Elden Ring sigue dominando la discusión cuando se trata de diseño de juegos, accesibilidad y comercialización de juegos actualmente. Como ya me temía, veo que la gente lo utiliza como medio para atacar la interfaz de usuario y la accesibilidad, y que los que lo atacan dicen que, como no es divertido para ellos, debe ser un mal juego. Cuando se trata de estudiar el diseño de juegos y hablar de mecánicas, "diversión" puede considerarse una palabra de diezletras y es importante entender por qué.

El diseño centrado en el jugador

Siempre que hablamos de conceptos de "diversión" en los juegos, me recuerda a las conversaciones en torno al "diseño centrado en el jugador". Se trata de la idea de que un juego debe estar diseñado para que cualquiera pueda superarlo. Recuerdo que leí por primera vez sobre esto a principios de la década de 2000 y no estaba de acuerdo con este principio entonces y sigo sin estarlo ahora.

Algunos críticos argumentarán que esto va en contra del diseño UI/UX, pero yo creo que va en contra del buen diseño de juegos. El buen diseño y el marketing de los juegos consisten en identificar y diseñar el juego para el público al que va dirigido y, a continuación, utilizar las convenciones de UI/UX para mejorar la accesibilidad y la facilidad de acceso. Algunos de los juegos más populares e innovadores que han surgido del espacio indie no consisten en atraer a todo el mundo, sino en presentar un paquete atractivo y único que haga que quieras probarlo y jugarlo. Los debates sobre UI/UX se centran entonces en hacer que el juego sea más aceptable para un público más amplio sin perder de vista la experiencia prevista. La mayoría de la gente no va a terminar los juegos a los que juega por una u otra razón, como lo demuestran los índices de completitud bajos y las altas tasas de abandono que veo cuando examino los títulos.

El debate en torno a Elden Ring es sin duda una prueba de ello, ya que el juego está recibiendo elogios y tiene unas muy buenas ventas, al tiempo que se opone a las tendencias tradicionales de los juegos AAA de la última década. Tanto es así, que hubo una pequeña crisis en Twitter donde desarrolladores de juegos no podían entender por qué el juego está funcionando tan bien.

El error del marketing

Parte del problema de la discusión sobre la diversión y el marketing es que hay elementos de razón, tanto para los consumidores como para los desarrolladores. En el caso de los consumidores, se trata de que, al comprar un juego, tienes derecho a que la experiencia se adapte al 100% a ti y a tus gustos, y si no es así, el juego es malo por que no te gusta. Para los desarrolladores, es posible diseñar un juego 100% amado por todos y imposible que alguien lo odiara. Sinceramente creo que los desarrolladores y los consumidores siempre han buscado "el juego perfecto", ese título que todo el mundo debe jugar, o el juego que define lo que es un videojuego.

Hay desarrolladores que, en mi opinión, creen que ciertos aspectos o diseños de un juego son intrínsecamente "buenos" o "malos" y son las razones por las que un juego tiene éxito o fracasa, respectivamente. El año pasado, hubo un discurso en torno a la idea de que la gente llevaba la etiqueta de ciertos juegos como "buenos" a un nivel extremo. Que estos juegos eran de alguna manera inherentemente mejores o más saludables para jugar en comparación con otros juegos.

Volviendo a la discusión sobre la "diversión", el error es asumir que si te diviertes, el juego es bueno, y si no te diviertes, el juego debe ser malo. Esto forma parte del reto que supone estudiar el diseño y la mecánica de los juegos y el hecho de que no se trata de que te diviertas en general con un juego, sino de si los desarrolladores han conseguido o no los objetivos que pretendían con el diseño y los sistemas. Como consumidor, estás en tu derecho de que no te guste un juego por la razón que sea, pero otra cosa es que declares que un juego es "malo" o "incorrecto" simplemente por ese criterio. Hay muchos juegos que a mí personalmente no me han gustado, pero aún así podría explicarse por qué a alguien le gustarían estos sistemas.

