Dashed Upon The Rocks

I haven't written much about Super Meat Boy, but it's not because my fingers and hands are too ruined to type (although that's nearly the cause). It's a fantastic experience, basically the Platonic platformer, I just didn't have anything to add that was more substantive than "Yeah, it's really good."

Earlier this week though, I was listening to Jorge and Scott's conversation about grinding and it reminded me of something Kirk wrote about "skill grinding." Jason linked that piece and referred to it in his review of SMB for Paste (and thus the circle is complete). What Kirk calls "skill grinding" is basically referring to progress in a game that emerges not from a character earning experience points and gaining levels, but from the player themselves actually getting better at the game's challenges. Character improvement vs. player improvement. Kirk was writing about this in the context of Demon's Souls, but it applies even more so to SMB.

What I think SMB illustrates is games about player improvement operate best when the loop of the player attempting a challenge, failing and being able to try again is as tight as possible. In SMB, you barely have time to angrily sputter a new concoction of profanity before you're back in the fray. This allows the player to dash themselves again the rocks as much as possible, and while that sounds frustrating to some, it's actually the best way to improve. The frustrating part isn't failing, it's waiting to try again. Or worse, it's being forced to overcome a previously surpassed challenge just to reach the one in question simply due to arbitrary checkpointing. The satisfaction and improvement comes from analyzing the situation, attempting a solution, seeing what didn't work, refining it and trying again. Anything that sits in the way of that will make player improvement slower and less satisfying.

Of course, putting up barriers to player improvement with intent and purpose can actually be used to good effect. As the game that inspired Kirk's discussion of this topic in the first place, Demon's Souls certainly doesn't have the tight loop that SMB does. And failure in Demon's Souls is far harsher than SMB, where death is swift but relatively without consequence. As such, Demon's Souls feels far tenser than SMB, with much higher stakes. The only time I've found SMB to be particularly tense was a few of the longer levels near the end and when I finally neared unlocking The Kid. Demon's Souls plays the player, asking them to constantly weigh banking the souls they've got versus pressing on for more. Demon's Souls isn't superior to SMB or vice versa, but I'd wager more people could pick up and improve at SMB. Demon's Souls demands a certain ... dedication.

In the opposite direction, games that communicate progression of a character do so through lengthening the loop between moments of progress. Character progression is all about contrast. Progress that comes too quickly muddies the waters, making it so the moments of progress seem less impactful and distinct. Again, this style of progress isn't inferior to player improvement, merely different. Mass Effect 2 uses it quite well, going so far as to decrease the number of skill points you gain at each level. It certainly feels like fewer than Mass Effect 1, and the parade of "SpaceCorp Gun I-VII" is largely toned down as well. Whenever your Shepard progresses in Mass Effect 2 it feels substantive.

The trick bit with character-based progression is that it's easier to abuse than player progression. Turning the reward progression into an ever-increasing time commitment that offers little in return otherwise is dangerously nearing Skinner Box territory. And many free-to-play games make showing up really the only condition for success, but if that success still isn't coming fast enough, you can pay to increase the rate of reward.

I'm not going to say one is better (some of my favourite games are RPGs that are primarily about character progression), but there's something that feels very "tactile" about player progression in games. It's a manufactured skill you're improving, but honestly, you have learned to do something better. It's a made up something, but is it any more arbitrary than, say, juggling? I'd like to see more player progression games with a feedback loop as tight as Super Meat Boy. We've seen plenty of strong character progression games, but the trick bit with them is they almost always need something else to lean on to stay engaging (Mass Effect 2 as a pure shooter would be ... lackluster). Creating a great story or expert pacing is hardly a given for many studios, even very competent ones. I'd love to see more folks experimenting with player progression games instead. As SMB demonstrates, this kind of satisfaction is hardly played out.

