How "Good Design" Ruins Games
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- Опубликовано: 7 сен 2024
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Arctic Eggs is a badly designed game. It's unfair, it's confusing and it's controls, well, they barely work. Under every possible metric it is designed wrong - in a way that's counter to what's generally accepted to be good design, both for cooking games and games in general...
But what if that's a good thing?
After inhaling the fumes of one too many burned eggs, The Architect has come up with an idea - what if a rigid, narrow idea of good design can actually hold games back? What if sometimes games need to break the rules and be made badly in order to teach us new ways of playing?
You Saw:
Arctic Eggs - 2024
Cook Serve Delicious 2 - 2017
Final Fantasy 14 - 2010
Venba - 2023
Overcooked 2 - 2018
DOOM 2016 - There's simply no way of knowing
The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild - 2017
Metal Slug 3 - 2000
Xenoblade Chronicles 3 - 2022
A Hat In Time - 2017
Ape Escape - 1999
Alien: Resurrection - 2000
ASTRO BOT - not out yet
Dark Souls - 2012
Another Crab's Treasure = 2024
Lies of P - 2013
Dune Spice Wars - 2022
Dune 2 - 1992
Starcraft 2 - 2010
Command and Conquer 3 - 2007
Age of Empires 4 - 2021
Super Metroid - 1994
Hollow Knight - 2017
Ori and the Blind Forest - 2015
Guacamelee 2 - 2019
Slay The Spire - 2019
Across the Obelisk - 2021
Monster Train - 2022
Griftlands - 2021
Far Cry 5 - 2018
Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth - 2024
Horizon Forbidden West - 2022
Mirror's Edge - 2008
Uncharted 2 - 2009
Resident Evil 4 Remake - 2023
Cruelty Squad - 2021
Golden Light - 2020
Moon: Remix RPG Adventure - 1997
Toodee and Topdee - 2021
Teardown - 2022
Yume Nikki - 2004
Hatoful Boyfriend - 2011
Hylics 2 - 2020
Dragon Quest 3 Remake - not out yet
BABA is YOU - 2019
Outer Wilds - 2019
Fez - 2012
Viewfinder - 2023
Undertale - 2015
Super Mario Brothers - 1985
Shovel Knight - 2014
Mario Bros - 1983
Mario Odyssey - 2017
Sonic Generations - 2011
Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy - 2017
Bubsy 3D - 1996
Parcel Corps - not out yet
Neon White - 2022
Portal - 2007
Pepper Grinder - 2024
Verlet Swing - 2018
Titanfall 2 - 2016
VVVVVV - 2010
Downwell - 2015
Snake pass - 2017
Yellow Taxi Goes Vroom - 2024
MO Astray - 2019
Tinertia - 2014
Splodey - 2023
Super Magbot - 2021
Getting Over It - 2017
I Am Bread - 2014
Sniper Elite 5 - 2022
Halo 1 - 2001
DOOM - 1996
Halo 2 - 2004
Halo Infinite - 2021
Metal Gear Solid - 1998
Resident Evil - 1996
Resident Evil 4 - 2005
Dead Space - 2008
SIGNALIS - 2023
Crow County - 2024
Resident Evil 2 Remake - 2019
Resident Evil 2 - 1998
Prey - 2017
Indkika - 2024
Mario Kart 8 - 2014
Mario Kart Double Dash - 2003
Resident Evil 8 - 2021
Magic The Gathering Arena - 2018
Call of Duty Black Ops 3 - 2015
Metal Gear Solid 2 - 2001
Minecraft - 2011
Splatoon 3 - 2022
Deep Rock Galactic - 2018
Vermintide 2 - 2018
Left 4 Dead 2 - 2009
GTFO - 2019
Stacklands - 2022
Witchhand - 2024
Cultist Sim - 2018
XCOM: Enemy Unknown - 2012
Final Fantasy Tactics A2 - 2007
Into The Breach - 2018
Tactical Breach Wizards - not out yet
Shadow of War - 2017
Far Cry 3 - 2012
Sable - 2021
Spiderman 1 - 2018
Death Stranding - 2019
Psychonauts 2 - 2021
Wandersong - 2018
Superliminal - 2019
Buckshot Roulette - 2023
Ultrakill - Early Access
Street Fighter 6 - 2023
The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom - 2023
Catherine - 2011
The Eternal Cylinder - 2021
Borderlands 3 - 2019
Dreamquest - 2014
Rogue Legacy - 2013
Hades 2 - Early Access
Returnal - 2021
Apex Legends - 2019
Zero Seivert - Early Access
Dark and Darker - Early Access
Ghost of Tsushima - 2020
Super Mario World - 1990
New Super Mario Bros Wii - 2009
The Hex - 2018
Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 - 2022
Pokemon Scarlet - 2022
Overwatch - 2022
Mosa Lina - 2023
QWOP - 2010
Surgeon Sim - 2013
Dishonored 2 - 2016
Chants of Sennaar - 2023
Katamari Damacy - 2004
Destiny 2 - 2017
Hello yes I would like one egg please, extra egg and with a side order of egg. Oh! - and if it's not too much trouble can you sprinkle a bit of egg over the top of it? Great, cheers thanks!: www.patreon.com/ArchitectofGames
Look I'm all for being experimental and trying new things but this social media thing has been nothing but trouble let's call it quits (unless you follow me): twitter.com/Thefearalcarrot
Please display the name of the games you're showing us please
PLEASE
_sprinkle a bit of egg over the top of it?_ . . . *FILTH!*
I love it!
So much egg!! Sounds like a deep dive on Celeste.
@@pjgoldstein6562 my brother just started playing that game and so far she really likes it
Would captain toad treasure tracker count as a platformer without jumping
I think the important thing to realize about Arctic Eggs is that the reason it can break all these rules of cooking games is that at its core, it *isn't* a cooking game. It's a game about mastering a single skill, but that skill has enough variety in expression that it can fill out a whole game. This isn't a game about cooking eggs; it's about mastering your control of the mouse through increasingly awkward situations.
It's QWOP but cooking. The genre of "Let's pick a mundane task to focus our game around but make it reaaaaally hard to do" has had plenty of variations over the years.
Honestly it needs a better name. QWOPlike? Obtusers? I don't have a lot
@@icicleditor Physics game.
@@icicleditor I second QWOPlike.
@@icicleditorI like ‘obtusers’. People probably won’t pick it up, but they should.
Just the other day the author of Caves of Qud tweeted: “Some people will say Caves of Qud is a bad game, to which I will say, yes but if you only make good things you're missing out on a lot of things that could be made.”
That's exactly it! It also reminds me to try and get past Red Rock for once...
knowing it's coq, I'm going to be a little bit biased about their opinion since most of the information I know about them is from the merchant's guild but anyways; everything has caveats. I'm not going to stay if the game tells me to pay more after I purchase them, or told me to grind for 100 in game hours with no sense of progression
you can make weird game without making it bad, all you need is more playtest and even more playtest to weed out mechanics that nobody wants to touch
@@ArchitectofGamesI got past that every game. I die at the tech place farther a foot. But win some lose others. I love qud however as it is a mix of retro and new ideas in a nice pot that hate you just as you hate it. XD caves of qud. A game made to be in a love-hate relationship with you.
@@adhiyaksaoktav497same of the guild aid. But also personal love of wacky game. S
Nice game, unfortunately the current version is broken right now. I lost all my saves rebuilt the golem was told to go defend the spindle but the templars never came 😔. That was 5 montgs so i might need to recheck if they fixed it.