Para ello, hay que salir de las propias opiniones y pensamientos para entender lo que las mecánicas intentan conseguir. Hay una gran diferencia entre decir "no me gusta esto, así que debe ser malo", y "no me gusta esto, pero si lo disfrutas, entonces te va a gustar este juego". A la inversa, también significa que el hecho de que a uno le guste algo, no significa que sea automáticamente "correcto" o que alguien esté equivocado porque no le guste el mismo juego.

Algunos ejemplos serían juegos como Getting Over it With Bennett Foddy o Jump King. Estos juegos se basan en controles frustrantes. Sin embargo, no se trata de un caso en el que un desarrollador no entienda cómo diseñar un juego, sino que haya construido explícitamente el juego para que sea así. En ese sentido, aunque no te guste o no lo encuentres agradable, es un ejemplo de un desarrollador que se propone un objetivo/experiencia específico y lo consigue al 100%. Hay aspectos en los que puedo criticar, y he criticado, a Elden Ring, y con razón, pero se refieren a la mecánica y el equilibrio del juego y no a que yo personalmente me divierta o no. Esas quejas se centran de nuevo en el núcleo del juego y en los objetivos del desarrollador, y no en cuestiones personales.

Y esto llega al meollo de la cuestión cuando se trata de utilizar la palabra "diversión" para definir la calidad de un juego. Al igual que no hay una talla única para todos los juegos, no hay un juego universalmente divertido que todos puedan disfrutar.

El mercado de la crueldad

Hay videojuegos perfectos para la gente, pero no son para todos. Yo tengo mi propio juego perfecto, al igual que todos los que están leyendo esto tienen el suyo. Lo que funciona para una persona no funcionará para todos los demás, y esto está en plena exhibición en el espacio indie. A estas alturas he jugado a cientos de juegos independientes que son únicos, con mucho encanto y que nunca pretendieron triunfar en la corriente principal. A veces, hay juegos como Disco Elysium, Stardew Valley o Celeste que se convierten en éxitos masivos. Sin embargo, puedo garantizar que los desarrolladores no empezaron su desarrollo con el objetivo de hacer un juego atractivo para el gran público, simplemente querían hacer ese juego en concreto.

Los desarrolladores independientes llevan más de una década impulsando el diseño y los sistemas en direcciones únicas. Parte de la razón por la que se ha elogiado tanto el espacio indie ha sido la voluntad de llegar a lugares en los que los desarrolladores AAA o convencionales no podrían arriesgar sus estudios.

Un ejemplo es la reciente tendencia a rehacer las primeras 3D y emular los gráficos de Ps1/Ps2 como estética. Ya sea para un juego de terror retro moderno como la serie Dread X, el reciente juego de plataformas Sephonie, o el diseño casi "antidiversión" de un juego como Cruelty Squad, ya que el juego se hizo intencionadamente con el mayor número de sistemas esotéricos que cabían en el extraño mundo del juego.

Y esto nos lleva de nuevo a Elden Ring y a cómo no es tanto un ejemplo de que From Software "lo ha conseguido", sino que el resto del mundo se ha puesto al día con la filosofía de diseño del estudio.

Puede que Elden Ring no me guste tanto como otros Souls de From Software, pero esos problemas tienen que ver más con un elemento aislado del juego en comparación con el conjunto. Y de nuevo, incluso con mis problemas con el diseño, no estoy diciendo que el juego sea "malo" o "incorrecto" por ellos o porque no me haya encantado el juego.

Para las muchas personas que se han desvivido por atacar a Elden Ring como un juego "equivocado", me hace pensar en lo poco que han jugado a juegos fuera de la corriente principal, si tu única exposición a los juegos indie es algo como Celeste, Hades o Disco Elysium, eso no es realmente examinar el espacio indie. Hay juegos que hacen que Elden Ring parezca sencillo en comparación.

