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Original post by loufoque Playing a CRPG is more like reading a book than playing a board or card game.

I hardly play PC RPGs or the recently released CRPGs nowadays. I might be wrong or biased but I felt that their focus have been shifted from story to "leveling up" and "main quest + sub quests".

Missed the good old days of Advanced Dungeons and Dragons.

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Original post by kru I might have misunderstood the original question, but it seems like you're attacking your own definition here. You're defining "hardcore" games with a very narrow view, then attacking the games that fit within that narrow view. You dismiss the entire category of games that thwart your definition with the world "casual," as though they don't exist. I don't think you can dismiss those games and still ask why the palette of situations in video games is narrow, because is isn't.

I see what you mean. A distinction I see really should have made very clear relates directly to why I exclude casual games, and I'm sorry to not have made it originally.

What I'm really inquiring after are games which I perceive to have depth. Obviously that's highly subjective, but you might get what I mean if you compare Diner Dash to Civilization. I arbitrarily exclude casual games because of the level of complexity presented. So for these more complex games I'm asking why the situations presented so often only encompass combat or management.

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At the heart of the issue, it seems as if you wonder why games that feature combat or management are popular. My opinion is that combat and management are simple and intuitive.

Combat I'll grant you (because it's so visceral), but I wonder if that actually holds true for management. It's not something we see depicted all that often or that we're exposed to, is it? If not, why is it automatically so intuitive?

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I'd even say we've mastered the art of shooters and strategy game pattern designs. That makes them easy to make, and more profitable.

That's an interesting thought. Whether or not they're innately easier to develop I don't know, but I think you're right. We've iterated over them so much that it's not as hairy and scary a territory as trying to make gameplay out of dramatic social situations.

Maybe I'd also go as far to say that we've mastered a level of spatial strategy, which you could say holds true for any activity involving physicality, from timing a jump in a platformer to setting up a kill sack in an RTS.

In comparison, a game built around backstabbing and political intrigue, for instance, or thieves pulling off a heist and double crossing one another is mostly terra incognita.

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I also tend to think a little bit negatively about the people who buy games. I don't think the majority of game players want to read or think too much about a story.

Heh, I find it way too easy to be pessimistic about the hardcore audience. But I'm always surprised. The amount of time people can devote to mastering spell combos or management screens in a builder game gives me hope for the attention span of the average gamer (some anyway).

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The game with the most dialogue and least combat had the weakest sales, even though it was critically acclaimed.

Yes, I take your point, but I can't help but wonder whether or not the critically acclaimed game is doing it's job. I can be pretty cerebral about a wide array of subjects but I don't want to play a game that's dreadfully dull-- I need drama and tension, the discovery of the unknown and a slew of interesting decisions to make. I don't think the average gamer is much different, and any game that comes out of left field content-wise is going to need to offer some hint that it's got this.

Actually arent THE most popular computer games actually online gambling ???
(of course technically many ARE 'table' games (cards/spinning wheel/dice) and the
Slots are closer to 'mechanical' resolution of the play)

They have nothing to do with combat and have a real element (real money) involved
which give weight to the play.



There are economic and 4X computer games which largely abstract the 'hack and slash' aspect.

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I hardly play PC RPGs or the recently released CRPGs nowadays. I might be wrong or biased but I felt that their focus have been shifted from story to "leveling up" and "main quest + sub quests". Missed the good old days of Advanced Dungeons and Dragons.

Actually when it comes to RPGs, the reason that keeps getting repeated as to why they can't make a cRPG like the pnpRPGs is that to make a computer respond as well as a real person in the role of a DM is too difficult.

I don't agree with this at all. The problem lies in the approach. Most cRPG are designed like, as loufoque mentioned: "a book". Specifically the Choose your own adventure type books. At various places you can make a decision as to the direction that the story goes.

Now, if you are going to make an RPG where the player has virtually unlimited choice at each of these points, and are going to have lots of these points, then the game will be extremely complicated.

But there is another approach. This is to abstract the decisions that a character can make, and abstract the character's responses.

If you think about it, in every game you make decisions as to where the game will proceed. Take an RTS for instance.

In an RTS you are constantly having to make choices as to the way the scenario plays out, but the designers did not have to craft every single choice, the choices you make are the results of the current state of the game (what troops you have, what troops the enemy has, the map, etc). And the choice the player makes depends on their "Characterisation" (strategy) they are using. If a player is doing an aggressive strategy then they will make one choice, and if they are playing defensively they will make a different choice.

