Creating Satisying Goals

Last week I was climbing up a gigantic piece of granite rock by the name of "Lembert Dome." This experience taught me some things, the least of which is related to game design, which is why I am referencing it.

By the time I reached the final stretch of the hike, the sun was about to set and the peak was still ahead of me. With a little help from my friends, I made it to the top, and learned some valuable lessons about goals and what it means to achieve them.

How does this apply to game-design? I would say that in order to have satisfying goals, you need three elements: Payoff, Originality, and Failure.

1: Payoff
Why do people do things? Why do you endure struggle, pain, and hardship? The obvious answer is because it will be worth it, but the end goal must be gratifying enough that it is worth the struggle. If you know the payoff will be high enough, you can endure many difficulties in order to reach it.
What's the notion behind hiking to the top of a giant dome? The 'explorer' answer is for the view--you get to a see an aerial perspective that is not available from down below. As you're climbing, in the back of your head you know that there is a great view waiting for you, and that motivates you to keep going. This is the reason why you would exert force and endure the pain to reach the peak--because you know that there will be a payoff, a reward for your efforts.
In game design, there should always be a payoff to every task that requires the player to struggle. Why should the player explore a giant underwater, mutant-infested Utopian residential section? Why not just sit in the corner and not doing anything? In order to motivate the player to explore, there needs to be some sort of reward, and in this case it would be extra health, ammo, items, or power-ups. What's the reason for the player to defeat the gigantic cyclops boss in the Earth temple? To gain an extra heart container, advance the story, and unlock new areas of the world. Whether it's fighting a boss, or just exploring a level, there needs to be a reason as to WHY the player should be doing it. If there were no rewards for completing a given task, it would be pointless to do so. In game-design, there should always be a payoff to each of the player's accomplishments, whether they are big or small--the payoff will be adjusted accordingly. The greater the promise of reward in each specific task, the more incentive the player will have to reach it and the more intrigued he or she will be to keep playing the game.

2: Originality
The second item required in achieving satisfying goals is originality. When given the choice of hiking two places, one already hiked and one never traveled previously, which one will a given person choose assuming that both hikes have an equal payoff? Logically, most people will probably choose the hike they had never done before, because it provides a new experience.
When hiking Lembert dome, I had never seen the top before, so it was a new experience for me. If I had already experienced the view before, it would have not been quite as magnificent.
Likewise, with game-design, goals should be new and original in order to be satisfying. If the goal of every level in a game was the same (interrogate the traveling merchant, pickpocket a thief, then eavesdrop on a conversation) then it will become stagnant and boring. When you achieve those goals, it is not as rewarding because you've already done them before. If goals are new and unique (become a Big Daddy, liberate City 17) they will be more fulfilling because you have never done anything like it before. Goals should be original as much as possible in order to provide the best experience for the player.

3: Failure
The last element necessary for satisfying goals is a chance of failure. When reaching the peak of Lembert Dome, I saw the tall granite cliff wall and wasn't sure if I could scale it to the top, especially since it was dark and the sun was setting. Also, since this was an original goal, that added to the difficulty since I was not sure I could do it. If I knew I could have made it to the very top before I even started hiking, that would not have been as fulfilling. Instead, since there was a chance I could not do it, that I could fail, that made it much more rewarding when I got to the peak.
With game-design, an element of failure helps to motivate the player to give her best to complete a task. If a game is too easy, there is no satisfaction when reaching a goal. If you already know you can kill these two-hundred Germans because your health respawns and you quickload when you die 5 seconds prior for each death there is no chance of losing at all. This makes the completion of each goal unsatisfying since it was a matter of when, not how to complete the goal. In contrast, if you don't know how to defeat an enemy and may die in the process, it makes the success much more enjoyable. When the Big Daddy comes around a corner, and you are not sure if you have enough health, ammo, and leeway to destroy him while staying alive, it is very fulfilling when you fire the last bullet into him and he thuds to the ground, giving you a payoff of money and more. When you jump onto the final dragon boss and hookshot your way across several flying pedestals to reach the dragon's neck with only several hearts remaining, it is much more satisfying to destroy him while almost dying than to have beat him without losing a single heart container. It is the chance that you can fail, that you can die, that makes something so much more fulfilling when completed.

