insane because the because the board is full of monopolies that will drive you bankrupt. Those moments are some of the coolest things ever.
The Fear series is very good at delivering two separate kinds of game play, going from the traditional fps to an intimidating and horrifying experience from the paranormal
There is another example I would like to share on game with different kind. No One Lives Forever is really awesome in doing that. Now I know why this game is so engaging when I played it decades ago.
Serious Sam games come to mind. Differences in kind come as variety of different combinations of enemies the game throws at you, size and shape of the areas you're in and from how many directions these enemies are coming from.
so if I have this right, platform games differences in kind Sonic for example would be the difference of just running along at breakneck speed then suddenly an enemy stops you and knocks out your rings or when you need to slow up to do platforming or fight a boss
+Randy Johnson (MetaSceptile) The differences in kind for a platform game I think are more tied into the level shifts. Take the original Sonic. First off, you've got Green Hill Zone, which has falling platforms, loops, and enemies. You can time this zone with your jumps so that you never have to stop moving forwards. This level is all about speed and being nimble on the controls. Even the first boss fight is all about dodging and moving about the stage. Then next comes Marble Zone, which looks and feels very differently. This one introduces the concept of multi-level zones, lava, enemies which can hurt you after you've killed them, and moving walls. This zone rewards tactical play much more heavily than Green Hill Zone. You're rewarded for accurate movement as opposed to simply brazening through the level. Third is Spring Yard Zone, with bouncers and springs and tunnels out the wazoo. Things introduced in the previous two zones, but now fully explored. This zone is about bouncing around and is more closely related to Green Hill Zone, but is still different. This one rewards more chaotic "bounce off the walls" style play as opposed to accurate movement or simple speed. In addition to gameplay though, each zone has a very distinctive look to it that sets it apart from the others. The palettes and sprites change in each zone to reflect a new environment and keep the player engaged. Put it this way, imagine that every zone was the same as it was before, the only thing that's changed is that now they all look like Green Hill Zone. No new environments, no palette shifts or sprite alterations to fit the environment, it's all just rolling hills and waterfalls. The game suddenly becomes much less engaging, even though the only thing that's changed is how the game looks. Each new level (or "zone") in a platformer should introduce new gameplay elements, palette shifts, and reward different playstyles to bring in that "differences in kind" that they discussed in the video.
Evelyn Finegan makes sense and I agree with that too but I'd still say the moment to moment game play also tries to fall along an interest curve to a degree
Randy Johnson Oh I definitely agree, and within each zone and stage there's still some smaller differences in kind, mostly through gameplay, to keep that interest curve shifting, such as in Marble Zone where you're outrunning that lava wall, that's all about speed and shifts the zone from accurate platform-jumping to "ahhhh shit I'm gonna die run run run!" I was simply using the zones as a whole as they represent a very drastic and easily identifiable shift in kind.
I actually kinda liked Black Ops 2's campaign. You may be controlling a lot of stupid drones, flying in a squirrel suit and shooting a tank with a rocket launcher while on horse back, but god damn my testosterone, you're still controlling a lot of stupid yet incredibly awesome drones, flying in a squirrel suit and SHOOTING A TANK WITH A ROCKET LAUNCHER WHILE ON HORSE BACK!
Yes I agree! Actually the part in the first game when you control Sora's heartless through me for a loop, it was completely unexpected and probably the most memorable gameplay in the entire series. If you haven't gotten a chance to play KH: BBS you should, it's loaded with differences in kind. :)
I know perfectly well about this stuff in LoL. Early Levels: You and possibly someone else are sitting close to your turret. Combat is relatively tame, but confrontations with other players are generally avoided. You need a group of minions to back up your attack. Mid: Now everyone has their abilities and some items. You start pushing more and more to the enemy turret, and start gaining a good foothold. Confrontations with other players are now much more common. It has become more about moving
Even if you dont change much in the industry right NOW i hope you know that the people tht watch this may not be ea or valve but they are the people who want and will become the next gen of game makers and they will make the industry different and you make that so, so thanks to all of you for all the video's.
I can think of raid boss fights in WoW as an example of differences in scale as well as in kind; each "phase" of the fight offers something new and increasingly difficult for your raid to deal with. To put it in story format: When you're about to start, everyone's casting buffs, planning out the fight and making sure they know what to do. When the fight starts, the tanks get the boss's attention, and everyone goes through the motions of their rotations until the boss starts to use its more threatening abilities. The first few typically aren't too dangerous and you deal with them with practiced ease. But then the boss uses its most powerful ability for the first time or transitions to a new, much more dangerous phase. If you don't immediately kill this creature he summons, you die; if your positioning or reaction time is off by a hair, you die; if any one of your raid members messes up, you die; if you're not collectively doing enough dps or healing, you die. Yet in the midst of that struggle to survive, you somehow pull through. But you know the true battle has begun and the boss is stepping it up; more and more of the ground is being shrouded in fire and the boss becomes more dangerous and pressures you harder with each passing moment. He prepares a new, much more dangerous trump card, and though you somehow fight your way through it, you know the next time he uses it will be the time you don't survive. You push for damage on the boss and force him into his last phase, but you know full well it's no picnic either. The incoming damage becomes astounding and even though you've saved all of your cooldowns, your raid is just barely hanging on. He's at 15% health; 10%. You yell for everyone to put everything they've got into the boss, even though you know his minions will pick off your friends one by one now that you're ignoring them. At 2% health, half the raid is dead and you will soon join them, but you've survived this long with your defensive cooldowns and just need a little more time to finish him off, and... he's dead. Everyone cheers, everyone's congratulating each other, and the only thing left to do is divvy up the spoils. So anyway, that's my experience with raiding in WoW and how a good boss fight in an MMO can create a feeling of ebb and flow and increasing difficulty while keeping things varied and fresh throughout the encounter. Hope that's a good example for this topic.
warframe: the different mission types: from exterminate (kill everything and stay alive) to defence (kill everything, stay alive and keep an objective alive) to survival (stay alive and keep your oxigen at good levels) to spy (stay alive and make it trough stealth parts). or just the different factions: you don't fight the greneer (lots, bullets, shields, rockets and flamers) on their ships very differently to the corpus (more drones, no power bubbels and lazers) on their bases. and the infested play very different again (more fast zombies, they rush you but have very limited range). in the void you get a bit of all of them. making it harder and also unique again.
Thats why i generally like things like crafting in RPGs. Like settlement building in Fallout 4, for example. It gives you a break from adventuring by doing something different for a spell.