Normalmente no enlazo a Twitter cuando hago posts de diseño, pero este hilo realmente aterriza muchos de los detalles de los que he estado hablando cuando se trata de estudiar el diseño de juegos. Y para terminar, una última ronda de puntos a destacar:

Tocho del hilo de twitter en inglés, no chopeadito, no listo Mostrar spoiler Tocho del hilo de twitter en inglés, no chopeadito, no listo Ocultar spoiler

So how are all you game devs who said elden ring is shit and games are too long feeling now that it has players with hundreds of hours and repeated completions? Will you finally accept that games aren't too long, but some games are too boring, too padded, too condescending?

I don't know how you can't respect elden ring, even if it isn't your kind of game. Like it's a mammoth achievement in understanding the fundamental truth of video games: they're meant to be played, so they have to be interesting.

similar to how I respect guilty gear strive even though I'm not a fighting game player. I can respect what it's doing.

most reading I've done on game design is fundamentally wrong. It starts from two places, usually intertwined:

the past
desire

so if you played Mario and you think "this is game," then you write theory based on "make it like mario," because that is your desire

which is how you get some really dumb takes from design fundamentalists like "we know boss fights are bad, we know platforming in 3d is bad, so why is shadow of the colossus good? we need a term for objectively bad design that is good despite our Known Knowns." (this happened)

and it's like, dude, you were wrong. Like, you were just powerfully, unfathomably wrong about game design. Everything you think you know is incorrect. Your formalism is not rooted in any kind of reality, but by a desire to make games like they already are--what comforts you.

the really interesting games come from people who are designing experientially, thinking about how to take the components they have to create feelings. there are few, if any, TRULY good or bad mechanics, just good and bad uses.

for instance, I said "I don't like games that make you wait" and a lot of people went "what about cooldowns" and while I meant like "standing there waiting for an animation to play out in an instant fail stealth section" they were thinking Any Kind of Waiting.

cooldowns CAN be used to create INTERESTING FEELING.

we have waiting in adios--your walk back to the farmhouse is a wait. your fishing is a wait. you wait for the hitman to throw his horseshoes as you gab about dead rich boys in burned-out farmsteads.

practically all "game design knowledge" I hear is horse shit, at least until it gets super granular (like someone talking about balancing econ or something), because so much of it is just... stupid shit based on "i want the player to be like this" without considering the player.

I think part of the reason is because a lot of game design knowledge comes from a kind of prescriptiveness. "We know this mechanic is always good, we know this mechanic is always bad"

no! not really! THINGS ARE DESIGNED FOR PURPOSE

you do not say "I have the best hammer, therefore my house will be the best house." You have pieces and components that you put together and it's in the togetherness that these things end up becoming or meaning something.

Like, take the maillard reaction.

why does heated food become brown? well, there's a chemical process called the maillard reaction that occurs as things carmelize.

different foods require different temperatures and durations to get the desired level of that reaction to occur.

you don't go "oh well since this one thing browns at 500F, everything must brown at 500F" and get mad at people who cook at different temps.

Likewise, just because two ingredients are good separately doesn't mean they work well TOGETHER.

knowledge is nothing without synthesis--you have to take what you know and blend things to get the appropriate chemical reaction to create the emotional experience you are trying to get the player to feel.

if you think that your design components are one-size-fits-all you'll never make a good video game.

maybe I know this instinctively because I am a storyteller, and most of my creative process is about determining whether something is right or wrong for a vibe, teasing it out, trying to see where it goes, and putting ideas that don't fit back into my brain's cupboards

i routinely dig up old ideas I've had and find they work PERFECTLY with newer, stranger, weirder ideas. determining appropriateness is so so so crucial.

anyways, elden ring works because they're not condescending to the player, because they're making things that matters to them on the dev team, because they're trying to make the world interesting rather than go "well based on operant conditioning we know we need..."

the reason people are putting hundreds of hours into it is because there's tons of cool shit to find rather than a massive open world that's just like "ah yes, talk to this character, go to this location, fight 3 waves of enemies, return home" quest design.

elden ring works because it does this:

what is that?
i will check it out
oh jesus christ
AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

what's that? oh it's a big fart dragon

what's this? a hidden path that takes you to an entirely different area

who's she? that's ranni, you can marry her

etc

elden ring is also funny, not self-serious when it needs to be. it learned the real lesson from berserk, which is that you can't write berserk without Puck. he may seem out of place but that comic relief is what stops berserk from being misery porn

it's a game where the entire thing is getting players to go

"what's this?"

