Why Don't People Finish Games?
Dan Greenawalt, Lead Game DesignerDeveloper: Microsoft Game Studios
Current Game: FORZA Motorsport
Gamestar: Have you thought about the tendency for gamers to not "finish" a game?
Dan Greenawalt: This is a really great question. Honestly, this is the sort of topic developers/designers talk about at the Game Developer Conference every year. On Forza Motorsport, we've actually thought about this tendency in gamers quite a bit. Mass market gamers don't seem to be as willing to spend forty hours "finishing" a game as our more hardcore audience used to. Because of this tendency as well as the increasing pervasiveness of online play amongst the mass market, some developers have begun to rethink how they construct gameplay progression.
Gamestar: What sort of techniques do developers use to hook gamers?
DG: As a developer/designer, it is much easier to control a "linear" game progression. By linear progression, I mean one mission follows another and so forth and so on until the game is finished with no branching and few side-quests. With a linear progression, you can very closely control the difficulty, pacing, and learning curve. You can also construct a predictable story with well timed humor and drama. In this type of progression, you put the hardest, most complex levels and most powerful tools towards the end. Of course, difficulty is not a one size fits all proposition. Depending on the player's learning speed, memorization skills or even manual dexterity, the player may run into a difficulty wall that he/she can not (or is unwilling to) pass. In linear progression, at least difficulty is predictable and easily controlled - you may not be able to remove the wall, but you can at least prepare the player for it.
However, if you're making a game for the mass market, especially one that highlight's online competition, you have to consider the fact that many of your audience will never see the final levels you spent so much time and money to create. Also, you have to consider that some of your audience may just want to compete online and participate in online community straight out of the box. If you limit their access to the most powerful tools because, they have not yet completed the single player missions; they may become frustrated with online play.
Gamestar: It seems like a racing game would involve different techniques and concerns than, say, a platformer or a FPS. What are you doing with FORZA specifically?
DG: In Forza Motorsport, we chose to invest in a "sandbox" type progression. We layered an experience point and leveling system over the top to add some structure and facilitate reward distribution. This game features several hundred events, eight different event types, and over two hundred cars with mix-n-match upgrades as well as free form car tuning. When playing online, Forza Motorsport players have access to the fastest cars and all the tracks straight out of the box. With all this content, I foresee the more creative players inventing new types of online gameplay to share with their friends.
Basically, with this amount of content and an open sandbox type of progression, I don't expect players to "finish" all of Forza Motorsport. One might ask why we would create so much content if we don't expect players to "finish" the game. Simply put, Forza Motorsport is an entire world. I expect different players to find different areas in this world that highlight and reward their skills. I believe players will "finish" the areas they like several times over. In this way, Forza Motorsport is more like several game in one. On a side note, even if players spend very little time in the Single Player areas of Forza Motorsport, we're banking on this open structure fostering strong online community and great out of the box online competition.
GS: Are there any pitfalls to your approach?
DG: One of the other dangers of a sandbox mentioned before is how to meter difficulty and reward. Since you can not count on the player encountering level 1, then level 2 and so on, you can not necessarily make difficulty and reward progression smooth. Therefore, in Forza Motorsport, we introduced a player selectable difficulty scaling and reward system. Players can select their desired assists including transmission, damage level and wear level for the race. Based on the difficulty selected by the player, his/her rewards will be automatically scaled. This allows advanced players to challenge themselves, while also allowing less skilled players to play in the same sandbox.
Another danger of building a sandbox is player goal ambiguity during the first hour of gameplay. It can be difficult to get the player started in a sandbox. During the first 30 minutes of gameplay, players can have trouble getting oriented -- "where do I start?" Also, without knowing the rules of the game, players can get lost in all the options. To solve this problem, we're adding a linear element to the first fifteen minutes of the career. Rather than just throwing the player into the "tall weeds" as they say, we're starting the player on a set path to get them oriented -- step 1, 2, 3. After the player had completed these compulsorily steps, welcome to the sandbox.
We also have a couple online tricks up our sleeve. We'll be utilizing Xbox Live to help players be successful without progressing through the entire game. We'll be emphasize community over progression to "finish" a game.