This is really interesting for me, because whenever I play something like a tower defence, where a lot of the gameplay is repeated, I can't play more than one level at a time, because they all felt the same. I loved playing it, but I had to keep breaking up gameplay myself. Compare this to Skyrim, or Tetris, and you can see the difference.
Anyone ever play Pac Man World 2? That game was mostly about platforming, but the levels mixed the elements up to the point of having a fundamentally different construction in cases, such as with Blade Mountain, Haunted Boardwalk, and the undersea levels. This variety was one of the game's major selling points, so much so that the promotional artwork is from these times in the game.
TheRezro It was kinda all over the place imo. DX1 had fantastic sound design and 3 fantastic tracks for every map. DX2 has a couple of good tracks and shitty sound design. Yeah, I get that they were trying to go for a more sombre tone but choosing a semi-stylised look doesn't quite work for it. DX1 made the most of its extremely rudimentary physics while DX2's full physics doesn't really seven any purpose. And the bizzarre ragdoll effects broke immersion every time. And there are serious uncanny valley issues in DX2! And while I liked the level of conspiracy in DX1, in DX2 it goes 8 ways bananas by the second half of its pathetic playtime! The small levels with regular loading screens made the world feel very restrictive and small so that most of the game might as well have been taking place in the same corridor and vent system. The story doesn't have nearly the same depth or complexity as the first game. Perhaps the game's only saving grace is the decent ending. Had a couple of neat ideas too like the 2 tier city. Don't even get me started on the inventory system.... Okay okay, so I won't go into my full rant. You get the idea. I didn't like it very much and it certainly doesn't deserve the name of Deus Ex.
agreed... I've probably put 1500 hours into battlefield 2 (fair enough mostly in multiplayer, but a lot of single player/coop missions as well) and never noticed what he was explaining anywhere near how in depth he was. I instantly just got like 100 "Oh jeez!" moments from that game alone-_- And this was only showing examples in an FPS... Imagine how long the video could have been if he showed off an RTS or MMO
"They understood that these differences in kind were core to the series, but didn't know how to subtly deliver on it..." They really are the modern equivalent to Sonic the Hedgehog, aren't they?
A recent conversation about the use, relevance, and fate of manuals (and tutorial types) makes me request a show about that. I've seen a few examples (I think Dynasty Warriors 3 for one) where the manual was actually very entertaining. Other times the manual can be more of an artbook than a manual. Naturally the paper manual will fade from existence as games go digital, and I'm more a fan of learning through playing instead of STOP! Tutorial Time! but I doubt they're going away any time soon.
This reminds me of MGSV, because of so many options you have and the layout of the map, in a single side op where you take out 3 squads and a large base, you will be having a straight gunfight, a time when yiu have to fire down on unaware enemies, you will have to throw grenades up a hill because 2 people found their way to a hill and started firing down on you, you will have a claustrophobic SMG duel with you on the ground, crawling under shelves, trying not to take any shots, but before any of this, you infiltrated small barracks after having to sneak up behind a small squad, you then have to find a big base to extract yourself with a massive container.
So in Destiny Strikes: You're on your speeder. Next, you fight off waves of enemies and a boss. Then, you fight off a mid tier boss. Finally, you face off a boss with more health and relentless attacks. (In each phase, you're surrounded by enemies. While this sounds useless, the enemies are cannon fodder to kill so they can drop ammo and replenish your super ability). It's mostly increase difficulty bosses. Raids: (Crota example) You're running for your life! You can't kill every enemy. Your teams objective is to survive. This phase typically falls apart if only one person survives because the team aspect is optional. Next, you're building a bridge and holding a position so that your allies can cross. The team now has to work together to move forward. Then, and I'm skipping a hallway thats just a diversion from the chest room, you've gotta take down high priority targets and namely a Witch in less than a minute. Testing your teams quick timing. For what? For the finale. Finally, you're facing Crota himself. You must take out a swordbearer, weaken his shield, and slay him with a Hive sword. All the while, your team needs to share an object that will allow them to regenerate health, otherwise your team us a member short and Crota gains the ability to wipe the team. By looking back at this, the raids in Destiny really deliver on the promise of Destiny's advertising. Raids are designed for clear communication and planning. While the strikes are grinds that don't require much thought. Is it a bad thing? No. Because it's another difference in kind that, although dull and repetitive, serves to act like the puzzles in God of War that he mentioned in the video. I think the only question i have is, what happens when a game is solely the one good part without having any difference at all?
''A game throws more enemies at you'' can really make gameplay feel fundamentally different, I think it can actually be a very elegant way of introducing a difference in kind if the mechanics allow for it
Take Dark Souls for example, it's quite clear there. I might be misunderstanding the topic though lol, as I only watched up until this quote. You pointed out how this is quite subjective though, so I'm not necessarily arguing
In games like XCOM - Long War 3 strong enemies would also feel very different from 6 weak ones. It makes you consider using the geometry in completelly different ways. The stronger ones can be easier because of how you can isolate and flank them more easily, but they might be more risky to get close to, kind of making flanking and moving about the geometry in general harder again.. Just in a different way, that feels so different!
Other than it's broadness of gameplay, the multiplayer of Crysis 1 is one of my favorite game experiences because of the differences in kind that came out of the huge 32 player maps. Everyone would start out with a nice choice of weapons, but only smaller, skirmishing weapons. As players got the first kills and took objectives, they got more prestige points at once, and so got bigger weapons. But the champions and leaders emerged here too, and the first lines are drawn, which turns the game from a scouting landgrab into a dug-in brawl. Now the big guns are in play, and the race is on to see who gets the nuke tech first. Tricked-out assault rifles give way to machine-gun-toting humvees give way to tanks give way to rocket-launching assassins give way to CQC trickery gives way to snipers give way to scouting give way to tricked out assault rifles all over again, cycling forever until one faction gets the nukes. Then the game takes a whole 'nother turn, as one side is clearly now the offense and the other defense. Now one side has to bring their whole arsenal down onto one guy with the nuke, and the other team has to protect him. From there the game switches sides again, because both teams could have access to nukes, but only if they hold the facility that makes them. Or maybe the team without nukes has to slip in behind the attacking team and take the facility out from under them, allowing their base to take a hit so they can try to get a leg up on the competition. It's cycles within cycles in a very balanced, solid, free-feeling fps, and I loved it.
1:04 Not to mention simply increasing difficulty or doing progression by boosting numbers is an easy way to cause Skinner boxes, to make people do the same thing over and over again.
