My friend Max and I have been playing Mass Effect 2 on the 360. Though not quite what I expected, it is an interesting mix of action and role-playing and, in many ways, a smoother experience than its prequel.

Unfortunately, there is one thing about it that has gotten to me: the powers screen and the B button. It may not sound like much, but I have been jumping out of the powers screen and into a mission prematurely every time—even after realizing what it is I’m doing wrong. To me, the powers are very important; knowing that I’ve gone in with less than the best Shockwave available to me is aggravating. Worse yet, I get into that situation because of a silly interface oversight.

Powerless to stop it

In the case of Mass Effect 2’s pre-mission setup, the player must first choose two party members, equip them with weapons, and, lastly, upgrade their powers. In most of these screens, the B button is used to go back a step. In the weapons screens, B backs out of screens in which the player equips a certain party member with weapons, to go back to a screen in which she can then select a different party member to equip. To change weapons or check what each member will carry into a mission, the player needs to use the B button several times to navigate the weapons screens.

In the powers screen, however, the B button does not move between party members. Unlike the weapons screens that preceded it, in the powers screen the left and right triggers are used to switch party members. Since the player has just come from a set of screens in which the B button is used to navigate between details and party members (and, perhaps, because she is somewhat distracted by the task of spending upgrade points on powers), it is not unreasonable that she press B to switch to the next party member and spend its upgrade points.

Unfortunately, B doesn’t work that way in the powers screen, and instead exits the party setup screens and begins the mission. From there, the player has to load the pre-mission auto-save and redo her party setup, or play through the mission without the benefit of having spent her hard-earned upgrade points.¹

This kind of error is known as a slip: intending to do something but performing the wrong action. In this case, the player intends to switch characters or go back, but presses the button that exits the powers screen instead. Slips often happen when someone acts automatically, doing what she is used to doing in a certain context. The previous setup screens, and Xbox UI convention, cause the player to expect that the B button will go back, not advance. Even though the function of each of the buttons is stated on the screen, the player’s expectations and habit is so strong that, even if she bothers to read them, she may go ahead and press the wrong button anyway.

B consistent

This kind of error could have been avoided. The screens could have used a consistent arrangement and means of navigation. If every screen worked the same way, the player wouldn’t get caught expecting one thing but executing another.

For example, powers setup could have been designed to use the same multi-screen design as the weapons setup: one screen listing the party members, each of which leads to a screen with details of that specific member’s powers; B to go back. Alternatively, it would’ve been possible to have the Start button advance, and B go back², on every screen.

I don’t mean to take away from Mass Effect 2: it’s a pretty good game, and has improved on its predecessor. Overall, its interface is simpler and easier to use than it was in Mass Effect. The game’s design, generally, seems to be much more consistent and comfortable to play. It’s just a shame that this problem made it into the final release.

Retro Game Challenge has been getting some attention in year-end roundups. In a recent episode of The Brainy Gamer Podcast, Retro Game Challenge was praised for being true to the NES-era games it recreates without being as frustrating. While RGC includes a number of familiar retro games, it does not seem to be as punishing to play as the original games or their remakes (Mega Man 9, I’m looking at you).

RGC is not just a collection of retro homages: the player plays as a player that must complete a number of “betcha can’t” challenges across a bunch of old-school games. The design of this meta-game works against much of the frustration of playing otherwise difficult and unforgiving games. It creates a variety of things to do and game types to play, and keeps play sessions short and sweet, not long or repetitive. It also gives the player the ability to help herself out of uncertain, frustrating challenges.

Variety keeps things fresh

There are a variety of challenges in the game. Game Master Arino dares the player to get 250,000 points in Star Prince, or finish first in the third race of Rally King. These challenges are explicit—the player is told what to do and, sometimes, how to do it—and there is no doubt when the player has completed them.

The challenges encourage the player to experiment or play under certain constraints¹, something the games do not do themselves. While Rally King only asks the player to come in the top five in a race, RGC asks her to perform a number of boosts, to win while avoiding damage, or to reach a high score—without cheating.

