Following up on yesterday’s topic of Developer Moments, which are defined as:
Any time the player’s available verbs are restricted beyond what can be attributed to a clear narrative device.
Let’s talk about some classifications of developer moments. I’m going to try and keep my player-centrist attitudes to a minimum, but forgive me if I slip. At the very least, I’ll try not to rant.
And keep in mind that these classifications actually apply to video games and traditional table-top RPGs. Technically they apply to board and card games as well, but I don’t know many board game designers with their heads stuck so far up their… oops, I promised not to rant. ;-})
I’ll start with three basic classifications, Exposition, Foreshadowing, and Puppeteering. Please feel free to suggest refinements and new classifications.
Exposition: These DMs give the player insight into the world. They establish history, set up scenes, and show character moments that can’t be easily revealed through gameplay. Beyond Good & Evil made great use of Exposition DMs. When people defend cut scenes, they most often reference this classification of DMs. They are also the easiest to get right and probably the hardest to implement as actual gameplay.
Foreshadowing: These DMs are the other half of the narrative coin. Instead of showing what is, or what has been, they harbinger what is to come. Yesterday I referenced Tombraider‘s camera swoops that show you where you need to go in a level. That’s a use of Foreshadowing DMs. In Castle Crashers there’s a level where you can’t advance until you’ve watched an animal shit itself to death in fear of something. Since you can normally advance after dispatching all the enemies on a screen, I consider that a Foreshadowing DM as well.
I believe that Nintendo’s controversial, and patented, Hint System is an attempt to turn Foreshadowing DMs into foreshadowing gameplay. I’ll let you imagine how I feel about that (hint: I get a wicked gleam in my eye).
Puppeteering: These DMs involve ensuring the player behaves in a manner consistent with the developers’ expectations. Puppeteering DMs typically involve showing the player’s character performing actions that could normally be performed by the player. For example: moving the player’s avatar to a specific point in a room to keep them from colliding with an incoming boss, which happened Blood Omen 2: Legacy of Kain, or switching to a cut scene to show them walking them through a door they’ve just opened, as happened in Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic.
Puppeteering DMs may also depict actions that are consistent with the core verbs available in gameplay, but require special-case implementation. In Matrix: Path of Neo, Neo is depicted jumping off a sky scraper in a cut scene immediately after (or was it before?) a level where falling off some scaffolding resulted in Neo’s immediate death.
And, because I promised to avoid angry rants, I’ll set my opinions about Puppeteering DMs aside for now and turn the conversation over to you.
Did I miss something? Am I chasing white rabbits? Did I not go far enough? Have at me!
I agree that puppeteering shouldn’t be used outside of tutorials. And I don’t believe tutorials should be part of the actual game either, but thats another rant altogether.
Where do QTEs fit? As discrete exposition moments connected by button presses or mini-games with their own internally consistent narrative and ludic rules?
Where do QTEs fit? Do they even qualify? And do they easily fit into a single classification? I suspect each game would have to be assessed individually to answer those questions.
I was just going to bring up QTE’s as developer moments. I just finished indigo prophecy, and the QTE’s are puppeteering in some cases, in others, they are exposition. Also, in the case of Shenmue, I’d say they are puppeteering DM’s as well.
Not sure if QTE’s occur outside adventure games; I’m almost inclined to give them a pass, as adventure is somewhat limiting as a genre, but damn, QTE’s are painfully obvious and come off as lazy DM’s.
Are QTEs actually DMs if they represent the core verbs of gameplay as they do in Indigo Prophecy or a major portions of the gameplay as in Shenmue and Yakuza?
Not to get too off topic, but I generally see QTEs as two types:
“Press X to Not Die” – A random piece of interaction dropped into a DM because the designer was feeling guilty about the puppeteering that you are being forced to sit through. Examples of this are plenty. These are crimes against nature.