"Puzzles that remap what the controls do" - that could easily be the most horrible, frustrating thing in a game. I remember a couple of times towards the end of Transistor when you find yourself walking on the ceiling instead of the floor and it was just terrible. It was meant to be disorienting, and it sure was, and thankfully it didn't last long. Then after it was over the "narrator" said "I hope we don't have to do that again!" and, as usual in a Supergiant Games game, the narrator expressed what I was feeling, perfectly. Seriously though, the narrator in their first game Bastion is one of the best game performances EVER.
differences in kind for starcraft establish. building the begining of your base buildings like barracks, bunkers and missile turrets scout. sending small forces to every corner of the map to find people upgrade. building second building and add-ons , researching actually upgrade for units, and of course making you "final" army attack. taking your army to destroy other players or heavly cripple them, with zergling rushes, battle cruiser armardas, or pylon warping these don't necessarily happen in this order and a good player always has them over lapping with each other
While we're on the subject of differences in kind this episode seems rather different than you're typical episodes. Mainly because this is the first episode I've seen that actually felt like you were giving me homework. :D I suppose that's because it's one thing to ask people to think, but another to ask people to analyze. Note that this isn't me complaining. In fact I feel quite enlightened and I will look forward to noticing some differences in kind as I play games from now on.
TF2 competitive has plenty of these, given the classes and maps, but there's some parallel basics at least on 5CP maps. Rollout, midfight, second, and last. Rollout is all about speed and maneuverability. Your objective is "Get there as fast as possible." It's an tension builder, but not an adrenaline rush because you're moving first and foremost--you anticipate what's waiting for you there as you lead or fall behind in movement. Midfight is where you get 'the fair fight.' It's where you get the critical decision of when to uber, when to push, and when a lot of important picks are made. All things being equal the decision to advance or fall back is made by who's still alive after the first round of shots. It's tense and exciting because this is where you can control the flow of the match. Second is where things get tougher for the defenders and more encouraging for the attackers. Second is often tough to control no matter who has it, and you really have to fight to take it or to keep it from being taken. Second is tense but a slight downward slope on the interest curve from the heady highs of the first mid fight, or the pushes on last. Last is where the interest curve shoots up, where the big plays are made, especially based on how much time is left. Do you split the team into two squads to defend all entrances? Do you split up to force enemies to defend from both sides? Do you swap a Scout out for a Sniper? A Heavy? An Engineer? If time is ticking down, do you throw everyone in for a final desperate gamble? Do you send a Spy in to wait for everyone's guard to drop and leap on the point? None of these areas feels quite the same as the others even though it's still all cartoon men shooting at each other.
Interesting point about the different phases of Starcraft. I wonder if the new accelerated early-game will decrease their "differences in kind" aesthetic
Batman Arkham series... BEST games ive ever played. Difficult ramps up, but also enemy variablity ramps up too. Especialy when you play the repeatable melee encounters. Enemies will grab guns, chairs, pipes, some times they will be freakish monsters, or hell one armed giants. Then on top of that, there are the predator missions which offer an IMMENSELY different experience. Anyone who's played Arkham city will think of the Mr.Freeze fight. Honestly, I don't know why Extra Credits doesn't talk about it ever. I honestly can't think of a better game. Especialy for this topic. Good video though, I was never much interested in the Call of duty genre, but I gotta say, I think I might buy them if they have a steam sale for the older ones.
my favorite example is the last of us as there is a part late game where you switch back and forth between Joel and Ellie with each character playing drastically differently despite the same controls and almost identical weapons and enemies
Wait ... is the difference in Kind of League of Legends starting with Phase 1: Draft Pick? It is part of the matchup. Including the choice of runes and masteries. 2) Pre minions spawn. Jungle invasions and such 3) Laning phase, gank sub-phase 4) Dragon fight 5) Midgame, with sub-phases within itself 6) Baron 7) Siege
One other thing similar to difference in setting is the difference in enemies. While it is convenient to scale up a simple enemy it is also good to add a new different one. To make the player have to react to two different attack patterns at once. To watch the ceiling and the area around them. To make them have to decide which enemy they might want to rush down and which is better taken more slowly, kiting the enemy while making sure they dont move into a corner. There are lots of games that i see where there is only one type of enemy and it is just scaling. Left 4 dead fixed some of this with their specials, a large unit that will mess up your day if the players dont take care of it as fast as possible. If they didnt have units like this then the best strategy would be to find the best corner or hallway and just shoot down it with the most efficient weapons possible. (i dont know what brought this on but its things to pay attention to)
For a great example of how the town/adventuring mechanic works at its simplest form the old Black Isle RPGs are incredible in this regard. No NPC is highlighted. You have no designated quest-givers. Quests and encounters are found fluidly by exploring the game world. You explore the town looking for quests. Then you're off on an adventure. Clearing out the zones designated in your quest guide (with no objective marker) and finding more quests in the field. Buy them all on gog.com, its worth it.
That's part of the challenge! Go look at some of your favorite older games and point out those differences in kind on your own, see if you can spot them.
Borderlands and Farcry 3 have varied story missions but the combat really just moves to farther ranges as you get more accurate and powerful weapons when you shoot at enemies with more health. Certain aspects change but for the most part the games don't change.
there's an enormous subset of games that have minimal to no reliance on differences in kind. primarily this includes the mechanic-based puzzle games. a classic example would be tetris. aside from the last level that most players never even see, there really isn't a single difference in kind in the entire experience. these games simply teach you one mechanic, then make you work harder, or faster, or smarter in executing it, often until the point you simply can't anymore.
You know, I can watch programming videos all day,
but this series has really helped me get great ideas on how to make a game that will be fun and engaging.
Keep making these vids that outline the aspects of game design from a player's needs POV!
I am going to watch them all and make sure it's all taken into account!
***** Well, until it's release, I recommend Steam for the best indie titles available.
I'll be sure to put my apps on blast all over the internet when they become a reality.
MindMeme
Yeah, they gave me so many ideas on how to improve my programming skills :3
Well, of course if you want to improve the design of your game, watching videos about game design will be quite more useful than watching programming videos lol
Call of WarioWare.... MAKE IT HAPPEN!
+Uncle Jellyfish YEAH *cheers for future title*
+Uncle Jellyfish WHAT!?!?? Yeah... I really want such a weird thing done...
Call of Jaurioware lol
Tempted.
