What is "consolisation" and why does it exist? Or Simulated Skill v Player Skill - by SubJeff
Koki on 9/2/2011 at 14:08
Quote Posted by "Eldron"
So if it removes skills out of the equation, how does the competitive scene exist on console shooters?
Uh, it doesn't. At least not in the WCG sense.
Sulphur on 9/2/2011 at 22:00
Quote Posted by Bakerman
I'm going to go right off the deep end here and say those things are all different sorts of skills; managerial and metagame skills rather than finger reflexes and quick thinking. The skill of managing health - knowing when to use your limited healing items and taking the time to hunt for them when you're low. The skill of...
So I couldn't think of any other ways to classify the things you said as skills. The skill of not failing? The skill of being willing to walk across the entire game world? :p
But I don't necessarily regard those things as consolisation either. It's not really consoles' fault that we don't have deep, meaningful, heart-wrenching moral dilemmas in games; heck, I've never experienced that on any platform :p. (Caveat: I'm a relatively young gamer, so I wasn't really around in the halcyon days of the 80s and 90s... maybe PC games were way better back then. I've played Deus Ex and Thief though, they're two of my favourites.)
Anyway. I do agree with you; the skill spectrum isn't all-inclusive. But to me, and apparently to SubjEff, it's an important part of the trend away from the kinds of games we like. What I'm going to take away from this thread is another useful way of looking at the interactions in games. Not the be-all and end-all but something relevant.
Once you move past input mechanisms, that's where the grey areas are. How much is this decision to gimp/simplify based on 'dumbing down' for the potential audience, and how much is it just for convenience? Are the two mutually exclusive, or inter-related?
I'm not really asking for real heart-wrenching moral dilemmas in Bioshock and its ilk - though I'd love to have had them - but I'm saying that choices you had to make in SS2 locked you down to a character path and gameplay type because cyber modules actually weren't in plentiful supply, whereas in Bioshock the choice you made had ultimately little to no consequence to your gameplay path because Adam was plentiful anyway.
I like the Player/Simulated skill spectrum. I've had similar ideas myself to describe this at an embryonic stage when I encountered my first QTEs and asked myself, 'why am I mashing this button to simulate cinematically ripping a monster's head off, and why aren't I
really controlling this particular action of my character's?' -- and my thoughts never really went further than 'too complex for the input mechanism'*, but SubjEff's outlined and delineated the why and how of that in a pretty thoughtful post.
The reason I keep banging on about all these different things, though, is because of the fact that the thread title reads the way it does: 'What is consolisation?'
I don't buy the skill spectrum as a general explanation for consolitis. It explains part of it fairly well. There's a lot of different things that don't fall under simulated actions unless there's some very liberal bending and twisting of the OP's ideas.
That doesn't make it useless - like I said, I like the idea. And like you said, it's not the be-all and end-all, but it is relevant.
*And interestingly enough some of this can be tackled by using a gesture based system a la Kinect and Move, currently on the consoles.
Aja on 9/2/2011 at 22:43
Playing Gran Turismo, I bought a limited slip differential and I was playing around with the initial torque settings (should be biased toward the front or rear?) but my Veyron that I tuned to 1000 horsepower kept jerking the wheel out of my hand at higher speeds. So I bought a racing suspension and managed to quell most of the shaking by increasing the spring rate and compression damping. Of course it didn't help that the Cirque du Sarthe is surprisingly bumpy, and the slightest surface changes seemed to toss the car off the track.
:erg:
Eldron on 9/2/2011 at 23:34
Quote Posted by Sulphur
...I'm not really asking for real heart-wrenching moral dilemmas in Bioshock and its ilk - though I'd love to have had them - but I'm saying that choices you had to make in SS2 locked you down to a character path and gameplay type because cyber modules actually weren't in plentiful supply, whereas in Bioshock the choice you made had ultimately little to no consequence to your gameplay path because Adam was plentiful anyway.
Once again, I don't think these bad choices were so much related to "consolitis" as it was to bad design choices, much more consequence-filled and harder games exist on the consoles.
I mean, I'm one of the people that think it was the biggest mistake ever to leave out any consequence to the way that you could just pick every power available and buy everything in bioshock, but I'm just not seeing any point to blaming it on consoles.
Quote Posted by Sulphur
I like the Player/Simulated skill spectrum. I've had similar ideas myself to describe this at an embryonic stage when I encountered my first QTEs and asked myself, 'why am I mashing this button to simulate cinematically ripping a monster's head off, and why aren't I
really controlling this particular action of my character's?' -- and my thoughts never really went further than 'too complex for the input mechanism'*, but SubjEff's outlined and delineated the why and how of that in a pretty thoughtful post.
I think games just didn't do those kind of things before, there just really isn't any way to perform it 1:1 with any controllers, even with kinect. But some day someone thought of the idea to have these cinematic moments that you had a bit of control over by using QTE's.