Great game tho all you need is to learn some exploits through proselytise and warm static and you will soare until you get time locked due to getting too close to hunter and continually assaulted then even your 1000 hp and mighty cheruby companions will fall.
1:52 "games about cooking...are at least positive and fulfilling experiences"
He says whilst showing the most intense, stress inducing, family destroying gaming experience of my life in Overcooked
I've seen Overcooked break up a relationship - it's a powerful, powerful game
@@ArchitectofGames When I played it with my 2 best friends, we quickly turned into a well oiled cooking machine. Solid relationship
Overcooked is the only game that has made me hyperventilate
@@FogelTheVogel either you´re a well oiled cooking machine belasting through levels.
Or your group´s a fucking burning fryer.
There´s no inbetween, and thats beautifull
I know this is the litteral antithesis of your video, but my tenuous grasp of chemistry, phase changes, and gastronomy allows me to suggest an answer to your hook's question.
TLDR: you would be able to "cook" an egg, but it would take a bit more energy or time and the final result would be a weird dehydrated egg-cookie of unevenly cooked fat and proteins.
In the normal case, eggs are cooked by denaturing the proteins with heat. This value ranges from 65 - 75 °C. Since proteins are large, complex molecules suspended in aqueous solutions, i would not expect cooked-temperature to decrease significantly as we lower ambient air pressure (top of Everest being about 1/3 the air pressure at sea level, or ~0.3 bar for this napkin math). That is to say, if you can bring an egg to 70 °C at 0.3 bar, that egg will be cooked.
However, water happens to evaporate at around ~70°C at 0.3 bars. This is important because eggs are 90% water.
When eggs are cooked at 1 bar, water doesnt get hot enough to evaporate, but it gets trapped in a soup of denatured proteins, essentially giving well done eggs that fun squishyness. At 0.3 bar, a significant amount of water would leave the egg through vapor (exactly how much is a bit beyond my drunk capacities and shoddy math right now).
Additionally, the water vapor "steals" heat from the egg as it leaves, further increasing cooking time and/or energy required.
Also, liquid water is a great heat conductor and storer of heat. This is why we can cook an egg over easy at 1 bar. Even if the top part of the egg never touches the hot part of a pan, the water conducts heat through the egg. At 0.3 bar, this phenomenon would be less likely, further increasing cooking time AND resulting in a significantly uneven cooking.
I would expect a sort of very dry and crumbly hunk of unevenly cooked fat encased in a carmelized or charred shell. Shaitains scrambled scam
Also I just realized, if you're cooking with a pan , how are you heating it? Most gas or fueled power heat sources need oxygen to make fires. Everest isn't known for its abundance of air, much less oxygen! I suppose you could bring your own fuel oxidizer. And if you go electric , that could work. But then again most batteries and capacitors lose reliability as temperatures drop.
The best way to cook would be with a pressure cooker, hooked up to a miniscule nuclear reactor but that kinda breaks my first comment, and I was working under the game's clips implying that we only have a frying pan.
respect for the answer
@@theorixlux I'm so glad somebody came by to add to my 'I dunno, but it'd be really hard to do unless you can put the egg in a vacuum flask of hot *something* that will stay hot enough to cook the egg once you've got there' theory.
@@theorixlux So. We have our hyphothesis, now we need experiments
someone in a twitch chat said that apparently eggs get weird and rubbery when you freeze them and you can't cook that texture out of it after so even just taking it there and cooking it later would make it suck
As the saying goes, you need to know the rules before you can break them- but often understated is the emphases on asking “why” rather than blindly following them~
Yeah. The rules are presented as "don't do that", but they're really more like "don't do that unless you want to have _this_ effect"
Whatever "this effect" is, it'll be something that designers usually wouldn't want in a game. But if you understand the effect and you actually want to explore it? To design the other parts of the game to work well with it? That's different
If anything, I disagree with the saying to begin with
Is it a good idea to follow the saying?
Yes
Will I not care to look and do what I feel like and see how it goes?
Absolutely
I love learning WHY my concepts are wrong, not just that they are
And explaining why doesn't teach that, I have to experience it myself
I get a lot of friction for my approach to things, but in the end, I still get results
Like the MDA approach in the GMTK video "How To Think Like A Game Designer". Each mechanic of the game leads to a way the people act, and then a feeling bad or good depending on the mechanic and it's purpose
@@prosamis yeah, I think the full saying would be that you have to understand the rules before you can expect to _get good results_ from breaking the rules. But that's not so snappy
If you're deliberately playing around as a learning exercise, then that's completely different. And it's a really good learning technique IMHO
It’s Chesterton’s Fence.
I will say, the first boss of another crab's treasure sends a lot of mixed messages. They teach you the block system and try to get you in the habit of blocking more often as they should. But in the same breath they introduce blocks, they introduce unblockable attacks. Putting people back into their existing muscle memory.
This is a good point and also absolves me of blame so I will choose to believe it!
It puts me in mind of the first boss in Ninja Gaiden on Xbox, the place where you learn how to fight, but where so many ninja dogs gave up.
@@Justin-TPGI think my temp of that game ends there XD. But a block orinted foe with still unblockables is to remind you. AN ABSOLUTE DEFENSE is nothing without legs and a brain.
@@lechking941 Thankfully, these crabs have many legs…
But consider this: the game didn't have unblockable attacks at all. Suddenly, there is no dynamic there at all and it becomes a one-note experience.
That's like hanving Sekiro but every single attack is easily blockable the exact same way and not having attacks designed to jump over or Mikiri Counter towards or even lightning counter. The experience of learning fights would be no where near as fulfilling without these.
Not having unblockables is a bad idea in a game that insentivises blocking BUT gives you other defensive options. You can't always just adhere 100% to your key combat tool in a combat-centric game if you want it to be fulfilling - you gotta shake up the formula for it to engage the players more, whilst still keeping to the general pace the game lays out for the player.
In this sense, I still 100% believe it's a user error in the case of ACC (also me included btw) when they fail to see the importance of blocking. The early game, hell, the core gimmick of your character being a shell-bearing crustacean should clue you in. I sure felt dumb for not realising sooner!
Have heard a funny story about game design / muscle memory: In console racing games, the "right trigger" button is generally the accelerator pedal. In shooting games, that button is usually used to fire/trigger a weapon. In Call Of Duty: Black Ops, the RCXD is a remote-controlled explosive car meant to be driven towards an enemy and detonated. Its acceleration is simply controlled by the left analog stick, like it's a person. However, allegedly some players saw the "car" onscreen, pressed right-trigger to make it accelerate, and instead detonated it right in front of the player character, killing themselves instantly.
XDDD that's funny as heck
"If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses."
Damn that’s a fire line
**Makes horses trot forward at a solid 3 MPH.**
my favorite example of "bad design done right" is always gonna be nuclear throne
at the very end of the game, after you've beaten every single level and killed every enemy you previously had died to once the final boss starts its battle the first thing it does is shoot a giant laser beam across the center of the hall it's in
chances are you'll be caught in the beam and given pretty much no time at all to react and you'll die and go back to the main menu
the best part about this is that one of the developers for the game, rami ismail, said that he and the other lead developer recieved emails saying stuff like "why did you put that there fuck you for adding this" and some days later he'd get another email saying something like "i beat it, fuck you again."
there's plenty of examples of unconventional design choices in nuclear throne but this one is definitely my favorite
That really does just sound dumb and unfair, though. Could you explain what about it is "done right?"