Conclusion
When I reached the top of Lembert dome, there was a feeling of mutual victory, thanks to the fact that I had some fellow hikers. In the same way in games, victory is just as sweet when shared with fellow players.
On last stage of Goldrush in Team Fortress 2, when the cart is several feet away from the drop zone for the first time (originality), and there is only several seconds left (chance of failure), victory is mutually satisfying when you push the cart in and get to kill your enemies while seeing the gigantic hole explode (payoff). A shared victory always holds something slightly more than an individual victory, but both still benefit from a payoff, originality, and chance of failure.

Games that I played in 2007

It would be impossible for me to compile a list of the best games of 2007, considering I have only played about 1/15 of the major contenders. I will however, compile a list of the best games I played in 2007 (some of which are about 5 years old), which was actually a pretty good year for good games.
Starting off:

# 7 - Trauma Center: Second Opinion :: I probably have more fun in Trauma Center than Crysis, but for something's sake, it has the number seven spot.
# 6 - Crysis :: Crysis - a fun, buggy, clunky experience that tries to imitate Halo and Half-Life and succeeds in most respects.
# 5 - Halo: Combat Evolved :: Yes, I played Halo 1 for the first time this year. It is a very good and fun game, though not on the same level as Half-Life.
# 4 - Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess :: A standalone game, this is one of the finest masterpieces you can ever play. As a continuation of the Zelda series, it's a boring, repetitive cycle of an overused formula beaten into game form yet again.
# 3 - Half-Life²: Episode Two :: Episode two contains the very best of the half-life formula to date, despite that fact that it's a 3 year old formula and only a small segment of a larger story.
# 2 - Resident Evil 4 :: Despite its problems, RE4 is a very, very fun game although it gets dragged on for too long.
# 1 - Portal :: Portal is just fantastic and the best thing I have played in a long, long time.

All of these games were actually pretty good. To sum up:

Portal > Re4 > HL²:Ep.2 > LoZ:TP > Halo > Crysis > Trauma Center

Half-Life²: Episode Two

I have just finished playing Half-Life²: Episode Two. Thoughts:

The Good:

- New enviroments: These include outdoor forests, mountains, underground caverns, and a rebel base.

- New gameplay situations: Teaming up with rebels against antlions, running around with a vortigaunt ally. Thse new gameplay situations refresh the old combat in new ways.

- The physics puzzles actually make sense and don't feel tacked on.

- New graphical features (motion blurs, dynamic flashlight shadows) add a nice touch to old graphics.

- Some of the new AI is very impressive. The combine are smarter than before (I think) and some of the cave enemies are very intelligent and elusive.

The Bad:

- Some minor, reoccuring graphical glitches.

- The WOW factor of seeing real-time enviroments and characters interact has died down since 2004. If Half-Life is going to continue, they need to upgrade the gameplay and not rely on the "frosting" to get gamers through. Right now the gameplay is somewhat shallow, acting only as a constant "problem solver" to every barrier in the story. This is not bad in theory, yet Half-Life is feeling more like an interactive movie with pauses of mundane combat to keep the interaction.

- Due to the episodic content, the story suffers from a lack of completeness as a whole, and thus is less satisfying.

- Every time you must do an inane old-school FPS jumping sequence, Alyx still leaves the room.

- Some sequences felt predictable and had a sense of deja-vu. It seemed like the game was redoing the same sequences from older games in slightly different ways.

The Best part in the game:

Driving through the forest, you make a pit stop and search an abandoned hotel for supplies. You get in your car to continue yet a surprise forcefield activates, blocking you in. The Combine have sprung a trap on you. You retreat back into the hotel with Alyx and take out multiple Combine troopers and several Hunters in an epic battle of two versus fifty.

Overall, Half-Life²: Episode Two is on par, or better than Half-Life² and certainly much better than Episode One. However, the repeating combat system, recycled graphics and short story arc keeps this from being a completely enjoyable experience.

Half-Life²: Episode Two

9.1/10.0