Few will pass your game, so is it worth spending time on the ending?

Recently, a translation of an article by Ubisoft creative director Jason Vandenberg has been released. It was written back in 2013, but the subject concerned is more relevant than ever. In the article, he justifies people who have not completed the game and removes responsibility for the final from the game designer. The ending is a nice bonus inside the game, and the reward can be any. His conclusion is that a game designer is free to create an ending, but he has to express a screaming truth that reflects his attitude to the project, so that the whole world will remember this final! I thought a lot about the endings, and the players who will not see them, and I have formed certain conclusions.

Final and Game Design

The theme of the game design of the final is so complex that I could not stand aside. I, still a novice game designer, but a player with a lot of experience, as well as a consumer of a huge amount of other media content - movies, TV shows, anime and books. And the ending in any of the works is a very scary thing.



Everyone likes to dive into the new world of the work. Further, as if covered with a cozy blanket, this new world will warm you. And I don’t feel like tearing off this cover, discarding all the comfort and warmth that fills you with a piece of work and warmth! An overwhelming fear appears when you see that there will be the last episode now, you feel the end of the film, you see that this is the last chapter, or you physically feel that you are approaching the last pages of the book. Fear that either goes into satisfaction from the ending, or its rejection. However, all this is overshadowed by a bit of disappointment, from leaving a warm blanket created by the world of the work out from under the cover of it.



Now the author of the original article - Jason is busy with a wonderful game For Honor , which is highly praised for the fact that you constantly feel the game designer’s hand, as if he is standing behind his back, constantly focusing your attention on bright memorable moments. The release of the game is scheduled for February 14, 2017 - we wish good luck that the game really be on the shelf by this time, and look at its ending, since this is the largest project in all the years of its work.

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Statistics

3 years have passed since the writing of the article, but I easily believe that, on average, players really only finish the game in only 20% of cases. If we take the easily accessible values ​​among PC players on Steam , we will see completion numbers from 10-18% to 40-45% and the top is a small part of players with a value of 60-70%. Even hits like Bioshock: Infinite and Portal have a pass rating of no more than 55%.



I agree that not always people go through the game to the end. Even I still have a few unfinished games, but this is more likely due to the fact that I don’t have time for them now and I will definitely finish them when I can.

True target audience

There is a whole group of indie games in my collection, which I started only to understand whether I would like them, and which I received as gifts or for subscriptions for free, but from the very beginning I downloaded them with great skepticism and if they weren’t interesting story or gameplay, then I threw them after one game session. Unfortunately, I am not ready to attribute such projects to AAA titles, which are monitored by players, and thoughtfully choose each next game. All the games that I bought at will, I finish in any case. Any ambitious project is run by an interested player in the shortest possible time. Stop such a player can only bugs and flaws in your game. Or the player is not your target audience.

The ending (not | very ) is needed

I consider a very bad example of game design, when all efforts are invested to impress the player at the very beginning, and then slow down and do not offer anything new to the ending, cutting off the gameplay or making a reserve for the second part.



One such example is the sensational at one time, and the slightly failed The Order 1886 , which begins well, but does not offer anything new impressive for the entire game, only in the final, in a couple of minutes so much emotion is thrown onto the player that, to his dismay, only exclaim - "Is that all ?!" The problem with this game is that the player does not receive emotional involvement through well-set plot scenes in metered portions throughout the game. This scene is the only successful one, and if there were more such moments, and at least every hour we were given an emotional shake, the game would have been much more successful.



A counterexample is The Last of Us - where we literally after each chapter get another emotional well-placed plot scene. Naturally, the first such scene at the end of the prologue is very strong, and it involves the player with an explosive burst of emotions, but I will not say that all the subsequent ones are much weaker. The ending also leaves the player in moral torments and shows a lot that the player wanted to see. In this regard, Uncharted4 somewhat yielded to the level of emotional involvement, because most of them offered the player familiar moves from a familiar story with all the familiar characters and picture villains. The only new emotional experience from her was obtained at the moments when we were sent into the past of the main character, but there were too few such moments. The ending also sent to the near future, and although it has become a solid completion, there is a lack of emotional involvement in it. Even the second part was a head taller in terms of the ending.



With all of the above, I understand the author of the original article very well with the choice of The Darkness as an example of an excellent ending, because it is so well written that the plot and emotions are kept to the very end during the game, and it provides very metered explosive scenes throughout its length, completing all of one of the most touching moments in the history of video games.



One of the greatest game designers - Hideo Kojima not so long ago in one of the interview just directly touched on the theme of game endings. His opinion - the ending in the game is the smallest part of it. Criticizing Japanese developers for what they are doing in their grand finals. We, of course, remember his ending in MGS3 , so I accept his words with some degree of skepticism. Again in that interview, he criticized the more studio approach of large corporations that are not ready to throw out the lion's share of the budget at the ending, which will reach no more than 10% of the players. I absolutely disagree with his opinion, the Western market can not be the reason that game designer could not think about the ending. Unfortunately, we will not learn about new endings of Kojima for quite a long time, since its new project is at an early stage of development.

Game Design and Finals

This will be the last point of our story. The result of which will be very simple conclusions:

• Shuffle a player with your head in your story and your world - you are a game designer, and you know how to achieve this.
  
  
  
  
• Do not believe the statistics, it does not take into account your target audience. Even pre-orders are not an indicator, because players sometimes give in to the herd effect after a regular presentation, believing every word that has flown out - perhaps all the empty promises that, for various reasons, are not always realized in the final project - Peter Moulinje has acquired a very bad fame, the authors of No Man's Sky, too - but in the latter case, it looks more like they were very much customized with the release, at the moment when the budget ended abruptly on a grandiose advertisement.
  
  
  
  
• Remember that the ending is not less important than any of the intermediate cut-scenes, each of which should cause an emotional surge in the player. In this case, the ending should smooth out the moment of parting with your world as gently as possible, taking the player out of the comfort zone. If you have something to say to this world - shout about it all the way through your game - do not pile everything up at the end.

PS

There is another approach that I don’t really like, but it does occur from time to time - a game designer saves emotions only for the ending. Such games suffer most from the evaluation of players who have not passed it, but this approach also has a place to be. Brothers - A Tale of Two Sons , one of these games, which, although it has emotional scenes inside the main game, concentrates all the heat at the end. And this is also a great example, however, only those who reached the end of the game saw it.



The last of these examples would like to recall a recent project from Playdead - Inside ! We are all emotionally fed by the world of the game, engaging deeper and stronger, just shocking the last chapter. Here, the emotional tension also occurs gradually, breaking through in one shocking moment, after which the whole game session is in a state of shock, however, unfortunately, it causes almost no emotions at the last minute before the captions.



Inside has received excellent marks because of its game design, and if you think that the ending begins with a shocking moment, then it is perfect. The only problem is that it is not quite an ending to the full, and the game does not provide anything after its gaming session, leaving questions behind it, too carelessly chopping off the agenda.