There is also a variety of games to be played: Robot Ninja Haggle Man is an action platformer, Rally King a racing game, Guadia Quest a JRPG, etc. Though some games are repeated (Haggle Man 2, Rally King SP), the shifts in mechanics and genre keep RGC from feeling like a grind.

Play is brief

Most of the challenges can be completed in minutes. Each game has five challenges. RGC also allows the player to quickly restart games. This makes it easy for players to retry challenges without having to go through many game menus.

As Adam Saltsman has noted, long play times can discourage a player because she finds it too daunting or the rewards too spread out. RGC does not ask the player to invest hours of her time into completing its challenges, instead asking the player for a few minutes and rewarding her often.²

Help is at hand

In the same podcast, it’s mentioned that Shigeru Miyamoto meant The Legend of Zelda to be played by many players who share tips and discoveries with one another. Sharing was important, often necessary, to play through those older games: without friends or game magazines, I would never have beaten Super Mario Bros. or put up with Battletoads.

The experience of sharing expertise is recreated in RGC. All of RGC’s games have manuals. The player’s in-game buddy drops hints after failed attempts. He also has a shelf of GameFan magazines that the player can browse through to find ways of overcoming challenges and improving her play.

These things help the player help herself. Through the amusing, player-driven help RGC keeps the player from becoming lost and frustrated, without putting her through tutorials or adding anachronistic button prompts to the games.

Dead Space aims to be scary. Its creators went to great lengths to create a spooky atmosphere, to make the player feel tense and, at moments, panicked. Its play, characters, environments, sounds, and user interface are designed to support such feelings.

Unfortunately, some aspects of the game undermine its scariness. Particularly, its way of providing the player with ammo and its storage system spoil opportunities to make the player feel desperate. Dead Space tries to convince the player that items are scarce, but does not deliver on the threat. Instead, it keeps the player well supplied and safe from making meaningful choices about what she carries. Monsters aren’t so scary when the player has a full clip.

Ammo, ammo everywhere

Early in Dead Space, tutorials and tips encourage the player to conserve ammunition. This advice is not useful: there is a lot of ammo in the game world. The player doesn’t need be too careful, as she can expect to find ammunition throughout the environment in boxes, lockers, and corpses.

Not only that, the player can expect to find exactly the kind of ammo she needs. There is a system that monitors the player’s inventory and sprinkles just what she needs a few rooms ahead of her. If she’s carrying the line gun, she’ll find more line racks. When the player drops or sells the line gun, line racks are nowhere to be found.

As it is, the player is not made to worry about being careful with her shooting. Firing at monsters’ weak spots is more a matter of efficiency than of conservation. Ammunition isn’t valued as highly as it would be if it were harder to come across.

The adaptive system could have been tuned to keep the player just barely capable of surviving: spawning ammo only when the player’s supply is very low. When the player is well-enough equipped, perhaps it could spawn ammunition for weapons the player does not carry, or lock some boxes and lockers.¹

Storage is too safe

Vending machines in Dead Space provide access to a personal storage space. Since ammo is abundant and storage available, the player is not likely to ever have to trade-off, say, four shots of the line gun for more stasis energy: the line racks can be kept for a rainy day. The decision to carry, drop, or sell an item can be put off by storing the item for later use.

Instead of encouraging pack rats, Dead Space should make the most of the tension that “comes from managing very limited resources.” If the player has a lot of items, she should be made to decide which are most important. This will make managing her inventory meaningful, and create a better sense of being alone, of getting by with the skin of her teeth (and the few medikits in her inventory).

Dead Space’s in-game interface has gotten a lot of attention. No doubt, the holographic displays look slick, and the way they’re presented in the game world does a lot to make them feel like a part of it, less artificial.¹ But it’s the fact that the interface does not interrupt the game that makes it worth mention. The fear and vulnerability central to Dead Space isn’t ever trumped by the needs of the UI—and critics noticed. Rarely has the unobtrusiveness of an interface been so acclaimed.

Not pausing the game while the player fiddles with her inventory is not new (it’s a design choice used similarly before—System Shock 2—and since—Demon’s Souls), but Dead Space pulls it off particularly well. Thoughtful design compensates, in part, for the lack of pauses and the limited time the player has to keep track of her stuff. By sorting, organizing, and keeping the inventory simple, the interface reduces the amount of attention the player needs to spend on it, leaving her to explore, shoot off limbs, and be scared.