What is important, is that the choices emerge out of the mechanics. This is because the choice is an abstract choice, it is the mechanics that realise the details of the choice.

Such systems for RPGs have been created in the past ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sword_of_the_Samurai_(computer_game) ), so such things are not impossible, and should easily be feasible on today's (faster and with more memory) computers.

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Original post by Edtharan But there is another approach. This is to abstract the decisions that a character can make, and abstract the character's responses. If you think about it, in every game you make decisions as to where the game will proceed. Take an RTS for instance. In an RTS you are constantly having to make choices as to the way the scenario plays out, but the designers did not have to craft every single choice, the choices you make are the results of the current state of the game (what troops you have, what troops the enemy has, the map, etc). And the choice the player makes depends on their "Characterisation" (strategy) they are using. If a player is doing an aggressive strategy then they will make one choice, and if they are playing defensively they will make a different choice.

Excellent analogy. What it brings to mind is the UI scheme for The Sims. Just as in an RTS where you might select "Hold Position" or "Attack Target," the UI for The Sims encapsulates a wide range of responses for any given object which in turn affect stat levels. Those stat levels then drive different game states. So you get a lot of variety in terms of situations without specifying each and every interaction.

I think what keeps us stuck is no more than a narrow view of what kinds of interactions we think players want to have as well as specific ways to depict them. It seems that we assume that if we can't photorealistically render characters emoting at us, for instance, then we can only do combat or management in the type of games I've been talking about.

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Original post by wodinoneeye Actually arent THE most popular computer games actually online gambling ??? (of course technically many ARE 'table' games (cards/spinning wheel/dice) and the Slots are closer to 'mechanical' resolution of the play) They have nothing to do with combat and have a real element (real money) involved which give weight to the play.

I think you miss my point here. I'm not saying this gameplay isn't done. I'm asking about variety in the games that are considered deep. The subject matter is typically combat or resource management.

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There are economic and 4X computer games which largely abstract the 'hack and slash' aspect.

Case in point. These are most often war games with a thin veneer. Civilization, for instance, has very little to do with civilization. It's a war game with trimmings (that I've enjoyed for years, but a war game nonetheless).

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Excellent analogy. What it brings to mind is the UI scheme for The Sims. Just as in an RTS where you might select "Hold Position" or "Attack Target," the UI for The Sims encapsulates a wide range of responses for any given object which in turn affect stat levels. Those stat levels then drive different game states. So you get a lot of variety in terms of situations without specifying each and every interaction.

And with the abstracted interface/commands of games like the SIMS, players will make up their own stories about the details of the interactions. Like with the "Simish" language the characters in the SIMS speak. Although there is not real words there, they do have expression and inflection in there so you can understand what is meant to be going on, even if you don't know the actual words. It is the lack of detail that actually create more detail in the players minds.

What I think is narrowing the variety of situations that computer games can do is not so much a lack of ability, but a perception of a lack of ability due to "traditional" game structures.

RPGs, for instance, in the early days were by necessity simple. As computers got better at displaying high detail graphics in real time, this was a natural tendency to "improve" the game by adding in these advances. However, the core concept (of creating a persona for a particular role) has not been advanced much at all.

Instead a simple veneer of what exists in pnpRPGs (the character sheet) has been expanded and complicated, and this has been called "Character Development". When in fact, the concept behind pnpRPG character sheet has actually been lost (as a tool that allows simulation of a world, not the character).

This has been accepted as "traditional" cRPG and there is a perception that a cRPG must have a character sheet. This then means the character sheet has to be used, and as it is only a tool for the simulation of a world, the game ends up focusing on world mechanics simulation than character simulation. Because world mechanics simulation in RPGs is mainly about combat (in pnpRPGs this is what the character sheet is used for), the games just ends up being about combat.

It is not only in RPGs that this occurs either. It is "traditional" for games to follow certain patterns. FPS games are set in modern or (near) futuristic worlds. What about a medieval FPS where you have to assassinate a person (like Assassin's creed) as a cross between "Thief" and a standard shooter. OR one set in the American war of Independence where you are a Militia Rifleman and are facing an overwhelming force of English Riflemen in formations (and how the Militia were using different, hit and run, and skirmishing tactics against the superior numbers and training) - you could call it Battlefield 1775 :D .

