The Cardinal Sin of Gaming
There's a part of GTA: San Andreas that involves "capturing" hoods. You go into an enemy's territory, start up a gang war (by shooting several of the enemy gang members), then survive through three waves of attacks. If you survive all three waves, the hood is yours and marked with your color on the map. You first learn how to do this after a mission called "Doberman" and you are encouraged to take over as many hoods as possible. Each time you take over a hood, you gain money and respect. Perhaps more importantly, when you take over a hood, your gang members show up there, and the enemy gang members don't (at least, not nearly as many).

Of course, I tend to take over all the hoods, which takes several days of gameplay, but it's a great feeling. Once you've taken over all of Los Santos, you can drive around anywhere, and know that there's almost no chance of running into an enemy gang, or getting shot at as you cross the street.

However, when you progress in the story far enough that you reach your first betrayal (you knew there had to be betrayals), you leave Los Santos, and the whole game changes. Instead of fighting in the urban jungle, you now have access to the "Badlands", a large open area surrounding Los Santos, full of forests, lakes, hills and mountains.

The game goals also have completely changed. All the missions you are given are in that open area, and although you can drive back to Los Santos, there's almost no reason to do it. After all, you lost all of your hoods.

That's right. Days of gameplay gone in an instant. Suddenly, as you drive down the street, Ballas or Vagos will shoot out your tires. They are all around, everywhere you go, and there's nothing you can do to stop them. You couldn't even start up gang wars and win back the territory (even if you wanted to go through the whole egregious procedure again).

Now, I haven't finished the game, and for all I know, I win back the hoods. Perhaps, at some point, they just blink back in and show that I've still captured all the hoods. But for now, that is supremely depressing. I lost a huge source of income, but more importantly, I lost security in my home town.

I know why Rockstar did this. They want the story change to be poignant and noticeable. They want it to hurt. All the same, I can't help but think this is the most horrible sin a game can commit.

Once a person wins something, let them keep it. When Mario gets to the castle, don't tell him, "Sorry Mario, but the princess is in another castle". Make sure that the player has a sense that what he's doing matters, that it makes sense, and that he is truly earning what he has. If something has to be taken away, make sure that it's a bad guy who takes it, and make sure that the player knows he can get it back.

There's a social contract between the player and the game. One of the unspoken laws is that, if I follow the game's rules, I should get the rewards the game promises. Of course, there are exceptions (for instance, taking all of a player's weapons away when he's put in prison), but there should always be a way to recover from that (by letting him find his weapons in the prison storage area, after he has broken out).

You see, the game holds all the cards. It can define at any moment how many weapons I have, how much ammo I have, how much health I have, even which direction gravity is leaning. With that much power, we have to have faith that the game will only make those changes when absolutely necessary for gameplay. Without that faith, we can't respect the game itself.

I worked on a game once called Turok:Evolution, and I was responsible for the weapons code. When the designers noticed that certain weapons would give the player an unfair advantage in certain levels, they set up a system that would make the player just lose those weapons in those levels. You would just have the weapons at the end of one level, then not have them at the beginning of the next. There would be no explanation for it (but then, there was damned little explanation of anything in Turok).

I said at the time, and I still believe that this is a big mistake. It should be taboo, this cavalier asset theft. Every status change should have a reason, and should be recoverable. To ignore the game's responsibility is to commit the greatest breach of faith; and as such it should receive the greatest punishment.

Obscurity.

- posted by BrandG @ 6:22 PM