"oh that's interesting"

"how do I..."

and so many games teach you what to do so you know what to do at all times.

Elden Ring teaches you How To Figure Out How To Solve Its Problems--it teaches you framework, rather than rote behaviors.

So you don't go "ah I know what this is and how to beat it" and shut your brain off. It requires PLANNING and SOLVING three dimensional problems.

it's not like "I'm gonna go to that town and in that town there will be all these generic vendors and a quest board with quests and then i pick up a quest to kill 10 wolves and then i go do that and maybe do the 5 minigames this game has set up for us"

The Witcher 3 solves this problem by simply having interesting as fuck characters and story, so you WANT to know what's coming next; that's how I like doing it. But Elden Ring is more like "here's a fucking weird little rat ape man who loves sewing and he's turned into a bush"

then elden ring does that... everywhere. It will be like "you know this enemy type?" and I'm like "yeah of course" and it's like "cool anyways what would happen if you had to fight this enemy type in the rafters of a cathedral now" because the level design changes your solutions.

it's not just "be ambushed," it's "so THIS fight is gonna happen on rooftops" or "these enemies don't show up until you enter another dimension so you can scout their locations out in advance and try to FIGURE OUT how to open this door to this optional area"

I don't know if I'm communicating this as clearly as I'd like

elden ring works because instead of being focused on "a good game is a game that doesn't have boss fights because i don't want games to have boss fights and I'm a self-professed authority on game design"

it uh...

it is focused on making you ask questions and try to work out problems

I want to be clear, I'm not talking about "figure it out/find the fun" game design, which is what inept/lazy designers do and think. And I'm not talking about puzzle design.

elden ring will be like "hey. there's a single enemy standing in the floor of this church. you got him." and then you'll be like THIS FEELS LIKE A TRAP so you start looking around the arena, you start looking for other ways past things. it's not a massive cognitive load.

this is not "puzzle design" the way that a certain guy from indie game the movie said (not in the movie to my recollection), where he basically went "a good game is one where you have a single problem and then explore every possible iteration of that problem" that's just puzzles.

elden ring is more like "anyways there's a big fuckin GUY standing in front of this castle. You gotta get into the castle. Here's a sword and a horse. And the level design. Good luck." So your problem solving is more like real world problem solving, often spatial/tool-driven.

it's not "the designer wants me to hide here unti I get the Debuff of Conjuring to carry to the ORB OF TERTIUS" or whatever, it's "aight well he is shooting me from there so I'm gonna wait until he reloads and then take cover behind that rock."

while the game has its own special set of rules, it has an entire world design dedicated to giving you opportunities to MAKE PLANS based on how you understand the world to work so you can SOLVE THE PROBLEMS it presents you, which are like "how do I open this door"

it's not from fundamentalists who think all games need to be designed on a board game level first

it's a game of SCENARIOS that you can TEASE OUT (which is very mentally stimulating) without being brain teasers (which is too much cognitive load and often unrewarding)

It's "bob has a problem: he wants to cross this gap. can you help bob?" as opposed to "figure out the specific game designery solution to this that uses that same familiar language I can't quite describe but is very common in fundamentalist circles, which is why it's meaningless"

it's more simulation than abstraction, you are thinking through problems organically rather than having to adhere to dumb fucking rules

and the rewards are like "oh I can use this to do this thing I want to do" more often than not, which is VERY nice.

