The Agency of Controls

Anybody who has ever played a game has used good controls, bad controls, and everything in between. Controls can be designed to do more, however. Well-designed controls can give a certain feeling to you; a sense of fluidity or helplessness that changes the game completely.

So what makes controls well-designed?

Both the Silent Hill and Resident Evil series’ controls, although sometimes complex and uncoordinated, enhance the central horror themes in both games. In most of the Silent Hill games walking around requires you to turn the character based on a fixed camera. This is awkward and can take some getting used to. When combined with the slow-to-respond controls it makes reacting to and fighting enemies frustrating at best.

The forced camera angle featured in games like Silent Hill 2 allows developers to really control how the player experiences the game.

While these controls might seem unresponsive or just plain bad, they are actually taking cues from Japanese horror movies and stories. In Japanese horror, a large evil force tries to make the characters feel unwanted and uncomfortable. Japanese monsters do not jump out at you, but rather create a world of constant anxiety; you are not wanted in this place, you have no control in this place, and you will never feel safe here.

 Resident Evil, as well as Silent Hill 2, translates this (traditionally) cinematic feeling into games by making you into a fumbling mess. With Resident Evil’s “tank controls”, so named because of their 6 directional nature, you control the character based on the fixed camera that changes every time you enter a new room. Given that you cannot move and shoot at the same time, it makes for a surprisingly nervous cocktail. While Resident Evil is generally fairly amusing and campy, the controls do a lot to increase the tension and horror.

Moving through the mansion in Resident Evil wouldn't be nearly as anxiety inducing if it weren't for the cumbersome controls.

In the opposite manner to Silent Hill 2 and Resident Evil, controls can empower you with almost total agency, like in Dark Souls. While Dark Souls has garnered fame (or infamy) for its difficulty, its control scheme deserves more praise. You choose from a very large number of weapons, most with their own unique move set. You can beat the game with each weapon, so it really comes down to preference. The control scheme might seem slow or heavy to newer players, this adds weight and consequence to movements. The controls force you to think more carefully about when an attack, or roll, or any other move..Once you get the hang of it, you'll  have near perfect control over the character’s walking, running, jumping, dodging, rolling, and parrying. The controls let you almost orchestrate combat, becoming less frenetic and more thoughtful.

The controls and hitboxes of Dark Souls are so precise, it's actually possible to dodge below enemy attacks, rather than just dodging back.

Similarly, Receiver’s tightly controlled gunplay makes you feel totally in control of the character and the game. To reload your handgun, you must eject the magazine, put the gun away (you only have two hands after all), fill the magazine with bullets one at a time, get the gun out again, insert the magazine, and pull back the slide to chamber the first round. To fire the weapon, you must turn the safety off. To check how many bullets you have left, you have to take the magazine out of the gun and count. Combat in Receiver can switch from slow to extremely fast in a split second, depending on how quickly you become overwhelmed. However, a quick hand and knowledge of the controls allows you to go through the full reload process in under a second, which feels smooth and imbues the player with a feeling of total agency.

Receiver uses complex controls to do something that's usually simple in games, which definitely changes the feeling of agency.

            Over time, controls have evolved into a bigger and bigger part of the experience. More than just an interface, controls complement the atmosphere of a game, increase your immersion, and make the game memorable far past its release. Well designed controls add to and improve the experience, which is definitely something to strive for.

Formula Friction

Ubisoft, a French game publisher, has sold millions of games since its inception in 1986. Now it is a near household name, known for Assassin’s Creed, Far Cry, and Tom Clancy series. Ubisoft’s strict adherence to formula has drawn recent criticism, but not the right type. The inorganic nature about Ubisoft’s game design formula causes problems, but not necessarily formula itself. 

From left to right, Watch Dogs, Assassin's Creed, and Far Cry.

An organic process follows logically from start to finish. For example, imagine if you are spawned in a room with a nailed-shut door at the end and provided with a claw hammer. You would use the hammer to pry out the nails to open the door and get out. An inorganic process would not follow logically. Imagine if you were spawned in the same room, but given a salmon and expected to know that you have to knock on the door exactly three times with it, at which point the door will open.

The special weapon unlock system in Watch Dogs provides a perfect example of Ubisoft’s game design philosophy. How does completing 17 QR codes teleport a Thompson submachine gun into your inventory? How does solving six missing person cases unlock an Assault Rifle? No explanation or in-world connection is present or offered. Similarly, the in-game world and the side-missions don’t connect. When you move to a start indicator and you are magically transported into the mission, a lack of transition or connection to the game world draws you out of the experience. The side missions lock you into a nonsensical closed-off section that destroys the notion of “open world” almost entirely.

Watch Dogs QR codes appear in various places and can give you rewards once scanned.

Inorganic game design is present in a fair amount of incredibly well selling games, so people might assume that it’s the norm, or that there are no other ways to make games. However, one need not look far to find plenty of examples of more logical game design.

Assassins’ Creed 4: Black Flag might not be the title you think of when you think organic gameplay, but a large portion of the game is in fact a great example of good design philosophy. Assassin’s Creed 4 tells you that you are a pirate, and you quickly find out that you can do what pirates are famed for: pirating. You can board enemy ships, capture their resources, hire crew members, sell contraband goods at the various ports, and upgrade your pirate ship to allow more pirating. Sailing your ship to find loot to plunder is responsive, intuitive, and enjoyable. Perhaps the only confusing part is having to cut down your opponent’s flag to “claim” their ship. The enjoyment of this game is only marred by the stock Assassin’s Creed style gameplay when off your ship. 

The exciting and fast-paced pirate gameplay elevates Assassin's Creed 4: Black Flag over the rest of it's franchise.

In a different vein, Amnesia: The Dark Decent offers some seldom used design choices. In Amnesia you cannot fight the various enemies the a dark and terrifying castle you are trapped in, so you hide. Not being able to fight makes you think hard about how you use the tools you’re given. You can light various candles, or use a lantern, but light allows enemies to see you. Hiding in the dark is an option, but the longer the character is in the dark, the less of a grip your character has on reality. There is no point at which fighting is an option, or when you are expected to figure out that one monster is actually killable if you throw enough barrels at it. You are instructed about the game’s world, given the tools to use, and their use follows very clearly, adding tension and atmosphere and to enhance the horror in the game.  

Since combat is not an option, hiding is the only method you have to deal with enemies.

In the Pokémon series, right in the beginning of the first game, you are told that there are many different types of Pokémon. You quickly learn that certain types have strengths and weaknesses and that the best strategy is to use a team of different types. This general style of game has remain mostly unchanged for 20 years. As the success of Pokémon proves, formulas are not necessarily problematic. Many series follow formulas, but they escape the criticism that has plagued Ubisoft of late because they employ organic game design and gameplay.  

While formulaic and increasingly complex, Pokémon types create strategic and compelling gameplay.

Organic mechanics are a large part of what makes the aforementioned games great, enjoyable, and some might say timeless. This is not to say that Ubisoft games cannot be enjoyable, or that the company is doomed financially, or that anybody is going to forget the various Ubisoft series, just that good game design should be the focus of any gaming company.