Flowchart Fiasco

I remember when Resident Evil first came out. I thought it was going to be a great game; a real action, monster, zombie fest. You’re running low on ammunition, you’re running out of places to run and hide, you’re stuck in a horrible nightmare you cannot escape from. It was all a great idea from the get goes…until I discover that it wasn’t horror that was the backbone of the gameplay. It was really a puzzle game. Most of the time spent in the videogame wasn’t going from one place to the next thinking of ways to survive and finding a means to do it. It was running up the stairs to get the lighter, running down the stairs to light up the candle, allowing you to see the painting in the room which had a clue, running around to the opposite end of the mansion with the hint from the painting to unlock a safe. Inside the safe is a key that has an impression on it, signifying a certain door you have to find and go through. Once inside the door you realize that you need to run back upstairs to return the lighter to its original location to unleash a latch in the previous room. Running back downstairs and into the room you’ll discover that there’s an oddly shaped diamond glistening on the ground. Take the diamond back into the room with the candle and place it on a special platform next to the painting, a click sound goes off outside. You run out to find an ugly deformed three headed dog waiting to pounce and tear you to shreds. Killing it ends scenario one. This is an exaggerated example of how flowcharts seem to work nowadays with many games. It drove me nuts then and it drives me nuts now. Puzzles are only entertaining if players enjoy puzzles. It should be a genre, not a gameplay element incorporated into every single videogame.

I can see why videogame has evolved with these ridiculous flowcharts. In part it has to do with videogame design from the archaic age i.e. Atari and before. These videogames were very limited in their scope. They had to present “little obstacles” for a player like asteroids crashing into a plane or bugs falling down the screen. There wasn’t even an ultimate agenda in mind. It was simply playing to get the highest score possible and initialing it. As videogame evolved and eventually reached its 2d heights in the form of the 16 bit consoles such as Super Nintendo, it outgrew high scores. There were definitively better ways of making a videogame. Objects and characters can roam around freely although it wasn’t truly three dimensional. However, the notion of “little obstacles” didn’t go away with the development of better technology. If anything, it only heightened it. Videogames like Sonic the Hedgehog weaved the concept of “little obstacles” quite well with the available technology. Sonic collected rings and jumped over pitfalls and spikes, spinning into a bowling ball to knock creatures out. Its best feature was doing all of this in an up-tempo fashion, having Sonic running up walls and in loops as he bounces of springs. I can say that the perfect execution of “little obstacles” with the updated technology turned Sega into a household name.

By the 3d era of polygons and Playstation “little obstacles” have been fully incorporated into how a videogame works. “Little obstacles” served as the core gameplay element. However, “little obstacles” were no longer spikes or pitfalls and objects flying randomly about. “Little obstacles” have evolved with the technology. It had reached that ridiculous state I mentioned about running in a mansion solving puzzles in a horror game, requiring the pulling of some lever to open a gateway, the use of a special key to open a door, the finding of some item to advance to the next phase of the game, etc. Videogames used to be about a starting point, “little obstacles”, and an ending point. Nowadays it’s about a starting point, flowchart, ending point. “Little obstacles” have evolved into our modern notion of flowchart but retained most of its characteristics. The truth is videogames nowadays are far more complex with their storylines and virtual economies that “little obstacles” just cannot keep up. Why try to find a special key to unlock a wooden door in Resident Evil when you have a rocket launcher that can blow it down easily? Why run around trying to open a safe when you can just blow it up with a grenade? How on earth does putting a diamond in the eye of a tiger statue open a door? It has become both impractical and illogical. Just as 2d outgrew high score 3d needs to outgrow “little obstacles.”

Game designers really have two choices when it comes to flowcharts. Create a long straight story that a player cannot branch away from or create short multiple paths for a player to follow with multiple endings. Way of the Samurai 2 is a perfect example of multiple paths to choose from. On the one hand short multiply paths create a lot of replay value because players naturally want to see where the other paths may have led to, but on the other hand a long straight story can be quite meaningful and engaging because it has more depth. This is a dilemma I like to call playing with destiny and free will. In life we often chose our own paths without knowing where it ends. Many people have said it is not so much attaining the goal that matters as it is how we get there. Many have also said that all paths in life lead to the same end; death. We all die someday, but how we live is what makes it worthwhile. The same holds true for any videogame. It is not so much creating a flowchart that a player must follow to get to the next stage. It’s allowing the player the freedom to do what he wants as long as he gets there. Game designers need not guide players with the hand of god in every direction. They do not need to create the paths to take. Game designers merely need to create the end that all paths lead to. Let players have the free will to do what they want within the game designers’ worlds. Videogames are meant for a player to find his way through and not be guided hand and feet. For example, what made Grand Theft Auto such a hit wasn’t just the fact that it had a free roaming world where a player can go anywhere. There was a noticeable lack of direction in the game. A player can do whatever he wanted from prostitution to robbery to sniping random people to car chases. Another videogame that allowed for freewill in a flowchart was the lesser known Indigo Prophecy. It was unique in that the flowchart included time constraints and changed small outcomes of each scenario. How? By choosing different options within a limited time the player received different information and interactions, revealing one side of the story while holding on to the other. It kept the player actively involved and at the same time it forced the player to help develop the outcome of the videogame. This solves many people’s complaint that in videogames especially RPGs that no matter what the response are to something the results are always the same. Although not based completely on freewill this type of flowchart creates many paths that lead to the same road. It is a method in which life itself operates by.