In regards to content, what role does the game engine have? It is a mistake to say content is separate from the game engine.
“I do not believe this,” says a reader.
Very well. History proves the point.
When Richard Garriot was making the Ultima games, he learned that he needed to re-make the game engine with each new Ultima. The draw of Ultima was this massive world (which is the sapling which grew into the tree of Massively Multiplayer Online games with the ascent of Ultima Online).
Garriot talks about the game engine primarily until he gets to Ultima III and talks about ‘craftsmanship’ and Ultima IV about the virtue system and then Ultima V about the ‘story’ and so on. What is the theme of everything being said here?
It is the concept of layers. Alkabeth was just some dungeon crawler (and boy was it primitive!). Garriot’s “genius” (oh, that word!) in this case was taking a successful game and adding another layer. Garriot did not make Alkabeth 2 with ‘more rooms’ and ‘more monsters’. He added another layer. This layer was Ultima I in which Alkabeth was included inside it. And with Ultima II, he added even more layers such as additional planets, a solar system, going backward and forward in time, and so on. With Ultima III, it was an additional layer and this was a craftsmanship. Instead of an ‘epic’ game, he tried to create a more detailed world which, ironically, made the game feel epic to players.
The virtue system of Ultima IV is an additional layer to the game. The “story” of Ultima V was an additional “layer” to the game. And so on, and so forth, up until Ultima Online where the Ultima series ends.
What is interesting is that the complaints about Ultima games revolve around missing layers. Ultima 8 did have additional layers of greater animation and all, but in order to pull that off it shrunk the world and removed the party. Ultima 9 had additional layers as well but those led to removing other layers of the game. Ultima in 3d came at the price of a shrunken game world. The previous Ultima games did not increase layers at the expense of other layers.
“But Malstrom,” asks the reader interrupting this post. “What does this have to do about game engines?”
When you add a new level or new monster or new ability, you usually aren’t changing the game engine. But when you add a new layer, you have to fundamentally alter the game engine (or just make a new one).
Due to the increasing complexity of game engines, it was taking longer and longer to make a new Ultima game due to making a new game engine. A really good idea was the ‘Worlds of Ultima concept was to give players new games using the old engines during the wait. The Savage Empire and Martian Dreams both used the Ultima VI game engine. there was a third WoU game which was cancelled.
Hindsight is 20/20. At this particular point in time, Worlds of Ultima was a brilliant idea. But looking back on it, it didn’t work. Despite being placed on brand new worlds, players did not really warm up to the Worlds of Ultima games. These games were pretty well made. They are Warren Spector games after all.
“But you say content is what compels the gamer,” says the reader. “But the history you presented shows this is not the case.”
But why you assume content is divorced from the game engine? It is like saying a book’s content is divorced from its words.
I believe content and the game engine cannot be separated. In order to add more ‘content’, one must add additional “layers”. Layers require a game engine change. A new layer is not an ‘additional level’ or a ‘new monster’. The game experience is not just ‘more stuff’ but adding new rules to the game.
“What new rules are you talking about, silly Malstrom!”
Alkabeth was a dungeon crawler. But with the additional layers added with Ultima I (e.g. an overworld), the game was the same yet totally different. With the television or computer screen as a window frame, it is as if the developers ZOOMED OUT and expanded the scope of the game. But it wasn’t expanding in the sense of ‘more stuff’ but that the gaming well had become deeper. The addition of virtues, of “story”, and so on are not additions to the game experience but multiplications.
“So why do you not like the Nintendo way of new games? You say it lacks content.”
It lacks layers. Nintendo’s idea is to make game console do something funky. And then they design the game around the hardware’s funkiness. This is totally missing the point. It is saying, “Buy games to experience the console,” where it should be “Buy the console to experience the games.”
Remember when the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 came out and we were told to buy games so we could experience ‘HD graphics’? That didn’t work out too well. When the games became more than just illustrators of the console (e.g. tech demos), then the consoles were sold because people wanted to play the games.
But the concept of layers is the key behind the phenomenon of these early Nintendo games.
Take Super Mario Brothers and look at it from the context of a 1984 gamer. Super Mario Brothers represents the addition of many new layers not really seen in a video game before. These new layers we, gamers, do not know how to articulate so we throw it in a box we call ‘gameplay’. But the layers include precision control, momentum of the jumps and turtle shell bouncing, as well as breaking blocks alters the level and the power-ups affect how you play. I don’t remember Pitfall Harry getting a power-up. No, he had to jump on crocodile mouths to get by.