I think that it's very interesting how Portal 2 is broken up. They start with you wandering around Aperture with Wheatley trying to find a way out, until Glados wakes up and makes you go through all sorts of tests. The tests get kind of monotonous after a while, but that's the point. It makes the player experience what Chell is feeling in those moments. That feeling of "When is this going to end? I'm done with puzzles!" Then there's the sequence where Wheatley tries to break you out, and the next phase of the game is spent sneaking around Aperture while taking Glados' security systems offline. It's a really interesting change of pace where, while the gameplay is essentially the same, the context of the story is what breaks it up and makes it interesting.
"Wait, Glados wants me to do WHAT? Won't that kill me? Like the last couple dozen tests that I've had to solve?"
you know what game mastered differences in kind? phoenix wright: ace attorney.
you have the moments where you're talking to people: gathering information on them, the plot, your surroundings, and the current case. you have the moments where you're gathering evidence: finding small, minute details which will help you later on. and then there's the moments in court: presenting the evidence and information that you have gathered.
there are these three very distinct kinds, and yet they flow together fairly well.
+Misty Wind And BOY did these games improve later on...
+Misty Wind My fucking MAN!
YESSSSSS
I think a great example of change in kind is Ninja Gaiden. New enemies where at every turn completely new: not merely stronger versons, they used different attacks, requiered you to come up with new strategies and combos, they felt compeltely different.
Especially when chainging dificulty- one expects that a raise in dificulty makes you take more damage, only. Instead we got entirely new enemies which we had never seen before, in addition to the raise in dificulty. That kept it intresting- allowing you to replay the same game like 4 times in a row without getting bored.
Wait, is it just me, or could Call of Warioware actually be an entertaining mash-up if the Wario artistic direction was juxtaposed with COD style combat.
Oh yes, I GOTTA think on this.
Yes, but I think Call of Warioware: the Carsmell would be a great parody of Call of Juarez. THEY'RE COMIN OVER THE BORDER STEALIN OUR GARLIC!!!!
I remember reading that the developers of CoD were confused that they sold a bunch of games, but most of their players actually never touched the multiplayer aspect. The devs simply could not understand it.
Perhaps this would explain it.
You perfectly explained how I feel about my video game library! I mostly play league of legends and my friends ask how I can play so often. The differences in kind are just so comforting. I am going to use your explanation of differences in kind to explain why I like or don't like certain games from now in. Thank you very much for all your videos!
As someone going to school for game design I sometimes come upon an article or a video that makes me think hey, my view point isn't going to be the same after watching this. I have to admit that I love, absolutely love systems in games. Seeing this really makes me think about making better levels and enemies by subtly changing the scale, AND subtly changing the kinds of things you do in the game. Thx for this one, should help to make better games for all of us.
You know, I've always noticed differences in kind, but definitely not to this degree. I always looked for vastly differing ways to play, but not differences in how the same mechanic is presented. I just chalked stuff like that up to progression in difficulty! There's always more to learn. Excellent video!
What I find interesting about diiferences in kind when it comes to League of Legends is that the differences are created by the players themselves: getting an item that gives you a destructive power over opponents, muscling in on team fights, picking off the low-health opponent that crossed your path, so on. It's all very different, but each scenario has been created by the player, his team and his opponents. That's probably something no developer can confidently rely on to make a good game and I reckon LOL got really lucky.
WizardsClub Aeon of Strife did it first in starcraft 1
dota did not come around until warcraft 3
Colin Justice No items in AoS...
I'd love to see a more nuanced Differences in Kind, like differences in kind specifically in enemies, or encounters, or difficulty levels. In fact, I think most increases in difficulty are the cheap kind (more enemies with more health, shields, and attack power). I love a difficulty change (either in game settings or just from one encounter to the next) where the flavor of abilities changes. You don't have to just handle melee damage any more, you need to handle traps, ranged AoE damage, attacks from multiple sides, disabling debuffs, etc. The nature of combat has changed from 1-dimentional to multi-dimentional. Even better, maybe the AI or carefully crafted enemy layout has changed so that you aren't facing a simple rush any more, but heavy tanks screening for ranged damage dealers and backed up by healers and buffers. Debuffers hitting specific units with specific ailments, like silence on my mages and domination on my tanks, not the other way around.
When the change makes you throw out your strategy and develop something entirely different, that's a HUGELY different feel than just having tighter parameters.
The problem with that kind of change is also its advantage - you need to rethink your strategy to deal with this new threat. If the change is significant, and the resulting metagame change is similarly significant, this basically resets the skill level of the player, which can be frustrating, as it may feel like all of the tricks you've learned up to that point have become worthless. On the other hand, if the new, different element of the game is later integrated with the old, it can make for an amazing payoff.
The Call of Duty example is interesting, since it shows minor shifts in kind rather than major shifts like puzzle to combat.
I may harp on the CoD series for releasing mainly on the multiplayer platform, but if they can (occasionally) do pretty good things from a gameplay design perspective, they can't be the black holes of sameness I thought they were.
Yeah, people harp on CoD, when its a decently made game. its almost never bad, but also never great.
leventhefox I think that the main reason a lot of people harp on cod, is that from a viewing standpoint, all of the games look exactly the same, with a few improved graphics and more guns. And I must say that in several cases that is true. I really don't see the need to buy ghosts as opposed to black ops 2, and quite frankly I would be satisfied with just playing Modern Warfare 3. The main reason that I would buy the new games, is that after you exhaust the campaign and other single player modes in an old game, the only engaging thing left to do is multi-player. Often times, a massive portion of the community has switched over to the new game making it challenging to find full, or even really good games online.
Reece Updike This happens with sports games every year.
In my personal opinion, CoD4 was the best of the series, WaW and MW2 being good games in their own right, but now the series it just too bloated. The CoDs before the modern shift were good too no less. The newer ones just seem to be money snatchers to me at this point; nothing new and really inventive coming from them. It's good for some, but not for me.
The bloatedness of the newer CoD games touches on a point he brought up in his "punishing vs. difficult" games - when they're all wildly-different setpieces, the rules of play change so often and so much time has to be allowed for players to figure out the new rules... the game is much weaker overall. MW was still all shooting but had great differences in the kind of shooting.
Thank you. I was unable to put a term to the concept but this is one of the top 10 untouched subjects I've been hoping you would talk about. I was well worth the wait and an excellent exploration of the subject. I first realized this concept with SRPGS. A good chuck of these games is customizing and organizing your units between combat. I think this is one of the reason's Shining Force with its exploration for hidden items and unit conversations remains one of my all time favorite SRPGs.
This is a really late comment, but I really appreciate you taking us through the game to make your point! In a lot of your videos, you use examples from games to paint the picture for the topics your discussing, but actually getting to see gameplay made it so much clearer!
