More details are emerging about Sony’s upcoming game handheld, the PSP.
There seems to be nothing really new about the device, rather it’s an amalgam of current technology and conventional projections for the future:
Sony is taking a page from Nintendo’s GameCube by introducing a new small disc format (60mm), the “Universal Media Disc” (“Universal” apparently means “Proprietary”.)
It will also feature wireless gaming capabilities like the Nokia N-Gage. (Though Wi-Fi rather than Bluetooth.)
This is nice enough, and lots of tech specs pointing to better 3d. But what I’m less sure about is whether we are really always looking for more 3d capabilities? The Gameboy games I enjoy are all 2d: Chu Chu Rocket, Denki Blocks, Zelda, Advance Wars, but the 3d Super Monkey Ball jr. does nothing for me. I could be wrong, but I feel that 2d is more natural when playing on a small device – especially when in a train, car, or on a plane.
My non-corroborated explanation would be that when your body and what you are interfacing with is fixed on a desk and a chair, you can use your brain’s center for motor control to navigate in a 3d game world, but that when your body or the Gameboy is moving, your brain is preoccupied with controlling the body and can’t really spare that energy on the 3d game world.
So this would be the argument that portable gaming will always be primarily 2d.
Similarly, it appears that 3d games take more time getting used to than 2d – I’ve seen lots of small kids (and older non-gamers) having a really hard time interfacing with a 3d world, moving their bodies instead of using the gamepad etc… Is 3d always less casual than 2d? Is Sony barking up the wrong tree?
Half the problem with 3D games being more… er, ambiguous than 2D games is that 3D games rarely have much focus on portraying intuitively the positions of objects within a volume. In 2D, this comes quite naturally since there is a one to one relationship between flat screen and flat playing field. We find it very easy to see that one point is ?higher? or ?further right? than another. Not so with depth ? without stereoscopic imagery, scaling of objects can trick us (as with so many optical illusions).
I once wrote a red/green 3D glasses mod for quake 3. It gave me little or no game playing edge; depth in a 2d representation of a 3D scene is interpreted by comparison of texture sizes, the slant of perspective, and where shadows cast on such surfaces (giving us a somewhat 2D description of a 3D point in space by transferring the depth of an object onto a 2D plane – typically the floor).
If designers could work on presenting players with USEFUL information about entities’ positions within a space rather than the most flashy cinematic visualization of the scene, then 3D games might be as naturally interpretable as 2D games. There’s a few other natural hurdles – human depth perception is useful tool, but a 3D visualization standard does not exist in homes, and some people are better at perceiving depth than others.
There also seems to be trend toward the camera having a player-character bias, almost as if the designers have decided that the player’s avatar is the only important part of the game (Certainly, it is very important and should be on screen at all times (or implicit at all times, as with an FPS game), but I would rather have the camera keep within its limited view all the useful information in a game scene than simply focusing on how well modeled the main character is. Then again, camera control could be seen as a mechanic for unearthing information about the scene, and while this is a legitimate reason, it’s usually a cop-out excuse for a bad camera implementation, if the game has nothing enjoyable to gain from such a mechanic).
It’s interesting that most 3D games are only really 3D in terms of graphics: a generic FPS game gives the player great lateral control, but very limited vertical control (jumping, crouching, ladders, lifts, rare zero gravity environments, and water) yet everything is played with a horizontal plane as its base. The vertical movement available to the player merely changes what ?layer? or ?level? they are on, or gives them a temporary ability to make themselves a difficult target by jumping and falling, though they have no real control >while< they fall. They're 2.5D in terms of game play, and with a few exceptions (Descent and that other one beginning with F??) have been since Doom! Heck, even space games tend to stay in one or two main dimensions - if there are no more than three main points of interest to fly between, then the playing field tends to be on a plane between those three points. It's only in close combat that the extra dimension really becomes interesting, and even then, one's ability to aim at other things tends to be the result of just pitch and yaw; roll is as tiny a component of aiming as jumping is in generic FPS movement (unless we're talking about elite, in which case, replace yaw for roll). I?m taking an abstract aesthetic in my game which I hope will enable me to present a 3D scene very usefully and address the problems mentioned here (as well as others, like parallax error). I could be kidding myself that it?ll work, since the only proof is in the pudding, but so far, it?s working out.