And of course, the player-character progression dichotomy is only one axis a game can be satisfying on and it doesn't need to be particularly prominent in all games. And it's certainly a spectrum (multiplayer games with level advancement blend these things interestingly, and I might have more to say about that in the context of Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood). But I'll drop a stake to say player progression works best with a tight loop and character progression works best with a lengthy. Deviating from this can be useful, but it should be intentional. And it should certainly never be a punishment. I don't think many favourably remember Too Human for exactly that reason.

Epic Fail

It's weird to think that there exist solitary entertainment experiences wherein you can experience failure. Not failure through a cipher, but you, yourself, failed to do something correctly. Video games are unique, or at least uncommon, in this respect. Maybe some variants of solitaire have unwinnable deals, but those are wholly random. It's much harder to fail at reading a novel, listening to a song or watching a play.

I think this is actually a very good thing. After simply having agency at all, it's probably the most distinguishing characteristic of games. But it also affects how we perceive games. It may cast games as things to be overcome, rather than understood. Things to be beaten, rather than examined. For a lot of games, this alone can be deep, rich and fascinating. But I can't help but think this might be impeding our ability to communicate through a game's mechanics.

When I talked about why indie darlings are so often 2D platformers, I noted that part of the reason why so many creators opt for 2D platforming as a style is there are probably more players who are literate in that style of game than any other. It's not that the challenge or possibility of failure has been necessarily diminished, but rather that the basic structure is very well understood and internalized. Move from left to right, avoid hazards, gravity and timing behave in certain ways, etc. You place a random person in front of a 2D platformer and ask them how to succeed, and they'd probably have a good guess. Getting the same after putting someone in a random spot in Red Dead Redemption is probably far less likely.

In the comments to that post, Michal Wisniowski remarked that bullet hell shoot 'em ups are also quite prevalent in the indie scene. Which made me wonder what would be required to communicate some kind of tonal/aesthetic message through a shmup's mechanics. A great deal of that style's appeal comes from its unrelenting difficulty and split-second timing. This makes them less accessible than more playable platformers though, even for pretty experienced gamers. I mean, I look at Ikaruga, smell copper and then pass out. I enjoy some games with an intensive manual dexterity component, but shmup's are a bridge too far for me.

Given that there's so much emphasis on overcoming challenges and avoiding failure, I wonder how much cognitive space is really left for a player to pick up on anything more subtle. Of course, there's nothing to say shmup's have to be well suited for these kinds of experiences. But it seems like any type of game that does desire to communicate some kind of message that isn't just through exposition and dialog might do well to consider exactly how much emphasis is being placed on "winning." If too much emphasis is placed on moment-to-moment survival, it could be difficult to encourage thinking about the game as a larger, more cohesive statement.

The other unfortunate consequence here is that it becomes difficult to encourage players to explore outcomes that seem "negative." It's quite rare to find a game that doesn't just jump to something checkpoint-ish as soon as a failure state has been reached. Roguelikes are a rare style of game that, due to a brutal and unforgiving difficulty, failure is almost an information gathering process. Each failure grants further insight into the world and its rules. Most games do this to some extent, but the majority cast failure as an optional thing. It feels avoidable and unintended when it occurs. I'm not sure what it would look like, but I'd be very interested in a game that encourages probing "failure" without the merciless character of a roguelike. I just can't help but think we haven't seen this yet because such a game would seem bizarre and antithetical.

As an aside, Jon Blow gave a good talk at MIGS where he discussed the tension in games between progress (continue the story, allows things to evolve) and challenge (keep things from changing until certain conditions have been met). Listen if you haven't, it's solid.

Games can be thought of as a conversation between creators and players. A great deal of the time, the player is just trying to keep up with the conversation until it's over. We've seen some great experiments that helped players hear and reflect about what was really being said by slowing the conversation down, by using common parlance and familiar words. I think we'll see even more of these experiments in the future and I'm definitely excited. Maybe before long, we'll see games where you "fail" because you want to, not because you didn't do things right. As long as we've still got plenty of good healthy challenge in other games that appear alongside it, I'm totally on board. You?