After that it became a tool to use in game design, for good and for bad.
Sulphur on 9/2/2011 at 23:59
Quote Posted by Eldron
Once again, I don't think these bad choices were so much related to "consolitis" as it was to bad design choices, much more consequence-filled and harder games exist on the consoles.
I mean, I'm one of the people that think it was the biggest mistake ever to leave out any consequence to the way that you could just pick every power available and buy everything in bioshock, but I'm just not seeing any point to blaming it on consoles.
But consolitis is exactly that at the end of the day for PC users, isn't it? 'Bad design choices'? I guess part of it's attributable to SS2's poor sales and Levine & Co. addressing its perceived faults of complexity, like giving the player the freedom to completely screw themselves over, to reach a broader audience with Bioshock.
It's bad design choice, but why were these choices made? Especially when Levine knew that SS2 garnered critical acclaim and a cult following and therefore knew that most of it wasn't broken? Why was it simplified in so many ways, from glowing quest items to map markers to no inventory to lack of consequences to choices?
Answer: to be immediately accessible and to appeal to everyone it targeted right from the get-go, teenagers to adults alike. PC game devs tended to do their own thing and end up appealing either to the masses or to a niche back in the day depending on how complex and different their games were; but when you develop for consoles as well, your audience's age range expands significantly because younger demographics are built in, and patience for something as slow-burn or complicated as Thief and SS2 with younger audiences is limited.
Quote:
I think games just didn't do those kind of things before, there just really isn't any way to perform it 1:1 with any controllers, even with kinect. But some day someone thought of the idea to have these cinematic moments that you had a bit of control over by using QTE's.
Maybe not 1:1 exactly because that's never possible, but a highly reasonable approximation, yes. Kinect scans your entire body, so there's no theoretical limitation to making the player do the acrobatics required to, say, leap over someone's head. Practical limitations are such that a mechanic would be a) ridiculous b) tiring and c) painfully fiddly. But interacting with an object in a gameworld by, say, reaching out with your hand and 'touching' it? Picking it up and throwing it? Rotating it in front of your eyes? Smacking someone in the face with it? Ripping their head off? All possible. With Kinect there's potentially more verisimilitude possible with enough camera resolution for gameworld interaction, in fact, than with a keyboard and a mouse.
You still need buttons for lots of things and an effortless way to aim, of course, which Kinect fails in quite completely without factoring a pad into the equation.
Yakoob on 10/2/2011 at 00:32
Quote Posted by Sulphur
It's bad design choice, but why were these choices made? Especially when Levine knew that SS2 garnered critical acclaim and a cult following and therefore knew that most of it wasn't broken? Why was it simplified in so many ways, from glowing quest items to map markers to no inventory to lack of consequences to choices?
Looking glass died because it couldn't survive on the critical acclaim achieved via those "not broken" design choices.
2K made millions while winning the hearts of thousands of fans thanks to the critical acclaim of the "broken" design choices.
I think you have your definitions mixed up there, buddy.
Papy on 10/2/2011 at 04:15
Quote Posted by Sulphur
I'm not really asking for real heart-wrenching moral dilemmas in Bioshock and its ilk - though I'd love to have had them - but I'm saying that choices you had to make in SS2 locked you down to a character path and gameplay type because cyber modules actually weren't in plentiful supply, whereas in Bioshock the choice you made had ultimately little to no consequence to your gameplay path because Adam was plentiful anyway.
I think that in a game where the player can choose an easier difficulty level, as well as being able to save and reload whenever he wants, any attempt to create meaningful consequences by making the gameplay easier or harder will more or less fail with most persons. Sure, you can force a person into a gameplay path or another (until he replay the game using another path), but in the end, if he can win whatever his path, does it really matter?
I qualify BioShock's gameplay as average. Yet, I rate it as one of the best game I ever played. The reason was there was consequences to my actions. There was, for example, Tenenbaum thanking me several times, as well as what I perceived as a change of attitude toward me, but more importantly there was the safehouse. Seeing those little girls was one of the greatest reward I ever got in a video game. And that's what made my choices to save them meaningful. In my opinion, SS2 had a much better gameplay than BioShock, but BioShock was overall a better "experience".
BTW, I played BioShock in French and the voice acting was much better than in English (it was less of a caricature), which helped a lot.
Sulphur on 10/2/2011 at 07:47
Quote Posted by Yakoob
Looking glass died because it couldn't survive on the critical acclaim achieved via those "not broken" design choices.
2K made millions while winning the hearts of thousands of fans thanks to the critical acclaim of the "broken" design choices.
I think you have your definitions mixed up there, buddy.