@@WintryFox Mostly because it's funny
@@WintryFox “Oh, what the fuck. That was sooooo cheap. You know what? Fuck this, fuck that guy, I’m gonna dodge his stupid fucking laser next time and fucking kill him.”
type beat
😂
For me, this game was Sekiro. It was my first Fromsoft game and went in assuming it was an action adventure hack and slash type game. Got my butt kicked and quit for a while. Then i played Dark Souls and learned to be afraid of everything, cautious, extremely methodical and to take no risks. When i went back to Sekiro i progressed a little more, but (as with most players), Genichiro put me in my place and forced me to learn to play the game right. I had to unlearn my Souls approach of extreme caution, reactionary boss fights, and letting enemies control the flow of combat. This coincided with me finally learning the Mikiri Counter after hours of playing the game. The symbolism of having to dodge directly into the oncoming attack finally clicked in my head and i realized i needed to be the one controlling the flow of combat. I learned just the right amount of aggression and control needed to play the game right and its since become my favorite combat system ever. Still havent beaten Isshin or the Demon of Hatred, but i adore that game for all it taught me
I made the mistake of playing Sekiro right after Bloodborne, and not picking up on the fact that the "blocking is useless, dodge everything" dynamic was completely reversed. I brute-forced my way through several bosses before giving up. I only learned my error later, from watching other people play.
I need to reinstall it and give it another shot. Except, y'know, with a mod that rebalances limited consumables and Dragonrot, which were genuinely shit mechanics. (edit: Stop assuming that I'm talking about spirit emblems. Those are fine.)
@@CheshireCad ive played all the other souls games and Elden Ring since, but still havent gotten a chance to play Bloodborne yet. I couldnt agree more about dragonrot and spirit emblem limits. Bad attempts to mix up the formula that failed.
@@CheshireCadI agree on the consumables. If it's gonna take me 18 tries to get through a fight, then I either don't use consumables and learn to win without them, or I use them, run out of them, and learn to win without them
By the time I was good enough to realistically incorporate them into my strategy, I was already too used to not using them
For me the key mechanic was jumping over the spin/slash attacks. I was trying to beat Lady Butterfly, and the attacks were too common for me to ignore, but too rare for me to actually get used to them. I kept forgetting to watch out for them because I just couldn't spare the braincells. All my attention was focused on surviving the other attacks
I finally went back to the training area and just spent 20 minutes practicing the response to those specific attacks, until it was muscle memory. The lady Butterfly fight went _so much better_ after that
@@CheshireCad you don't need to rebalance consumables or worry about dragonrot, you can finish npc quests near the end of the game and undo the rot with an item. Spirit emblems are also plentiful if you spend you're left over sen when ever you have the chance.
Wow!! It is an honor to be featured, thank you so much, and fabulous video! Arctic Eggs is such a bizzaro delight, and now I understand a bit more why I loved it so much.
It's my pleasure!
I just watched your slay the princess video a few days ago, I really enjoyed it, I am not sure why I did not subscribe then, but thanks to the shoutout here it reminded me to go back to sub, and now I am going to watch a video about whoever this Daniel Mullins person is, I'm sure I'll know plenty soon.
Also watching you guys backlog now!
There's a lot that goes into it, but... to address the title itself, _good_ design doesn't ruin games. _Not knowing how to design_ ruins them. If the designer understands why something is considered "good" or "bad", then they know when to use it, when to use it with a twist, or when to eschew it entirely, and how to make their choices not just acceptable but outright engaging. If they just use something because it's "good", then chances are it won't be good in _their_ game. There's really no in-between here: What makes "good design" good is the designer's ability to understand the rationale behind it, plain & simple.
Case in point, coyote time. It exists to provide a buffer for imprecision, because the average player isn't casually pulling off frame-perfect inputs for an entire game. Having a bit is useful, since players can (and will) easily overestimate their leeway, since they see the graphics and not the hitboxes; it compensates for the hitbox not matching the graphics, and also for any slipperiness inherent to your controls. Turning it off feels bad, since basically every _other_ game has trained people to jump at the last second; with no coyote time, you need to jump earlier than it feels like you should. Too much can feel floaty, or even end up looking ridiculous if you aren't specifically _trying_ for _Donkey Kong Country_ -style hangtime, and too little feels overly precise and/or makes people miss their jumps. Once you understand this, you can use it to communicate with the player, such as by using length of coyote time to indicate jumping & acrobatic skill, or disabling coyote time to indicate that a block is slippery, and so on. Understanding _why_ it's good gives you the ability to use it to its fullest extent, instead of just copying it without really understanding it like a lot of games do.
Wasn't the crazy taxi arrow locked behind a patent or something like that?
shit am I going to get sued by sega now
@@ArchitectofGames After looking into it for a few minutes looks like it expired in 2018, so arrow away :)
Maybe SEGA were just trying to prevent other devs developing conventions and stifling creative design behind de facto standards? Or they were trying to be a bit greedy. I believe Shadow of Mordor's Nemesis system was also patented.
@@andymitchell2146 Correct, and that patent hasn't expired yet probably
@@JoseALugoR When will it?
I took a desktop design class once, and one thing that stuck in my mind is the professor said we were learning the rules - so we can break them. When it comes to art, something that is mostly consistent but in one area breaks that consistency - that will stick out and have a lot of impact.
11:30 this whole video but this section particularly reminded me of the existence of the challenge run community, the idea of people completely changing the rules and objectives of play, often by choosing not to do something that’s considered fundamental to the game, and almost always they get a completely fresh perspective and understanding of the mechanics that never would’ve been considered when playing the game “normally”, and it usually ends up with doing some absolutely ridiculous stuff to break the game in half. speedrunning is the most obvious and popular example of something like this that can apply to almost every game in some way, but you can see this most clearly with stuff like the A-button challenge, which is, relevantly to the section on platformers, people trying to beat mario 64 in as few presses of the A button as possible and studying the game’s mechanics like a straight up academic field. weird impractical tech is like pure math and challenge runners are the ones that find applications for it, and while devs maybe don’t have to go this far with it, there is absolutely inspiration to be found here
Huge agree here. I am of the opinion that Pokemon SwSh are not fantastic games, but I have been able to have a lot of fun playing through shield with a steel gym leader challenge, limiting myself to 4 steel types and only being able to use healing items the opponent uses. Alternatively if you complain about a game having cheese which makes it too easy (especially if it's singleplayer), it's kinda on you for continuing to exploit it despite it worsening your experience.
I have a lot of opinions here basically lol - even if you don't like a game you can still alter your playstyle to create more fun for yourself.
Kojima's presentation on how (mostly technological) limitations stimulated Evolution of Metal Gear's game design is a great companion piece for this vid.
Really what should be kept in mind are these heuristics:
1) understand your tools and the context of design conventions, how developer's vision or technology at the time led to it. Mechanics and decisions should NEVER be analyzed in isolation from the game around it. That's cause it will have different effect based on what design decisions you already made.
Metal Gear exists because the MSX computer had very strict sprite count for the action game, so Kojima reversed the Dynamic of engaging in encounters to avoiding them.
2) keep in mind the vision: understand the Dynamics and/or Aesthetics (MDA framework) the game is going for.
Ueda wanted to create a game where you create emotional bond with your companion (Aesthetic part), and that fueled the design decision of removing the healthbar but tie success/failure to safety of Princess Yorda (changing the Dynamic).
Imo, the concepts of Dynamics and Aesthetics are quite underdiscussed, but are great tools to help with understanding what's good for your game.
