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Forums - Gaming Discussion - Who Says Linear Games are a Bad Thing?

starcraft on 10 March 2008

Bioshock is an example of a game that more often than not created the illusion of being non-linear, when in fact it really was very much a linear shooter (in no way am I criticizing this most excellent game).



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Garcian Smith on 10 March 2008
Sullla said:
elnino334 said:
Does it really make a game less appealing or less worthy of purchase if you follow a predetermined progression or is this just a symptom of a consumer base that places heavy emphasis on expectations? Gamers can be pretty judgmental of products that don't match up to their pre-conceived notions, but I for one do not believe that this mindset leads to fair assessments of game quality.

If all you do is follow a predetermined path with no choices possible, yes, it really does make a game vastly less appealing. Obviously this is a bigger deal for some genres than others, of course. It's a problem everywhere though. There's simply no excuse for developers to ruthlessly shoulder aside the player at every moment, which I've seen occuring way too often in the past five years or so. I also completely don't accept the argument that non-linearity is a phenomenon of 3D gaming. What about great 2D platformers like Super Mario 3 and Super Mario World, where you had your choice of which levels to play? What about the spectacular 2D RPGs of the SNES? Sorry, not buying it.

This reads more like an apologetic for some of the poorly made games of the past few years. No problem if your game is painfully linear and five hours long - as long as the production values are good and it has multiplayer, it's a 9.0! Reviewers seem to have bought into this philosophy, but for me, that's emphatically not what makes a good game. If there's no room for the player to make real choices, you're not really playing a game at all - just watching an interactive movie.

You can cut-and-paste Bodhesatva's response for a further elaboration of how I feel on this issue.


Yeah, there's no choices possible at all in a linear game. When you make a choice to not time your jump right in Super Mario Bros., you're not actually making a choice; you're just watching an interactive movie of Mario jumping.

*rolls eyes*

Linearity does not mean a lack of choices. It simply means that a different set of choices exist. In the Super Mario Bros. example, the choice is, "time your jump correctly or incorrectly." In Portal, a linear game (OMG!) that many people called the best game of 2007, the limit of your choice-making is, "put your portal in the correct place or the incorrect place." In a sandbox game like GTA, the choice is, "go to the next plot point or screw around stealing cars for a while."

Fact is, there are plenty of excuses for developers to make a linear game. The ability to take a player on a pre-determined path allows developers to integrate the game's story and atmosphere better in the game; to make sure that the player doesn't get bored by changing up the type of gameplay (see e.g.: Ratchet & Clank); to constantly challenge the player through scripted encounters and puzzles, rather than padding out the game with travel time; to avoid the problem of backtracking, which doesn't work in many game types; and so on. (I'm no game designer, but I'm sure that a professional developer could provide you with more reasons.)

There's advantages to either approach in specific games, and the design decision of "linear v. non-linear" should be made on a game-by-game basis, because some games work better with one more than the other. Just because you have a preference for one or the other doesn't mean that you need to go all NERD RAGE   about INTERACTIVE MOVIES .



"'Casual games' are something the 'Game Industry' invented to explain away the Wii success instead of actually listening or looking at what Nintendo did. There is no 'casual strategy' from Nintendo. 'Accessible strategy', yes, but ‘casual gamers’ is just the 'Game Industry''s polite way of saying what they feel: 'retarded gamers'."

 -Sean Malstrom

 

 

Danny355 on 10 March 2008
Sullla said:
elnino334 said:
Does it really make a game less appealing or less worthy of purchase if you follow a predetermined progression or is this just a symptom of a consumer base that places heavy emphasis on expectations? Gamers can be pretty judgmental of products that don't match up to their pre-conceived notions, but I for one do not believe that this mindset leads to fair assessments of game quality. 

If all you do is follow a predetermined path with no choices possible, yes, it really does make a game vastly less appealing. Obviously this is a bigger deal for some genres than others, of course. It's a problem everywhere though. There's simply no excuse for developers to ruthlessly shoulder aside the player at every moment, which I've seen occuring way too often in the past five years or so. I also completely don't accept the argument that non-linearity is a phenomenon of 3D gaming. What about great 2D platformers like Super Mario 3 and Super Mario World, where you had your choice of which levels to play? What about the spectacular 2D RPGs of the SNES? Sorry, not buying it.

This reads more like an apologetic for some of the poorly made games of the past few years. No problem if your game is painfully linear and five hours long - as long as the production values are good and it has multiplayer, it's a 9.0! Reviewers seem to have bought into this philosophy, but for me, that's emphatically not what makes a good game. If there's no room for the player to make real choices, you're not really playing a game at all - just watching an interactive movie.

You can cut-and-paste Bodhesatva's response for a further elaboration of how I feel on this issue.


Im slightly confused, SMW & SMB3 are non linear? SMB3 seems completely linear to me. Nevertheless that & the SNES games you mentioned are most of my favorite all time games.



viewtiful_jon on 10 March 2008

I love Linear games, I really hate a world map that i can get lost on, If i have taken a wroung turn on a game and its gonna take more than 5mins to get back to go the right way then that is normally the last time i play that game, The world map in NMH was good as it was small and most things were close together but i do prefer my side scrollers and most of them are pure linear fun.