See-through and sorted to be useful

In Dead Space, the player is often assaulted or surprised by monsters. The in-game interface takes up three quarters of the screen, but is semi-transparent so the player can still see advancing zombies while she heals, reads, or orients herself.

Once the zombies hit, the player will need to heal herself or refill her air tanks, but may not have the time or ability to run away from a fight to a safe place. There are buttons that allow certain items to be used without going through the inventory (using small medkits or reloading weapons), but sometimes the player needs to use an item in her inventory quickly, in the action.

To help her out, items in the inventory are sorted by their usefulness in frantic play situations: medkits are first, then air canisters, then stasis packs (fuel for the slow-mo ability), then ammunition. Within each type, items are sorted by size: larger medkits come first. When the player is running low on HP or oxygen, the items to alleviate her distress are the ones the fewest button presses away. She can restore as much HP as possible with as few presses as possible.

Small, separated, and simple

Even when not under pressure, the player’s tasks are not needlessly complicated. The interface remains simple and interruptible, not ruining or allowing escape from any surprises.

Items occupy a single inventory slot, no matter their size in the world. There is never a need to rearrange things in order to fit in another item—no inventory Tetris. The player either has space or she doesn’t.

Fortunately for her, things such as weapons, power nodes, or quest-specific items are stored and presented separately from cheaper, fungible things like medkits. This ensures she has space for key items, reduces the chance that she will discard expensive weapons accidentally, and keeps them out of the way of the stuff she is likely to use or drop from the inventory.²

Without the need to move items around, and without needing to take much care to avoid messing things up, the inventory interface is pared down to the bare necessities. The player can, and need, only ever do two things with an item: use it or drop it. (When at a store, she can buy a new item; when at storage, move or sell one she already has.)

The holographic UI in Dead Space makes things fast and easy, intruding as little as possible on the game’s intense atmosphere. It looks cool, fits the fiction, and it supports the player’s tasks and the aesthetic goals of the game: mainly, being scary.

Of the many key activities in Mass Effect—shooting, driving, bumpin’ uglies—talking to others was the most satisfying. Though not something with much marketing appeal, dialogue is one of Mass Effect’s most effective game mechanics. It is easy to use, produces natural-sounding dialogue, and adds a sense of discovery to conversations. It was what I enjoyed most, and, despite a few faults, something I would like to see in other games.

The dialogue wheel is easy to use

The dialogue wheel is an efficient means of presenting and selecting dialogue options. It is a variation of a pie menu: options are arranged in equal distance around the player’s cursor. Any one option is as close to the cursor as any other; the player need only pick a direction to highlight an option. This maps options to a gamepad’s analog stick directly: the direction in which the player takes a conversation is the one she takes with her thumbs on the stick.

In traditional list-based menus, some options require the player to move the cursor farther than others. Lists also place options along the same dimension, which makes it more likely that the player will overshoot the option she wants, selecting the wrong one or spending time correcting herself.

Conversations flow

Mass Effect’s designers also made it simple for the player to decide on an option. Firstly, the options are short and quick to read. Secondly, the position of dialogue options is meaningful: options along the right half of the wheel advance the conversation, along the left, they are more exploratory; nice-guy, neutral, and aggressive options are along top, middle, and bottom respectively. The player need not read all the options, only the options relevant to her. This helps conversations to move at a natural pace because the player does not spend much time reading and deciding.

On top of that, the dialogue wheel appears a moment before the final line of dialogue is spoken. The player can begin deciding among dialogue options while the current piece of dialogue is ending, making it less likely that there will be dead time between utterances. The dialogue seems to be written in a way such that information relevant to the player’s objectives comes early on; what she hears when the wheel appears is not important, so she can be a little distracted by the new dialogue options.

The combination of ease of use, well-placed and well-timed presentation of options, and good writing make conversations seem much more natural than they do in other games while reducing the burden of reading and picking options.