"I have a sword that does +1 damage" or "I got 500XP" is nice on a lizard brain level but if you want to get a player playing HUNDREDS OF HOURS then your rewards need to be more concretely interesting and relate to the player's problem solving.

"oh I found a torch that reveals invisible enemies" leads to "ah now I can have an easier time with that black blade assassin in that mine" which is much chunkier thinking and more satisfying to most humans than "cool I do +2% dmg. it still takes 4 swings to kill a zombie."

and the realization "oh I can take on that guy now" means you go "I am GONNA go take that guy now" (a plan), and then you probably encounter other cool shit along the way (which are all a bunch of mentally stimulating problems to solve)

what I'm saying is that Elden Ring is almost as well designed as STALKER: Shadow of Chernobyl, which does all of what I've just told you

pepper the world with interesting scenarios that stimulate the player mentally
give the player a robust framework for how to logically think through the problem as if they were experiencing it in real life
minimize abstracting things to the point of irrelevant numbers

the only game that's too long is a game that's boring. an interesting game is never too long.

and that's why STALKER: Shadow of Chernobyl is the best video game ever made

anyways, Hi, I'm Doc. I make games like Adios (it costs about as much as eating at Arby's and will stick with you longer--it's rated OVERWHELMINGLY POSITIVE on steam and is also on Xbox/Switch!)

i also write about game design differently than anyone else I know.

anyways here's my blog if you want to know what I write about

mostly it's about How To Get Players To Do Stuff And Stay Interested Without Harmful Gamification

How To Make People Give A Shit So Much They Keep Playing

you've probably played games I've consulted on and the games I actually direct keep ending up being things people like so I think it's safe to say I do know how to make games interesting to people and will probably tell you shit you've never heard before that'll really help you.

two small anecdotes, which I've shared before:

first: evolve was a game that wasn't fun to play when you were alone online. the developer postmortem basically went "we wanted the game to be played in a specific way and so we created that ideal scenario in play sessions"

it turns out being alone and ganged up on by four people isn't super fun! and sucks! ("but what about dead by daylight and all the other games that do this" you will note that the many are being hunted--the hunter doesn't feel ganged except when players are using Bad Manners)

turns out that it's VERY fun to be in a room with four other friends and trash talk each other as you all take turns as hunters and hunted--you don't feel ganged up on!

so when you are creating scenarios, ask yourself: am I designing this based on the assumption that all players are rational actors and know how to Think About The Game Session the way I want them to? Will they act in accordance with my intended play style?

a lot of game designers do this, I'm not picking on evolve.

But listen: you can't fight the tides any more than you can fight human nature. And you shouldn't, because a person whose nature is fought against will feel CONSTRAINED and stop having FUN.

so you need to design in accordance with how people like playing games, rather than a fuckin NASA cleanroom perfect rational actor on paper human being. Design for the real world. Which means understanding what drives human beings to act--which means understanding EMOTION.

the second anecdote was a post-mortem of a dev team that made a cute pixel-art platformer and they were all "we did everything we were supposed to! We picked a popular genre! we got a booth at gamescom! we didn't get ANY press!"

well yeah... you know why?

because you can't design games based on what the market wants any more than the air force could design seat belts based on the 'average pilot.' The average pilot does not exist. He is not a real person. People come in all sorts of sizes, you can't just average them out.

(this was an actual air force problem)

you can't go "this is popular right now so I will copy it"

like, man, call of duty is the best at being call of duty. you can't just make another call of duty and expect people to give up the thing they trust and know to be good in favor of what you're making.

the reason nobody gave them any attention was because their platformer looked like every other platformer on the market; they forgot the most important thing: desire. You have to make people go "you know, this is in that sweet spot of 'i understand it but i am intrigued by it.'"

nobody wants dinner when they're full

nobody wants a game when their needs are already sated

you need to create things that INTRIGUE and EXCITE players. create a fantasy they WANT to experience.