As in a lot of places, I think the key is often purposefulness. You'll often just make a mess without really advancing anything if you break rules without knowing why, and you'll make games which are bland and safe at best and bad from inappropriate use of tools at worst if you follow rules without knowing why.
I think this is what Yahtzee called “post-punk games” where after the previous rules and assumptions have been overthrown, new ones are established to always push the medium forward
Sometimes I wish I could look into other timelines and see what games they make there, like what if genre definers, like Mario, Quake, X-com, Rouge, Warcraft, etc., were never made or made poorly and instead, other games took off. Would games of these genres look notably different, or would they start down a different path to come to a similar location?
To some extent, you can experience this playing games from other countries, especially places like China that have a strong indie scene but not a lot of translated breakouts. Certainly, something like Dark Souls or The Witcher could never have been invented by a US studio. Even British video games have a distinct design philosophy that's really easy to spot.
Quake is just Doom in a 3d engine, the flow is the same, it became much faster in Quake 3 which is probably what you were trying to refer to
Reminds me of those stories that have the main character be someone secondary to the grander events. I find it fun when you're being another cog in the machine, rather than always staying in the spearhead - gives the setting an actual sense of scale, and not some Call of Duty "four angry dudes save the world" vibes
on one hand fair. on the other hand fallout three.
I suppose it's also funny when you're both insignificant yet also kinda big deal
A spanner in an incomprehensibly large machine
@@getaround1276 Fallout 3's problem is not in you being secondary. its problem is in you being a metaphor for Jesus, while forcing you to just follow what people order you to do with no expression of self or even choices. in Fallout 3, the game thinks and acts like you're the most important person, while actively avoiding putting you into that position
@@DorkN313 Its a game about choice and the effects they have while not letting the player make any
Probably why I like COD WAW and STALKER among others, I just love that stuff where other people do their things and you're not roping the world around you. It's why I'm fairly disappointed with Halo Infinite, the campaign is too much of a singular level type of feel (well it really is like the second mission but Ubisoft open worlded). I guess it's better to describe the opposite of this, in past Halos, even if you're playing as THE Spartan you're still not the big leader or whatever, you're still a soldier just super. Halo 3 ODST is nice for this, you're supposed to be landing on the carrier but the ONI agent redirects you to a different one, just as Chief goes on his mission on the other Halo ring, you're out there surviving on the streets of New Mombasa and finding clues to where your teammates are. Everyone is doing their own thing their operation but in Infinite you don't really feel any of that. There is no larger sense of going-ons and thisness from the forefront unlike the older titles.
Has anyone else noticed that games like Arctic Eggs and Buckshot Roulette have the same art style? Bad Games On Purpose seems to be becoming it’s own genre and that could very well end up leaving them with their own rules and conventions that will eventually need breaking.
Low polygon models and dithered textures are the new pixel art of indie games
I mean, arctic eggs is already pulling from tropes that I've seen in games like qwop and off peak, so from the little I've seen of it here it doesn't feel like a "truly" rule breaking game
How is it a "bad game on purpose"?
@@votch2798 I think that's at least partially because those art styles are easy on the budget. They're not that way just to chase a trend, it's easier to have a game that has a consistent aesthetic if you're working within some sort of limitation. Plus, these styles often go on to get expanded in ways that even if they were technically possible would not have occurred to graphic designers at the time.
I'm a firm believer that retro graphics are not just for the sake of nostalgia, but for the sake of artistically exploring roads left untaken.
This sounds like a cycle: when a great new idea grips the imagination of many players, they first enjoy seeing developers explore the space of possibilities of that style - until this space is explored well enough so it gets boring (though after different times for different players) and a different design style becomes more interesting. And the game that’s in place with a different core style in sufficient quality at the right time defines the next style to explore.
That different people have different timing of this, though, means it’s not as simple as I write it here ☺
There's also examples of whole genres being made by breaking rules of other genres. The prime example is farming sims.
Made a thing by Story of Seasons (originally called "Harvest Moon" in the west), there was really only one rule in Farm Sims: Don't make it violent. You could put the character through all kinds of hazards, poisonous gas, pitfalls, bees, shipwrecks, but never can the danger be a monster. You can have all kids of antagonists (Save the Homeland has some guys wanting to make the town a resort) but never a true villain (like a character who wants to use the harvest powers to take over the world). You can have your character use any tool you want, like a fishing rod or mining hammer, but never a sword. For 10 years that rule was essentially a law.
And on the 10th anniversary of the FOUNDING FRANCHISE, What did the devs decide to do?
Make a Harvest Moon game that aggressively breaks that rule. "Mines" were replaced with dungeons that had many dangerous monsters (which would originally kill you), your character could use multiple kinds of battle weapons (and even magic), and the antagonist WAS in fact a maniacal villain who wanted to conquer the world (he had a whole dang empire!)
Essentially farming sims were never the same after that. And many companies decided to brave the idea of ARPG farming sims.
I love how Armoured Core 6’s grading system challenges the idea that a grading system should make any sense at all. I’m doing everything right and I still don’t get a good grade, it really makes me feel like I’m at school again!
that actually was a japanese thing for decades now, you will notice it with pretty much any jrpg or japanese fighting game.
Honestly I wish there were more open world games with no death or combat. I was refreshing to realize I can actually jump all the way down in paradise killer (unless it's water then I'll be respawned). It also has a stellar story where literaly everyone is guilty of something.
Would A Short Hike count?
I liked Sable, though the dialogues are terrible and I skipped through most of them, but exploration and doing quests and puzzles were fun
Great video, but I strongly disagree with the "yellow paint is good design" bit. It kinda worked with Mirror's Edge because the game is just a long corridor and the challenge is execution. But in more exploration-based games it's just clunky and immersion-breaking.
If the player can't tell where they're supposed to go it's because of poor pathing or a lack of memorable landmarks.
If the player can't tell which barrels are breakable... well, there should be arbitrarily unbreakable barrels at all. Just don't throw in a billion barrels in and cause visual clutter.
(Also Rogue Legacy is great!)
The most important motion you should use when flipping anything in a pan is keeping the pan mostly level and doing sudden horizontal movement. So arctic eggs is not only ruining game design, but also cooking technique :v
That's just what Big Egg wants you to think!!
Horizontal?
@@a_lethe_ion yep, most prefer just doing a thrusting motion forward before quickly pulling back, but some prefer doing it the other way around or to the sides (which sometimes depend on the shape of the pan).
@@a_lethe_ionessentially you want to push your food against the rounded edge of your pan from where itll fly almost straight up
@@dinoaurus1 the way i do is letting it slide back by having it horizontal and then snapping it up vertically, like a come hither motion basically
Great video, i loved the narrative of how Can you cook an egg on Mt Everest is just about trying something new because you can.
Thinking about it more i feel as though rules and guidelines in game design is all about structuring your idea, and is never meant to have your idea structured from
I dislike the idea of blaming people for expecting something similar or the same out of a sequel/reboot. I feel like most people would rather new games entirely anyways, and if theyre getting the same game, they might as well get "game but with new thing and elaborating on whats interesting"(see kingdom hearts spinoffs) rather than "game but character assasinates someone who didnt need it" or "game but awful in boring ways"(see dmc:dmc for both)
Upon seeing Artic Eggs interface, my immediate thought was "is that the TFal professional skillet?" Lol, peak game design
Because the experience was so different, I honestly didn't even realize that Getting Over It is a platformer until I heard you say it.