Dialogue is about discovery

Natural dialogue that is easy to participate in is quite an achievement, but what I found fun about it was the sense of discovery. The terse dialogue options in Mass Effect are quick to read, but only suggestive. It isn’t until the player selects one that she can know exactly what it was.

For the most part, dialogue in other adventure games can only be discovered by the player if it is spoken by non-player characters: the player knows what her character is going to say because she picked the lines already. In effect, her half of the dialogue is repetition.

There some exceptions: Sam & Max Hit the Road and Strong Bad’s Cool Game for Attractive People use icons to represent dialogue options. These, as with the short options in Mass Effect, suggest a response instead of showing it outright. When the player selects one, she has some idea of what her character will say, but not exactly what.

Not knowing exactly what will be said adds freshness to the player character’s half of the dialogue, and creates a sense of exploration.

Unfortunately, this method risks betraying the player’s intentions: ambiguous or poorly written dialogue options can cause the player character to say something the player didn’t want. The position of dialogue options in Mass Effect adds information that can help a player know whether an option is along the Paragon or Renegade path, but that does not necessarily map to the character’s tone or discretion. Another problem occurs when options do not seem different enough from one another, making decisions more difficult or feel as if the writers and designers are forcing the player to follow a particular path. Such problems are less likely to occur when dialogue options are presented verbatim.

It looks real because it is real

It is no mistake that, in WALL·E, trash looks real. The city-cum-junkyard in which WALL·E is marooned is full of texture, dust, and detail. The wasted city’s realness is meaningful¹: it is a vision of the future of the world outside of the movie, the real world.

Pixar’s realism is not used only to echo a timely, real-world fear, but also to argue that humans are responsible. The humans in old recordings of Earth are not computer-generated, but flesh-and-bone actors. Earth is ruined, and real humans ruined it.

Further, the damage is the result of familiar, even friendly forces. The mountains of garbage were not caused by some large, international conflict (Planet of the Apes), deadly virus (I Am Legend), or alien invasion (Independence Day), but by consumerism and apathy. There are no flashbacks to secret labs or mushroom clouds, but instead chirpy billboard advertisements; no glowing craters, but bras, tires, and other recognizable bits of trash.

In these ways, WALL·E uses realism and familiarity to tie its tale to the world outside the theatre. The unreal slickness of the Axiom and the goofy look of its inhabitants sets them apart from our experience. It is much more difficult to separate ourselves from the mountain of discarded boots and refrigerators, or the call to “abandon the planet” from a tired, wrinkled authority behind a White-House–like podium.²

From mothership to stewardship

As strong as its position on the dangers of pollution is, WALL·E fumbles its argument in the end. Though the realism of the first half says the danger is real and heedless consumerism a poison, the second half claims the solution is eagerness and care.

The film’s position seems to be what Rosemary Ruether calls the Protestant stewardship approach: “Nature must be regarded as an object, not as a subject. It is our possession, but we must possess it in a thrifty rather than a profligate way.” With care and hard work, the Earth can be saved. Nature and health are grand projects of conservation.

Hopeful though it is, this position often does not consider the historical and economic context in which damage and restoration occur. As Annalee Newitz notes, “everybody on Earth is dead except for those who could afford to take what is billed as ‘an executive class cruise’ on the BnL ship.”

This makes the film’s end seem not just naïve, but macabre. If unprepared humans (dreaming of “pizza plants”), galaxies and generations away from those familiar with Earth and the causes of its destruction, can repair the damage through good will and elbow grease, why did they not do so earlier?

Ultimately, as damning as WALL·E’s opening setting may be, its philosophy is toothless. It reduces the environmental problem to one between Nature and Man (the only things mentioned in “Down to Earth”, the song that plays over the credits), discarding the economic dimension. Having shown the audience its own dire situation and condemned its destructive habits, the film tells it that everything can be okay, that we can have buildings and high technology and a green world so long as we plant enough seeds.

The Megahunks & Superbabes fiasco

About a year ago, I prepared a talk on the use of analogies to understand complex systems to give as a part of the Un-Distinguished Lecture Series (better known as UDLS). It’s a topic I find interesting, but I worried that it would be boring to a bunch of grad students dropping in on Friday before going out to drink.