MW single player was simply amazing. Loved every second of it. I completely agree with your point on later CoD games.
What I love is how all of this applies to every form a media. Look at music albums. A good album will have the same style of music, but each song will have different tones so that when you listen to the whole album you never get bored. It also applies to writing, movies and really everything else.
These videos are amazing, and there are so many to watch it's overwhelming.
XCOM does these both really well. there's a huge difference from when you're doing things in the base, to in a random fight. and then the random encounter fights are very different than say, the terror missions. all the while giving you bigger, tougher enemies to fight, and to learn something new about.
This is a REALLY good episode.
I find a large majority of your videos really informative but this one just went above and beyond. Lovin' it
I know right! these are the sort of conversations people need to be having.
This video reminded me of my love for CoD4. God I loved that game....
6:11
Best line.
I literally had to pause the video because I lost my shit when he said that and couldn't stop laughing
"erf"?
siprus Call of Warioware.
Pretty funny that auto-generated captions got that word right lmao
Even when you discuss a mildly controversial topic as an example, knowing that many would just not want to hear it as "game design", you do it in such an unbiased and perfectly reasoned way that explains your points. Everything just fits when you guys are writing, voicing, and animating it.
The laning phase and team fighting are great examples of differences in kind. They feel totally different.
I haven't played any CoD game, but "Call of WarioWare" sounds awesome to me, what's wrong with that? lol
To me, WarioWare games feel like a splash of the raw concentrated essence of gaming.
#COW
woopi Wouldn't it be COWW? WarioWare?
SanbaiSan
But then it wouldn't spell cow...
Golden Sun. The epitome of differences in kind mixed with differences in scale. Puzzles that get both more complex and simpler as you obtain new powers and enemies that go from spam attacks to use everything you've got. Not to mention towns-dungeons-world map-cutscenes changes. I didn't realize just WHY Golden Sun was my favorite game until just now.
I thought the differences kind would be something like enemies using a different techniques, but I was surprised to realize all those different subtleties in tone through simple placement, location, and event changes.
Also, I really like it when Extra Credits picks a subject, and then successfully points it out in a game(s). I hope Extra Credits will keep that style of showing through examples.
Gurren lagann is a fundamental example of scale.
Starts with mechs the size of small buildings fighting each other, to mechs dozens of light-years big fighting each other. Yup.
GTiszaczac111 If you watched the movie, it goes from mechs dozens of light-years big throwing galaxies at each other to two dudes beating the shit out of each other.
Tsundere Shyvana "it's not like I wanted to get a penta or anything...b...b...Baka!"
And a fundamental example of differences in kind. Goes from small community of people living underground that has never seen the sky, to giant robots fighting each other on the surface, guerilla style, to reasonably organized military campaign, to doomsday prophecy, to unsteady futuristic utopia, to space battles and random attempts to add quantuum physics, and then we get giant mechs several light years across throwing galaxies at each other.
That anime series has more kind swaps than most games.
Zorua Hunter This is some artistic version of saying that World War 4 will be fought with sticks and stones isn't it?
Harley Mitchelly Holy crap, I never thought about that.
But no, I think they just wanted to show you a badass fistfight.
Your videos are very educational for me as an aspiring game designer. For example, I've learned from this one not to make a game that's the same most of the time (like Mario) nor to make one that's constantly different (like Call of Duty).
If you look at SCII singleplayer every single mission has a different mechanic like "get to the scourge nests before the big enemy ship comes" or "fly the battleship and blow up the star base" or "get the larva to make the giant army of banelings". But it keeps the core elements of gameplay so it still feels fluid.
That subject of puzzles in God of War actually reminded me of something a Let'sPlayer said about the evolution of action games. He talked about how they evolved from beat-em-ups and how the larger scale required a greater level of complexity, describing the addition of things like puzzles as "fleshing out" the game.
One of the best videos I have seen for a long while, quality stuff!
Wow, I'm new here and this was incredibly insightful. As an aspiring game designer this was incredibly interesting to me and very well explained and with good examples. Instantly subscribed when the video ended. Keep up the awesome.
Extra Credits, you guys are geniuses. Much love.
I think Medal of Honor Single Player is quite a good example for difference in kind. It has you changing from one militairy unit to the next, all delivering different kinds of playstyle. (For example the infantry against the helicopters.) I really liked that.
Do any of you actually make video games? Your videos are always so great and informational, it's hard to believe you just play games.
wow, i never think this deeply in games... but you're totally right about COD 4!
I've actually told people in the past "from a design perspective, the Werehog areas are responsible for Sonic Unleashed feeling good when its not playing those sections". - Not to say the same gap wasn't filled vastly better with Colour Powers in Sonic Colours but still, its funny to think about.
I don't know how many of you played Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker, but when I was a kid, I found it to be awesome how the beginning of the game gave you a taste of the combat by fighting in the forest, but they make you sneak around the forsaken fortress right after. Finally completing the fortress after (im not even kidding) years of trying to pick it up and beat it as a kid made the rest of the game soooo enjoyable, because I finally got to fully experience the combat.
One my favorite part was when he said "I'm on a horse" it just reminded me how much i love Old Spice commercials.
I like to think this is why the best Rush maps in Battlefield 3 (e.g metro) are so popular. Each stage is so different from the last one and requires completely different ways of playing them
This was a really well done and interesting episode but it was also made glaringly obvious that you're not an avid FPS player during the modern warfare walkthrough. "Military sounding things" and the rest of your terminology was really hilarious, made the show that much more enjoyable.
this was such an informative video where a grown to appreciate game development even more
This is without a doubt the number 1 thing I look for in games,
Phase Changes.
It is when the rules of the game change without a change in the underlying mechanics.
For example:
The basic mechanical rules of Monopoly remain the same throughout the entire game, but the late game is very different from the early game. In the early game sitting in jail is insane as the board is chock full of opportunities. However in the late game paying to get out of jail is insane because the because the board is full of monopolies that will drive you bankrupt.
Those moments are some of the coolest things ever.
AAAAND thats why its one of the most popular and accepted fighting series ever made.
The Fear series is very good at delivering two separate kinds of game play, going from the traditional fps to an intimidating and horrifying experience from the paranormal
This was a brilliant video, as always! I have a better understanding of the differences I sense in various games (such as comparing LoL and DotA).
There is another example I would like to share on game with different kind. No One Lives Forever is really awesome in doing that. Now I know why this game is so engaging when I played it decades ago.
