The Little Things
Note: this entry is not so much about graphics as it is about games.
I've been playing Deus Ex 2 and Half Life 2 lately, and I gotta say, it's all about the needless details. Little details like paint cans shot at walls in Half Life splattering paint everywhere, or off-the-wall stories of hoaxed Mars landings you can read about in Deus Ex. These are the pointless details on top of the actual gameplay that make these games so immersive.
Take the all-time classic: Duke Nukem 3D. Duke Nukem was as pointless a shoot-em-up as an FPS could be. What made it so great, so revolutionary for its time, was how much interaction there was with the world. There were mirrors you could break, toilets you could flush, strippers you could pay! You could even shoot at balls on a pool table and watch them move around with crude physics. It was an amazing display of pointless technology and this is what brought the game world to life. And this was back in the days of Doom! So take Doom 1 in contrast: the actual story is as pointless as Duke Nukem's, and the gameplay is identical: run around and shoot the monsters. What's different is the game world itself. The Doom levels are stale by comparison! Just endless textured hallways with the occasional moving platform. Well, at heart, the Duke Nukem engine delivers nothing more, but the carefully placed suggestion of a fully interactive world is what makes Duke shine.
It is thus my theory that pointless detail, the over-the-top little things, are what define immersion in a game world. There are two parts to this theory: suggestion of a broader world and mindless interaction.
Suggestion of a Broader World
In order to create the illusion of a complete and functional universe around you, there needs to be more to the game world than just the bare essentials of the plot. You need to feel like life is continuing around you regardless of your actions or goals. Deus Ex does this well through books and side stories you run across. For instance in the orignal Deus Ex the "Grays" or aliens are creatures you run across in Area 51, first on the dissection table and later as live captives. They have absolutely nothing to do with the game or plot, they were just thrown in to enrich the world. There are also countless books and articles you can read, such as sections of "The Man Who Was Thursday", a book the game designers felt had philosophical relevance to the Deus Ex story. On top of this at a random point in the game you overhear a bum on the street claiming to have written the book.
Half Life achieves a broader world through the citizens of city 17 you come across who are trying their best to cope with a post-war world and government opression. It's one thing to be told the government is ruling it's people through terror in a splash screen or character dialogue. It's wholely another to witness it first hand as the police raid a tattered appartment building or interrogate and beat civilians in alley-ways. You start to see how people might live under such conditions and you start to believe it.
Mindless Interaction
Mindless interaction, was pioneered in Duke Nukem and perfected in Half Life 2. Duke Nukem did not need physics for a pool table, making it all the cooler that they spent the time doing it. When enough interaction is presented to you, you begin to feel as if the whole world was completely functional which is vital to immersion. Half Life took this to the extreme through the use of physics. Whereas Duke Nukem had carefully placed props to suggest an interactive world, Half Life could actually pull off true physical interaction on a subset of game objects. Neither game went nuts with interaction, both just added a coating of it, enough to get the player to believe it. Some of my unnamed colleagues remain skeptical of simulated physics in games. "How realistic must a rolling barrel really be?" they ask. "Not very" is the answer, but its going that extra mile that gets the player to stop seeing the world as a series of design decisions and start seeing it as an interactive, functional universe. Physics engines are definitely here to stay and bring on the Physics Processing Unit, I say!
That's enough for one night, I'd like to hear people's comments on this stuff.
I've been playing Deus Ex 2 and Half Life 2 lately, and I gotta say, it's all about the needless details. Little details like paint cans shot at walls in Half Life splattering paint everywhere, or off-the-wall stories of hoaxed Mars landings you can read about in Deus Ex. These are the pointless details on top of the actual gameplay that make these games so immersive.
Take the all-time classic: Duke Nukem 3D. Duke Nukem was as pointless a shoot-em-up as an FPS could be. What made it so great, so revolutionary for its time, was how much interaction there was with the world. There were mirrors you could break, toilets you could flush, strippers you could pay! You could even shoot at balls on a pool table and watch them move around with crude physics. It was an amazing display of pointless technology and this is what brought the game world to life. And this was back in the days of Doom! So take Doom 1 in contrast: the actual story is as pointless as Duke Nukem's, and the gameplay is identical: run around and shoot the monsters. What's different is the game world itself. The Doom levels are stale by comparison! Just endless textured hallways with the occasional moving platform. Well, at heart, the Duke Nukem engine delivers nothing more, but the carefully placed suggestion of a fully interactive world is what makes Duke shine.
