Yes, I would like to pick up 5000 swords: Loot and Looting in Games

Loot, for those of you who don’t know, is a term used for equipment, armor, currency, and other pick-up-able items that you would find in a videogame. You usually get loot for completing a quest, or killing an enemy in a RPG, though the lines have definitely gotten murkier over time. The distinction that I still think holds true is if you can find an item with many slight variations, it qualifies as loot. You probably wouldn’t call an ammunition pickup loot, but you would call a +1 Steel Sword loot, for instance. So, now that you’re all edumcated, let’s get down to it.

I'm going to pick up all of this junk, stuff it in a chest, and totally forget about it forever.

What makes for good loot in games? What makes for a good loot system in games? Why is obsessively collecting things fun at all?

The most impactful example of loot and looting in video games has to be Diablo, released in 1996. In Diablo, you play as one of three classes and you are charged with defeating Diablo, the Lord of Terror. The loot in Diablo is good because it presents a clear reward for progression, with harder enemies giving out better loot, and because figuring out what is better isn’t a headache.

All the needed info is right there, presented clearly. Loot like this is hard to find and really gratifying when you stumble across it.

The items also have a number of stat requirements which increase replay value by offering you a number of different playstyles besides just the class differences. In Diablo 2, 3 and Titan Quest (a mythological themed hack’n’slash lootfest very similar to Diablo) the items are even easily visible when you’re fighting an enemy, so you can tell what they’re going to drop ahead of time, which increases anticipation.

You know what weapons these enemies are going to drop just by looking at the enemies. You'll be able to tell if a weapon or armor piece is rare early on, which makes defeating tough enemies with rare items fun.

These games also all make good use of chests and treasure boxes. These items are usually positioned after bosses or near the end of dungeons to give a reward besides the items from the boss and to increase the anticipation to finish an area. Yes, you’re low on health potions and you know there’s a tough boss ahead, but man, you could find that +5 Staff you’ve been wanting in the chest behind them.

Most games took their loot systems and loot design from Diablo, so they’re generally well thought out, but there are some odd choices some games make. Borderlands is another loot filled game, though through the lens of an FPS-RPG, rather than an isometric RPG. Borderlands is a generally good game, but I think the loot and loot system have some issues. First of all, unless a weapon is massively overpowered, you can’t figure out much about it when an enemy is using it. You might be able to tell what kind of weapon it is, but only if you’re pretty close, as the cell shaded design of the world makes the weapons tough to distinguish.

It's hard to figure out what kind of weapon an enemy is using, especially when a bunch of bad guys are shooting at you, which is always.

Another choice I’m not too fond of is one that World of Warcraft made with its loot system. While the actual loot in WoW is pretty interesting design-wise, the loot system revolves around a lot of random drops. Essentially, bosses and enemies in WoW have a set group of loot that they can drop, with each item on the list having a certain percentage to drop once the boss/enemy is defeated.

For this particular boss, the drop rates aren't even known yet. This doesn't really seem like good, or even fun, loot design.

This encourages “farming” of items and bosses. Farming is when you keep killing the same boss over and over again to try to get an item drop. MMOs are designed differently than other games, specifically to keep you playing, but having a mechanic that actively discourages progression doesn’t sit well with me. It feels a little too much like a Skinner box, and the fact that designers would think in such a blatantly manipulative manner is a little off-putting.

So, now that we’ve talked about what makes good loot/a good loot system, let’s go a little deeper: Why is collecting loot fun at all? Well, there’s a number of reasons. One of the first is just aesthetics; who doesn’t want to create an awesome looking character by equipping them with cool weapons and armor? There’s something very gratifying about building a unique look in these games, and though Diablo was a bit primitive graphics wise, the later games really allowed you to create an awesome looking hero.

Somebody spent many hours (or even possibly some real money) making this Demon Hunter this awesome.

Besides customizing how you look, there’s also the satisfaction you’ll get from making your character move effective in a general sense, or designing a particular build. For instance, you might be building a character that has a really high damage per second, so you equip armor and weapons that increase your attack speed.

You can design your gear around your build, aiming for a specific kind of gameplay or experience.

Lastly, collecting things, useful or not, is pretty fun. Pokémon is a living example of this, as is the absolutely gigantic amounts of different kinds of Oreos you can find in China. Maybe you don’t even want to equip the full set of that awesome armor, you just want to have all the different sets in your storage and use something else. People like collecting rocks in real life, so collecting different suits of armor in games doesn’t seem that odd to me.

Bet you thought I was joking. Nope. China has a huge variety of Oreos, with different flavors and style of cookie. You don't realize how much you'll miss peach Oreos until you can't get them anymore

Loot and loot systems are huge parts of gaming history, from table top games like Dungeons and Dragons to AAA games like Destiny. Every game puts its own unique twist on the concepts pioneered by earlier games, but every game with a decent loot system shares some qualities. It’s hard to improve upon a system like Diablo’s, but game developers and designers deserve credit for exploring new ground. So next time you’re playing your favorite lootfest, ask yourself what the game is doing to make their loot system more unique and interesting.