Context\Verb Sensitive – A part of gameplay that extends the usual set of verbs in a repeated and predictable way. These may be combined with DMs, but usually in a way that involves a choice of action. Examples would be Indigo Prophecy (sometimes) or special kills in God of War, Bayonnetta or Dante’s Inferno. These, as long as they represent a consistent interface, can extend the gameplay in very engaging ways (especially when choice of context action is provided).
Wolverine fell into that second group, as did most of the QTE in Kung Fu panda (I know, I know).
The question is–with each of those types of QTE do they qualify as DM, or do they count as–and here’s a new term we haven’t formally defied yet–Shared Moments?
In general response:
How would you classify something like the converstaions in a Bioware game (say Mass Effect, because I’m currently re-playing it)? Does it use Puppeteering in conjunction with Exposition between the game mechanics of selecting responses?
How big does a DM have to be to qualify as a DM?
I personally feel that interactive dialog qualifies as a gameplay element and doesn’t qualify as a DM at all. If anything, I’d say Mass Effect‘s style of dialog is even more a game mechanic than letting the player know exactly what they’re saying when they pick an option.
That’s a good question. At what point does the developer’s input become intrusive enough to qualify as a DM? Because honestly, without any developer input there wouldn’t be a game at all.
First off I love the term developer moment and will now have to add it to my dictionary.
Here’s a question which I’ll try to ask without spoiling the game. The big moment in Bioshock would you say that it would be considered exposition or pupperteering or even both?
I think on the subject of how big a DM has to be to consider it a DM, in my opinion I would say if it is big enough that either it affects the game play or if it is noticeable by the player. For example in the game based off of the movie King Kong, there are sections as Kong that the player has to hit one button to have Kong climb and swing around the environment. Technically it is a QTE but it is so minimal that you can just go through the motions and not really focus on them. The developer wants you to interact with the world in this way with these controls, but the interaction is so limited that I don’t think there is a DM here.
Bioshock. I think it’s pretty clearly a Puppeteering DM as your character’s actions are within the core verbs of gameplay. So there may be exposition happening, but I feel Puppeteering trumps exposition.
Although, arguably–it does use a clear narrative device now, doesn’t it? Perhaps we should give it a pass?
I think the answer to the “at what point does the developer’s input become intrusive enough to qualify as a DM?” question is similar to the answer to “at what point does a conversation between two people become one-sided enough to turn into a lecture?”
I’m confused about the distinction between puppeteering and exposition. For example, how do you classify a DM where the player character performs actions that the normal controls do not allow (e.g. dramatically leaping out the window of an exploding building)? By the way, I’m on the fence about whether or not this is good design. That is, it can add to the narrative, but it can also highlight inconsistencies in the game rules. (e.g. Why don’t enemies ever do X? Why can’t the player do Y that I saw in the DM? How come enemies can do Z, but the player can’t?)
If you want to get into edge cases, what about game sequences where the player must “lose” in order to advance the story? Are those goals better served by a DM, or does forcing the player to “play” the sequence contribute to the experience by establishing a power differential? Why does the player fail by dying before reaching the end of the level, only to have the game force a failure via DM afterwards?
As for QTEs, I consider them a form of bait-and-switch, swapping in new rules and skill requirements. (e.g. What’s this sequence-memorization minigame doing in the middle of my tactical shooter?) Then there’s the subject of boss fights, which often suffer from similar shortcomings. Ah, but I digress.
Puppeteering is typically focused on a single action or character movement and used to either ensure the player doesn’t screw something up, get them out of the way of moving level geometry, or transition them from one scene/location to the next.
Exposition, while it may contain some pupeteering is more focused on communicating information.
These categories are far more about intent than content. I think each will be getting its own post next week.
The edge case you describe is an interesting one. I can think of a few examples where being allowed to fail in-game made the resulting transition more meaningful to me. Including one in Batman: Arkham Asylum, which was one of the few moments I really appreciated their handling of the narrative.
[...] he defined three categories of Developer Moments: Exposition: These DMs give the player insight into the world. They establish [...]