Serious Sam games come to mind. Differences in kind come as variety of different combinations of enemies the game throws at you, size and shape of the areas you're in and from how many directions these enemies are coming from.
so if I have this right, platform games differences in kind Sonic for example would be the difference of just running along at breakneck speed then suddenly an enemy stops you and knocks out your rings or when you need to slow up to do platforming or fight a boss
+Randy Johnson (MetaSceptile) The differences in kind for a platform game I think are more tied into the level shifts. Take the original Sonic. First off, you've got Green Hill Zone, which has falling platforms, loops, and enemies. You can time this zone with your jumps so that you never have to stop moving forwards. This level is all about speed and being nimble on the controls. Even the first boss fight is all about dodging and moving about the stage.
Then next comes Marble Zone, which looks and feels very differently. This one introduces the concept of multi-level zones, lava, enemies which can hurt you after you've killed them, and moving walls. This zone rewards tactical play much more heavily than Green Hill Zone. You're rewarded for accurate movement as opposed to simply brazening through the level.
Third is Spring Yard Zone, with bouncers and springs and tunnels out the wazoo. Things introduced in the previous two zones, but now fully explored. This zone is about bouncing around and is more closely related to Green Hill Zone, but is still different. This one rewards more chaotic "bounce off the walls" style play as opposed to accurate movement or simple speed.
In addition to gameplay though, each zone has a very distinctive look to it that sets it apart from the others. The palettes and sprites change in each zone to reflect a new environment and keep the player engaged. Put it this way, imagine that every zone was the same as it was before, the only thing that's changed is that now they all look like Green Hill Zone. No new environments, no palette shifts or sprite alterations to fit the environment, it's all just rolling hills and waterfalls. The game suddenly becomes much less engaging, even though the only thing that's changed is how the game looks.
Each new level (or "zone") in a platformer should introduce new gameplay elements, palette shifts, and reward different playstyles to bring in that "differences in kind" that they discussed in the video.
Evelyn Finegan makes sense and I agree with that too but I'd still say the moment to moment game play also tries to fall along an interest curve to a degree
Randy Johnson Oh I definitely agree, and within each zone and stage there's still some smaller differences in kind, mostly through gameplay, to keep that interest curve shifting, such as in Marble Zone where you're outrunning that lava wall, that's all about speed and shifts the zone from accurate platform-jumping to "ahhhh shit I'm gonna die run run run!" I was simply using the zones as a whole as they represent a very drastic and easily identifiable shift in kind.
Evelyn Finegan OK, makes sense glad we agree
I actually kinda liked Black Ops 2's campaign. You may be controlling a lot of stupid drones, flying in a squirrel suit and shooting a tank with a rocket launcher while on horse back, but god damn my testosterone, you're still controlling a lot of stupid yet incredibly awesome drones, flying in a squirrel suit and SHOOTING A TANK WITH A ROCKET LAUNCHER WHILE ON HORSE BACK!
I agree
Yes I agree! Actually the part in the first game when you control Sora's heartless through me for a loop, it was completely unexpected and probably the most memorable gameplay in the entire series. If you haven't gotten a chance to play KH: BBS you should, it's loaded with differences in kind. :)
I know perfectly well about this stuff in LoL. Early Levels: You and possibly someone else are sitting close to your turret. Combat is relatively tame, but confrontations with other players are generally avoided. You need a group of minions to back up your attack. Mid: Now everyone has their abilities and some items. You start pushing more and more to the enemy turret, and start gaining a good foothold. Confrontations with other players are now much more common. It has become more about moving
Loved the dissection :) nice ep too
(in reference to the beggining) Art IS Science but even so very true
Even if you dont change much in the industry right NOW i hope you know that the people tht watch this may not be ea or valve but they are the people who want and will become the next gen of game makers and they will make the industry different and you make that so, so thanks to all of you for all the video's.
I can think of raid boss fights in WoW as an example of differences in scale as well as in kind; each "phase" of the fight offers something new and increasingly difficult for your raid to deal with. To put it in story format:
When you're about to start, everyone's casting buffs, planning out the fight and making sure they know what to do. When the fight starts, the tanks get the boss's attention, and everyone goes through the motions of their rotations until the boss starts to use its more threatening abilities. The first few typically aren't too dangerous and you deal with them with practiced ease. But then the boss uses its most powerful ability for the first time or transitions to a new, much more dangerous phase. If you don't immediately kill this creature he summons, you die; if your positioning or reaction time is off by a hair, you die; if any one of your raid members messes up, you die; if you're not collectively doing enough dps or healing, you die. Yet in the midst of that struggle to survive, you somehow pull through. But you know the true battle has begun and the boss is stepping it up; more and more of the ground is being shrouded in fire and the boss becomes more dangerous and pressures you harder with each passing moment. He prepares a new, much more dangerous trump card, and though you somehow fight your way through it, you know the next time he uses it will be the time you don't survive.
You push for damage on the boss and force him into his last phase, but you know full well it's no picnic either. The incoming damage becomes astounding and even though you've saved all of your cooldowns, your raid is just barely hanging on. He's at 15% health; 10%. You yell for everyone to put everything they've got into the boss, even though you know his minions will pick off your friends one by one now that you're ignoring them. At 2% health, half the raid is dead and you will soon join them, but you've survived this long with your defensive cooldowns and just need a little more time to finish him off, and... he's dead. Everyone cheers, everyone's congratulating each other, and the only thing left to do is divvy up the spoils.
So anyway, that's my experience with raiding in WoW and how a good boss fight in an MMO can create a feeling of ebb and flow and increasing difficulty while keeping things varied and fresh throughout the encounter. Hope that's a good example for this topic.
warframe:
the different mission types: from exterminate (kill everything and stay alive) to defence (kill everything, stay alive and keep an objective alive) to survival (stay alive and keep your oxigen at good levels) to spy (stay alive and make it trough stealth parts).
or just the different factions: you don't fight the greneer (lots, bullets, shields, rockets and flamers) on their ships very differently to the corpus (more drones, no power bubbels and lazers) on their bases. and the infested play very different again (more fast zombies, they rush you but have very limited range). in the void you get a bit of all of them. making it harder and also unique again.
Good and memorable GTA missions do that, also bits in Mafia 2
This isn't just good advice for video game designers, but for GMs in table top gaming as well.
Thats why i generally like things like crafting in RPGs. Like settlement building in Fallout 4, for example. It gives you a break from adventuring by doing something different for a spell.
This is really interesting for me, because whenever I play something like a tower defence, where a lot of the gameplay is repeated, I can't play more than one level at a time, because they all felt the same. I loved playing it, but I had to keep breaking up gameplay myself. Compare this to Skyrim, or Tetris, and you can see the difference.
