Craig is teaching open-world game designers how not to be lazy and suck, one video at a time. This one might be my favorite in the series so far. 10/10
Truthfully Craig, though I love listening to all your talks on game design, there is no way I'm gonna make my game as good as it should or could be. There are just too many "slogs" in my way. But I was entertained at the least.
What do you think of the idea of proc-gen interstitial space in open world games? Where the landmarks on the map would be persistent but the space in between them would be procedurally generated? I think there's a problem in open world games where once you’ve explored an area for a while, it starts to feel like just going over the same familiar physical space over and over again. Generating the journeys between landmark locations could help to keep exploration fresh and- by not specifying and detailing every single inch of negative space in a map- help to maintain an idea of scale and mystery in the player’s mind. It would also match up more closely to exploration in other mediums… In a film, tv show, or novel, there are certain locations that are important, get visited multiple times, and start to feel like familiar spaces (eg.Winterfell). Since they should be persistent and more or less unchanging, we might as well handcraft them to express more personality in the game world. On the other hand, the paths the characters travel through are more spatially trivial, it’s more about getting some idea about what the space is like and conveying a feeling of travel. (eg. the 1000+ miles between Winterfell and King’s Landing) Except for notable milestones along the way, it’s unlikely you would even feel like you really remember the exact spaces of the area you travelled through after a long journey. Even in the biggest open world games, distances are scaled down a lot compared to reality, people wouldn't be able to tolerate travelling for a realistic length of time in a video game journey (same for other mediums). So procedurally generating the journey might better convey the idea that the experience you had travelling was a representation of a journey and not the literal space in between distant landmarks. TES: Daggerfall did something like this, but the proc-gen parts weren’t particularly interesting.
I don't think it's possible to procgen interesting slog between repeating landmarks. The landmarks have already been evaluated. The slog will feel pointless. You might be able to generate goals, though - for example, a Psychonauts-style brain level could be randomly generated, with the understanding that the difficulty reflects how much psche-editing you're doing.
The problem then would be creating a tool that can generate these region repeatedly at high, bug free quality (floating trees, trees in rocks), without direct dev interference.
I'm thinking about the Greybeard mountain in Skyrim now, which always feel much longer than I first expect it to with little reward on subsequent playthroughs. The slog being worse by the fact that the foot of the mountain is far from other places you've visited by that part of the game. (Please don't tell me that the horse carriage goes there and I've just missed it)
What would be the pitfalls or just the reasons why many metroidvanias/open worlds have somewhat static level designs which don't change over time or between deaths? (changes here being changes in content, monster spawns, item spawns, road blocks, etc. but not changes to the level design itself which usually turns it into a haphazardly level designed roguelike) I'm interested in playing a game that has a plethora of these factors which differ every time i respawn/rest at a "bonfire" so that going through the same world felt different every time, maybe even to the point that an info-gathering gameplay system becomes fun and useful wherein every time the player respawns to attempt to fight a boss again they check out their CCTV's or other such info-gathering machines for which monsters/items have spawned in which locations to inform their routing to the boss this life, maybe the routing gets even more emphasized with a limited ammo system from survival horror genre so they can't just fight everything they see to clear the way to the boss, but it's not like they can't fight at all because some monsters are good at their job
Well, the core problem is that this really only works once per result. If you get to final content you've had before - for example, a boss you've seen before - the payoff won't really absorb your expectation. You'd have to be very careful to make it so the slog seems like it exists around something "real", not just a copy of something they've already been through.
I think I could have made this more clear, but if it doesn't ~slow~ your exploration, it's not slog. If it's a stealth section, enemies are a slog, because the point is you have to move slowly while poking around. But if a fight starts, that ~stops~ your exploration.
Love how you talk and convey your ideas but this one didn't really click I guess 😅 You started by saying that simply adding content along the road isn't going to help, and that slog is a solution. But after that you never come back to the concept of the road, so it's hard to place your idea in the context you proposed in the beginning, making it difficult to differentiate between slog and the content that's supposedly... less engaging? It felt a little like the whole setup ended up being a chekhov's gun scenario. After watching I still don't really grasp what you propose is the difference between slog and adding content. Because it feels like what you propose is also just adding content to the road. Not trying to be negative here! I just don't really understand the point you're trying to make and would love to understand it more deeply.
@@KevinNijmeijer it would have been great to have an official answer for this, but my understanding from another comment is that the content earlier doesn't count as slog as it *stops* exploration. Slog should only *slow* down exploration.
Craig is teaching open-world game designers how not to be lazy and suck, one video at a time. This one might be my favorite in the series so far. 10/10
I don't think anyone that tries to create an open world can be called lazy, but I hope we can get more worlds that don't "feel lazy", you know?
Truthfully Craig, though I love listening to all your talks on game design, there is no way I'm gonna make my game as good as it should or could be. There are just too many "slogs" in my way. But I was entertained at the least.