I think some “good design” that has gone unquestioned in recent years is crafting systems .
When they were first popularized in stuff like minecraft and terraria it really gave a sense of taking the world and turning it into your progression. The trees you chop to clear land for a house can be used to get a pickaxe, the stone you mine naturally also turns into a better pickaxe as well as furnaces for smelting the ores you get deeper. It really makes a nice flow where progression can be made anywhere because the world itself is the progression.
Meanwhile in newer games crafting systems are a way to fluff out the progression that is already there. It makes you, the player, feel like you are constantly picking up worthwhile loot in areas while you’re exploring around, and maybe you can even make some healing items or ammo or something. But you usually can’t craft any actual upgrades or game changing stuff until you get a specific material from a specific boss. And at that point the boss might as well just give you whatever upgrade or item they let you be able to craft.
I've had a certain game idea floating around in my head for a while, but I felt like no one would actually appreciate it but me because it breaks some fundamental player expectations from the JRPG genre. Specifically, the player can only customize and control a single character from their party of 3 or 4 characters. That severely reduces player agency by putting the majority of the player's party on autopilot and severely limiting the player's ability to craft a "build", so it just feels like a doomed idea. But it wouldn't be stuck in my head if I didn't think it had redeeming qualities. Once I got to the section of this video at 12:53, I started feeling more confident about the idea, and I think if I fully commit to the things that make the game a different and unique experience, I could make it work out. I feel like my idea is effectively more of a puzzle game than a JRPG, so when you said the same thing about Into the Breach, I felt reassured. Great video, I really needed to see this.
That makes me think of OG Persona 3 with AI party members whom you give general tactics for them to follow. I'm really not a fan of the Portable and Reload versions adding manual control of party members because it fundamentally altered the game to make it less unique. 3 had the guts to say 'these are your friends, not your battlebots' and then every subsequent edition pushed the party further into battlebot mode, even FES is a little guilty with the fanservice outfits. I'd really appreciate another RPG like Persona 3 or Miitopia that has the courage to embrace AI party members.
It was done as far back as _Dragon Warrior 4,_ where once you started playing as the hero in chapter five, the rest of your party was under 'AI' control. (Scare quotes because this was an NES game.)
@@BaronWarthog That is exactly the feeling I want to go for. I want the AI teammates to feel like individuals, not an extension of the player.
@@BaronWarthog I bet I know why they changed it: Persona 3 not giving you direct control over the rest of your party basically forced me to use the main character as a healer so I could top everyone off, and to never use Mitsuru because she'd keep trying to do a status effect move that wasn't worth much. I really like the feel of 3's combat, but 4 and 5 just play better because stuff actually works right. All that said, I would love to see an RPG that nails the gameplay of only controlling one person, I think you just have to abandon traditional RPG combat design and rework everything around this change to do it.
Another example of this would be FF13, the only control you have over the party members in that game is programming the order in which they swap combat stances and which abilities they unlock.
Metroidvania developers try not to copy hollow knight's mechanics 1:1 challenge (impossible)
Hollow knight invented nothing, they just polished the hell out of it.
6:24 Dude, as I was listening to you talk, a started thinking about "Hmm, I wonder what kind of interestingly unique ideas I've seen in indie games lately?" And I answered my own question with "Well, there was that one game called Toodee and Topdee."
I look back at the screen and, coincidentally, you have some gameplay from Toodee and Topdee up there as B-roll.
As I've played more games over the years, I discovered how important it is to know "how to play" a game. This isn't always about going against the grain and doing things differently, its about setting up perception and expectations. It's part of why we have genres in the first place. Playing a Horror game like a Shooter not only won't work... It just doesn't make sense.
Ideally, "how to play" a game is something that should be taught in a Tutorial, but sometimes that's difficult to do or developers forget. As a result you get issues like you had with Crab's Treasure. Although, one could argue the 1st boss is part of the tutorial, in which case forcing you to adopt a defensive playstyle to win is actually a great way to set expectations for the game.
Personally, I recently bought and played Signalis but I didn't realize it was a Horror Survival Game, I just knew it was about Human Sentient Androids. Unfortunately, I've never been good at understanding "how to play" Survival Horror games, especially Retro ones like Signalis is modeled after. I tried to play Signalis, but I was constantly upset while playing because I didn't know if I was playing it correct, using the right weapons / bullets, solving the puzzles correctly, progressing correctly, etc. I got to the last Act of the game but then stopped because the game became too frustrating and the feeling of "What am I supposed to be doing" or "How am I supposed to play this game" got too much. I also had that experience when first playing Noita, I was unsure how to play it, like an RPG? A Survival? A Roguelike? A Roguelite? Does anything roll over between play throughs? Should I be working towards anything or just trying to preogress as far down? Should I be trying to collect gold? The game doesn't actually tell you how to play it or what to expect, I had to resort to RUclips Tutorials for help.
I always have this problem with Pokemon games. I like collecting the animals and learning about them and feeling like I'm making friends with them way more than the battle system, which generally feels boring to me. I think that's why I have only beaten Legends Arceus, which streamlined the battling more and put more into how you fill out the Pokedex and relate with the Pokemon by also making some of them double as fun, directly-controllable movement abilities. (And I've only "beaten" that one if you don't count the post-game actual final boss.)
Thats part of the fun in all games to explore what kind of design it is rather than starting with all the knowledge in the world.
Or at least go blind for a bit and try to adapt.
In that way you also learn to generalise, which makes that problem you experience much less apparent.
It is another layer of game that is worth having and not stripping away
@@damianabregba7476 I can't help but disagree. I understand that for some people, fumbling around while you search for the way to play is fun, but for me, I want to understand at the very least what the game is. My favorite games (like Celeste, Streets of Rogue, and ULTRAKILL) are clear about how they work and what it means to play them. Even for a very sandboxy game like Minecraft, you know how to engage with it - you mine, and then you craft whatever interests you, to facilitate the aspect of the game you like most (building, exploring, fighting, etc).
On the other hand, I hated the pervasive feeling of confusion that playing Noita was for me. Like the original comment said, what is the goal here? What is *any* goal here? There were things that were hard to do, but I was utterly bewildered on if I should do them, which I guess for some people is a fun mystery, but for me just made each achievement unfulfilling, because I didn't know if it was an achievement at all
This seems like a very long winded way of saying _"You can't do something new without experimenting, and you can't experiment without breaking some eggs"_
I've come to appreciate a lot Death Stranding. Because at first it was really frustrating that you biggest enemy is tripping on a rock, but it felt unique and made something that usually is boring like travelling to point A to B, actually interesting. And also feels so rewarding at the endgame when you have tons of methods of quick and easy transports
The only thing I really found frustrating about that game was its insistence on having boss fights.
It truly is the first Strand-type game.
Technically the biggest enemy is that whale.
The way you described Artic Eggs immediately made me think "well, isn't that good design?" but by the end I realized that you weren't talking about design the same way I think about it.
I don't think I agree with everything here (ex: What do you mean blocking doesn't work in Souls games? I did that for 3 of them...), but all things considered, this is exactly what your conclusion leads to. For me, good design is not about how smooth the gameplay is, it is something that somehow interests me enough to live a different experience that what I'm used to; this is usually a mix of a lot of different things (visuals, gameplay, narrative, etc.). I realized over time that I rarely play games of the same genre because I simply feel like "oh ok, this is going to be just like this other game", and I avoid triple A games like the plague because they almost exclusively rely on safe game design concepts. They refine it and most of the time are the reason why something peaks, but still: it's kinda bland to me. Or maybe I'm projecting too much of what I know onto them.