Anyone ever play Pac Man World 2? That game was mostly about platforming, but the levels mixed the elements up to the point of having a fundamentally different construction in cases, such as with Blade Mountain, Haunted Boardwalk, and the undersea levels. This variety was one of the game's major selling points, so much so that the promotional artwork is from these times in the game.
In cod is stopped being differences in kind and started being set pieces.
Your grammar sucks.
What say makes that you?
TheRezro Deus Ex 2 all over again.
TheRezro It was kinda all over the place imo. DX1 had fantastic sound design and 3 fantastic tracks for every map. DX2 has a couple of good tracks and shitty sound design. Yeah, I get that they were trying to go for a more sombre tone but choosing a semi-stylised look doesn't quite work for it. DX1 made the most of its extremely rudimentary physics while DX2's full physics doesn't really seven any purpose. And the bizzarre ragdoll effects broke immersion every time. And there are serious uncanny valley issues in DX2!
And while I liked the level of conspiracy in DX1, in DX2 it goes 8 ways bananas by the second half of its pathetic playtime! The small levels with regular loading screens made the world feel very restrictive and small so that most of the game might as well have been taking place in the same corridor and vent system.
The story doesn't have nearly the same depth or complexity as the first game. Perhaps the game's only saving grace is the decent ending.
Had a couple of neat ideas too like the 2 tier city.
Don't even get me started on the inventory system....
Okay okay, so I won't go into my full rant. You get the idea. I didn't like it very much and it certainly doesn't deserve the name of Deus Ex.
Cleath78 His grammar is bad just because he accidentally said "is" instead of "it"..?
Great insight. Thank you!
agreed... I've probably put 1500 hours into battlefield 2 (fair enough mostly in multiplayer, but a lot of single player/coop missions as well) and never noticed what he was explaining anywhere near how in depth he was. I instantly just got like 100 "Oh jeez!" moments from that game alone-_-
And this was only showing examples in an FPS... Imagine how long the video could have been if he showed off an RTS or MMO
"They understood that these differences in kind were core to the series, but didn't know how to subtly deliver on it..."
They really are the modern equivalent to Sonic the Hedgehog, aren't they?
A recent conversation about the use, relevance, and fate of manuals (and tutorial types) makes me request a show about that. I've seen a few examples (I think Dynasty Warriors 3 for one) where the manual was actually very entertaining. Other times the manual can be more of an artbook than a manual.
Naturally the paper manual will fade from existence as games go digital, and I'm more a fan of learning through playing instead of STOP! Tutorial Time! but I doubt they're going away any time soon.
This reminds me of MGSV, because of so many options you have and the layout of the map, in a single side op where you take out 3 squads and a large base, you will be having a straight gunfight, a time when yiu have to fire down on unaware enemies, you will have to throw grenades up a hill because 2 people found their way to a hill and started firing down on you, you will have a claustrophobic SMG duel with you on the ground, crawling under shelves, trying not to take any shots, but before any of this, you infiltrated small barracks after having to sneak up behind a small squad, you then have to find a big base to extract yourself with a massive container.
Another fantastic episode.
MIND BLOWN
So in Destiny
Strikes:
You're on your speeder. Next, you fight off waves of enemies and a boss. Then, you fight off a mid tier boss. Finally, you face off a boss with more health and relentless attacks. (In each phase, you're surrounded by enemies. While this sounds useless, the enemies are cannon fodder to kill so they can drop ammo and replenish your super ability). It's mostly increase difficulty bosses.
Raids:
(Crota example)
You're running for your life! You can't kill every enemy. Your teams objective is to survive. This phase typically falls apart if only one person survives because the team aspect is optional.
Next, you're building a bridge and holding a position so that your allies can cross. The team now has to work together to move forward.
Then, and I'm skipping a hallway thats just a diversion from the chest room, you've gotta take down high priority targets and namely a Witch in less than a minute. Testing your teams quick timing. For what? For the finale.
Finally, you're facing Crota himself. You must take out a swordbearer, weaken his shield, and slay him with a Hive sword. All the while, your team needs to share an object that will allow them to regenerate health, otherwise your team us a member short and Crota gains the ability to wipe the team.
By looking back at this, the raids in Destiny really deliver on the promise of Destiny's advertising. Raids are designed for clear communication and planning. While the strikes are grinds that don't require much thought.
Is it a bad thing? No. Because it's another difference in kind that, although dull and repetitive, serves to act like the puzzles in God of War that he mentioned in the video.
I think the only question i have is, what happens when a game is solely the one good part without having any difference at all?
aweshum So that would be changing scale.
''A game throws more enemies at you'' can really make gameplay feel fundamentally different, I think it can actually be a very elegant way of introducing a difference in kind if the mechanics allow for it
Take Dark Souls for example, it's quite clear there.
I might be misunderstanding the topic though lol, as I only watched up until this quote.
You pointed out how this is quite subjective though, so I'm not necessarily arguing
In games like XCOM - Long War 3 strong enemies would also feel very different from 6 weak ones.
It makes you consider using the geometry in completelly different ways.
The stronger ones can be easier because of how you can isolate and flank them more easily, but they might be more risky to get close to, kind of making flanking and moving about the geometry in general harder again.. Just in a different way, that feels so different!
Other than it's broadness of gameplay, the multiplayer of Crysis 1 is one of my favorite game experiences because of the differences in kind that came out of the huge 32 player maps.
Everyone would start out with a nice choice of weapons, but only smaller, skirmishing weapons. As players got the first kills and took objectives, they got more prestige points at once, and so got bigger weapons. But the champions and leaders emerged here too, and the first lines are drawn, which turns the game from a scouting landgrab into a dug-in brawl. Now the big guns are in play, and the race is on to see who gets the nuke tech first. Tricked-out assault rifles give way to machine-gun-toting humvees give way to tanks give way to rocket-launching assassins give way to CQC trickery gives way to snipers give way to scouting give way to tricked out assault rifles all over again, cycling forever until one faction gets the nukes. Then the game takes a whole 'nother turn, as one side is clearly now the offense and the other defense. Now one side has to bring their whole arsenal down onto one guy with the nuke, and the other team has to protect him. From there the game switches sides again, because both teams could have access to nukes, but only if they hold the facility that makes them. Or maybe the team without nukes has to slip in behind the attacking team and take the facility out from under them, allowing their base to take a hit so they can try to get a leg up on the competition.
It's cycles within cycles in a very balanced, solid, free-feeling fps, and I loved it.