No, I don't. There's a difference between simplified and broken; I don't think I said Bioshock was 'broken'. But if SS2's systems weren't broken, why fix them in Bioshock? That's what the rest of my post is about, so I think you should read the rest before jumping on one word.
It's possible for a game to have gameplay systems which are shallow and broken but still sell millions and be critically acclaimed anyway. If you want an example, try Oblivion.
@Papy: I think we both agree Bioshock's gameplay wasn't its best asset, which was what I was focusing on with the repercussions of the 'choice', not the
nature of the choice itself.
Whether you like the Rescue/Harvest system and what it means to you enters the realm of subjectivity. So, subjectively: I couldn't identify/relate with the Little Sisters because they had no personality and looked like wax dolls and not actual children, so saving them didn't have much of an impact on me. The same goes for Tenenbaum because she gets almost no character development either apart from those audio logs, and she never quite seemed trustworthy in the game up till the end; hell you don't even get to see her face when you make it to the safe house.
The Iron Man argument we've had before and elsewhere, and I don't want to go over that again. Suffice to say the majority of PC gamers don't view game challenge the same as you do. I'm fine with quick saves and quick loads and the ability to choose a difficulty level if you want to; these options are not forced on you, and choices you make as a player to use or not to at the end of the day.
Briareos H on 10/2/2011 at 08:28
Let's not forget that the way the game teaches you its mechanics is also very important, and was quite different between both games. It contributes a lot to the difference in feel and what people have attributed to consolisation while it's basically just devs being stupid/driven by their publisher.
A little example:
If all I knew by the first fourth of Bioshock was that I could harvest gruesomely the Little Sisters or not at all (much more interesting choice), if I only discovered by myself through scattered audio logs that there was a way to rescue them, virtually launching an enormous optional sidequest to gather the tools and plasmids needed to rescue the sisters - quest that relied solely on player initiative (no update in the game log) - the end result and my drive to find that way to save them while thinking "wow this was not advertised by the game at all this is awesome" would have been delicious.
No, here you have that artificial choice from the start. Okay whatever, I'll save them because in the end I'm sure you wouldn't make harvesting them the most interesting option, Ken.
Games where every player is expected to "experience" all the narrative has to offer or hell, even the true ending, is a trend which has been rising parallel to the last generations of consoles. Hence the understandable confusion and terms like "consolisation" when it is not.
When you look at Dead Space 2 credits, the list for QA testers is longer than the list for developers. Well I say fuck them. Developers should abide by a rule: if more than 80% of all QA testers see everything the game has to offer on their first run, something is wrong with the game.
EDIT: i'm terrible at english :(
Eldron on 10/2/2011 at 11:33
Quote Posted by Briareos H
Let's not forget that the way the game teaches you its mechanics is also very important, and was quite different between both games. It contributes a lot to the difference in feel and what people have attributed to consolisation while it's basically just devs being stupid/driven by their publisher.
A little example:
If all I knew by the first fourth of Bioshock was that I could harvest gruesomely the Little Sisters or not at all (much more interesting choice), if I only discovered
by myself through scattered audio logs that there was a way to rescue them, virtually launching an enormous optional sidequest to gather the tools and plasmids needed to rescue the sisters - quest that relied solely on player initiative (no update in the game log) - the end result and my drive to find that way to save them while thinking "wow this was not advertised by the game at all this is awesome" would have been delicious.
No, here you have that artificial choice from the start. Okay whatever, I'll save them because in the end I'm sure you wouldn't make harvesting them the most interesting option, Ken.
Games where every player is expected to "experience" all the narrative has to offer or hell, even the true ending, is a trend which has been rising parallel to the last generations of consoles. Hence the understandable confusion and terms like "consolisation" when it is not.
When you look at Dead Space 2 credits, the list for QA testers is longer than the list for developers. Well I say fuck them. Developers should abide by a rule: if more than 80% of all QA testers see everything the game has to offer on their first run, something is wrong with the game.
EDIT: i'm terrible at english :(
That does remind me of games like silent hill and another case where I first played castlevania: aria of sorrow for the gba, it had this thing where you'd get a regular ending which was so and so, but later on I discovered that there was an intricate way to trigger an alternative part of the game in the end to get a way more special ending.
Much like the inverted castle in symphony of the night.
On the QA stuff, modern game development, especially with console game development has some really hardcore testing rules, especially from microsoft, and most often big QA departments are hired to go through the game over and over again and feed your bug-tracking software, thus the big QA credits in games.
Modern games are extremely more complicated technically than older games, and that's why everything can go wrong, and why the amount of testing is needed.
I think bioshock succeeded for some reasons, the world of rapture, and it's success in marketing and hitting just at the right moment, people can't critique the lack of gameplay they never knew existed anyway.
ss2 didn't succeed as much because it never had the marketing and back then the market wasn't as big as it was when bioshock hit.
