Games strive to retain the player’s attention. To do so, many well designed games streamline their gameplay. This streamlining refers to smoothly connecting or polishing a game’s various gameplay mechanics. Such mellifluous transitions from one aspect to another helps uphold the player’s suspension of disbelief; with less downtime between gameplay elements and with polished flow between them, the player less commonly remembers that they are playing a game with no place in reality. By maintaining the game’s illusion of reality, the player’s entertainment is not interrupted. Particularly from its contributions to player engagement, streamlined gameplay remains a subtle component of many well crafted games that removes unnecessary distractions to improve the gameplay experience.
Retaining engagement
Streamlining gameplay is a quality of life improvement within games that generates many benefits, the often most direct being sustained player engagement. Deft transitions from a cutscene to dialogue before returning to gameplay, for instance, save the player from harsh, heavy-handed, and awkward playtime handoffs. Streamlined gameplay blends a game’s various mechanics without letting each one overstep their boundaries. This fluidity starkly contrasts games whose mechanics are essentially distinct from one another, as the player is thrust like a baton from one independent game mechanic to the next. Celeste embodies the aforementioned fluidity with its quick death and respawn system. Death comes easily and often in Celeste due to its inherent difficulty; however, levels promptly restart upon death to almost immediately allow a second attempt. Instead of adopting an slow loading screen or a disheartening Game Over screen, Celeste’s snappy level reset preserves player attention and engagement. Intermittent load screens or Game Over screens serve a valuable purpose, yet their use provides the player with dangerous time to think upon real life and break a flow state.
While Celeste utilizes quick level resets, Far Cry 5 emphasizes speedy protagonist movement to retain player engagement. In Far Cry 5, the player enjoys many methods of traversal, such as driving cars/boats, flying airplanes, and soaring with an air suit. Each method of the protagonist’s movement demonstrates superior fluidity. The protagonist can easily run near an enemy base, hop in a car, drive into the fray, jump out, run to cover, and slide all in a seamless process. If the player knows how to capitalize on such seamlessness in mechanics, he/she can manipulate the game to achieve astonishing feats of speedrunning. The ease and snappiness of movement instills a sense of power within the player that connects him/her with the protagonist. This connection helps build believability, and the player becomes more engrossed in Far Cry 5’s world. Button input correlates with immediate protagonist movement, and the speed of movement allows the player to make more inputs at a faster rate, thus requiring the player’s constant attention and dedication.
It remains difficult to achieve such constant fluidity throughout the entire gaming experience. Oftentimes, cutscenes abruptly shift to gameplay without warning and gameplay is cut short by unskippable dialogue. Fire Emblem: Fates avoided such choppiness by streamlining its tactical gameplay with its combat cutscenes. In Fire Emblem, the player strategizes on a grid map before initiating battle against enemy units. In prior entries to the series, these two components were separated, and brief, yet awkward load times would bore the player. Fire Emblem: Fates introduces a new visual zoom feature where the camera zooms in on a battle once it has been initiated. Instead of clunkily transitioning from overworld to battle, the two views are linked through a quick and seamless zoom. This visual trick helps sustain realism and player engagement because it justifies combat. No longer does combat take place in general fields or black areas of nothingness. Now, combat takes place in the unique tiles where it is initiated that features a plethora of backgrounds to fit each battle location. By smoothly zooming into these unique, map-specific locations, Fire Emblem: Fates streamlines its gameplay to produce a constantly active and consistently engaging player experience.
Justified vs unjustified limitations
Games often restrict the player to prevent boredom. With unlimited power, the ever-motivating need for growth is null and void, resulting in a lack of long-term commitment and engagement. Thus, games limit the player’s power. The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword incorporated such limitations in its stamina gauge. It restricted how long Link could run, climb, and swim. This stamina gauge has potential implications to puzzle-solving, yet Skyward Sword’s lackluster use of the mechanic resulted in an unnecessary and unentertaining hindrance. Because the stamina gauge depletes so quickly, the game commonly provides green stamina fruit to instantly and completely restore Link’s stamina. These stamina fruit are commonly sewn throughout Skyward Sword’s overworld and dungeons. Thus, the game robustly limits stamina, yet contradicts that limitation by providing an ever-present supply of stamina. In dungeon traversal, for instance, Link commonly scales a high wall, which reduces his stamina. This action is an insulting facade of challenge because Skyward Sword’s abundance of stamina fruit mitigate any threat or need for stamina. The entire stamina system in Skyward Sword may as well be removed because the game limits stamina to only replenish it instantly. Skyward Sword’s core gameplay of puzzle-solving and combat failed to logically and entertainingly utilize stamina, so the gameplay experience is choppy and disjointed. It took the series’s next game to successfully streamline the restrictions of stamina with other gameplay elements for a better gameplay experience.
The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild fixed many mechanics that Skyward Sword introduced. Aside from linking stamina progression to Shrine completion (a union that motivates the player to explore shrines), Breath of the Wild integrates stamina with other gameplay elements to produce entertaining strategy. For example, instead of just running forever, the player must diversity his/her traversal methods to efficiently cover Hyrule’s large surface area. Perhaps the player could use Revali’s Gale before paragliding onto a horse to save stamina. Instead of swimming forever due to limited stamina, the player could use the Cryonis rune to freeze water to create a platform upon which to rest. And instead of climbing forever, the player must strategize where to climb, where to stop, and when to jump to prevent falling. This limitation of stamina enriches gameplay by turning a simple action of movement into a streamlined puzzle. The strategy naturally evoked from Breath of the Wild’s stamina entertains the player by transforming Hyrule’s land into an open-ended puzzle, thereby justifying its forced movement limitations.
An exception
With most every rule, there is an exception. Although streamlined gameplay typically aids the player with faster gameplay, sustained attention, and smoother mechanics, some games volitionally avoid streamlined mechanics to great success. Introducing Red Dead Redemption 2: this gun-slinging adventure aimed to faithfully portray early 20th century America’s shrinking Wild West. To enact this goal, realism was paramount. Historical accuracy of towns, cultures, and weapons were considered, but developer Rockstar Games moreso targeted realism through its slow mechanics. Unlike in Far Cry 5, Red Dead Redemption 2’s protagonist, Arthur Morgan, authentically moves slowly, clunkily, and heavily. The player has to wait for Arthur to leisurely eat or drink. Animals’ hides are not instantly looted; instead, the player must trigger a graphic skinning animation. The player cannot fast travel from every point to any point on the map; he/she must instead ride a horse to those locations. Collectively, these examples illustrate how Red Dead Redemption 2 values realism over streamlined mechanics. It would be more efficient for the player to quickly parkour around enemies during shootouts like in Far Cry 5; however, that streamlined gameplay would not authentically display the game’s characters and abilities. Admittedly, many players were turned off by this clunkier, slower approach to gameplay. Yet others found it refreshing, noting how long horseback rides between missions, for instance, allowed them to appreciate the game’s beauty and genuinity. Red Dead Redemption 2 ultimately illustrates that while streamlined mechanics typically produce a smoother and better gameplay experience, they can be deprioritized to maximize another one of the game’s aspects.
Conclusion
Streamlined gameplay remains an important component to infuse in a game’s mechanics. Streamlined gameplay is smoother, faster, and more user-friendly, often resulting in an overall better gameplay experience. With the advancement of gaming hardware and technology, games are becoming more and more complex. Confusion often aids this added complexity, but streamlining gameplay mechanics can help reduce this clutter. By logically intertwining gameplay elements, the player can organically progress through a game’s varying mechanics. This guidance keeps players engaged by reducing wasted time, thereby contributing to sustained playtime enjoyment.
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