Game Development Reference
In-Depth Information
players have no depth perception; it's like they're running around trying
to gauge precise jumping distances with only one eye.
Another huge problem that's often (but not always) an issue with 3D
is that of camera controls. If your players have to stop playing every few
seconds (or even every few minutes) to fix the camera so that they can
see the information necessary to play the game, you have, on some level,
failed to do your job as a game designer. This totally breaks up the experi-
ence and is annoying and completely unneeded.
Focus on Metagame
So-called RPG elements are now expected to appear in every single genre
of game, no matter how inappropriate they may be. In this context, RPG
elements refer to the
metagame
—another game that wraps itself around
the game in question. This other game is very rarely interesting, and al-
most always something of an afterthought. The metagame is usually a
very bad and broken game when taken on its own.
The simplest form of a metagame would be something like a record
of your wins and losses, or a high-score board. But usually when people
refer to the metagame, they mean things such as unlockables or custom-
izable features. The problem with metagames is that they almost always
damage the games they surround. The first way they do this is by reduc-
ing the importance of decisions in the original
game. For example, let's
say you have a simple one-on-one fighting game. When you add several
types of metagame features on top of that, those metagame decisions
you make are going to have an impact on the game itself, and therefore
reduce the impact of the in-game decisions.
Metagames also often create motivations that conflict with the in-
herent motivations of the core game. The developer, Valve, experienced
this in
Team Fortress 2
with its unlockable weapons metagame element.
It tried many different ways to allow players to unlock weapons, which
were usually based on getting a certain number of achievements. But
it was clear that if the metagame feature was tied to anything—includ-
ing achievements—people would stop playing correctly. And they did!
Players essentially began to grind the achievements instead of playing
normally.
The most common defense of a large number of metagame elements
is that it provides variety. However, metagames always make games much
harder to balance, because every element of the metagame essentially
multiplies the number of interactions in the system. Therefore, domi-
nant strategies are more likely to emerge, reducing variety. Not only that,
but each element's flavor, or difference from the other elements, is di-
