Decades of mono-directional industry wide game design have duped players into thinking playing a game means completing a checklist.
In other words, we've dumbed players down by dumbing game design down.
If that seems overtly hostile, stay with me.
No-one is at fault. This isn't directed at how we play games or how designers design their games, but rather how the industry as a whole has slowly fallen into the trap of players having their hands held without realising it. So much so that when a player doesn't have their hand held, they're unaware of the game they can play at large.
One of the greatest games that eschewed hand holding, and one of the greatest games ever made, was the original Deus Ex. It opened with a very binary like choice, to kill or not to kill. From there, the player could choose how they progressed. Violence, stealth, lethal, hacking, the game world was rich and free for you to pursue objectives how you see fit.
Fast forward a couple of decades, and a game called Cyperpunk 2077 is released.
It doesn't open with a binary choice. It opens up with an objective checklist and a marker. You follow the objectives, you follow the marker, the opening scene ends, you move on.
It never lets you know that from that point on, there will be a staggering amount of freedom for you to pursue objectives how you see fit.
Now, this obviously is ignoring the main story (the smaller, weaker part of the game compared to the whole). That prefers to offer you the more well-known and established structure. Here is a choice, here is a marker. It doesn't offer you the freedom you have in the rest of the game. Which is a shame - compared to what else is on offer it feels like CD Projekt weren't prepared to throw two decades of players conditioned to hand holding into the wilderness.
They probably should have been bolder.
If you've played through Cyberpunk 2077 more than once, and deviated significantly in your side quests and gigs between playthroughs, you've probably started to notice how differently they pan out. Your relationship with your fixers, the plots and the lore you uncover, the options that open up they were not there the first time around, to kill, to question, to knock out. My fixers was enraged at me at how I had done one gig in the first playthrough, she laughed with amusement in the subsequent, was bored in the third. A character I never saw again in the first, had expanded work in the next, was dead in the third.
We've been asking for games that don't hold our hands, for games that set us loose on their worlds, to chase objectives how we see fit, to have choice and player agency.
It's a shame that in a game that has dared to do it so much, many will miss because it's hidden under an objective checklist and an objective marker.
So, if I can offer any advice to players - it would be this - don't make a bee line to the objective, don't chase the 100% completion achievements. Explore. Read. Watch. Hack. Take your time. Your options, choices, and world might open up a whole lot more than threads and videos may make you believe.
In other words, we've dumbed players down by dumbing game design down.
If that seems overtly hostile, stay with me.
No-one is at fault. This isn't directed at how we play games or how designers design their games, but rather how the industry as a whole has slowly fallen into the trap of players having their hands held without realising it. So much so that when a player doesn't have their hand held, they're unaware of the game they can play at large.
One of the greatest games that eschewed hand holding, and one of the greatest games ever made, was the original Deus Ex. It opened with a very binary like choice, to kill or not to kill. From there, the player could choose how they progressed. Violence, stealth, lethal, hacking, the game world was rich and free for you to pursue objectives how you see fit.
Fast forward a couple of decades, and a game called Cyperpunk 2077 is released.
It doesn't open with a binary choice. It opens up with an objective checklist and a marker. You follow the objectives, you follow the marker, the opening scene ends, you move on.
It never lets you know that from that point on, there will be a staggering amount of freedom for you to pursue objectives how you see fit.
Now, this obviously is ignoring the main story (the smaller, weaker part of the game compared to the whole). That prefers to offer you the more well-known and established structure. Here is a choice, here is a marker. It doesn't offer you the freedom you have in the rest of the game. Which is a shame - compared to what else is on offer it feels like CD Projekt weren't prepared to throw two decades of players conditioned to hand holding into the wilderness.
They probably should have been bolder.
If you've played through Cyberpunk 2077 more than once, and deviated significantly in your side quests and gigs between playthroughs, you've probably started to notice how differently they pan out. Your relationship with your fixers, the plots and the lore you uncover, the options that open up they were not there the first time around, to kill, to question, to knock out. My fixers was enraged at me at how I had done one gig in the first playthrough, she laughed with amusement in the subsequent, was bored in the third. A character I never saw again in the first, had expanded work in the next, was dead in the third.
We've been asking for games that don't hold our hands, for games that set us loose on their worlds, to chase objectives how we see fit, to have choice and player agency.
It's a shame that in a game that has dared to do it so much, many will miss because it's hidden under an objective checklist and an objective marker.
So, if I can offer any advice to players - it would be this - don't make a bee line to the objective, don't chase the 100% completion achievements. Explore. Read. Watch. Hack. Take your time. Your options, choices, and world might open up a whole lot more than threads and videos may make you believe.
