Audience and Accessibility: Devlog #8

Good Morning

         Breaking news: every person is different. We all have different ideas of what makes a game fun, and we all play games for different reasons. Every person's preferences are a little bit distinct from every other person's preferences, and there are some people who many not share any preferences with you whatsoever. Due to this very inconvenient diversity of thought, it's impossible to make a game for everyone. It is very important that a game is explicitly made for a specific audience of potential players who all have some preferences in common. Those who gravitate towards expansive JRPGs may not be part of the intended audience for Super Meat Boy, a precision platformer.

         This is a key piece of advice often given by veteran developers towards newer ones. While I'd imagine it's pretty helpful advice, it doesn't really answer how you actually determine what that audience is. I am a fan of most video game genres; this is likely what led to me deciding on this crazy genre-mashup for Enchanterland. But that raises the question: who is the game for? Players with platformer experience could potentially feel alienated from the limited controls and combat focus, while beat-em'-up fans may not find the two-dimensional space comfortable to move around in. Appealing solely to the overlap in these audiences is out of the question, and doing so wouldn't guarantee that any of those players would find the combination of genres to be at all enjoyable.

         To top everything off, audience is inherently intertwined with difficulty. Some players might find a game too hard, while others may find it too easy. Players on the extreme of either end likely won't enjoy the game. Sure, you could appeal specifically to either those who are inexperienced with games or to those who've played them their whole lives, but there are certainly games out there that have done both. How did they do that? How do I do that with Enchanterland? How do I make this weird genre combination work? How do I disable the option to refund my game on Steam? These are all great questions, some of which will be answered in this devlog.

Who Would Play This

         This question popped up in my mind when I had the idea for this topic. The short answer is: me. It's my game, I can do whatever the heck I want with it, so screw you. The long answer is a lot more nuanced and less aggressive. Obviously, I want a fair amount of other people to enjoy my game as well. If I was the only person on the entire planet who liked Enchanterland after its release, that would be saying something. I'm definitely holding the thoughts of others in high regard for this project, even if my own preferences are the driving factors here.

         With that being said, this is a weird kind of game. My preferences in games can often be bizarre to other people. I can't imagine I'll ever meet a single other person who agrees that the turtle run speed on low level Morrowind characters is a good thing. Thinking about what kind of players Enchanterland is for made me realize that at least one major thing about it is going to feel highly unintuitive to someone. Platformer veterans will find the fixed jump arcs to be overly restrictive, while those who don't play platformers will find the whole game unintuitive by default. That doesn't even mention the beat-em'-up side of things. This game is wholly designed by me... for me. When the game comes out, I will probably start off as the only one who doesn't feel like anything feels weird or unintuitive. Though, I don't think that's a bad thing.

         The precision platformer subgenre sure is an interesting one. It's a pretty niche category, and I only really enjoy a couple games within it. Precision platformers, as the most astute among you may infer, are all designed around precision. More specifically, they tend to present you with levels that get their challenge from a direct opposition to your intuitions. Geometry Dash should theoretically be the most intuitive game ever made; it  only requires the use of a single button. However, part of what makes the later levels in this game so difficult is the absurd amount of visual tricks and traps put down to mess up your timing. If all you had to do was press the spacebar at the right time, Geometry Dash would be fairly simple, even if the timing was strict. But it's not just that; you have to let your reactions simultaneously work with and against your sense of what is visible on the screen. Most jumps aren't difficult because of tight timing windows; the jumps are difficult because the game tricks your brain into jumping or not jumping at the wrong times by making your hands conflict with your eyes. Your senses don't normally have to cooperate in this way; Geometry Dash is an extremely unintuitive game. However, I also think this unintuitive-ness is what makes the game a unique skill and an engaging experience. The game now has a playerbase of millions within a thriving community centered around pressing the spacebar at the right time.

The spikes that become transparent as you approach them are evil.

         In this example, there's still a clear part of Geometry Dash that is intuitive: the controls (or should I say, control). 'Space to jump' is probably the second most intuitive key binding for most people, right behind 'WASD to move'. This simplicity allows players to immediately understand how the game works, and to quickly understand what challenges could be presented to them. There's a clear contrast between the intuitiveness of some parts and the un-intuitiveness of others. These unintuitive parts don't make the experience frustrating for most players because the they can clearly understand the challenge and are able to work past them. That's the appeal of precision platformers, those who want a challenge typically enjoy the satisfaction of overcoming obvious but daunting obstacles. If those obstacles were obscured, or if several other parts of the game started breaking conventions in strange ways, Geometry Dash would stray into the realm of Getting Over It.

