Our life shares one similar element with a story. It is the
duration. In the story, usually, it covers a certain number of pages, or a
certain amount of time. In our life, it is our lifespan. However, different
than a story, in our life we rarely found that the right won. Maybe some people
do not agree with this. They believe that you will get it if you stick with the
right. The problem in here is not how to do it, it is whether it possible or
not. Win is one of the output conditions that, usually, come from a type of
confrontation. If it is an output, it means it is the end. There is nothing
beyond it. Na da. That is why, the triumph of the right, which the hero fights
for it, always comes at the end of the book, or before credits screen rolls. Do
we get this when we died? Do we really extinguish what we thing wrong in our
last breath? We do not. Then, what about this? What if, we can eliminate all
wrong before our life span runs out? For instance, we successfully reduce the
rate of crime in our country to zero. Is not that a win? Sadly, even if it
comes true, we still do not win. The wrong still lingers somewhere without our
knowing. It lingers in our mind. You still think the wrong is the opposite of
your right, and you will make sure it will not appear again. It still exists.
Without we forget the wrong, we will never make the right win.
Can we do that? It is difficult. Because when we take one
thing as right, at the same time we also acknowledge the wrong. Throughout our
life, we tend to strengthen our faith to the right, which, usually, also
consist enhancing our hatred to the wrong. This habit works continuously until
we found it was hard to try to explain why the wrong is wrong. It just already
crystalized in our mind. Suddenly forgetting about it is proof to be difficult.
However, it is possible, but with a cost. To forget the wrong, first we need to
forget why it is wrong in the first place. The problem is, what makes it wrong
is because it lies in the opposite from the right. If wrong disappear, then
what makes the right is right? It lost its frame of reference. This makes to
forget the wrong is wrong; we also need to forget that the right is right. It
will throw us outside the boundary of the spectrum right and wrong. Not sure
what we fighting for up to now, not sure which is right and which is wrong, we
enter nihilism.
Nihilism
Nihilism is not a belief that there isn’t right or wrong, a
world without order. Nihilism, based on Nietzsche, is an event, a situation
where there is no highest value, there is no actual right. This situation
happens because our world is always changing, always growing. Our value that we
keep is actually a fiction that we desperately hope to exist. Something that we
get from the other world, the world where there is a totality, and we try to
impose it to our ceaseless real world. Doing this only put us in vain, and
eventually will lead us to nihilism, a situation that Nietzsche put as a
situation when the highest value devaluates themselves. Maybe this is why we
like to read fiction, watch a movie, or play a game. It is only in those “other
world” we get an affirmation about our value. We are just trying to escape the
nihilism.
Nihilism creates disbelief toward value to maintain order.
This makes there is no universal right or wrong, everything is right and the
same time wrong. Everything is the same and is allowed.
As a situation, it means that it is not only what people
believe. It is a fact, which will happen to us. That is why, Nietzsche believes
to overcome nihilism it is not sufficient to change what the nihilists believe.
Try to make them hold a certain highest value, the right, when they already
seen its incapability, is just like asking them to become an ignorance.
Post Nihilism
However, nihilism is not a totally bad thing. It is a
situation that is required if people want to know the truth. So the question
is, how we move forward from nihilism. To do this, Nietzsche said that what we
need is reevaluate the value. Value should become a product of life that
depends on itself, not on dictates from “outside”. Value depends on the
situation, not control the situation. We allowed upholding a value as long as
it makes sense for our current situation.
Nietzsche argues value should applicable for our life. So
the one who should create it is the people who live the life. Life itself comes
in a various shape. There is our individual life, social life, and many more.
From each life, there is a certain value that regulates within it. A value can
be similar or can be different depend on which life we belong to. However, this
does not mean that value is relative. This is because when we happen to be in
one life, we see value from its perspective while we can only see something as
relative if only we are outside to what we measure, a position where we can see
all things at the same time. It is
absolute, and yet it only becomes absolute in that life. This makes value is
actually exist. There is right and there is wrong. However, for the same thing
(or event), the value can varies, depend on which life it is located. Also, the
one who must make the judgment is the people who belong in that life. So we are
allowed to use or even make a value when it only impact on us personally, but
when we with other people we must reevaluate our value by considering the other
people.