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Original post by Edtharan And with the abstracted interface/commands of games like the SIMS, players will make up their own stories about the details of the interactions.

Right. It's funny how a bit of character animation and stat bars in the red or green suddenly equal dramatic events like "my sim was in love" or "my sim was depressed."

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It is the lack of detail that actually create more detail in the players minds.

I think this is one of the biggest mistakes games are making these days. It's like with horror-- the scariest stuff is the stuff you don't see, but only imagine.

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Instead a simple veneer of what exists in pnpRPGs (the character sheet) has been expanded and complicated, and this has been called "Character Development". When in fact, the concept behind pnpRPG character sheet has actually been lost (as a tool that allows simulation of a world, not the character). This has been accepted as "traditional" cRPG and there is a perception that a cRPG must have a character sheet. This then means the character sheet has to be used, and as it is only a tool for the simulation of a world, the game ends up focusing on world mechanics simulation than character simulation. Because world mechanics simulation in RPGs is mainly about combat (in pnpRPGs this is what the character sheet is used for), the games just ends up being about combat.

I never thought of this but I think you're on to something here. Even when the character sheet contains non-combat skills, they're usually dwarfed by those relating to combat mechanics.

But I think this gets down to problem solving and advancement. It's technically possible to have a number of different strategies to solving a problem such as how to get through a door, but it always invokes the question of how much simulating of the mundane we'd find interesting. There could be, for instance, a half dozen different door strategies, some of them noisier, safer or involving the challenge of different magical or security systems. But would enough players find this intriguing?

In terms of character development sometimes I think the real problem is that we don't know what that looks like in both playable and dramatic terms. We know what more strength, more magic and more intelligence looks like. But what does dramatic progression look like outside of set piece events embedded in the story?

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It is not only in RPGs that this occurs either. It is "traditional" for games to follow certain patterns. FPS games are set in modern or (near) futuristic worlds. What about a medieval FPS where you have to assassinate a person (like Assassin's creed) as a cross between "Thief" and a standard shooter. OR one set in the American war of Independence where you are a Militia Rifleman and are facing an overwhelming force of English Riflemen in formations (and how the Militia were using different, hit and run, and skirmishing tactics against the superior numbers and training) - you could call it Battlefield 1775 :D .

Hah, true. I loved Thief even though I was too chicken to complete it (timing some of those guard rounds was just too nerve wracking!).

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I never thought of this but I think you're on to something here. Even when the character sheet contains non-combat skills, they're usually dwarfed by those relating to combat mechanics.

This is why I always write out a list of actions (sorted by how often I expect the player to be performing those actions) as part of the game design. IT not only allows you to design the levels better and eliminate tasks that are not fun or significant to the gameplay, but also allow you to know where your effort in both design and other development can be best focussed.

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In terms of character development sometimes I think the real problem is that we don't know what that looks like in both playable and dramatic terms. We know what more strength, more magic and more intelligence looks like. But what does dramatic progression look like outside of set piece events embedded in the story?

I think most people have an understand of character development in dramatic terms, but it is the playable terms that is the problem we need to solve.

Basically, Drama comes from tension, specifically, the build up and release of that tension.

Think of a Soap Opera. The drama involved in these has a gradual build up of tension between characters that is then suddenly released. However, it rarely goes back down to the level it was before the dramatic events took place and so the level of drama builds up over time (which can then be released as well).

See, set piece events that are embedded in a story are supposed to follow this patter. The game is supposed to slowly increase the tension the player feels (usually by giving them harder monsters to kill) until finally they encounter the boss monster and engage in the boss battle. These are usually show affairs which culminates in the player slaying the boss and finishing the level/quest/etc which releases the tension. But, there is usually some final twist which means that the battle does not completely release the tension and then in the next level the tension starts to ramp up again.

What we need is a way to put this kind of pattern into something other than combat. Although heavily scripted, the game "Façade" does a good job of this. As the game progresses, the tension between the 3 characters gets higher and higher until a final resolution (tension release) is achieved (there are a few different endings). However, even though it is the end of the game, the tension is never quite released.

If one of the characters walks out, the game ends, but leaves you hanging over what happens next. Do they take the time out and resolve their remaining tensions, or is that it for their relationships. These unanswered questions (and that is just form one possible ending) leaves us with unreleased tension, and that makes the game just that little bit more interesting.