         Making Enchanterland into this monster-mash of old genres causes a few parts of the game unintuitive for most players. However, that is to be expected from every game that does anything new whatsoever. Breaking design customs, when done in moderation, makes for better games. I could design a lightning-fast action platformer built for speedrunning. I could also design a side-scroller martial arts beat-em'-up with tons of shirtless men. On the contrary, Miyamoto forbid, I could design something that takes elements from both genres and puts fans of either one a little bit outside their comfort zone. Sure, some players may not like that, but then again, nobody can appeal to everyone. My original concern was that I couldn't appeal to anyone, but I don't think I was giving people enough credit for how far they are willing to step outside their boundaries. Most of those who have bought and played new Steam games at all recently are probably willing to play games that could potentially feel unintuitive at first. Combining genres, if I do it well, isn't going to restrict my audience: it'll expand it. The important thing is that I moderate to what extent my design decisions may push players outside of what's comfortable and make sure it doesn't become too much. Avant garde music eventually just becomes violent noise when the musician starts getting a little bit too creative.

         If it wasn't obvious, Enchanterland is catered to fans of both platformers and beat-em'-ups. That's the main audience I'm aiming for, but that doesn't make it the only audience I'm trying to pick up. While this is likely going to be the core audience of my game, it would be awesome if I could attain the interest of a few of those who aren't regular players of either genre. Making a game that is readily accessible to players with varying levels of experience, however, is an entirely different issue.

Who Can Play This

         Not everyone is making games that can be played with one button. A big part of most fighting games is motion inputs, typically reserved for the unique 'special moves' of the different characters. However, if you've played a fighting game for the first time before, you'll know that the simple act of performing these moves in an actual match is anything but simple in practice for newbies. These players often feel daunted by the difficulty of performing and applying different motion inputs in the heat of a fight. It can also seem daunting to memorize diverse movesets, matchups, combos, setups, frame-data, and all of the things that seem to make up the prerequisite knowledge required to just play the game. So, some fighting games started implementing an alternative control scheme that allows special moves to be cast with a simple button press. On it's own, this would give a distinct advantage to players using this, since it cuts the amount of effort required to perform the same action as someone who isn't. However, this control scheme also typically reduces the damage of these special moves, or even the damage of your character as a whole. Nonetheless, the goal was to provide a balanced way for those who weren't comfortable with motion inputs to enjoy fighting games regardless, maybe even at a competitive level. 

         The implementation of these features were often met with controversy. It can be difficult for many to shake off the feeling that players who use these accessibility features are taking the easy way out. It also adds salt to the wounds when these different kinds of players have to fight against each other. The feature implemented to expand the audiences of these games ended up frustrating parts of the audiences they already had. While new players appreciated things being made easier on them, veterans didn't always appreciate the feature that sometimes seemed to devalue the competitive integrity of their game.

         While this may seem like an entirely isolated case, most games have issues related to this one. When a game that provides any sort of challenge gets published, all kinds of players with varying levels of game experience are able to get it. This often leads to one or both of a couple outcomes: 1) Many less experienced players want to play the game, but are turned off by its difficulty. 2) Many more experienced players do play the game and find the challenge to be underwhelming. Most likely, both will occur. At least in competitive games, experienced players will always be able to challenge one-another. For singleplayer games, however, it can feel impossible to appeal to anyone who doesn't fit within a very narrow skill range that the game was targeted towards.

         The solution that most singleplayer games have for this is the difficulty slider. Players are given ability to decide how hard they want to make things on themselves, which allows the casuals to be separated from the masochists. For this week's contractually obligated Skyrim example, that game has many different difficulty levels that players can select from in the settings. The lowest difficulty is the default, while higher difficulties increase the health and damage of enemies. This, unfortunately, causes a lot of problems. Higher difficulties in Skyrim not only make the game more challenging, but also more tedious. It takes waaaaaaaaaay more time to defeat enemies on legendary difficulty than on novice. While this system absolutely makes Skyrim a very accessible game to those who didn't grow up with action RPGs, those who did often get frustrated with how the system works out on their side of the spectrum. 

