RE: [GD-Design] Speed kills

[Neil S. <ne...@r0...>]

> I just did a slightly more cohesive write up on this, in case 
> anyone is interested:
> 
> http://bookofhook.com/Article/GameDesign/SpeedKills.html

Hi Brian,

I think the overall idea of how fast the player perceives things to be
happening is pretty spot on, and it certainly applies to a much wider range
of games than people might think. Any game where time is a factor will be
affected by this, although obviously to varying extents.

What I'm not so sure about is the idea of just using a global time slider,
because I think there are more fundamental reasons why the player's
perception of of the game is affected by the game's speed than the speed
itself, and I wonder if there are ways to exploit them to better effect. I'm
not sure if I'll be able to articulate what I mean by this, but I'll give it
a go. ;)

If you imagine a game where there are, say, 10 things the player has to be
doing at the one time, e.g. moving, shooting, outsmarting his opponent,
timing moving platforms and powerups, etc., not only does he have to be able
to do all these things, but he has to be able to do several of them
simultaneously. When you're doing something that has become second-nature
(either through practice or natural skill), dealing with 10 different
aspects of it at the same time also becomes natural. If you have to think
about any of these aspects at a conscious level, your ability to multitask
is far more limited.

Now, if we assume that a novice player is doing almost everything
consciously, he would have to 'timeslice' through them if he were to do them
all, which will be very difficult and much slower than if he were doing them
subconsciously and simultaneously. In games where he can simply not do some
of them (e.g. positional tactics in Quake), he will generally take this
option just to give him a chance of performing the essential tasks with any
skill. In simpler games where none (or few) of the tasks are optional, he
will feel overloaded and find it difficult to do even the most basic things
a lot of the time.

If you reduce the speed of the game enough, the novice's timeslicing should
become nearly as effective as an expert's subconscious, simultaneous
approach, making the gulf between the two much smaller. Of course, this
assumes that the expert cannot also take advantage of the drop in speed to
exploit higher-level tactics or whatever.

So, although reducing speed will help the novice greatly, so would reducing
the amount of stuff he has to timeslice through.

I think we have seen a very simple example of this in action in racing
games, where you can usually select an automatic gearbox, removing one thing
the player has to think about: changing gears at the right time. Formula 1
games take this a bit further by providing automatic braking and other such
helpers. By selecting the right number of helpers, novices can give
themselves just the right number of things to deal with, so that they can
drive a good lap, at full game speed, without becoming overloaded and
confused.

You might argue at this point that this is no different to changing the
number of hits it takes to kill a monster or similar game rule changes, but
I think it is. Rather than changing the physics of the world or giving the
player more ammo/health, we leave the game world alone and simply help the
player overcome his limit on the number of things he can deal with at once.
In this sense, it is more similar to the global speed change than it is to
arbitrary game rule changes.

The advantages this has over a global speed change are that it is compatible
with multiplayer games and doesn't suffer from the sluggish feel that a
global speed change might introduce. Having said that, the global speed
change can be very effective and is simple to implement, so I do think it
has its place, and it may be that it combines very well with helpers so that
you can get a nice tradeoff between the game speed and the level of help you
need to give the player.

You also don't have to limit yourself to "input helpers" like the Formula 1
game. Anything which removes conscious thinking from the player will help
him deal with more things at once so, for example, Quake could have a "map
helper" that shows the player where he is and gives him advance warning of
armour/weapons that are about to spawn, both things that would take up quite
a lot of his "conscious runtime" if he were to do them himself.

There are probably lots of examples of this type of thing actually working
in games already. All I'm really suggesting is a more specific approach to
coming up with these things, while avoiding things that can fundamentally
change the gameplay.

Hope that made some sense... ;)

Cheers,

- Neil.