On Replaying Games

There is something to be said for playing a game which you have already played before. It isn't that it is going to be a revolutionary experience each time you play, but there is something substantial in the act of giving an opportunity to enjoy nostalgia. Playing an old game is like returning to an old friend, but the wise can learn new lessons.

A return to an old game provides you with an opportunity to assess it critically in a way that is not usually possible on the first play of a game. Likewise, every experience that you have with a game is going to be distinct based on your notion of what it should be when you go into it. This is similar to Reader Response Theory in literature, which says that what you experience is largely an individual phenomenon shaped by your own experience. With some distance in time between multiple experiences, your perspective on the game changes, which alters how the game seems to be.

Another opportunity that replaying gives–and this is not universal, for instance, in the case of a highly linear experience–is the opportunity to make new decisions. Part of playing a game is getting an opportunity to make decisions and see what happens. The second time through can either confirm previous decisions or permit new ones to be made. However, there are very few games that are so linear as to have a perfectly identical experience in multiple experiences.

There is also the opportunity to view the game's narrative in the more literary light. What I mean by this is that much of the artistic craft of storytelling which may not have been immediately self-evident can be evaluated in a repeated experience.

A good example of this is something like foreshadowing because with foreshadowing. It is a hint at a future event, and there are obvious reasons why foreshadowing can't be immediately obvious on the first play-through of a game. Having too much foreshadowing and making it too overt eliminate the whole point of finishing the story. With that said someone with an eye for the creative endeavors can often more clearly evaluate what the artist's intention was on a second experience with the game.

A good example of this is found in Metal Gear Solid V. At the end of the game there is a chance to replay the first level of the game, but with a perspective shift that reveals that many assumptions that the player may have made are incorrect.

If you wish to truly study a game's story, playing it once is likely insufficient. This is not to say that nothing can be learned from the first time a game is played. Indeed those who wish to master the art of storytelling through observation of the masters must have a very disciplined approach how they assess their first encounter with a literary work. However, the first experience with a work is by its very nature incomplete; the essence of the whole may be made known before the whole picture is made clear, but often it is the finale of a work, the conclusion, which serves to give meaning to the struggles and sacrifices within.

Right now, I am replaying the first Borderlands game.

This is a game that I played through a couple times when it first came out due to its multiplayer nature, because of the multiple characters to choose between in the game, and as a result of my desire to experience each of the possible ways of playing the game.

However, on a play-through years later I evaluate the game with the benefit of hindsight. Obviously some of the elements like humor have not necessarily aged well (though the first Borderlands is much less of an offender in this than its predecessor), but the gameplay itself is still solid.

The ability to make observations like this is one of the greatest utilities for a writer and game designer. By evaluating the responses in this manner it is possible to get a feel for what was truly effective as a storytelling method, and what may have merely been a happy accident or a product of its time that would not have succeeded in a more objective environment.

There are many places where game mechanics can be assessed.

For instance, it is generally the case that every few years there is a game that is an evolutionary step forward and influences all games that have been created since then.

Going back and reviewing Borderlands for the second time leads to interesting analysis about the decisions that factored into it. For instance, the core shooter gameplay, which was not exactly superb when Borderlands first released, reflects a situation where opportunities for refinement could be observed even more clearly with years of reflection guiding the observer.

However, such an opportunity also reveals where things are done well. For instance, the first section of Borderlands functions as a playable tutorial while also introducing us to the character of Claptrap, a recurring–albeit annoying–figure throughout the series. The combination of narrative development with a necessary function of telling the player how to play the game should not be overlooked as a valuable tool for a game designer. Moments like these, which have generally aged well, provide us with a reminder to include similar elements in our own games.

The functional utility of such an analogy why is in the human capability to assess the situations that we are confronted with. Our initial assessments are, quite frankly, wonderful for what they are. The ability to readily and quickly absorb discongruous information from our environment is a feat that makes us unique among creatures.

However, there is a limitation to the extent to which our on-the-fly judgments are capable of rendering the whole picture of any situation. They should be thought of as preliminary. Just as the creator of a game would not be able bring their ideas to fruition with a single moment of thought, neither is it possible to fully dissect a game in a single approach. To assess a game properly is to return to it after time has passed.