Video games, like books and board games, will almost always be inspired by something we incorporated before making them. But we should always strive to make them unique, both as players and as designers.
I'm surprised you didn't mention Surgery Simulator, which also provides you with intentionally difficult controls and still ends up fun as you have to learn this new system.
This video might be my favorite of yours. The difference between mainstream AAA games and experimental indies is really interesting to me, and as a designer I'm always thinking of ways to find a balance between the conventional and the novel. Arctic Eggs is without a doubt one of the most unique games I've ever played, and I just love its commitment to such a strange concept.
I'd argue Yellow Taxi falls very easily into the category of "thinly veiled games that say they don't have a jump but have a jump"
Almost immediately, the game provides a prompt detailing that the player can cancel a boost for a vertical "launch" perse, and the level design begins incorporating small ledges that all but basically ask the player to "Jump" up them.
"Why make games wrong on purpose?" Because the decisions made serve the purpose of the game and enable the desired experience.
8:30 As soon as you mentioned jumping as a staple of platformers, my mind jumped to VVVVVV. Nice to see it mentioned, it's a brilliant one.
0:32 "On both sides, as always"
What kind of monster are you?
I love the PowerGlove. It's so bad.
Its funny how different Souls-like games have become. When Demon's Souls and Dark Souls first got popular the genre was defined by hiding behind your shield and blocking everything, now blocking is such an afterthought that when a souls-like asks you to block people get confused about it. Love watching genre's evolve like that, where a return to convention feels like a step in a new direction.
And now you even have cute Souls-like games like Kena or Crabs!
In regards to games that mess with the idea of the jump, I highly recommend Leap Year, a game where doing a full-height jump will make your character die of fall damage. It's a puzzle game where the puzzles are basic environment navigation. It's very good.
In both cases, it kinda boils down to "But is it fun/interesting?", and the whole question of "Just because it CAN be done, doesn't mean it should.". A bit like when movies do a dumb thing, but "It's okay, we are *pointing out* we are doing the dumb!".
Very true about the stagnation and confusion, I’ve recently started playing the first Borderlands and it took me a while to release you can explode barrels because explosive barrels are meant to be bright red and stand out, but in this game the colours are muted and there’s different colours of them
It had me shooting random things just to see what happens
I recall people complaining about Fear & Hunger's mechanics as being "outdated", and this was exactly how it really felt to me. Game design doesn't exist on a 2d slider of quality, things exist for a reason and by all means a mechanic that sucks ass in one game can be the defining feature of another
Fear and Hunger is an old school (like 0DnD old school) rpg. It precisely follows the rules of good design in that context (jaquaying the dungeon, traps being avoidable and telegraphed, gear being, effectively a levelling system etc.) and translates them into a videogame, bypassing years of videogame design conversation. It's genuinely not even that hard it just requires a complete switch up of approach.
"Did you do something nice with your hair" yeah i just finished cutting it lol
4:42 perfect for pauseing,
He talked about social constructs in video games with out saying their bad.👍
Understanding the rules is only the first level of mastery. The second is learning when (and how) to break them. If there's a third level of mastery, I haven't found it yet.
I loved the video! I love the part on alternative game modes, which I think is often an underused tool by developers to find new fun in their projects.
However, I think there is more than « breaking conventions » at stake here. I see a lot of devs try to « break conventions » and ultimately just break their game, by removing a pillar it was resting on. I think innovative games don’t « break conventions » as much as they take responsibility over their own design: if anything is in the game, the designers know why. Convention or not, it is thoroughly understood.
A lot of games just grab mechanics from other games and assume they will fit another game with little to no retrofitting. Let alone deep understanding of the original thought process that lead to the original design.
And, when things get really bad, some devs grab a mechanic elsewhere and « remove what they don’t like » with little understanding of the consequences of that change in chemistry.
In other words, I don’t think these interesting experiences come from « removing limits ». I think it comes from actually understanding every little part that makes a machine run. Even if that means making a weird machine with all unique parts. A machine for which you can’t rely on any precedent for reference.
That fares certainly better than carrying bagage you can’t (or won’t) open, crossing your fingers that it will automagically translate into a fun time.
Anyway, super interesting topic, thanks for this video! :)
why did i get a haircut yesterday? got spooked by the end because of it, lol
"up to and including defenestration" is definitely the highlight of the script lol
I think a good example of breaking genre conventions to its benefit is Elden Ring. On release it was bashed by other developers publicly for not following the then typical Towers and Caves design metric of open world games and not giving players the usual navigation tools of the genre, but players loved it.
In ER, exploration and discovery are two of its biggest gameplay draws, so just handing you a detailed map full of all the attractions like a theme park would've taken away half the fun, and it used other tricks to help navigation- you get a good view of several points of interest early on that has sight lines and other small eye catches to essentially ensure you notice everything important and remember its place, and the game- which was not as sprawling as it's contemporaries of its time- was able to use easily distinguished and unique landmarks to help the player navigate holistically.
The tools exist in other open world games for a very good reason; many are incredibly large and forced to resort to sometimes repetitive terrain besides, and a big draw is doing all of the things- having a single bandit camp in the middle of nowhere keeping you from 100% completion with no indication of its location would be obnoxious as all get out, and was a problem collectathons as a genre, with much smaller maps suffered from often. It's justified there, but it's the right tool for that job, not Elden Ring; the best hammer in the world will still be a poor saw.
Great video but I absolutely can't get behind the take that rogue legacy is "straight up not very good" or has boring/unsatisfying gameplay. I loved every second I had with it.
This. While I never got around to actually beating it, this was my go to game on the PSP any time I had a spare 30 minutes or so in college.
Yeah, Rogue Legacy is good
I've only played the second one, but it's an excellent Roguelite, one of the best. I generally don't take this Adam guy's opinions very seriously, I find they're often pretty off-base or full of assumptions.
Searched for this comment. Thank you.
I think there 2 ways to " break" rules.
The first 1 and mostly shown in this video is where the breaking of rules is largely about the replacing of them with rules of a other genre. Essentialy creating games that wear the skin of 1 genre but in reality are a other. Like into the breach taking away the unpredictability and other minor chances to make a tactical game into a straight puzzle game. That doesnt mean that its just a switch though, Instead its essentialy using rules of the 1 genre to spice up the other into the breach is secretly a puzzle game but it uses a lot of stuff you would see in xcom to ad twists and vareity into the puzzle genre.
The 2nd one is more about taking a rule and understandign ti purpose and then trying to come out at the other end with a similair outcome just by taking a diffrent road. Like the no jumping games mentioned in the video the goal of jumping is to gain height so finding other ways to gain height can ad a lot of intrest. You just have to be carefull that it actualy adds something and not just make it more complicated just to make it more complicated. Complexity doesnt mean good after all.
In the end either way to make a good rule breaking game you need to understand the rules in the first place. What is there goal and why they excist. And most importantly what chancing them or taking them away actualy does. Does it mean you just switched genre or did you just take a diffrent route to the same rule and most importantly didnt you just added more complexity without adding value.
Really cool of you to shout out katie and catburger, i just met their channel by their slay the princess video and its fucking awesome
17:33 PFFFTT I thought you were legit married for a second, I was just about to say new lore unlocked
15:23 you say that, but I also did my first playthrough almost entirely without a shell and bashed my head into a brick wall trying to play aggressively. It ended up working eventually and I loved it so much more for it.