To add to what Bezzy said: 3D games are almost always more complicated than 2D games, which is to say that they usually have more controls for the player to worry about, extra elements to manage (the 3D camera, which turns information gathering into a mechanic whereas it’s usually not in a 2D scroller), and the game state invariably takes longer to “read”. On a cognitive level, humans understand 3D space, but our visual brains still work very much in two dimensions.
The GBA has brought us a renaissance of 2D games that are simpler and more readable than the 3D stuff you see on the home consoles and, often as a result of the previous two qualities, can present faster / more in-depth conflicts – parsing the scene is just that much less of a challenge and players are free to apply their brains and/or thumbs all the more ardently to the task at hand.
Sony just cares about winning the technology / marketing race, so of course they haven’t considered the game design implications of what they’re proposing with the PSP. They may well be forsaking one of the biggest advantages (distinctions?) handheld gaming has going for it. That probably won’t keep them from steamrolling the competition though.
The Capture the Flag mod for Quake II really was 3D in terms of gameplay as well as visuals. Players had a grappling hook which could hook on to pretty much any piece of scenery (it didn’t have to be a special target like in Zelda). You could go through the level without touching the floor, and then steal the enemy flag while swinging around their base like a monkey.
The rocket jumping also helped bring out the third dimension. If someone asks why I’m not playing a more realistic FPS, these are the examples I give.
Good examples, certainly (and those are elements I truly enjoy!) but they still don’t give the same precision in vertical control as your movement keys do in lateral movement. Once you have exploded your rocket, you’re still subject to gravity. With a grapple, your only choice, once hooked, is to keep going, or let go.
There is a huge problem with “graphical determinism” in games.
For one part, publishers still sell games much like studios sell movies, through images rather than insight into the gameplay experience. For the product marketers at Sony, I’m sure they’re thrilled. I have a call in to a friend at Sony to talk about this more; maybe I’ll get more insight.
I think the question hinges on the purpose of the handheld/portable platform. Who is the audience? I’ve been terribly disappointed in Nokia and Sony for targeting such a narrow audience for portable gaming, essentially the 18 – 34 market with their high disposable income and $2000 annual game budgets. Of course, Sony *has* to target this audience, but in so doing I think they are missing the markets above and below that demo who would take in more casual game experiences on a portable device. This includes both young and old.
In this way, I am tempted to say yes to Jesper’s question “is 3D less casual than 2D.” But it goes beyond graphics; the simplicity of gameplay is probably the main factor. Recently, I bought the GameBoy eReader for my almost-4 year old because even the 2D GameBoy games are hard for him, while Excitebike or Mario Bros. is easier, because these games are simpler and easier to coopt as casual games. In fact, my kid is perfectly content with the Tiger-like Sega/McDonalds promo games that came with Happy Meals recently.
I think game designers could create casual 3D games if they wanted to. But the budgets and stakes in 3D games seem still to necessitate or imply complexity of gameplay, which is maybe the real problem. Here’s an example: last year I was working on a GameBoy project that was specifically targeted at very young kids. When I talked to Nintendo about it, they explicitly told me that they don’t care about the kids until they’re 8.
On a related note, a month ago, I would have argued vehemently against graphical determinism, citing gameplay as the primary value criterion for a game. But since then I (finally) finished Zelda: Wind Waker and got my hands on the special GameCube edition of Zelda: Ocarina of Time Master Quest. The latter is still a great game. But having just played Wind Waker, I found myself gasping in disbelief: “The fences are just … two-sided polys! And look at the grass, trees, textures!” At the same time, however, I got my There beta account, and I was ecstatic that the graphics were, well, sub-par. It validated the purposiveness of the game over its patina. This is certainly not a black and white subject.
So, consider a game like Wario World, which is something of an amalgam: part railshooter, part platformer, part collector. I found this game terrifically endearing: it was a kind of homage to the old Nintendo platformers, including Super Mario, with the graphical alacrity 3D provides. But I don’t think the 3D was compulsory; here we have a 3D game that, by and large, plays simply enough (almost) to be casual.
I can remember spending hours playing Doom and the like in the mid-90s. Nowadays I find that 3D games give me motion sickness. Seriously. I feel like a diabetic kid at a birthday party ogling all the cakes longingly. Well actually, as long as there are good 2d or isometric games, out there, I don’t care so much. If 3D were ever to replace 2D, I would be disgruntled, but that’s hardly likely to happen. Most gamers will appreciate that 3D precludes at least as much as it offers to any game.
I’ve played DOOM 2 on the GBA, and quite honestly it’s fine.
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