If a game ain't janky, the dev ain't tryin' hard enough!
The reward for climbing up a mountain in Zelda BotW is the view, a good 3 minutes of delicious snow skating and a tiny golden Korok poop
Another great video. Thanks for sharing!
Amazing video!
What do you think of the idea of proc-gen interstitial space in open world games? Where the landmarks on the map would be persistent but the space in between them would be procedurally generated?
I think there's a problem in open world games where once you’ve explored an area for a while, it starts to feel like just going over the same familiar physical space over and over again. Generating the journeys between landmark locations could help to keep exploration fresh and- by not specifying and detailing every single inch of negative space in a map- help to maintain an idea of scale and mystery in the player’s mind.
It would also match up more closely to exploration in other mediums… In a film, tv show, or novel, there are certain locations that are important, get visited multiple times, and start to feel like familiar spaces (eg.Winterfell). Since they should be persistent and more or less unchanging, we might as well handcraft them to express more personality in the game world. On the other hand, the paths the characters travel through are more spatially trivial, it’s more about getting some idea about what the space is like and conveying a feeling of travel. (eg. the 1000+ miles between Winterfell and King’s Landing) Except for notable milestones along the way, it’s unlikely you would even feel like you really remember the exact spaces of the area you travelled through after a long journey.
Even in the biggest open world games, distances are scaled down a lot compared to reality, people wouldn't be able to tolerate travelling for a realistic length of time in a video game journey (same for other mediums). So procedurally generating the journey might better convey the idea that the experience you had travelling was a representation of a journey and not the literal space in between distant landmarks.
TES: Daggerfall did something like this, but the proc-gen parts weren’t particularly interesting.
I don't think it's possible to procgen interesting slog between repeating landmarks. The landmarks have already been evaluated. The slog will feel pointless. You might be able to generate goals, though - for example, a Psychonauts-style brain level could be randomly generated, with the understanding that the difficulty reflects how much psche-editing you're doing.
The problem then would be creating a tool that can generate these region repeatedly at high, bug free quality (floating trees, trees in rocks), without direct dev interference.
So basically reward behind challenge gate around circulation funnel
New design vid when
I'm thinking about the Greybeard mountain in Skyrim now, which always feel much longer than I first expect it to with little reward on subsequent playthroughs. The slog being worse by the fact that the foot of the mountain is far from other places you've visited by that part of the game. (Please don't tell me that the horse carriage goes there and I've just missed it)
That's the issue with locations that exist For One Important Plot Mission. It's just that one slogging thing, even though it's huge!
What would be the pitfalls or just the reasons why many metroidvanias/open worlds have somewhat static level designs which don't change over time or between deaths? (changes here being changes in content, monster spawns, item spawns, road blocks, etc. but not changes to the level design itself which usually turns it into a haphazardly level designed roguelike)
I'm interested in playing a game that has a plethora of these factors which differ every time i respawn/rest at a "bonfire" so that going through the same world felt different every time, maybe even to the point that an info-gathering gameplay system becomes fun and useful wherein every time the player respawns to attempt to fight a boss again they check out their CCTV's or other such info-gathering machines for which monsters/items have spawned in which locations to inform their routing to the boss this life, maybe the routing gets even more emphasized with a limited ammo system from survival horror genre so they can't just fight everything they see to clear the way to the boss, but it's not like they can't fight at all because some monsters are good at their job
Well, the core problem is that this really only works once per result. If you get to final content you've had before - for example, a boss you've seen before - the payoff won't really absorb your expectation. You'd have to be very careful to make it so the slog seems like it exists around something "real", not just a copy of something they've already been through.
im confused on why your example of adding enemies along the path dosnt count as slog
I think I could have made this more clear, but if it doesn't ~slow~ your exploration, it's not slog. If it's a stealth section, enemies are a slog, because the point is you have to move slowly while poking around.
But if a fight starts, that ~stops~ your exploration.
@@CraigPerko ah ok, interesting. thanks :)
Love how you talk and convey your ideas but this one didn't really click I guess 😅
You started by saying that simply adding content along the road isn't going to help, and that slog is a solution. But after that you never come back to the concept of the road, so it's hard to place your idea in the context you proposed in the beginning, making it difficult to differentiate between slog and the content that's supposedly... less engaging? It felt a little like the whole setup ended up being a chekhov's gun scenario.
After watching I still don't really grasp what you propose is the difference between slog and adding content. Because it feels like what you propose is also just adding content to the road.
Not trying to be negative here! I just don't really understand the point you're trying to make and would love to understand it more deeply.
I don't remember, it's been a long time. But not every video will click for everyone.
@@CraigPerko true! I do love so much of your content, been binging it for days 👏
@@KevinNijmeijer it would have been great to have an official answer for this, but my understanding from another comment is that the content earlier doesn't count as slog as it *stops* exploration. Slog should only *slow* down exploration.