The Japanese version of Super Mario Brothers 2 could not impress because of the lack of layers. It was the same game engine after all. Super Mario Brothers 3 and Super Mario Brothers 4 had completely new game engines which introduced new layers. Flying, for example, is an additional layer to Super Mario Brothers gameplay. The map screen is an additional layer to the Super Mario Brothers gameplay. And so were the Koopa Kids compared to killing copies of Bowser and getting a “Sorry Mario but our princess is in another castle”. The reason why 3d Mario never receives the same excitement and phenomenon as 2d Mario is because the additional layer of 3d Mario (3d) tends to remove other layers. It is not so much that gamers expect infinite content, but they do expect infinite layers. This is why new ‘retro games’ don’t sell.
And it is why Super Mario Brothers 5 was accepted. The new layer was simultaneous multiplayer (though for the record, Super Mario Brothers 3 had this but it was only in Battle Mode).
Consider Legend of Zelda if you were a 1985 gamer. This was a game of multiple layers. You had the overworld layer, which would have been enough back in that time, but you also had additional layers in the dungeons and caves.
Consider Metroid if you were a 1985 gamer. Metroid was not just a run and shoot game. It had the additional layer of being in a continuous world where you could return to previous areas. Castlevania, which used to be a game of just levels, added the additional laywer of being a large continuous world where you could return to previous areas, i.e. Metroidvania. And gamers were very enthusiastic about that.
My expectations in Nintendo games were caused by my enjoyment of computer game companies such as Origin. I expected a sequel to add new layers. Instead, the sequel has gored the original layers (gameplay) and put in new gameplay which may or may not work. I never liked 3d Mario because it removed the layered gameplay of 2d Mario with an extremely shallow gameplay (“But it’s in 3d! Behold the 3d! Yurk yurk!”).
Part of the reason why Metroid Other M failed was because the additional layer (“MATERNAL INSTINCTS!”) was added while removing all the other layers that we loved about Metroid.
Games do not go backward. We want MORE layers in a game, not LESS.
“But that would mean game engines growing out of control!”
No. Consider Minecraft which was made by one person. Indie games fail because they are so incredibly shallow. Minecraft has so many layers. When Minecraft was being built, Notch had the first few layers (the blocky engine) and slowly built up layers. The random world generator would be one. The monsters would be another.
We keep being presented with two choices. On one side, we are told that a sequel just needs MORE of a current value, of a current layer. This could mean ‘more levels’. Then we have the Nintendo way (which they keep mentioning in every interview in a smug and arrogant way) that ‘new levels’ are not enough, something ‘new’ must be presented because “entertainment is based on surprise”. To be more precise, entertainment is actually based on layers.
Nintendo’s market trends toward younger gamers. However, Nintendo’s market does not grow. Nintendo keeps bleeding its current customers but replaces them with younger ones. Why is this bleeding occur?
It occurs because the Miyamoto idea of ‘doing something new’ is throwing out the baby with the bathwater. If Nintendo made their sequels in the context of adding additional layers, they would keep their current games and add new ones. Nintendo wouldn’t have to rely on Wii Sports or Wii Fit to grow the market. These old franchises would grow the market as well.
And we have two examples.
New Super Mario Brothers and Super Mario Brothers 5 both added additional layers: multiplayer. It gave reason for old gamers and new gamers to pick it up.
The Mario Kart series. Mario Kart keeps the old layers while adding additional ones on top. For Mario Kart DS and Mario Kart Wii, the additions were Internet multiplayer. It turned out extremely well.
This would also explain why games like Ocarina of Time or Metroid Prime performed so well. These games still retained the layers that the older gamers expected while adding new layers. With both of them, the new layer was 3d. However, the old layers were not removed as they were with Super Mario 64. It has been said that Ocarina of Time was Link to the Past in 3d and that Metroid Prime was Super Metroid in 3d. That is why they succeeded. And the reason why Virtual Reality is always a dream is because Virtual Reality represents Infinite Layers.
If we look at content from the context of layers, we find that the game engine has to be fundamentally changed in order to create new content.