Judging Books by Their Covers: Graphics and Themes

People might spend more time arguing about graphics than they do arguing about anything else in video games. Every time anything comes out, approximately 5000% of all forum posts are about the graphics being the best ever, or the worst thing since E.T. for the Atari 2600. Graphics have definitely become more complex over the years, but now that designers can make pretty much whatever they’d like, your style of graphics a more a choice than a limitation.

it's like I'm really there. E.T. for the Atari 2600 is one of the games that lead to the great video game crash of 1983 and the  graphics certainly didn't help.

But what do the different styles of graphics tell about a game, or theming? Why do designers go with certain styles over others?

Cell shaded graphics are definitely a modern style of graphics that’s come about. Cell shading was made famous by Jet Set Radio for the Sega Dreamcast in 2000. The style allows you to create graphics that resemble a cartoon in 3-dimensions. This is a really cool style which ages well due to how stylized they are. This style is really cool for a number of reasons, not the least of which is because it looks like a damn cartoon. I think lots of kids dreamed about being able to interact with their cartoons, and cell shaded games let you do that. Cell shaded games also have certain air of fun about them. They’re usually colorful, fast paced, and cheerful. The Borderlands series does a great job using its cell shaded graphics to bring some irreverence and fun to the depressing-when-you-think-about-it setting.

So colorful and so depressing to actually think about.

There are certain downsides to the style though. I think it’d be very difficult to make a “serious” cell-shaded game. The style looks best with bright pastel colors, and those generally don’t translate very well to serious subject matter. The contrast between the brightness of the colors and the black outlines doesn’t work nearly as well when the colors are dull. I think you could design a good introspective game, but I don’t know about serious. It’s hard to deal with intensive subject matter when you look like you should be on at Saturday at 9AM.

Seriously, this could be a cartoon. I'd watch it. Who doesn't love awesome tunes and roller-skates? 

When people think about improved graphics, they usually think about “modern” graphics. I use quotation marks because technology advances and “modern” changes. After all, Deus Ex looked pretty great in 2000, but nowadays it looks pretty ugly and unrefined. The upside to these graphics is that they’re the height of graphics at the time when they came out. They show how much work designers put into their concepts because you can more accurately recreate the drawings in the game. Older games were basically just pixels on top of each other, so some of the nuances of the original ideas might get lost, but the better the graphics, the more accurate the recreation. Better graphics also allow designers to make more detailed worlds

The Crysis series is renowned for it's realistic and demanding graphics. The games look incredible, but in 10 years, maybe they'll look like mud.

The disadvantage to this kind of graphical style is that it ages very poorly. There might be some charm in looking at what was considered the height of graphics in 2004, but Doom 3 looks pretty gnarly these days. Using a modern style of graphics basically ties your game down to a specific era, and can really limit its life, though there are ways around that. People are still making graphical updates for games like Deus Ex or System Shock 2 to help improve their dated looks, but short of a total redesign, the majority of players will pass these games up.

Doom 3

Deus Ex

Lastly, we should talk about pixels. The art style, not that terrible movie that came out last year. I’m not actually sure if you can make a good video game movie, to be fair. Seems like most of them are pretty terrible. Well, Silent Hill was actually okay. But man, Pixels was awful.

Where were we? Oh right.

 Pixel graphics are what defined classic games, for the most part. There were some other interesting directions that came out at the same time, like vector graphics, but pixels definitely prevailed as the style of the time. Pixel graphics may have started blocky, like in Pong, or most Atari 2600 games, but by the time of Metal Slug pixels became an art form all their own. Detailed pixel art is impressive, not just because it takes forever to make and animate, but because it looks really good. Since pixels dominated for the first 4 generations of gaming consoles, pretty much every kind of game is represented, which means they can be used for any style. Pixels can also be as colorful or as monotone as you’d like them, so they can fit most tones that a game can have. Modern games that use pixel art are usually trying to callback to this classic era of games, and games like Shovel Knight, Axiom Verge, and Titan Souls use their style to great effect this way.

The Metal Slug series is fun, addictive, and beautifully made. The amount of detail in these games is pretty nuts, considering how long it takes to make the art.

There are limitations though. Pixel art is not great for 3D games, with a few exceptions. 3D animation requires sprites to be drawn from a huge number of angles, which is obviously very time consuming and difficult. Pixel art is also not the best for very detailed character faces, without falling on the old JRPG trope of having the characters faces be next to the textbox. It seems like it would be very hard to use pixels as an art style and not bring older games to mind, so if you’re looking for something newer, there are definitely better options.

These sorts of screen really break up the flow of a game and are best left in the past. Star Ocean: Second Evolution has a lot of old fashioned design.

So, we’ve seen how an art style can affect the tone of a game, and the advantages and limitations of a few. This is by no means an exhaustive list, but these are some standouts for sure. When making a game, every piece of it is there for a reason, and trying to figure out why makes the experience so much better. So, next time you’re playing a game, ask yourself why the designers chose the style that they did. What does it add to the game? Was it the best choice?