In order to spice it up a bit and, yes, try to secure a larger audience, I announced a talk on a different topic: sexy men and women. Before giving the presentation on analogies and complexity, I would give a joke presentation full of garish slides, inane talk, and unfortunate typos. It would lighten the mood, I thought. The audience and I would laugh at the amateur quality and vapidity of it all. I put together a few slides, and mailed out the following abstract:

there are lots of people that are super hot for men and for women but do we know which is hotter the man or the woman? im going to show a lot of pictures of sexy people and we can decide which are the most sexy or the two. SAFE FOR KIDS!!! (your sick for thinking i’d make a pornshow) ;P c u there

The trick worked: somewhere between twenty and thirty people showed up in time for the talk (as punctual as CS students are when there’s no free food), a good turnout. I did my best to live up to my stupid slides, speaking with the judgemental attitude of TMZ in the style of JEFF K. The three slides in my joke presentation on megahunks and superbabes follow.

The audience laughed and called out jokes. A few pointed out the incorrect use of “whose,” that I had stretched some of the images, and tried to guess who was with Jeff Goldblum in that photo.

I followed these slides with a blank one, over which I said something along the lines of “seriously though, here’s what I’m here to talk about” and then got into the real presentation: Thoughts on the Use of Analogies in Understanding and Solving Complex Problems.

That was when I lost the audience. Talking though the first few slides, I noticed that they’d become much quieter. Emt, interrupting my explanation of how colour is to spectrum as tone is to scale, asked “Analogies? Are you serious?”

“Uh,” I hesitated. “Yeah.” I had hoped to pull the rug out from under them, but I had sucker punched them instead.

I got through it, but I’ve not lived down my mistake. Since, other UDLS lecturers have joked about it by showing slides on unrelated topics with long titles in the middle of their presentations, threatening to “pull a Lucas.”

I’ve thought about that bungled joke a while. My joke presentation flopped, but why? I’ve tried to diagnose what went wrong, and find ways to avoid making the same mistakes. What follows are a few of the things I’ve come up with.

They’re not hard and fast rules, nor are they applicable in every case. Some should be obvious. Nonetheless, I do think they can be useful, and not only to fake out your audience with cheesecake.

Get your rewards right

I went from ogling Megan Fox to a remarkably un-sexy brain teaser from the GRE test prep. I feigned a fun, juicy presentation but delivered a dry, thoughtful one that had nothing to do with hot bods. It was a mistake to do so. It is better to risk scaring the audience away at the beginning, then rewarding them for their patience, than to tease them and not deliver.

Perhaps I should have started with a dull presentation, later switching to something more engaging. I could have made drab and heavy slides, full of complicated diagrams of the geometry of beauty, then moved on to more colourful things, like the photos of hurricanes and crowds in the slides on complexity.

Take advantage of their good will

Thing is, it’s okay to start juicy and then dry up—a little. The slides could have hooked them, softened them up for some meaningful content. As it was, the fake presentation grabbed everyone’s interest, and then the second one did nothing with it. There was no connection to be made from sexy people to complexity. It is important to take advantage of the good will of the audience.

I could have realized hunks and babes would be more exciting than analogies and complex systems, and kept those slides, used them to draw the attention of the audience before dropping science on beauty and sexual attraction. After I had everyone’s eyes and ears, I would ask “Why do we find this supermodel so attractive?”¹

Be clear before being clever

I thought the goofy, poorly made slides would tell them that the presentation was a joke. I mean, the images are warped, the spelling off, and it’s in Comic Sans, fer chrissake! They were meant to make the audience sceptical of the presentation.

They weren’t clear. Not everyone takes typos as cues to become critical and wary, as I do. Instead, the mistakes and imperfections signalled to the audience that they could kid and relax. The real joke—that the whole presentation was fake—was hidden. It is better to err on the side of readability rather than of subtlety.

The joke might have been clearer had I used something more esoteric, less appealing, and been more forceful and bizarre. I could have made the topic ridiculous, presenting close-up images of insect larvae and asking the audience which they thought was most attractive. “Which of these slimy young things would you like to kiss?”

