I have fond memories of the QTEs in the Shenmue games. Fixed cutscenes don't really serve as a drop-in replacement for them -- you're out of control of your own character, and can't "lose" in those kinds of circumstances. For bonus awesomeness, the games had "failure paths", where screwing up a button changed the way the cutscene played out, but didn't necessarily make you restart.

Well, I just wanted to point out that, while it might be something different than the average QTE, these action test / action bar mechanics do show up in my example.

Aah, fair enough--my mistake in interpreting your meaning, then.

I have fond memories of the QTEs in the Shenmue games. Fixed cutscenes don't really serve as a drop-in replacement for them -- you're out of control of your own character, and can't "lose" in those kinds of circumstances. For bonus awesomeness, the games had "failure paths", where screwing up a button changed the way the cutscene played out, but didn't necessarily make you restart.

Okay, as said, there might be devs that pulled it off. By making them "non-mandatory" and "non-critical", however you want to call it. I am cool with that.

Still, I rather have devs cutting the amount of cutscenes down to a minimum, or serving the story in another format (scrolls to read / communicator talk while playing / anything that does not disrupt you from playing), than having to put QTE in long cutscenes. Even if those cutscenes are rather nifty, and the QTE give you something to do....

I have fond memories of the QTEs in the Shenmue games. Fixed cutscenes don't really serve as a drop-in replacement for them -- you're out of control of your own character, and can't "lose" in those kinds of circumstances. For bonus awesomeness, the games had "failure paths", where screwing up a button changed the way the cutscene played out, but didn't necessarily make you restart.

I gave up on Shenmue 2 when I had to do a cut scene every time I walked across a plank to climb a building many times in a row... And I never did get to find out where sailors hang out at night.

I definitely feel QTE (or their closely-related brethren: 'action tests') are useful game design tools. Do some games over-use them? Certainly. I haven't played the specific Castlevania you mentioned, so I can't comment on that particular game, but I did drop a link here that may be interesting.

Hum... I'm not sure that I'd classify that "accuracy-bar" mechanic to which you linked as quite the same thing as a "quick-time event"--a minigame, yes, and an "action test", perhaps (I'm struggling a little to find a definition of that term), but not quite a "quick-time event". To my mind it falls somewhere in-between a true quick-time event--which is something quite divorced from the actual proceedings in the game--and more direct gameplay that simply requires that the player react quickly, such as a dedicated "block" or "attack" button.

Do Quick-Time Events really need to be divorced from the gameplay? That seems to be poor design decisions, not that the mechanic itself being bad.

I've mostly only encountered QTEs in the first Shenmue game. While novel at first, it basically was in place of real gameplay, instead of augmenting the gameplay.

Take for example, Legend of Dragoon's combat system. They made the turn-based combat alot more enjoyable, and were required to score 'hits' or 'misses'.

Or Paper Mario's 'stylish commands' (jump to 3:30 if the link itself doesn't) - again enhancing gameplay, they increase the amount of damage your attack does, or decreases the amount of damage you take from enemies from their blow.

(Note: Paper Mario uses not just the "action tests" under discussion here, but also has other mechanics depending on the selected ability, like holding the joystick left and then releasing at the right time, or aiming at enemies with the joystick, and so on. But it also uses, for some of the attacks like jumping, the "click [button] at the right time to do something" which is what I'm referring to as an 'action test')

I take QTEs, the golf accuracy bar, and action tests, and clump them under the same category of design tools, because they are so similar in functionality.

I'd say the greatest difference between Shenmue's QTEs and Spyparty's action tests is that QTEs in Shenmue don't use a dedicated key, and instead part of the challenge was pressing a basically unknown key as it pops up onscreen... kinda like Dance Dance Revolution. But with DDR, the buttons are visible for longer and come at a regular rate. DDR is primarily pattern-based - you see everything falling down the screen, and need to repeat the pattern (as time slowly speeds up).

Shenmue is reflex-based - you don't know exactly when it'll appear onscreen, and you don't know what button will be needed.

Spyparty, Paper Mario, and Legend of Dragoon are actually timing-based and the player is ready for it because, in all three of those games, the player initiates the start of the action test. (Same with golf accuracy bars)

This doesn't mean that you are obligated to like Paper Mario's implementation ofcourse, but it does mean that this same simple mechanic has a bit wider range of usability in game design than just "Surprise! Hurry and click an unexpected button!". I enjoy the augmenting existing gameplay and player-initiated usage of the timing-based ones, while I don't really enjoy Shenmue's reflex-based usage.