1:04 Not to mention simply increasing difficulty or doing progression by boosting numbers is an easy way to cause Skinner boxes, to make people do the same thing over and over again.
0:52
While the entire team at near death is going :MEDIC!!!
"Puzzles that remap what the controls do" - that could easily be the most horrible, frustrating thing in a game. I remember a couple of times towards the end of Transistor when you find yourself walking on the ceiling instead of the floor and it was just terrible. It was meant to be disorienting, and it sure was, and thankfully it didn't last long. Then after it was over the "narrator" said "I hope we don't have to do that again!" and, as usual in a Supergiant Games game, the narrator expressed what I was feeling, perfectly.
Seriously though, the narrator in their first game Bastion is one of the best game performances EVER.
differences in kind for starcraft
establish. building the begining of your base
buildings like barracks, bunkers and missile turrets
scout. sending small forces to every corner of the map to find people
upgrade. building second building and add-ons , researching actually upgrade for units, and of course making you "final" army
attack. taking your army to destroy other players or heavly cripple them, with zergling rushes, battle cruiser armardas, or pylon warping
these don't necessarily happen in this order and a good player always has them over lapping with each other
While we're on the subject of differences in kind this episode seems rather different than you're typical episodes.
Mainly because this is the first episode I've seen that actually felt like you were giving me homework. :D I suppose that's because it's one thing to ask people to think, but another to ask people to analyze.
Note that this isn't me complaining. In fact I feel quite enlightened and I will look forward to noticing some differences in kind as I play games from now on.
TF2 competitive has plenty of these, given the classes and maps, but there's some parallel basics at least on 5CP maps. Rollout, midfight, second, and last.
Rollout is all about speed and maneuverability. Your objective is "Get there as fast as possible." It's an tension builder, but not an adrenaline rush because you're moving first and foremost--you anticipate what's waiting for you there as you lead or fall behind in movement.
Midfight is where you get 'the fair fight.' It's where you get the critical decision of when to uber, when to push, and when a lot of important picks are made. All things being equal the decision to advance or fall back is made by who's still alive after the first round of shots. It's tense and exciting because this is where you can control the flow of the match.
Second is where things get tougher for the defenders and more encouraging for the attackers. Second is often tough to control no matter who has it, and you really have to fight to take it or to keep it from being taken. Second is tense but a slight downward slope on the interest curve from the heady highs of the first mid fight, or the pushes on last.
Last is where the interest curve shoots up, where the big plays are made, especially based on how much time is left. Do you split the team into two squads to defend all entrances? Do you split up to force enemies to defend from both sides? Do you swap a Scout out for a Sniper? A Heavy? An Engineer? If time is ticking down, do you throw everyone in for a final desperate gamble? Do you send a Spy in to wait for everyone's guard to drop and leap on the point?
None of these areas feels quite the same as the others even though it's still all cartoon men shooting at each other.
That was an eye opener... good stuff:)
As always, this is great food for thought.
Interesting point about the different phases of Starcraft. I wonder if the new accelerated early-game will decrease their "differences in kind" aesthetic
Batman Arkham series... BEST games ive ever played. Difficult ramps up, but also enemy variablity ramps up too. Especialy when you play the repeatable melee encounters. Enemies will grab guns, chairs, pipes, some times they will be freakish monsters, or hell one armed giants.
Then on top of that, there are the predator missions which offer an IMMENSELY different experience. Anyone who's played Arkham city will think of the Mr.Freeze fight.
Honestly, I don't know why Extra Credits doesn't talk about it ever. I honestly can't think of a better game. Especialy for this topic.
Good video though, I was never much interested in the Call of duty genre, but I gotta say, I think I might buy them if they have a steam sale for the older ones.
my favorite example is the last of us as there is a part late game where you switch back and forth between Joel and Ellie with each character playing drastically differently despite the same controls and almost identical weapons and enemies
Wait ... is the difference in Kind of League of Legends starting with Phase 1: Draft Pick? It is part of the matchup.
Including the choice of runes and masteries.
2) Pre minions spawn. Jungle invasions and such
3) Laning phase, gank sub-phase
4) Dragon fight
5) Midgame, with sub-phases within itself
6) Baron
7) Siege
great eppisode guys, i feel enlightened XD
COD4 and the Nuke. THAT WAS A VERY WOW MOMENT.
One other thing similar to difference in setting is the difference in enemies. While it is convenient to scale up a simple enemy it is also good to add a new different one. To make the player have to react to two different attack patterns at once. To watch the ceiling and the area around them. To make them have to decide which enemy they might want to rush down and which is better taken more slowly, kiting the enemy while making sure they dont move into a corner. There are lots of games that i see where there is only one type of enemy and it is just scaling. Left 4 dead fixed some of this with their specials, a large unit that will mess up your day if the players dont take care of it as fast as possible. If they didnt have units like this then the best strategy would be to find the best corner or hallway and just shoot down it with the most efficient weapons possible. (i dont know what brought this on but its things to pay attention to)
For a great example of how the town/adventuring mechanic works at its simplest form the old Black Isle RPGs are incredible in this regard. No NPC is highlighted. You have no designated quest-givers. Quests and encounters are found fluidly by exploring the game world. You explore the town looking for quests. Then you're off on an adventure. Clearing out the zones designated in your quest guide (with no objective marker) and finding more quests in the field.
Buy them all on gog.com, its worth it.
That's part of the challenge! Go look at some of your favorite older games and point out those differences in kind on your own, see if you can spot them.
Borderlands and Farcry 3 have varied story missions but the combat really just moves to farther ranges as you get more accurate and powerful weapons when you shoot at enemies with more health. Certain aspects change but for the most part the games don't change.
Call of WarioWare needs to be thing.
Someone call Nintendo.
Or just an Indie developer and give it a different name.
There needs to be a mini game where you shoot a rocket launcher on horseback.
This was actually an amazingly enlightening episode o.o
Even if I don't like Call of Warioware, it really put things into perspective
Guys...I love your videos. Thanks for your work ;)
one word: psychonauts. best game ever for getting a ton of really different kinds of play.
"Call of WarioWare"... Oh, boy, I loved this term
Awesome video! Keep it up Extra Credits!
there's an enormous subset of games that have minimal to no reliance on differences in kind. primarily this includes the mechanic-based puzzle games. a classic example would be tetris. aside from the last level that most players never even see, there really isn't a single difference in kind in the entire experience. these games simply teach you one mechanic, then make you work harder, or faster, or smarter in executing it, often until the point you simply can't anymore.