Games Can Be Fun From The Start
With the influence RPGs had on game design, many games prefer to keep things simple in the beginning and open up gradually as the player progresses. This ensures that player can learn how to play without getting overwhelmed and that the game doesn’t run out of new gimmicks early on. However, it can also make the early game somewhat dull, making it feel like playing a lesser game. I believe most developers do this out of a sense of unspoken tradition, as it’s often not a large enough problem to get a lot of complaint or attention. Still, rocking the boat can be worth it, and games can be the most exciting as they can be right from the beginning. Moreover, more fulfilling early games can greatly help to make games respect player’s time more. Here, I will discuss the ways games drag themselves down when it comes to early gameplay and how developers try to shake things up.
One effect this type of design might have is to make the game disproportionately difficult in the early hours. Bomberman(1985, Famicom) provides an excellent case study. At the each level of the game, the player needs to explode monsters and destroy walls to find the exit gate in a limited amount of time. The player can also find a permanent power-up in a similar way. In the first level, given that the player can use a single bomb at a time, a bomb has only one tile of explosion range and takes a couple of seconds to detonate; there is definitely a large amount of luck involved. The second level is barely any better, hopefully player has picked-up range power-up last level. The third level however is where the game drastically changes, as the player can get the power-up that enables them to make bobs explode as they place. All of a sudden, a dimension of tactics has opened and by gaining more, stronger bombs in each level, the gameplay turns into a race of creating the most effective and flashiest explosion chains. In comparison, the first two levels always feel like a chore. The game should have really started with the ability to detonate and perhaps with a couple of bombs at disposal. It is hard to understate how much of a bad first impression the game leaves by giving player almost nothing instead.
I have mentioned RPGs at the start, because the graduality is at the heart of these games and anyone who has ever played more than one of those games can attest to a situation like this: The game is filled with all these unique spells, guns, abilities, quests and so on; the player can build parties/characters and can make unique tactical decisions, but not in the beginning, no, they must first slaughter a hundred rats with a stick, so that they can bring a mystical herb to someone or whatever. However common this cliche might be, few games can claim to be close to Pokémon games(began in 1995) might be among the worst at introducing it’s fun contents. The series (I have played up to Gen 5) is famously shy about it’s mechanics, but even with the stuff it wants the player to use is locked away for an arbitrary amount of time. The impetus behind putting very strong mons to later sections of the game is clear, but some placements feel random nevertheless. The game gives the player little drips of new mons for most of the game,and upon arriving to somewhere like Safari Zone, they encounter a dozen new mons at once. Utilities like Move Deleter, Move Tutors and many useful items is locked away at least a few hours away. Is there any reason to not have bikes from the start? This is a game series filled with some of the most creative and intricate mechanics out there, but unless players go out of their way to dig deeper they will be conditioned to play an extremely simplistic game for a long time. At the very least, developers acknowledge this problem to a certain degree. In newer games, Pokémon tend to learn not only a lot of different moves, they will learn them very quickly as well. In Sword&Shield(2020, Switch), mons get experience quite fast, it seems like players can easily try the new mon they caught without worrying about being under-leveled. Starting with Black&White(2010, DS), TMs are re-usable, players can try them out without fear. There are certainly steps to get the game out of “common bugs and birds slam each other for a minute” slump, however timid they might be.
One way to make the early game more interesting is to turn it into a miniature of the whole game. Basically, if first 10, 30 or 90 minutes of a game can be reliably used as a demo for the game, then the game has a well-made beginning. Fallout: New Vegas(2008, PC) is an excellent example. The starting town, Goodsprings, is a just a recreation of the game in a smaller map. There is a way to use all skills, players can use conversations to persuade people, and they take part in a conflict that will have lasting effects. In fact it’s a little too good, as the game doesn’t reach to that level of robust design for a while after Goodsprings. This isn’t really a big deal to me thankfully, it’s much easier to deal with a slightly underwhelming mid-game than getting a bad taste right when the game begins.
Giving player a taste of what’s to come can create a strong first impression. Trails of Cold Steel(2013, PS3) begins in media res, the player is given a mid-level party with a sizable inventory and is thrown right into a dungeon. It is neither too difficult nor too easy. This opening speaks volumes about how strong the design of the game is ,as it can communicate its mechanics and warm the player up so effortlessly without any tutorial or over-simplification. When the story properly begins, the gameplay doesn’t feel any duller; it is just a smaller scope of the gameplay in the opening dungeon, and working up to that power level gives the player a clear direction. Tutorials themselves are not in the scope of this blog post but the fairly common design aim across big titles that is to please the hypothetical, easily-frustrated, impatient person who has never used any software before sometimes greatly hinder games’ openings.
If nothing else, players can just be provided with exciting stuff early on. Disgaea PC(2016, remake of 2003 title Disgaea: Hour of Darkness) is strategy-RPG where the player builds a squad of various people. The new game plus in the original game gifts a character named Pleinair, but the remake just gives her away right from the start. She’s slightly highly leveled for the first couple of maps, comes with strong items, has a attack spell with a 5-tile effect area (unmatched for a starter character), is the best gun user in the entire game, and has a stupendously cool visual design, also her idle animation floats in the air. Naturally she makes the game a breeze for a while. This is more than fine for me, I don’t really care about challenge when the challenges aren’t interesting. I much rather would get to the part where I can actually build characters as I want and be able to make actual tactics in battle as quickly as possible. Honestly, it took me a little while to get my head around the fine details of the game, being able to get through early maps without trouble probably prevented a great deal of frustration and some amount of early grinding. Also, the game doesn’t really have amazing gun using classes early on, I would probably not have a useful gunner in my first save file, which would be a shame because gun skills are quite cool. Furthermore, Disgaea is truly about overpowering the enemy as much as possible, and having a slightly overpowered character is a much more fitting than fighting early bosses tooth and nail. Pleinair isn’t thoughtlessly overpowered either. Her power level becomes balanced around after a while, her low defense starts to become an actual flaw but she is still the strongest gun user by a significant margin, being able to catch up to mages in terms of damage. The second best option is not only considerably less powerful but also requires quite bit of grinding, the kind of grinding I would rather spend on getting strongest classes, frankly. She makes the game more interesting by merely existing, and also she looks so gosh darn cute! Some stuff is just too good to lock behind a dozens of hours.
Early impressions matter. Just because a game can offer a hundred hours of content, that doesn’t mean the first ten hours should be expected to be merely passable. In this post, I only discussed a single angle of this issue. Tutorials, story presentation, even the loading screens and host of other topics are relevant on the beginning of the games. It’s not easy by any means, but games can show notable improvements by challenging conventions ever so slightly. For some players, those first few hours is the only thing they will see and remember, subjecting them to a lesser game is disrespectful to the craft, if nothing else.
This article is written thanks to my dearest Patrons and special thanks to: Acelin, Laura Watson, MasterofCubes, Makkovar, Morgan, Otakundead , Sasha and Spencer Gill.