Shenmue basically became a game of memory for me, "Okay, this cutscene so far is A, Left, Right, B, Y, Up, and... crap, got to start over.".

(oops, I just realized this thread was in the lounge instead of the game design subforum.

This is totally a game design question, so I was approaching it from that angle)

I hate QTEs too. Devs add them because they want their games to look more like movies. Inferiority complex? Maybe.

If you use film cameras and cuts it's hard to control your character so the controls switch to "hit x fast" and thats about it. I think they make games become kind of an interactive dvd. It's a solution for the time being until we figure the right way to do it.

I hate QTEs too. Devs add them because they want their games to look more like movies. Inferiority complex? Maybe.

If you use film cameras and cuts it's hard to control your character so the controls switch to "hit x fast" and thats about it. I think they make games become kind of an interactive dvd. It's a solution for the time being until we figure the right way to do it.

Yes, I agree to that... but additionally, I also think its pure laziness / risk mitigation. As other have pointed out QTE can reduce the amount of QA needed for a certain section of the game. You know what reduces it even more? A cutscene! Zero interactivness means zero things the player can abuse or can go wrong. the amount of permutations per device is exactly one.

So if the suits had their way, every game would be nothing else than a movie... without any interactivity. Of course that might give them a hard time calling it a game, so lets add some QTE events back in there so we can call it a game, without the need for much more QA.

The interactive movie was all the rage in the early 90's... for about an hour or so it took people to testplay something else than the golf game on the CD-i in stores and find out that most games for that system were not... interactive enough to be really called games. And the novelty wore off quickly...

I feel like we are going back to these early days of the CD-ROM again, when devs were putting cutscenes above gameplay all over the place...

IMO the right way to do it is to look to all the classics that managed to convey story without lengthy cutscenes.

I recently read a translated interview with the Symphony of the night devs from '97... they specifically said they wanted to include much more story sequences, but decided to cut a lot as it took players out of the game too much.

Now, when you play this classic, you do not get the feeling you have too little involvement with the story. Some things are hinted at, some things you need to figure out yourself, but lot of things get communicated by the boss battles, the graphical design and little short cutscenes.

They even created the prologue as the boss battle from the former game, so you need to defeat dracula as the former games hero before a short story sequence opener explaining what happened between the two game settings... genious, if you ask me.

As with books: a true Masterpiece will be able to convey more story with less words....

Do Quick-Time Events really need to be divorced from the gameplay? That seems to be poor design decisions, not that the mechanic itself being bad.

I've mostly only encountered QTEs in the first Shenmue game. While novel at first, it basically was in place of real gameplay, instead of augmenting the gameplay.

Agreed 100%... you could use the exact same gameplay mechanics during the normal game, integrate them well, and they would actually enrich gameplay. I have no problem with that. It is only jarring that somebody chooses to give you lengthy story parts that turn out to be actually very crappy minigames because of all the QTE random button mashing.

Games are looking more like movies because a portion of the target audience secretly want an interactive movie. The fewer new games that cater to this, the more appealing interactive movies become. Hurray diversity.

Due to a lack of game regulations, games can be movies. That's fine. But what isn't fine is telling people a movie is like an action figure, or not telling them.

Reading through the OP's rant, he has a problem with games being ported without proper labeling. This is actually a big problem as the game industry falls more and more toward an asinine "what they don't know can't hurt them" mentality. So just by suggesting that you need to label a regular game as a "software toy" and label a quicktime event game as an "interactive movie" I'm suddenly violating some unspoken wish for everyone to feign ignorance.

I really believe most people are smarter than this. Not getting what you expect is an old problem from where I am sitting. It's actually illegal, in favor of customers. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_advertising

It can be stopped, but only if websites like STEAM actually enforce the law with refunds in all countries.

Games are looking more like movies because a portion of the target audience secretly want an interactive movie. The fewer new games that cater to this, the more appealing interactive movies become. Hurray diversity.

Due to a lack of game regulations, games can be movies. That's fine. But what isn't fine is telling people a movie is like an action figure, or not telling them.

Reading through the OP's rant, he has a problem with games being ported without proper labeling. This is actually a big problem as the game industry falls more and more toward an asinine "what they don't know can't hurt them" mentality. So just by suggesting that you need to label a regular game as a "software toy" and label a quicktime event game as an "interactive movie" I'm suddenly violating some unspoken wish for everyone to feign ignorance.