Be sure they’re in on it

The audience did not know it was a parody, and I did not do enough to help them see it as one. I had failed to get the audience on my side. They had fun with “Megahunks & Superbabes” itself, not at its expense.

I assumed they would come in expecting to see a serious presentation, but sent out a silly abstract and started with funny slides. I failed to see that the audience did not, and could not, know that I intended to talk about analogy. I’m the only one that can read my mind. Presentations should be considered from the perspective of the audience, divorced from the experience of the presenter.²

I’m certainly not the only one that’s failed to get his audience in on the joke. Ghandi made the same mistake. He describes it in his autobiography:

When my turn for speaking came, I stood up to make a speech. I had with great care though out one which would consist of a very few sentences. But I could not proceed beyond the first sentence. I had read that of Addison that he began his maiden speech in the House of Commons, repeating “I conceive” three times, and when he could proceed no further, a wag stood up and said, “The gentleman conceived thrice but brought forth nothing.” I had thought of making a humourous speech taking this anecdote as the text. I therefore began with it and stuck there. My memory entirely failed me and in attempting a humourous speech I made myself ridiculous. “I thank you, gentlemen, for having kindly responded to my invitation,” I said abruptly, and sat down.

Ghandi and I should have known better. Not only could we have communicated our intent more clearly (Ghandi by impersonating Addison), but we could have taken a moment to think about the audience. Would they know about Addison’s stumble? Would it be funny to them?

Be confident

All things considered, I would have been better off without “Megahunks & Superbabes”. I was told later by a by a few audience members that the presentation about analogies and complex problems was pretty good, despite starting off on the wrong foot. Instead of resorting to cheesy humour and sex appeal, I should have been confident enough in my presentation to go out and give it as it was.

The move will happen sometime later tonight (EST).

Once moved, this site and its content will not be accessible at the same web address it is now. You will have to change your links, bookmarks, and subscriptions from http://www.soupface.net/blog/ to http://killspeak.lucasrizoli.com/.

That is all.

Update: The new site seems to be working, though the look of the site has had to change. I hope to fix broken links and etc. If you notice anything funny with the site, please let me know: leave a comment on this post.

The large radio tower in the RKO logo which appears at the very beginning of King Kong is a curious thing. It is a piece of an old medium, radio, in a new one, film. The logo seems awkward, a sign of a time in which movies were “moving pictures,” only beginning to gain the legitimacy of radio and print, to develop a vocabulary.

There are a number of elements of new media that are left over from their earlier forms: the prompt to “insert coin(s)” in home console versions of arcade games, electronic documents broken into distinct pages, to be stored in file folders on a computer desktop.

You might say these are analogous to vestigial traits.¹ They are remainders of past forms, still present but made useless by gradual change. The RKO radio tower is to film as the grasp reflex is to newborn babies.

This analogy is misleading. The truth is that carryovers from older to newer media are not always dead weight. In many cases old media serve as a fulcrum on which to advance the goals of new media.

Tropes as bridges

Consider the spinning newspaper trope (first used in Citizen Kane—an RKO radio picture). Presenting a brief banner headline, a film communicates that an important event has occurred, shows that it has impact, that it is known publicly, and that some time (enough to publish the paper) has passed. Taking advantage of the audience’s understanding of how newspapers work, this technique manages to get across a great deal of information in an efficient manner.

In this understanding, the radio tower before a film isn’t without function, but is instead a bridge between the old and new. It is as the language used to describe internet media—email, web-site—something familiar to explain something unfamiliar.

The spinning newspaper remains effective despite the fading relevance of and familiarity with newspapers nowadays. Ditto the comedic record needle scratch²: how many viewers laugh at it, but don’t know where and how the sound is produced?

(Of course, things continue to change. These tropes are not going to be effective forever.)

Tropes as interference

Ideas from old media can be useful, but can also interfere with the new. Their effectiveness and convenience can limit media as well as they can leverage it.

Take, for example, film and video games. Video games often use letterboxed screens (once only seen when watching widescreen film on television screens) to denote sequences in which players are meant to watch the game as they would a film, rather than participate in it.