Post nihilism is different than pre nihilism, where we just
blindly following what we thought right and wrong, despite our current
situation. It is also different from nihilism where there is no value. In post
nihilism, we become the master of value, not the slave. In turns, it will help
us to see the nature of value, what it actually gives us.
Why then the value, right and wrong, exist? When it comes to
reasoning about right and wrong, people tend to think them solitary from each
other, where the right will give them a benefit while the wrong will give them
punishment. However, I believe beyond that, there is a bigger advantage that we
can get when both the right and wrong exist. This advantage, strangely is not
related with either the right or wrong. It located outside the spectrum, and
yet it impact only to oneself. In our reality, this advantage comes in the form
of a sense of progression. Without the right and wrong, we do not have a
purpose to continue living, because everything is similar, there is nothing
that we can pursue. We will feel that we just circling around without moving an
inch in our life. I believe the scariest for human is the feeling of boredom, a
feeling that we get when everything is never changing. To escape the boredom we
must take a value. So, in my opinion,
post nihilism is a state where people uphold a value not for labeling things
around them with either right or wrong and blindly following it, but to get the
advantage that they can only achieve when both right and wrong exist.
Goals in Video Games
Surprisingly, the advantage of right and wrong is something
that we, game developer always trying to create. However, it is slightly
different from our real life. In the game, right and wrong is related with
goals. When goals in the game are created, the reason is not to make the player
get the right, which is winning the game, or to avoid the wrong, which is
losing the game. It is the other thing. If for our reality it is what I said
earlier as sense of progression, in the game it comes in the form of enjoyment.
To get this enjoyment, player does not have a choice other than play. This is a
grand rule that every game designer obeys. Goals only exist to give player
enjoyment. When the goals do not give a pleasure, they must be ruled out. Even
so, because every player has variety of skills, to entertain every player is
difficult. That is why normally in the game the player is allowed to adjust the
difficulty.
Difficulty selection feature works brilliantly to help
player to get the goals without losing the enjoyment. Let’s take competitive
games for example. In most of competitive games, player is allowed to adjust to
almost all of the aspects of the game, from time limit to enemy level (from
adjusting computer skill or selecting other player who s/he want to compete
with). This works well with player goal (to become better) without sacrificing
his/her enjoyment (s/he can cope with his/her current skill). However, this is
not valid for every type games. For single player story driven game, I argue
this feature will not work well with player goal and enjoyment.
For single player story driven games, the goals is to know
what will happen next, and finally see the ending. For the enjoyment, it comes
from the feeling of immerse through the story. Although by letting player
select the difficulty of the game (which is usually comes in the selection of
easy, normal, or hard) can help the player to cope with the game which is
giving them a bigger opportunity to reach the goal, it actually can break the
enjoyment, the feeling of immerse. That is why game designer, usually, place
the difficulty selection at the start of the game, and player must stick with
it until the end of the game. The problem is, human is a creature that is
easily to adapt. Given time, something that feels challenging will lose it
charm, and we will get used to it. Our skill will surpass the challenge and
what left is a dull experience, where game feels very easy, and we become just
like an audience rather than a player. This in turns will also break our
immersion. Knowing it, many game designers let the player change the difficulty
at fly. Believing it will help them to control the difficulty according to
their skill, this decision creates the same problem. Changing the difficulty
inside the game, usually, happens when the game was felt too easy or too
difficult. In order to do this, player needs to pause the game and go to the
difficulty setting. Which means there is a delay through game progression that
the player spend for an activity that unrelated to the narrative. This will
increases the chance the player loss the immersion.
The relation between challenge (or difficulty) and skill is
best-explained by flow theory from Mihalyi Csikszenmihalyi. In flow theory, we
see that when challenge and skill create a pattern of flow channel it will make
the player feel the experience of flow, which is being immersed in the
activity. This theory teach us that to make the game balance between player
skill and challenge provided in game, things that should be considered are:
1. Define the
challenge
The challenge that provided in game should have a value that
can be measured by character’s action. A task to deplete enemy’s health where
the game does not provide an action to punch, shoot, or other things to
complete the task is not a good challenge.
