biggest failure was not ramping up the difficulty over the course of the game, making
the game too easy overall. But that is less a training issue and more of a balancing prob-
lem. In terms of training, one game that erred in the opposite direction isOdyssey,my
turn-based RPG. In it players start off shipwrecked on an island, without any weapons
or possessions of any kind. I wanted players to immediately be frightened and need to
find a safe place to hide in a nearby cave. I achieved this by having a few monsters start
charging in the players’ direction a few turns after the player character arrives on the
beach. Players had no chance of defeating these creatures on their own, and needed to
enter the nearby cave to survive. Originally, I had the cave hidden in the woods, making
it hard for players to find and thereby making the game even more unforgiving. Fortu-
nately, my playtesters convinced me that the introduction was too hard, and I moved
the cave out into the open where players could easily see it. However, the problem
remained that, before players even had a chance to become familiar with the controls,
they were assaulted by strange monsters, with no real idea of what they were supposed
to do about it. I often wonder how many players were frightened away by this overly
challenging introduction and never played the rest of the game as a result.
Input/Output.................................
Your game’s input and output systems are two of the primary factors that determine
how steep the learning curve for your game is and whether players will find it intuitive
to play. Using the input/output systems you design, players must be able to control and
understand the game effortlessly. Designing these systems is one of the hardest
aspects of game design, since, if they are designed well, players will not even know
they are there. But if they are designed poorly, players will become easily frustrated,
complaining that the game’s controls prevent them from doing what they really want to
do in the game. Designing input and output systems is an “invisible” art in that the goal
of their creation is for them to be transparent to players. This can sometimes lead to
designers failing to fully consider how to best make the I/O work in their game, a mis-
take you must avoid if you want your games to be any fun to play.
Controls and Input............................
Nothing is more frustrating to players than knowing exactly what they want their
game-world character to do but being unable to actually get her to do that because the
controls will not let them. Good gameplay is never about trying to figure out the con-
trols themselves; though you may want puzzles in your game-world, your control
scheme should not be a puzzle players need to figure out. The controls are the players’
interface between the real-world and game-world. In order for players to experience
true immersion in the game they must be able to manipulate the game-world almost as
intuitively as they manipulate the real-world. Every time players have to think, “Now,
what button do I have to press to do that?” that immersion is destroyed.
Though the controls for many computer games seem to be getting more and more
complex, particularly those for 3D action games, there is a lot to be said for keeping
your controls simple. Indeed, a lot of the success of games likeDiablo,Command &
Conquer, andThe Simscan be attributed to the fact that players can play these games
one-handed, controlling everything with only the mouse. The mouse is an extremely
Chapter 7: The Elements of Gameplay 131