For the same reasons, letterboxed cutscenes are frustrating. They are a sign that the game is no longer an interactive experience, but a passive one; that the designers were not able or willing to look beyond their understanding of film.

The sequence in which Sephiroth kills Aeris works in the same way as does the twist in The Sixth Sense. It’s more film than game. Like radio on TV (which The Score seems to think is a good idea), it disregards core, distinguishing aspects of the newer medium to shoehorn in an older one.

The spinning paper trope does not make a newspaper of the film in the way Final Fantasy makes a film of a game. The spinning paper requires viewers to read only a headline, not an entire article. The trope makes use of the newspaper form without mimicking it. In this way, it is a successful borrowing.

Artful use of old media is possible. The video editor included with Grand Theft Auto IV, with which players replay and edit stunts they’ve performed in-game, is an example of how, as Steve Gaynor has said, “taking cinematic techniques and applying them to games that isn’t ‘let’s just put movies into games.’”

Just as old media can be useful, a reservoir of convention and time-tested mechanics, they can be distracting and limiting. The methods and tropes borrowed need to be questioned, sometimes tempered and adapted, sometimes discarded.

Mirror’s Edge, which I played through recently, provided me a patchy experience. It was sometimes thrilling, sometimes aggravating. In ways, Mirror’s Edge is its own worst enemy.

The most common actions of the game, running, climbing, and jumping, were great. The experience of free running through a modern city was sensational, in both senses of the word. I felt a rush when I managed to escape a dozen armed guards by running through an office building, vaulting over desks, then leaping out of a window onto another building’s roof.

There was a fluidity about doing these things, as if I were really pulling off something acrobatic. The lack of explicit health and speed meters and the presence of my character’s body—my hands would grab ledges, my fingers would push against walls, and when I looked down, I could see my feet, all while my character panted and gasped from exerting herself—reinforced my feeling of being in those places, of being a physical actor in that world.

When I carried out some clever combination of jumping and climbing to reach a distant catwalk, I felt as if I’d accomplished something. Sure, I was only pressing buttons on a gamepad, I was only following the paths created and allowed by the designers¹, but it was exciting, rewarding. In those moments, Mirror’s Edge was excellent.

Falling flat

In those moments, it was excellent—but not throughout. For each amazing run there were a half-dozen difficult obstacles or gaps that would bring the game to a sudden halt. For each puzzle there would be a frustrating fight sequence that required several playthroughs to memorize, optimize, and then, with luck, overcome. Flow turned to frustration as I was shot or plummeted to my death over and over and over again.

I know I’m not the best game player in the world (probably fourth- or fifth-best), so I expected to die a few times. Trouble was, I often didn’t feel responsible for my deaths. The obstacles, be they large gaps or police, appeared out of nowhere and took many attempts to get past. It felt unfair² and sudden. I had been running along well until I had to stop and fight through a dozen SWAT troops awkwardly, or have them shoot me to bits while I searched for that one way out. It was as if the designers were stuffing in infuriating play to break apart the thrill of parkour—exactly what is most enjoyable and original.

Story problems

I saw similarly harsh shifts in the way the game’s story was told. Some story sequences occurred in the game world and were told to me in the game, from my first-person perspective. These were okay. The majority, however, were presented in animated sequences that looked different from the world I was running through. The first-person, 3D, textured game world in which I could act would become a third-person, 2D, flat cartoon story world where I could do nothing but watch. The plot was divorced from game in perspective, presentation, and style, and these differences underscored just how irrelevant the story was to what I was doing in the game.

Faith, the character I played as, would visit places and interact with characters in the cutscenes that I never would truly interact with in the game. It was as if the storytellers were working on another game, parallel to the one I was playing, sometimes pulling me out of my body and making me watch the Erin eSurance commercials they’d made.

What confuses me further is that the game’s designers created this contrast purposefully. In an interview for Gamasutra, the game’s producer said,

We think it’s really cool the way you get glimpses of Faith in the game world: You see her in reflections, you see her in shadow, and I think that gives a really nice feel to the game. Obviously, in the storytelling we do, you see Faith, but we actually show her in a different way, so it’s 2D, more cartoon animation.

If glimpsing the character in the world gives the player a “nice feel,” why change that when telling the story?

