Generally defined as one of the core human motivators, autonomy refers to personal discretion with behavior. In terms of game design, autonomy concerns how much control the game bequeaths the player. Games vary in the extent to which the player controls gameplay. While too much autonomy might overwhelm and confuse players, too little autonomy removes the game from the video game. Thus, each game should strive to find its appropriate level of autonomy that balances the player’s gameplay with the its intended experience. The appropriate level of autonomy is difficult to determine, yet games often benefit from more of it. After all, autonomy results in a plethora of gameplay experiences that keeps each playthrough fresh and enjoy. Additionally, autonomy results in a personal accountability of gameplay. This accountability motivates the player to enjoy the game in the way he/she sees fit. From its consequences of iteration and motivation, autonomy is a worthwhile feature in game design that helps the player savor games in a more personal manner.
Strategic specialization
Autonomy allows the player to customize his/her gameplay in his/her desired way. Pokémon Showdown! is a Pokémon battle simulator that fully adopts this mentality with its Team Creator. In typical Pokémon games, the player spends more than twenty hours of team planning, acquisition, and training. Pokémon Showdown! counters this methodology by allowing the player to quickly construct any Pokémon team with complete control of the game’s more intricate statistics. For example, instead of finding, catching, and training a Pikachu like in staple Pokémon games, Pokémon Showdown! allows the player to generate a max level Pikachu with customized moves, abilities, and IVs. The ease of this system additionally allows casual players to approach the franchise’s competitive play, and its complete customizability enables each player to construct his/her ideal strategy. By removing barriers in team formation, Pokémon Showdown! grants complete autonomy to the player, subsequently actualizing the player’s strategies in an entertainingly self-directed method.
The Fire Emblem series is another long-standing figure in tactical games that benefits from player autonomy. Particularly in Fire Emblem Awakening, almost every unit was strategically viable, thereby allowing the player to choose which units to utilize. Some players strategize in an aggressive manner, subsequently lending their unit choices to the strong Fighter and swift Myrmidon classes. Alternatively, other players prefer the more methodical approach, lending themselves to employ the handy Archer and defensive Knight classes. Regardless, each player equips his/her team as he/she chooses, and because each unit is strategically viable, the player is not penalized for employing one strategy over another. Fire Emblem’s autonomy extends beyond team construction. The player orchestrates his units to accomplish missions in a nondirected manner, meaning that the player personally chooses which strategies to employ. With the game’s wide variety of unit types, maps, and victory conditions, the player enjoys an incalculable amount of ways to enjoy the game’s strategic blueprints.
More personalized fun
While self-direction can result in strategic gameplay, it can additionally entertain the player by enacting how he/she wants to play. This notion of autonomy allowing the player to play the game how he/she prefers may seem intuitive, but it has important implications for the player’s enjoyment. Oftentimes, games tell the player what to do and specifically how to do so. While general instructions are often helpful, overbearing constrictions can sap the fun out of gameplay because they prevent the player from playing how he/she prefers. Splatoon 2 helps prevent such suffocating direction throughout its impressively varied and quickly unlockable weapon system. The game boasts a myriad of weapon - including the standard shooters, the surface area covering rollers, the close combat dualies, etc. - and the player can quickly unlock them to customize his/her gaming experience. This self-directed customizability results in a preferred player state: an optional style for the player to enjoy the game. Sure, the player might be fine using the dualies, but if he/she prefers using a roller, then let him/her do so. Giving the player his/her desired gameplay experience results in a heightened state of enjoyment that nonautonomous gameplay often prevents.
Perhaps the zeitgeist of games that embrace autonomy is The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. Although its main quest instructs the player to “Destroy Ganon,” he/she can do so in the preferred procedure at the preferred time. Beyond autonomy in the game’s overarching goal, most of the game’s smaller goals embrace autonomy for a better gameplay experience. For example, enemies can be fought with bows, swords, axes, spears, magic rods, runes, environmental features, etc. And each option widely varies in its approach; while spears deal quick, precise damage, a slow-moving club packs a stronger wallop. And more creatively, the player can capitalize on runes to explode nearby blasting barrels near enemies. Thus, the open-ended nature of the game allows the player to autonomously engage combat. This open-ended nature also appears in traversal. The player slowly accumulates a wide arsenal of tools to cross hyrule, such as the waterfall-climbing Zora Armor, the vertical upshot Revali’s gale, and the plethora of horses to ride. Additionally, puzzles in shrines frequently demonstrate this same process where they can be solved using a variety of runes and weapons. Holistically, Breath of the Wild’s open-ended design enables the player to engage it in his/her desired way, thereby resulting in a more personalized gaming experience.
Personal preparedness
Games can often become overwhelming at times, which is why autonomy allows the player to pause and then reengage the game when desired. Many games do this subtly, such as Doom shifting its gameplay from safe exploration to intense combat and then back to safe exploration; however, some games blatantly incorporate autonomy with rest to great success. After action-packed missions in Red Dead Redemption 2, the game’s protagonist, Arthur Morgan, sits or stands alone in a safe, often visually stunning location. The player retains autonomy as to how long Arthur Morgan remains in this safe state. Because some missions drain the player with engrossing train heists or heart-pounding shootouts, these gracious respites enable the player to stop, gather him/herself, and then approach the game when ready. A nonstop state of action eventually burns the player out, so games frequently instill restful moments to prevent such fatigue. When implemented blatantly, as compared to subtly, these autonomously exited restful moments grant control of the game’s action, thereby buffering against burnout.
Lack of control, lack of fun
This analysis thus far has examined the benefits of autonomy. This is one side of the equation, the other side being the lack of fun resulting from an absence of autonomy. To illustrate how nonautonomous mechanics destroy a game’s enjoyment, look no farther than Fossil Fighters: Frontier. More than a poor man’s Pokémon, this dinosaur-themed strategy RPG was the third entry in its series. To keep the gameplay fresh, it introduced a new mechanic into its battle system: partner assistance. With it, the protagonists’ friends join all battles and fight alongside the player. While this system fits the game’s theme of friendship’s power, it largely removes strategic gameplay because the partners cannot be controlled at all. Thus, their dinosaurs fight with no coordination from the player. This lack of control reduces the complexity of battle because the player cannot strategize with partners. Thus, the game just plays itself. Making matters worse, partners’ lengthy attack animations bore the player because he/she has no connection to their actions. While its core mechanic of partner battles intended to illustrate the ties of friendship, its lack of autonomy results in an insultingly tedious battle system that drags the whole game down with it.
Conclusion
Games largely strive to empower the player. To do so, they can enable the player to complete goals in a self-directed manner. Instead of just having the player watch cutscenes or read text, games can include him/her with his/her purposefully chosen gameplay. This added sense of audience interaction separates games from other forms of media, such as film and books. Because of the interactivity that the gaming platform provides, games can and should incorporate the player’s direction for a more strategic and personal gaming experience. This sense of autonomy engenders enjoyable strategic gameplay diversity and a persisting motivation stemming from personal accountability. These two results work symbiotically, with enhanced motivation enabling the player to enjoy more gameplay diversity, which in turn motivates the player to experience more varied gameplay. Ultimately, autonomy keeps the gaming experience as it should be: with players playing games, not with games playing themselves.
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