make an interesting premise

make it interesting enough that it's mentally stimulating for the player

keep it stimulating by varying it up

(and make sure the inputs are pleasing)

congratulations, every single good game is basically this.

oh yeah and you wanna get enough cognitive load that the player is engaged (but you need natural room to step back and decompress--the fires in STALKER are a great example of this. more games should copy STALKER's bonfires, they're the best bonfires in video games)

too much cognitive load is exhausting (e.g. an environment with too much detail or something where the speed of engagement is higher than the speed of figuring out how to engage)

(halo is very good about cognitive load because it often lets you overlook the combat arena, plan, and consider the space before engaging; when the combat is faster paced, it does this by flying in enemy dropships that shoot at you to alert you to their presence--you ANTICIPATE)

"why would I want to be that?" "why would I want to go there?" this is the kind of question you should be able to answer in order to make a compelling fantasy

if you can make a player sit up and go "OH WHAT'S THAT? I WANNA GO THERE AND FIND OUT" yeaaah you got 'em

Some people think this thread means I'm anti short games.

Please consider checking out my video game Adios to see what I think about game length lmaoooo

Yes souls should have an easy mode though

I figured people reading this thread would be like "ah this is one of those weird fuckers that thinks FROM can do no wrong" and miss the point, which is that I'm also the guy whose thread on accessibility went viral in like 2018

I'm very easy to understand unless you're one of those people who sees part of my takes and writes me off as someone you have already seen before. I humbly ask that you don't take a fragment of my argument and assume you know my point. Let me get to the point first.

El hecho de que un juego sea desafiante no significa que tenga una mala experiencia de usuario.
Que un juego sea desafiante no significa que tenga una buena UI/UX
Que odies un juego no significa que tenga una mala UI/UX
Que te guste un juego no significa que tenga una buena UI/UX

El arte y la ciencia de los juegos

Todo este debate nos lleva a un punto que ya expuse en un podcast reciente. En el diseño de juegos hay arte y ciencia. No importa lo creativo o artístico que sea tu juego, todos los juegos de éxito tienen una buena base en lo que respecta a sus diseños y sistemas. Sin eso, es como construir una casa o un coche sin un chasis sólido o una planificación. A veces, esto puede llevar a que los juegos sean la excepción a la regla y se conviertan en grandes éxitos, pero esa no es la apuesta que la mayoría de los desarrolladores profesionales deberían hacer con sus estudios.

Y esa base proviene de la comprensión del diseño de juegos, no del desarrollo de juegos, que es su propia área. La artesanía del diseño de juegos es un conjunto de habilidades completamente diferente en comparación con el resto del desarrollo de juegos. Hay una razón por la que hay una gran diferencia entre los buenos y los malos juegos de plataformas, a pesar de que el género es tan antiguo y explorado: los juegos de éxito entienden qué elementos definen a un gran juego de plataformas, y los que no tienen éxito a menudo ignoran o no captan esos puntos. Y esos elementos no son "de opinión" o "de debate". No todos los juegos pretenden ser una montaña rusa de diversión a cada segundo ni gustar a todo el mundo. Eso tampoco significa que cada juego tenga que seguir la misma dirección y diseño que todos los demás.

Se me ocurren un montón de juegos como Frostpunk, This War of Mine, That Dragon Cancer, que tratan temas y tópicos que no son "divertidos" en la forma en que a los críticos les gusta usar la palabra. Los juegos que han explotado entre los círculos indie lo han conseguido por ser diferentes, por entender el diseño y las mecánicas que querían construir, y por hacer algo que no se había planteado antes.

¿Se te ocurre algún juego que haya triunfado por no seguir el camino trillado de un género o filosofía de diseño de juegos que no haya mencionado aquí?

Hagamos una lista de buenos juegos, tanto si son divertidos como si no lo son

Gracias por leerme. La fuente es de aquí. El chopeo, adicíon de imágenes, traducción y adaptación es trabajo de un servidor. Saludos.