We wanted people to take notice; we wanted people to look at the story, and understand the story, because that’s very important to us. We feel that you have a much stronger experience if you understand why, as you progress, and things change, and there are twists and turns.

It’s odd that they would want to point out how apart the story and game are. Rather than have it occur in the world of the player, as a consequence of the player’s actions, they set apart to be looked at and considered on its own. In my experience, the story did not motivate or reward me, it just filled the gaps in time and setting between levels.

An empty world

Though Mirror’s Edge communicated the sense of running across rooftops in a big city, I felt that the universe (characters, factions, history) in which it is set was not well established. The buildings are realized beautifully, but the city is not: there are almost no pedestrians and cars. The police are present on screen, but there’s no sense of the malicious surveillance and evil government that is to be behind them. I was told that times were rough, the the city had changed, but I spent the game running on shiny white rooftops or swinging from chrome flagpoles in a chic mall: it didn’t look so bad to me, just a little empty. Characters were introduced and suddenly of critical importance or killed off. Faith was supposed to be a member of a covert group of messengers, but I was only told who they were and what I did for them, I never did it myself—not that it mattered, as I was trying to clear the name of my sister, not save the city. (I ended up doing both!)

I think the game could’ve done with halving its cast, simplifying its plot, and showing (not merely telling) me who I was and why the city was so bad. A few early missions in which I would have had to have acted as a rebel messenger (perhaps take messages to political prisoners, or move a rebel’s supply of medicine of supplies from one cache to another) would likely have helped establish Faith, her world, and her cause. The game sped past this sort of tone-setting, motivational stuff, as if it assumed I was already aware of (and on board with) what my character did and why. In the game, I was a Person of Great Consequence without earning it, before I had a chance to understand how that was different from being Faith, parkour messenger.³ I was chased out of tutorial by gun-toting policemen, with only the narrator in my ear to explain why I thought it worth risking my life to go save some guy called Robert Pope.

Mirror-world Thief

I enjoyed Mirror’s Edge nonetheless because of the quality of the free running, wall climbing, and leaping shone through the frustration and story. Which brings me to Looking Glass’s Thief: The Dark Project.

Mirror’s Edge and Thief have a lot in common. They are both played from a first-person perspective, both are unusual in that they (arguably) don’t require the player to fight—they discourage the player from entering combat by make it difficult and close. Both take place, for the most part, in cities populated with few civilians, but many armed, semi-competent guards. Both convey the bulk of their narrative through animated, stylized cutscenes that come between missions. Lastly, Mirror’s Edge and Thief alike in that, despite identifying many shortcomings, despite being angered by the game for creating situations in which I failed again and again and again, I liked both games. I stopped playing out of frustration several times, I didn’t care much about the characters, but I genuinely enjoyed hiding from guards in Thief and jumping from rooftop to rooftop in Mirror’s Edge. Their mechanics—the verbs players use to describe their actions in the game—are what redeemed them⁴.

The nature of these mechanics (slow sneaking in Thief, speedy acrobatics in Mirror’s Edge), and the contexts in which players carry them out (Thief’s dark, early industrial, somewhat medieval setting; the sunny, modern, near-future city in Mirror’s Edge) are almost entirely contrary, but, in essence, the games are alike: they both make it fun to get from point A to point B, without fighting (too much), by taking advantage of the environment and the player character’s skills.

So it is that I feel, as do many others, that the designers could improve Mirror’s Edge by admitting that the game is an exciting platformer and encourage players to run, climb, and jump over stuff, instead of hampering them with awkward combat or forcing things into a complicated and irrelevant story.

Thief: The Dark Project came under similar criticism for having players fight through zombie-filled catacombs rather than stick to sneaking. Its developers understood this, and, in the sequel, Thief II: The Metal Age, created a world challenged the player to do what made Thief unique and exciting: break in, sneak around, and steal stuff.

Likewise, the developers of Mirror’s Edge are now selling a set of environments designed to the strengths of the game.⁵ This makes me think that I would play through a sequel to Mirror’s Edge. The core of Mirror’s Edge is great, its faults are remediable, and its creators seem to know what they are.