I really believe most people are smarter than this. Not getting what you expect is an old problem from where I am sitting. It's actually illegal, in favor of customers. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_advertising

It can be stopped, but only if websites like STEAM actually enforce the law with refunds in all countries.

100% agreed. If I KNEW what I was getting, I most probably wouldn't even have paid the reduced sale price for it.

You could say I expected too much, I didn't pay enough attention to the fact that the franchise has changed A LOT in the 30ish years it has been around (small wonder seeing the age of the franchise), how many different studios and people came up with their own take on the whole thing.

You could also say I expected too much or something different when I read in reviews "best castlevania in years / reboot of the franchise"... ESPECIALLY after replaying the best version of Castlevania with SotN, which just shows what Castlevania COULD BE, if competent dev come up with good ideas.

I would wish Steam would have more unbiased information about the game, like a a gameplay description that in this case mentions "QTE heavy" or "long cutscenes with QTE"... I would wish for less biased reviews by more competent reviewers that would not only compare the newest Castlevania to the worst of the franchise (which was pretty much everything after 2000 on non-handheld systems), but also with some of the better entries. And would somehow not expect every gamer out there to be so brainwashed into liking QTE that it is not worth mentioning anymore.

Yes, I guess there IS an audience for interactive movies out there... Though I don't think it is big enough to warrant the amount of interactive movies they get nowadays (I still think its just cutting QA costs for big studios that is a bigger factor).

I totally support diversity and giving players what they want. But don't call something an "action game" or "brawler", when most of the time you are solving simple QTE based button mash puzzles.

Do Quick-Time Events really need to be divorced from the gameplay? That seems to be poor design decisions, not that the mechanic itself being bad. ...

I'll confess that I don't believe that I've played any of the games that you list. ^^;

Ultimately, I think that a lot comes down to how one defines the term "quick-time event"; to me, part of the definition is that they interrupt either gameplay or a non-gameplay sequence; in cases in which they're not an interruption, I'd more likely label them "action-tests". That said, I'll admit that my definition is somewhat intuitive rather than concrete, and I'm open to debate on it.

From the videos that you posted, I looked (briefly, I'll admit) at the ones showing Legend of Dragoon, Paper Mario, and Shenmue. The first I'd call "action-tests"; the second and third I'm less confident about, although I lean towards "quick-time event" in the case of Shenmue and "action-test" for Paper Mario.

Come to that, I don't seem to be managing to find a good definition for an "action-test", let alone as opposed to a "quick-time event"--do we have a reference for that?

But what isn't fine is telling people a movie is like an action figure, or not telling them.

Reading through the OP's rant, he has a problem with games being ported without proper labeling.

...

I really believe most people are smarter than this. Not getting what you expect is an old problem from where I am sitting. It's actually illegal, in favor of customers. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_advertising
It can be stopped, but only if websites like STEAM actually enforce the law with refunds in all countries.

100% agreed. If I KNEW what I was getting, I most probably wouldn't even have paid the reduced sale price for it.

Forgive me, I may have missed it--I'm a little tired, and in going back today to re-read the first post I did, admittedly, just skim it--but was the game labelled in such a way as to preclude quick-time events? If not, then I'm not sure that they're doing anything that I'm inclined to object to.

For example, with only a very few exceptions, I don't like mazes in games, especially in first-person games; should games be labelled as "containing mazes" for the benefit of people such as me? What about mentioning that they have spiders for arachnophobes, or tight spaces for people with claustrophobia? Should adventure games (in the King's Quest sense) mention that they contain action elements for those that strongly dislike action in adventure games, or action games mention that they have puzzles for those that just want to shoot things? There are a myriad of preferences out there, and asking stores, publishers or developers to label their games for all of those--or even a significant subset of them--seems infeasible.

Ultimately, I don't think that it makes much sense to require that games be labelled to indicate that they contain elements that may go against the preferences of some; there's a slightly better argument for the phobias mentioned above, but I think that it, too, fails simply because of the number and potential specificity of such things.

Rather, I'm inclined to argue for such labelling being implemented on the consumer side, whether by users adding tags (as I gather that Steam allows), or by sites on which people with similar interests can compile information on games for the benefit of others--such as noting that such-and-such a game contains quick-time-events for those that don't like them.