It is thus my theory that pointless detail, the over-the-top little things, are what define immersion in a game world. There are two parts to this theory: suggestion of a broader world and mindless interaction.
Suggestion of a Broader World
In order to create the illusion of a complete and functional universe around you, there needs to be more to the game world than just the bare essentials of the plot. You need to feel like life is continuing around you regardless of your actions or goals. Deus Ex does this well through books and side stories you run across. For instance in the orignal Deus Ex the "Grays" or aliens are creatures you run across in Area 51, first on the dissection table and later as live captives. They have absolutely nothing to do with the game or plot, they were just thrown in to enrich the world. There are also countless books and articles you can read, such as sections of "The Man Who Was Thursday", a book the game designers felt had philosophical relevance to the Deus Ex story. On top of this at a random point in the game you overhear a bum on the street claiming to have written the book.
Half Life achieves a broader world through the citizens of city 17 you come across who are trying their best to cope with a post-war world and government opression. It's one thing to be told the government is ruling it's people through terror in a splash screen or character dialogue. It's wholely another to witness it first hand as the police raid a tattered appartment building or interrogate and beat civilians in alley-ways. You start to see how people might live under such conditions and you start to believe it.
Mindless Interaction
Mindless interaction, was pioneered in Duke Nukem and perfected in Half Life 2. Duke Nukem did not need physics for a pool table, making it all the cooler that they spent the time doing it. When enough interaction is presented to you, you begin to feel as if the whole world was completely functional which is vital to immersion. Half Life took this to the extreme through the use of physics. Whereas Duke Nukem had carefully placed props to suggest an interactive world, Half Life could actually pull off true physical interaction on a subset of game objects. Neither game went nuts with interaction, both just added a coating of it, enough to get the player to believe it. Some of my unnamed colleagues remain skeptical of simulated physics in games. "How realistic must a rolling barrel really be?" they ask. "Not very" is the answer, but its going that extra mile that gets the player to stop seeing the world as a series of design decisions and start seeing it as an interactive, functional universe. Physics engines are definitely here to stay and bring on the Physics Processing Unit, I say!
That's enough for one night, I'd like to hear people's comments on this stuff.
posted by MonkeyScience at 5:42 PM
3 Comments:
Mindless interaction, indeed. I would assign the following weights to the elements that provide a sense of immersion and realism in a game, particularly a first person shooter:
Visual Quality: 50%
World Complexity/Size: 20%
Interaction Depth: 15%
Sound: 10%
Physical Simulation: 5%
It should be apparent how little I value accurate "barrel physics" from this list; I suppose this is largely a personal preference. Basically I would say that it pains me to see people spending so much time and effort and money on physics and seeing such piddling returns. Interaction - sure. World complexity - sure. But physics are a pain in the ass and only provide a small subset of those two.
Sure, bring on the physics accelerators, as long I don't have to bend over backwards to use them. But if you think they will become as useful and ubiquitous as graphics hardware then you are badly deluded.
I will finish by linking to a review of "Trespasser".
http://www.gamespot.com/pc/action/trespasser/review.html
Humpf.
I think you missed the point of my post and I don't agree with your ranking of physical simulation at all. my point was that these seemingly small, useless details actually add a great deal to immersion. The returns are not piddling by any means. Little details like being able to knock barrels over are what breathe life into game worlds. They make the world seem more autonomous and you start to lose the sense of every object and event having been carefully placed by a level designer.
And as far as the PPU is concerned, have my $50 ready :D
Humpf!
I didn't miss the point of your post at all; my only gripe was with your limitless enthusiasm for physics.
Nowhere did I say that little details add nothing to a game.
Anyway, lets do this PPU bet. I say we ignore the consoles for now, since the next gen won't have any PPU hardware and a second refresh isn't due for quite a long time after that. Plus it should be fairly apparent that console designers make odd decisions when it comes to hardware selection (*cough* SONY! *cough*). The PC market should be a good indicator of how much people actually want these things. Our criteria should be something quantitative, like after a certain time has passed (say 2-3 years?), find out what percentage of people who buy a prominent title own PPUs that they can use with that game. I contend that it will be far less than a majority, say 10-15% or so.
Also, the wager should be something more interesting than 50 bucks. I say the loser has to get and maintain a subscription to "Cosmo" for one year.
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