Moving Pixels on Sierra vs LucasArts
Submitted by Earok on Tue, 09/21/2010 - 16:09Pop Matter's Moving Pixels blog is one of my favourite game development reads. One of their recent posts is an interesting perspective on the Sierra and LucasArts adventure game philosophies.
In a nutshell, Sierra games will kill the player character frequently and lead him into situations where it is literally impossible to complete the game. LucasArts games will never kill the player character and will never make it impossible to win. Conventional wisdom dictates the LucasArts philosophy is naturally superior, but Moving Pixels doesn't necessarily agree.
The suggestion that lacking player death saps tension has made me rethink the wisdom of the LucasArts method. However I am definitely not sold that the Sierra philosophy of not always allowing players to backtrack and collect the item they need is a good idea. Allowing a player to become a lame duck isn't necessarily a bad design decision, except when the player cannot know he or she has become one.
However the post doesn't mention the middle-of-the-road approach taken by some other adventure games (and most non-adventure games) where victory is always possible while the player's character is alive. The Chzo Mythos games had a tension supported by the very real threat of the protagonist's death, but unless he was brutally murdered he always had a chance to save the day.
This approach will not be right for every case but I believe that, since the game is able to continue until a dramatic finale (Such as death of either the protagonist or antagonist) this is the best option for strong story telling.
Comments
I don't quite get why they can be wrong or right. To me they just seem like two different styles of adventure games.. Although I do like to know if I am wasting my time.. (Hence not wasting my time anymore.) :P
Well Game Design is entirely
objective(woops, meant subjective) so different styles will suit different games and different gamers.But I think it's a reasonable expectation that the majority of gamers would be frustrated by never really knowing if they've done something that makes the rest of the game impossible to finish. Hence, generally, that aspect of the Sierra philosophy is a bad idea.
Well I don't think it's the not knowing if they are doing something futile as that can be the basis of some games. It's the fact that you don't per say have any 'turn' limits or hints to suggest that. For example even in other games like Knots and Crosses, even if you pass the point where it makes no sense to continue playing, you can still do so and the game will still end as a draw. (Confusing win for finish but ...) The part where that doesn't happen, and it's not simply a matter of adjusting your game play to get out of a 'stale mate' like situation. I know I spend a fair amount of time on Lucas Art adventure games as I know that I am _not_ stuck and I can work my way out. (When I get stuck that is.)
The difference I'm trying to point out is that games like noughts and crosses will end, and even if you can't win it's normally obvious, yet an adventure game that doesn't allow backtracking will never end and it is not obvious you can't win.
Yeah I was trying to think of a game like that.. I had Go in mind, or sometimes checkers/chess... But I didn't think they were simple enough. So I went with something too trivial and ill fitting.
But other than that.. My point?
I'm not really familiar with Go, but Chess is a simple game anyway (The rules are at least, the complexity comes from the massive number of possible combinations of moves). For an experienced player it should be obvious when Checkmate for one or both players is impossible to achieve, and at any time either player can forfeit. But with an adventure game, it may not be immediately obvious to anyone that the game can no longer be finished.
Go basically ends when one side decides they can't do anything more without risking their position. It's not a 'defined' end it's just basically you deciding you can't win. ;P