Through the Lens: Video Games - Game Design Theory - page 94

on to the second section (third-person action), I realized that many of
the problems that applied to brawlers would be appearing in the second
section too. In fact, I realized that there are key problems that are com-
mon to almost every video-game genre. These are things we've touched
upon in the topic before, but since they're relevant to this section, let's
get them out of the way first
The Accidental Puzzle
Intentionally or not, any single-player game that doesn't have random
elements (randomized level layouts, randomized monsters, etc.) is going
to degenerate into a puzzle or a contest. On your second play of Cas-
tlevania or Mega Man , you've already memorized some of the game.
These games require execution, and so they become contests. An adven-
ture game such as Secret of Monkey Island or a turn-based game such as
Advance Wars do not have execution elements, so they become memo-
rization puzzles very quickly.
For this reason, I advocate that all single-player video games have
random elements. Games should be testing players' skill, not their mem-
ory. Imagine that you wanted to examine children's addition skills: there
are two possible ways that you could test them.
Method A . Give the children the same math test, with handpicked
questions, ten times over.
Method B. Give the children ten unique math tests, each with
their own randomly generated problems.
With both methods, after the children complete one test, you would
grade it and give it back to them. Obviously Method A has the advantage
of having better quality control: there won't be any extremely easy ques-
tions in the one with handpicked questions. However, after the first couple
of repetitions the children will begin to memorize the answers, and after
doing four or five tests, they won't be doing mathematics at all—they'll
only be repeating what they've memorized as the correct answers.
This is what happens with single-player games that have no random
content. Players simply begin to memorize. Yes, a random generator may
produce less interesting results, but even after the very first play, a hand-
crafted level becomes less interesting than the least interesting random
level or game situation.
The Fantasy Simulator
As I explained in Chapter 2 , at some point we collectively decided that
video games would be primarily fantasy simulators. Of course, the task