Oh my God, a Katie and Catburger shoutout! I met Katie at GDC a couple of years ago, but their content at the time bounced me off. I'm excited to hear that they're doing video essays now!
I love that it's just a straight up T-FAL pan, lol
2:50 reddit says there's psychological reasons for it, going left to right is perceived more positively than right to left
I can't believe you went through this without talking about Splatoon
2:50: Except at the start of every level when you must run to the left first, in case of secrets
I'm totally ok and honestly even excited when games had similar bases or ways to play with a different amount of systems. It's easy to understand the mechanics and makes the transition to become a master easier if you played a game that taught you to dodge well already
All my dodge roll games have made me a master In many fighting games
Some games are so bloated with systems and tutorials you dont want to play tham so having a understanding of the basis sometimes really helps
@@megadeth116 honestly I wish more games just throw you into the world and say "good luck" after showing you the basics. Then you sink or swim
Recent example. Tokyo mirage sessions. I've gotten more patient as a player so what I did early game in lunatic mode was guard to regain EP to heal. Beat all foes aside one and just kept spamming that until I was at full health. High ep and then slay the foe. I wish that game did that all playthrough I'd have been having fun.
Also games that reward being smart. Fe so many examples like arena spam. Gordin archer training. Ross training. Azura dance spam etc.
I had this with skeleton boomerang. I saw that i was only getting 1 bone from the fragment pickups without a combo and felt like keeping a combo was impossible, since the dodge either kept you in place too long or flung you off the edge of a small platform. Then i realised the dodge was just one piece of the puzzle. Jumping over/sidestepping the boomerang and trapping it behind enemies then mixing in the dodge roll inbetween makes it easier and more interesting. And once you get past how unpredictable and awkward the boomerang initially feels you start to feel like a genius, deftly dodging the boomerang and subtly guiding it into enemies as you run by.
I've watched a lot of people play Rain World, and of all the professional RUclips game-players, I did just as good, or rather, better, not despite my inexperience with game conventions, but because of it. It's my favourite game of all time, and there's nothing like it.
The fundamental building blocks of being good at Rain World are different than most other games, and a lot of people started playing the game not understanding that. Something like understanding creature patterns is quintessential to being good at the game.
So basically, _____ walked so that ______ could run
20:42 "Given enough time, designers will refine the innovation out of a genre."
Part of the issue seems to be too many giant companies that make games so huge and expensive that deviating even slightly from the usual way of doing things feels like steering the Titanic towards a whole bunch of icebergs. Anything that could cut into profit margins risks massive layoffs, so in a sense they have a responsibility to make safe games.
Put another way: if you are a AAA studio with a massive budget, you have more to lose, and so the people at the top become risk averse.
I don't mind changing the rules outside of common expectations, but it does feel sometimes like devs just did a test, it didn't work out but they're asking other people money for their failures, and that's not cool. I think experimentation like that is great in game jams or even privately as a dev iterates through things, but at some point you should strive to put out a quality result, not just "it's weird and different therefore it's good".
Exactly. Big part of experimenting is writing down "Tried this. It did not work" (and it presumes that experiment-maker has some kind of goal in mind, other then throwing random stuff into pot to see if it goes "BOOM!" or "Psh-sh-sh-sh!!").
oh my gosh, this is the first time I’ve ever seen Verlet Swing featured in a video! Oh and all of the video was great - good job!
Every time I see someone talk about what a game should/shouldn't do, I'm reminded of a quote from Johan Pilestadt (Creative Director at Arrowhead Games): "A game for everyone is a game for no-one." Essentially, a rigid adherence to a single code of good/bad design makes the industry homogenous, which alienates a lot of people. I actually have this discussion more often in ttprg circles, but sometimes in videogames and board games too.
For example, you can be almost guaranteed that most games will protect players from their own stupidity, whether it be reaction time mechanics in Batman Arkham games, the mission story and illegal item/action popups in the HITMAN World of Assassination trilogy, or most team shooters jamming your weapon and refusing to throw a beacon if you're at risk of terminating an ally. The explosive success of Helldivers 2 (until Sony put their foot in their mouth), and the rise in soulslikes in the last few years is proof that there's a market out there for gamers that enjoy being backhanded for screwing up. In fact, when Helldivers 2 launched, it got a lot of negative feedback because a lot of people coming in from traditional shooters, had fundamentally misunderstood the game, and assumed some of it's core mechanics (mainly friendly fire and ragdolling) could only be the result of bugs.
Great video!
I really like showing Portal at 8:09; even though it has jumping, the portal mechanic was ported over from Narbacular Drop which notably did not feature jumping.
In Stars and Time is a game where the main character is stuck in a time loop. The game breaks the rules multiple times by forcing you to play through the same sections multiple times to try and simulate the frustration that the main character feels. The game is designed so that combat is slow paced and gathering key items is extremely annoying which makes for a very unique experience. It's a great game and shows how breaking the rules can also be used to help the story in a game.
I also think Void Strangers lack of a real tutorial and forced restarts are one of the main reasons that the game is so memorable after playing.
I'm reminded of _Suzumiya Haruhi's_ "Endless Eight." Except that the POV character in that didn't remember the loops, but the audience sure did.
A video about Dan Mullins? Okay, off I go to check out Katie and Catburger.
First, arctic eggs is fundamentally not a cooking game. It can't avoid design principles for a style of game it is not, or at least it doesn't get any points for doing so. What it is is a physics games, which has a completely different set of design principles to follow which the game does indeed follow.
Second, yellow paint is a BAD design. Universally. Yellow paint is what happens when game designers are as lazy as possible with signposting. Instead of making something that properly fits the scenario and doesn't take away from the experience, or actually putting effort into level design and visual design, they just slather random paint on everything.
In regards to your second point, you're not actually disagreeing with the video here. Yellow paint was a good idea, until people stopped using it where it was needed and just put it on every interactable piece of scenery.
@@arnerademacker Not really. Yellow paint specifically is the mutation of a good idea into a bad one. And the issue isn't so much a question of "where it's needed", and more "where it fits".
If you are going to use diagetic signposting it is 100% paramount that it fits into the scene. Diagetic signposting that doesn't fit the scene is more distracting than non-diagetic signposting.
I do want to add that yellow paint itself, while universally bad, is not the end of the world. It's more like a sign of the apocalypse instead. The use of yellow paint is proof that they didn't care, which means that there will definitely be far worse problems.
@@Sotanaht01 Yellow paint by itself is nothing, an empty idea, a concept ripped from any context worth talking about.
The reason it's bad is because, as you pointed out, the non-diegetic use of it. Which has something to do with "Yellow Paint" only insofar as "Yellow Paint" has become a euphemism for "non-diegetic signposting".
The video, however, is talking literally about yellow paint having become the euphemism "Yellow Paint" as a result of the rigidity with which it has been used in video games.
@@arnerademacker Correction. "Non diagetic signposting" is things like way-point arrows and objective markets and blue outline highlights. Diagetic refers to the fact that it exists in the actual game world, not whether or not it properly FITS in the game world. I'm pretty sure there is a word for stuff that does or doesn't fit or is out of place, but I can't think of what it is.
@@Sotanaht01 "Unfitting" I guess
As someone who hates when looking for games and every game is the same mechanics with a different skin this is a nice summary of my annoyances.
I think the idea is that in art, rules exist to be broken. Creativity exists on the line that separates the traditional from the unknown. It’s in the balance between knowing which expectations to follow and which ones to break that the brightest examples of creative exercise emerge.