        When implementing difficulty sliders, an issue arises: what exactly should these sliders be changing? Difficulty isn't a game mechanic, you can't modify it directly like you can with other things. All you can do is modify values and properties that could potentially change how the player engages with them. In Skyrim's case, the values being modified on the difficulty slider are enemy health and damage. In the case of fighting games like Street Fighter 6, the property being modified is the user controls. Introducing these sliders often presents a few issues. For one, the mechanic balancing could be thrown off very easily and dramatically. Skyrim isn't balanced around its legendary difficulty, which is what makes it so tedious to play. Giving players the option to change properties could also fundamentally alter the experience for certain parts of the playerbase. When you use the simplified modern controls in Street Fighter 6, you're essentially playing an entirely different game than your classic-mode counterparts. Fighting games are usually intended to make use of motion controls, so appealing to players who don't like motion controls in this manner requires making some drastic changes to their experience. Difficulty sliders are pretty much the only way to appeal to players of many skill levels, but developers should be weary of the implications of implementing them.

         So... Enchanterland. Appealing to a wide audience of people with varying levels of experience is very important, especially since this project is so weird at its core. I have to balance out that un-intuitiveness with mechanics that support new players, but also raise the skill ceiling as high as I can. I could allow players to alter the health/damage values of enemies, but that would just cause the Skyrim problem all over again. I also don't want the game to fundamentally change for different kinds of players; frankly, I'm not sure how I would even do that. It would seem that I am at an impasse, but there's also a method for implementing an "artificial" difficulty slider into games like this...

         Let's turn towards the root inspiration of Enchanterland: New Super Mario Bros. Wii. You may not have even entirely noticed or processed it, but that game has a scoring system. It's pretty much a large, pointless number that goes up throughout your playthrough when you do practically anything. However, I figure that if was further integrated into the experience, experienced players would care about it a lot more. On the other hand, players who are just trying to get through each level could ignore it entirely. Enchanterland could have that more integrated version of the scoring system with more incentives for experienced players to engage with it.

         You may have seen level-ranking systems in games like Cuphead or Devil May Cry, but that isn't really what I'm going for here. For one, these scoring systems have hard caps. When you get S rank on a level, there's usually nowhere to go after that, and even if there is, there won't be much more. Secondly, these ranking systems are usually front-and-center for everyone. They incentivize all players to go beyond the bare minimum, and may even require players to do more than simply complete the level to progress. A number-based scoring system could theoretically allow players to reach tremendous heights that not even I could dream of. It would also be easier to outright ignore for those who are struggling to get by. There's a place between the ignorable scoring systems in the Super Mario games and these attention-grabbing ranking systems that I could potentially get to in Enchanterland. There could also be an entirely separate game mode where score really is front-and-center.

Cuphead's victory screen does look pretty good though.

         This is not the only part of the solution I have in mind. I absolutely love the idea behind items like star coins and heart pieces: optional collectibles that are locked behind small but engaging challenges for more experienced players. My parallel to these collectables would probably be special treasure chests that are either hidden or locked behind bonus challenges. There would always be a set amount of them per level, which allows players to know when they should keep looking around and when they've gotten everything. Of course, these chests would give the player a ton of points, among other things.

         I think this is the best way to implement a "difficulty slider" for a game like this. New players aren't forced to do anything that isn't required, while experienced players can choose to go out of their way for extra challenges that also yield extra rewards. The skill ceiling also becomes nearly non-existent for the really invested players who want to maximize their score with multipliers, challenge chests, and time bonuses. And, most importantly, everyone is playing the same game with the same rules; it's a wonderful compromise. So, there are two clear lessons here: game design is extremely easy, and numbers will solve every problem in the universe. Thank you for coming to my TEDx talk.

And In Case I Don't See Ya, Good Afternoon, Good Evening, and Good Night

         At this point, writing these weirdo essays has become a weekday replacement for actually working on Enchanterland. Doesn't matter too much, though. What does matter is that I'm still consistently working on the project at all, and writing these seems to have helped a lot with maintaining that consistency. They don't exactly get a lot of traction with people who don't know me personally, but they will also remain available after the game gets released. Who knows, maybe a partner or publisher will be interested in backreading these. Though, they will more likely just be confused as to why the time writing them couldn't have just been spent working on the actual game. I don't have a good answer for that. Anyways, I'll be here next week to procrastinate my other writing with this writing. Ciao!