2. Define the
player skill
Player skill is different from character skill. By player
skill, I mean the ability that the player has in the real world that will be
translated by game through character’s action. It could be motoric ability such
as rapidly press various button or logic thinking ability such as finding the
solution of a puzzle. Also, not least important is to determine the maximum
skill the player can have. Although human always growing, but it needs time.
Rush it through game time, which considered small compared to player lifetime,
will only stress the player.
3. Map the
challenge and skill
The rest is to connect the challenge with the appropriate
skill. Although there is many guides to do this, I believe this activity is
more art than science. The best good solution that I have encountered is to do
much playtesting with different type of player.
The pattern at flow graph shows that there is a set of
challenge that only appropriate for a certain skill. Usually, this pattern is
plotted with the story in single player story driven game, where player is
assumed to have a higher skill in later story. However, because most of this
type of game takes a longer time to finish many players will not complete it in
a single play. Moreover, with the increase of the number of game that player
plays at the same time, it increases the chance there will be decrease in
player skill. Because previously I said giving the feature of difficulty
selection in the game could break the immersion, we are left with a dynamic
difficulty feature, which has two important things in order to work:
1. Measure the
player’s current skill
Game should measure player current skill and bring the
suitable challenge. In the game, challenge is represented by game element that
can be manipulated by character’s action.
Character’s action is coming from game translates player’s action to a
bit of information. Then, to know the player’s current skill can be measured by
how well s/he delivers the input. In the past, it is something that is hard to
do, but nowadays, with the rise of analytic tools, it is not impossible to do.
By reading the input information, such as the time between button pressed or
the decision the player made, game can measure a player’s current skill.
2. Remember the
player’s previous skill
Other than knows the player’s current skill, game should
interpret it based on player’s previous skill. If player’s current skill is
higher than previous skill, that means player is growing as the game wanted.
However, if the opposite happens, game should lower the difficulty by giving an
easier challenge while helping the player to gain his/her previous higher
skill.
However, using dynamic difficulty has a drawback. This feature will make there is no
progression through the game, which is what single player story driven game is
all about. This is caused by the game will adjust to player skill, and there is
a chance where player will feel the earlier section of the game is harder than
the current caused by the decrease in player’s skill and there is sudden
increase of difficulty because player regain his/her skill. Fortunately, like I
said before, in single player story driven game, player’s skill is already
plotted with game progression. So what game should do is only read player’s
current skill and compared it to the designed player skill from game
progression. If player’s current skill is higher than what it should be, then
the game can increase the overall game difficulty. However, when the opposite
happens, game does not need to lower its difficulty. What it should need is to
pause the game progression and focus help the player get the suitable skill.
There are many ways to do this. However, what I found
interesting is the dying system in Herc’s adventure (LucasArts, 1997). In
Herc’s adventure, every time player dies, player is thrown to the underworld
where player needs to fight Hades’s underlings before player can continue their
game. This underworld is not only worked as a mini games, but can also help the
player to improve his/her skill without sacrificing the game progression.
Moreover, the developer makes this feature still related to game narrative so
that it will not break player’s immersion.
By using similar concept with Herc’s Adventure (halt the
game progress to train the player in a special place), and combined with
reading player’s current skill (and use this information and the designed skill
to plot the difficulty trends of special place) it will help the player to cope
with game difficulty. Also, this concept can be used as interactive game
tutorial too. Game designer has long known that giving an interactive type of
tutorial is better than a writing one. However, this type of tutorial is only
found at the earlier game, and after it was over, when player forget about some
element of the game, the only thing player can rely is only the written summary
of tutorial (and only if it provided).
This system, together with the ability of the game to
dynamically increase the difficulty (if player’s current skill is higher than
the designed one) I believe will help the player to work on the game goal
without forgetting the advantage that it provided, the enjoyment. Or in the
philosophy words, the state of post nihilism.
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