If you strictly adhere to all the expectations regarding a genre, you end up with a completely recycled game - something we see in many recent games that fail despite their multimillion-dollar production costs. On the other hand, if you break too many rules, you create something so disconnected from the player’s experience that they simply don’t understand it or can’t see the point of playing in the first place.
Every standout game is one where developers use principles as the foundation to support the new elements they bring to the player’s experience.
StarCraft I, an RTS game released in 1998 is infamous for it's bad pathfinding. Combined with the 12 unit selection limits, its frustrating to walk your armies through a narrow choke point that blocking is very effective. Its sequel, StarCraft II, eliminated this issue, which in turn, created the opposite problem: The pathfinding is so good that units just clump up into a ball so easily, reducing the skill required to move from point A to point B.
I feel like arctic eggs falls into a category of game similar to getting over it and qwop. That is to say games where the primary challenge is the awful controls themselves, not any particularly difficult in-game task.
Funny enough I actually think Arctic Eggs is a bad example of a cooking rule breaker game... because it's a very good example of a conventional Surgeon Simulator clone, a genre which is in desperate need of a name. Cooking games are about clear and rigid rulesets, efficient productivity management, and entering a flow state. Surgeon Simulator clones are about unweildy control schemes, janky physics interactions, and unnessecary hyper-control over extremely specific parts of your body. Notable entries include QWOP and Octodad. Arctic Eggs checks these boxes perfectly. You have to use the mouse to balance the frying pan, which is simeultaneously too sensitive to achieve a balanced centerpoint and doesn't bounce back quickly enough to recover from attempted flips. Flipped ingredients not only accelerate at unimaginable rates, but also fly out of the screenspace where they cannot be observed. And you have exact control over the rotation angles of specifically your right wrist. Misidentifying genres is a classic consumer error, like that time Elite: Dangerous tricked me into getting invested in the sociopolitical landscape of an MMO by disguising itself as a flight sim
I honestly wish rougelike games were a side game feature separate from the main gameplay you are playing
Fire emblem for example you can have the main story and chapters while the side stuff could be a fun challenge mode. I can see fates do this best with capture units as bonus stuff you have.
That just sounds like you don't like roguelikes, but like good story games.
@@dr.cheeze5382Slow down there, he did say “Fates”…
I want game devs to work less and make worse games and I am not kidding
One of the best ways I've seen a game break the rules was a flash game called "This is a Work of Fiction". The "buttons" on the starting menu aren't buttons at all, they're instructions - move the mouse cursor around the central pointer in one direction to start the game, move it the other way to erase your progress. The game basically tells you from the word go that it's not going to hold back, and that outside-the-box thinking is encouraged.
i feel this. there's a lot of weird games that took risks and became beloved for it. but also I'm not paying 70 Dollars for Arctic Eggs (or other similar games). not that they're asking me to, but if a publisher is asking for multiple hours worth of labour from me in return for their game, it shouldn't waste my time.
*22:06* You get to pet the chicken, that makes up for all the game's jank. Lol.
Mark Brown's game is a victim of this. He has an entire video dedicated to how he had to go against the idea of mixing puzzle and skill elements in his platformer, because he didn't want people to be confused on how you're supposed to get through a level... in a puzzle game. The "game about magnets" concept asks for all sorts of physics shennanigans, for genuinely deep design that involves interesting planning even without conventional "puzzle" elements like switches and doors and whatnot, but noooooooo, gotta compress all dynamics out of the game and reduce it to locks&keys.
It wasn't supposed to be a game about puzzles or precision platforming, the pitch was that it's a game about *magnets*. The same set of mechanics could be used for puzzles, platforming, racing, tower defense, character action, anything! And I'd play it if the physics and obstacles are good and the game pushes the concept to the limit. But in the end, we're getting just another puzzle game, but with a magnet skin.
Nothing is more proof of this than all the AAA devs being salty at Elden Ring a while back
Elden Rings actually lifts off a lot of AAA design stuff in its open world (fuckton of repeated secondary content being the main culprit, the crafting with all the herbs and ores to collect around just to keep hostage the attention and engagement of the players, even the Ubisoft towers in a way) and it makes it probably the less inspired and more bland From Soft game.
Every concept was either a rip off of AAA game or the inflation of an idea already seen in a previous fromsoft game, with a huge amount blatantly recycled stuff, both in lore and gameplay/setting.
It played it incredibly safe, it's dark souls 3 but huge and people like it, although to make it huge they fucked up boss fights and the level design of most of the areas.
Quantity over quality, but it's from soft so of course everyone will say it is "innovative" and "risky", while it isn't.
@@Edo_has_a_marvelous_persona if you think elden ring is DS4 than you are sadly mistaken, the bosses are the best in the series and dodge/r1 spam isn't a thing anymore.
@@Ghorda9 the bosses are Sekiro spammers without the combat system of Sekiro. It's notdifficult to see. They just don't work in ER, they force you to metagame and stick to just 1/2 broken builds instead of being creative. It's a fact, every single person with a nudge of critical reasoning has noticed it. Also yes it's DS3 but huge.
This is one of things that I find exciting about VR. VR obviously doesn't have conventional controllers, but the trend at first, was to apply conventional game design regardless. You'd press a button to open a menu, your health and ammo would be shown on your HUD, you'd hold down a button to access your weapon wheel, that sorta thing.
Aside from completely ignoring the possibilities that makes VR different from normal games (which is pretty boring), these really didn't work that well in VR.
Due to the wider FOV in VR and the fact that the image is filling your entire field of vision instead sitting in front of you, like in normal games, things like HUDs don't really work. Human vision is only clear in the foveal area of the eye in the center, so when you position the HUD down the bottom of the player's view, where it normally goes, you can't read it. You need to move your eyes to see it, which means you can't focus on what's in front of you.
VR controllers also have less buttons compared to normal controllers, so you end up having to make clicking in the thumbsticks do things like open up your weapon wheel. Which is a pain when you're accidently opening it while you're trying to run from an enemy.
What they ended up discovering is making these things diegetic not only makes things smoother and more natural, but also more immersive. Instead of having inventory be a window that pops up when you press a button, have it be a backpack you open up by grabbing it from over your shoulder. Instead of using a weapon wheel, have it so your weapons are located on the player's body and the player simply grabs it. It's FAR faster to simply grab your pistol from a holster on your hip when jumped by an enemy than it is to fiddle with a weapon wheel, especially when adrenalin can make your ends a bit shaky.
A lot of conventions don't actually have a good reason to be conventions in the first place, though, yet going against them can often be seen as bad anyway simply because people may not like unfamiliarity. Making a game "bad" on purpose can make things more interesting and fun but going against convention doesn't necessarily mean making a game "bad". There are some conventions that serve a purpose but others are simply nothing more than tradition. Convention can perpetuate bad design just as much as it encourages good design.
'Without taking on the risk of f*cking up and getting it wrong, you'll never have a chance to do something truly new and special'
Yeah applies in life
i remember back in the day playing and looking for wacky weird stupid unpolished games and enjoying how sometimes the intended experience is awful and the controls are against you: kaizo mario, cat mario, envirobear, some WCIII maps. and i love seeing that same sense of humor being put today in modern and more polished(-ish?) games, showcasing how this philosophy can be a core part of the medium
22:09 AWWW, YOU ACTUALLY GET TO PET THE CHICKENS!?!?!
Thank you for talking about Arctic Eggs, one of my favorite short and sweet games