Should a video game be logically consistent internally?

If changes in physics are a plot point, then I accept and enjoy them. Example: Psychonauts. The premise of the game is that you explore worlds that represent people’s minds. When you go inside the brain of a schizophrenic guy, the roads twist upside down or drop off into bottomless abysses.

If the physics are changing for no reason whatsoever…..that would just be annoying.

I don’t play often play games, but I got this feeling when I tried to do my taxes with the wrong set of supporting materials. It was like some sort of evil choose your own adventure telling me to turn to pages that didn’t exist and use the undetermined data as input data to calculate itself. It felt surreal.

@Mariah

I see what you mean. But I’m assuming that if the game let’s you know that you’re entering the (admittedly illogical) mind of a schizophrenic , then all bets are off and anything can happen.

But presumably the rest of the game stays true to the premise which it has set up?

Illogical changes in games will never make way for chaos if that’s part of the gameplay. One level may have you jump over pits filled with water. Fall in and you die. The next level might be an underwater level. One might ask, so…wtf, can my character swim or not? That’s obviously confusing, but the rules are straight and simple. In one level you can swim, but not the other. We understand the rules, the game may still be played.

Chaos and confusion comes with bad game programming. Why am I falling through platforms? Why have the designers alloted one tiny landing space, but made the graphic bigger than what you’re allowed to land on? Why do I have a life bar if everything kills me in one hit? Stuff like that which wasn’t intentional.

But when rules are well made, there will be no chaos, no matter how illogical the content is.

If that’s what you meant?

I certainly much prefer my games to make sense, and notice and lose suspension of disbelief, and interest, when they don’t. I have the same reaction to stories (and drama and films, etc., unless they are intentionally being surreal).

However, many players (or readers or viewers) don’t mind as much. Some even go way off the deep end in the other direction, and/or see making sense as being un-fun. I start thinking those people are just wrong and/or confused, and annoying.

As for what you’ll find in games… it depends, but the more sensitive you are to lack of logic, the fewer games you’ll find that are very logical or consistent. Many games are consistent at some level, but break down on other levels, and so on. Almost all games have some areas where there logic and consistency breaks down, or at least they become quite abstract. Often games will focus on one aspect of their fictional universe, and include but be much less detailed and consistent about other aspects.

As a long-time game player whose tastes for detailed games that make sense has gotten more demanding over time, I tend to be able to intuit what a game will be like from looking at basic descriptions, then reading opinions of other players, and I rule out even trying probably over 99% of all games. This saves me a lot of time and disappointment. Fortunately, hundreds of games are made, and some are quite interesting to me, which is plenty.

For someone new to games, it may be hard to find games that are very logical and consistent, depending on the type of game you are interested, and how high your expectations are.

What game are you playing, and what types of game do you think you’re interested in?

No. But the author should at least try to create an internally consistent world.
Any work of fiction, be it a book, a movie, or a game, will have plotholes and internal contradictions. It is inevitable.

In Samurai Showdown the second last boss flips your controls and is confusing. Left is right and up is down.

@talljasperman Seriously? Wow, what a cheap ass way to up the difficulty lol.

@Buttonstc Yes, you know you’re about to go into a loopy mind. And each level is quite different from the last; everyone’s brains are different. But that’s sort of the point of the game.

I agree it would be chaotic and disconcerting for things to just change on you rapidly; good game designers would try to avoid such things.

Well, yes, but…

There are some games where inconsistency is conistency. Games that try to be inconsistent because the game world itself is wacky. Even then, there’s usually a reason though, even if that reason is just to cause the player the same mental distress that the character is experiencing for the sake of immersion.

Done correctly (as in the example below) it can be masterful, but it takes good game writing/design to pull off.

@talljasperman If you ever played the original Metal Gear Solid, one of the bosses (Psycho Mantis) is a telepath. Whatever you do, he “reads your mind” and counters. The way to beat him is to “shield your mind” by using the controller for Player 2 instead; he can’t read that. Once you switch controllers, it’s a fairly easy fight as the main difficulty is figuring out how to stop his “mind reading”.

Haha, he also reads your memory cards and comments on other Konami games you might have saved on there. ‘‘Soo, you like Silent Hill, do you?‘‘

@Symbeline Yep. But I think they did it brilliantly.

They did. I swear, the first time I heard that I’m like, k what? The way it’s done, they made sure you thought he was talking to you, and not just some reference to Konami stuff.

It all boils down to implementation. There have already been several good examples given of how rule-bending can work. Generally though, if it is built haphazardly to where the player never knows the rules at any given point than it just seems like it would be terrible to play.

There has to be some baseline from which to leap in my opinion.

@Zaku

Since I had gone as high as I could in Nemo’s Reef, (Im sure hardcore gamers will snicker) plus Disney stopped any further development, I was looking for something similar.

So I’ve started on Dragon Story. The graphics are beautiful (just like Nemo) and I sort of like the idea of breeding Dragons and getting something different each time.

I normally don’t do in-app purchases (made it through Nemo with $0.00) but they had a double rainbow dragon on special. So I fell for it.

It was a package deal, the dragon, his habitat and 250.00 in (virtual coin) and was surprised when all I got was the coin but nothing else.

So I fired off an email to support demanding a refund.

I did that first cuz it takes this company quite a while to get things resolved.

Then I also went to the forum cuz I wanted to see if this had happened to anyone else.

Lo and behold, my dragon and habitat was in storage. Well, I’m not a frickin mind reader. In my previous experience with storage, it could be used for small decorative items but NOT large buildings or habitats. So, why are they expecting me to find it in storage?

They put up a zillion little popups for when things are ready etc. so why not one saying “CHECK STORAGE” since placing the dragon and habitat in there is clearly an exception to the normal rules and practices of the game.

Perhaps I got spoiled a bit by Nemo, which always gave clear directions on everything but these developers provide damn little.

I’m not stupid, but when things are done arbitrarily against the game’s own logic, I just find it really annoying. Plus it’s just a huge waste of time.

I had a similar problem in doing an expension. But that was virtual coin rather than actual cash but it still took several days for me to get a straight answer because prleople on the forums were giving contradictory answers.

Obviously, before starting, I read thru the FAQS but they were prety sparse on specific info.

If this is how it’s going to be throughout the rest of the game, I’m considering bailing out now.

So, since I haven’t had a whole lot of experience playing games, I thought I’d get some feedback from Fluther gamers.

Maybe my problems thus far are pretty small potatoes but I just don’t think that the how-toe of playing a simple game should be this obtuse.

I mean, a few strategic info popups would save a ton of confusion IMHO, so why not just put them in.

I see. I imagine you’ll have further frustrations, almost no matter what game you try. How frequent they’ll be depends on the specific game (though sometimes sticking with the same developer or company gives similar experiences). The different forums for different games can also vary on how helpful they are – sometimes it’s easy to get a clear answer to a question, and sometimes not. It’s also probably going to be harder when first starting out, because you won’t know conventions some designers may take for granted. Some games do have tutorials which are sometimes helpful. Sometimes though, game developers will decide to skip making any tutorial and not explain things much at all. The typical level of documentation and game design for most games on smartphone is pretty low (some extremely low), though there are a few with better production values than others.

Somehow, I doubt you’d do well at Ryzom then. Of course, the community there is helpful enough that just asking in Uni chat can resolve most questions, but there are still things there that are counter-intuitive and undocumented.