Continuing the project of analyzing how games teach players to play effectively, we tackle Dark Souls III. I examine how well the game is able to take a new player and get them to understand the game’s controls and mechanics in a way that they can overcome any obstacle the game throws at them.
Tag Archives: video games
Teaching How to Play: Dark Souls II
Dark Souls II is one of those games in the FromSoft catalogue that tends to draw a lot of division. Many fans of the developer regard it as the worst game in the series, or among the various Souls and Souls-esque games that the studio has put out. But in tackling it from a design perspective, I examine how well it is able to teach players to become “experts.” My exploration leads to a conclusion that it generally does a good job, about on par with its predecessors.
Teaching How to Play: Dark Souls
Digging into games and asking what lessons they are giving to players helps us see both principles of design and how we learn – or don’t learn. In this essay I examine the openings portions of Dark Souls to see how it tries to teach players to succeed.
Teaching How to Play: Demon’s Souls
Every game needs to teach its players, and how a developer chooses to incorporate lessons is an opportunity to ask how learning works. What are all of these elements of the game communicating to the player, and what lesson is the player likely to draw? Does the lesson match up with the game’s design? Using Demon’s Souls as an example, I’ll be diving into the question of how this game attempts to teach players how to effectively get through Demon’s Souls…and how well that teaching works.
The Interaction of Design: Bloodborne’s Healing System
Games are chock full of mechanics that don’t just exist in a vacuum. How those systems interact with each other creates larger systems that push players toward certain behaviors. And sometimes those behaviors can be bad, even when the designers have good intentions. In this essay I look at the healing system in Bloodborne and examine how the totality of the system creates a major frustration for players.
Player Options and Problem Solving: Bloodborne’s Chalice Dungeons
Good games need to teach players to rethink problems and make use of a wide variety of resources. If players are just hitting their head against the wall for hours upon hours, then something has gone wrong. In this essay I explain that principle in more detail and examine how Bloodborne’s Chalice Dungeon system was an attempt – if a poor one – to provide players with better options for grinding.
Over and Over and Over Again
We tend to hate repetition in games. Or at least we claim to. And yet, games are built on a foundation of repetition. We’re often performing the same basic task(s) over and over again, and telling ourselves we’re doing something different each time. How do we go about crafting that illusion for ourselves, and just as importantly, how can game design help us to craft that illusion that our experiences aren’t repetitive?
Puzzle Design and Narrative
Puzzle games come in all sorts of varieties, but one flavor can lead to some frustration: open-ended experiences. When you have a space to explore, that exploration can turn into a game of hide and seek, which loses its charm quickly. In this essay I explore why that happens so frequently with these types of games, and how the pressures of design push towards that outcome.
Talking about Games: The Intended Solution
When faced with a challenge, we can sometimes find ourselves wondering what we’re “supposed” to do. What strategy did a developer mean for me to employ to overcome this problem? However, in asking that question we have a tendency to mistake how intent in game design works. In this essay I break down the concept of the “intended solution” as applied to puzzle games to explain why designer intent doesn’t matter as much as tend to think it does.
Retrospective: Devil May Cry, Part 2
In this (very long) follow up to last week’s essay, I look at the last three games in the Devil May Cry franchise and ask a core question: how effectively do these games turn brand new players into experts? Because these games rely so heavily on high-level play for their fun factor, how well a game can get players from just starting out to that high-level play is an important facet of the game’s design.
Abstracting Games 