Looking at even a moderately well-crafted game from a previous generation, it is as if one is reading the classics: a work of Aristotle or Socrates. This is not to say, perhaps, that the craftsmanship that goes into a game has yet achieved the level of such great thinkers. There is, however, an apt comparison to be drawn. Aristotle and Socrates, though ignorant of modern, science were capable of great feats of observation. To take this a step further, it is worth pointing out that they achieved this observation through deliberate and persistent contemplation of the task laid ahead of them. The decisions that they make are reasonable, even if not ultimately satisfying, and evaluating them provides an opportunity to catch up on knowledge that has been forgotten.

I am acutely aware of this. Much of my formative work involved dealing with the creations of other designers. As a youth I played too many video games, and one of the hobbies that was common was the art of making modifications for video games. This hobby still lives on, though I have taken my interest primarily to the field of pen and paper role-playing games which do not bear quite so many similarities to video game modification as some other fields of game design. However, there is something to be said for the merit of disassembling a working system to determine how it works. One often hears stories of great inventors who could not be deterred from breaking apart every gadget they came across in their youth, and modding was an outlet for budding game designers.

Before I became a designer for role-playing games, I had a hobby of modifying those games. I got my start with a pair of well received additions to the game Eclipse Phase. I would later do the same with the game Degenesis.

I was lucky enough to have had success in my early endeavors. This was a great boost to my ego, though it may not have made me that much better as a designer. Instead, it gave me the confidence to later reach the point where I would make my own games. I have since transitioned from focusing quite so much on my own games to instead doing freelance work on other games, though I do not find this so unbearable because I was given the opportunity to work on a game which I did not even dare to hope for an opportunity to work on.

To return to my point, while I was working on those homebrew modifications to other games I learned more about game design than I have while working on my own games independently. There is a powerful lesson in this. I do not believe that I have run out of things to learn. In fact, the more I work, the more I discover I have left to learn. Increasing mastery, as I have experienced, should not necessarily decrease the rate of learning. Rather, when one engages with the work of a master, the dutiful handling of it provides an opportunity for study and reflection.

Replaying a game, even without any accompanying creative endeavor, provides a similar opportunity for learning. The analytical process is benefited by repeat processing of information. This allows connections to form that may have been missed on first observation, but also provides, in the context of Gaming, less stress related to processes other than mere observation and contemplation. The difficulty that one experiences while playing a game will typically be lessened on the subsequent play-through of the game. This is not to say that there should be no difficulty, and there is something worthy of merit in assessing further what the remaining difficulty is in the game after it has been beaten once, but being too focused on beating the game deprives one of an opportunity to analyze the game; one's attention can only be in a single place at a time. While a certain amount of stress is necessary to foster learning, playing a game is the equivalent of seeing a magic show more than once.

The final effect of this is that one can see the tricks as they are being performed without succumbing to the mystique around them. They are still subtle and it may be beyond the capacity of a novice to deduce the purpose and effect of every action, but at least the tricks are made the focus and distracting elements are drawn away. This is significant because the first experience with anything novel is often colored by expectations that have not been rooted in reality. The novelty, for instance, of picking up a weapon which is more powerful than any weapon one has ever encountered in the game is diminished when one has a better repertoire with which to compare it.

In this way one is free to objectively consider what about that weapon made it desirable, leading to a deeper understanding of what the system really did in parctice. This should not be underestimated as a valuable asset to the game designer.

Viewed another way, game design is a series of layers placed upon each other. Each time one interacts with a sufficiently complicated game, one will peel back another layer as one can peel back layers of an onion. While a particularly astute game designer may be able to see through more of the layers at once than a novice, it is unlikely that any game which is the product of a sophisticated process of brainstorming, testing, and iteration, should be understood in a mere solitary interaction.

Replaying a game allows the mind to wander from what is known to the unknown; this is not an automatic process, however, and must be considered deliberately during re-exposure to the game. Otherwise, anyone who has played a game for a thousand hours should be a veteran game designer! There is some truth to the notion that only so much can be learned from a solitary source, and it would require more than one game to master game design, in the same way that one exemplar would not be sufficient to make one an expert in the study of any other art.

The need for variety notwithstanding, the experience ands lessons that can be gleaned from a single game are increased when a second exploration is undertaken with a deliberate emphasis on encountering layers which have remained previously hidden from the designer.