On Urgency

During a recent talk with one of my gamedev friends, I pass­ing­ly men­tioned that a game works much bet­ter as art when its game­play rein­forces its sense of nar­ra­tive urgen­cy. I didn’t think much of it at the time, but on fur­ther reflec­tion I think that it’s an impor­tant piece of the Plot vs. Fun puz­zle, and a use­ful lens for explor­ing games as art. I want­ed to explore it in fur­ther detail in hopes of address­ing some ques­tions that I raised pre­vi­ous­ly, and to add anoth­er term to the AAG’s lex­i­con of ana­lyt­i­cal con­cepts. Since the city of Warsaw requires me to warn peo­ple when I’m about to unload a wall of text, my dis­cus­sion will take place after the jump.

When I talk about urgen­cy, I mean a belief held by the play­er that they must under­go a par­tic­u­lar course of action with­in a speci­fic time­frame to achieve their goal. We see urgen­cy most direct­ly when we’re dodg­ing pat­terns in a bul­let hell game or floor­ing the gas pedal in a rac­ing title, but I want to use the term more broad­ly to include goals like mak­ing sure that I’ve swept every inch of a Zelda dun­geon for heart con­tain­ers before get­ting ready to con­front the boss. In this sense, urgen­cy is not nec­es­sar­i­ly about mak­ing the play­er feel pan­icked, but about inter­nal­iz­ing the imper­a­tive of the game. Jane McGonigal address­es this when she talks about using games as a model for gen­er­at­ing whole-hearted par­tic­i­pa­tion in activ­i­ties.

A Little History

Early video games such as Missile Command, Asteroids, Space Invaders, and Galaga all cre­at­ed a sense of urgen­cy by rapid­ly ramp­ing up the dif­fi­cul­ty of the game as you con­tin­ued to play. More tar­gets, faster ene­mies, and more com­plex tac­tics reward­ed skilled play with greater chal­lenges, which cre­ates a sense of accom­plish­ment while also avert­ing bore­dom. While this is born part­ly out of a need to force peo­ple to feed more quar­ters into the arcade cab­i­net, it was also excel­lent game design that cre­at­ed a sense of urgen­cy in the play­er to reach his or her goal.

In these early titles, there isn’t much nar­ra­tive to speak of. “Kill the aliens!” is enough story for quite a lot of video games, but for the first few gen­er­a­tions of gam­ing the exclu­sive focus was the game­play mechan­ics. Many of the arche­types of “mini-game” for­mats come from this era, and the game­play is good for a rea­son: it presents a goal, and increas­es the com­plex­i­ty or dif­fi­cul­ty of accom­plish­ing that goal at a rate cor­rel­a­tive with the player’s increase in skill. Among other rea­sons, they suc­ceed as games because the game­play rein­forces the sense of urgen­cy to accom­plish that goal.

As games have grown more com­plex and sto­ry­li­nes have become more elab­o­rate, we start fac­ing the Plot vs. Fun prob­lem: telling a good story requires seiz­ing the player’s sense of agen­cy, but end­less play­er free­dom is going to harm the story because you can’t con­trol the pac­ing or order­ing of events that lead up to them per­form­ing the right action to advance the story…

…unless they’ve inter­nal­ized the nar­ra­tive and have a sense of urgen­cy to ful­fill it.

Urgency Done Right

I’d like to elab­o­rate an exam­ple of how a game can match nar­ra­tive urgen­cy to game­play at mul­ti­ple paces with­in a sin­gle title. The AAG’s favorite dead horse to beat is Planescape: Torment, and I’m going to mer­ri­ly flog it fur­ther. While it’s not the explic­it struc­ture of the game, I want to break it up into three acts to talk about how each one uses a dif­fer­ent style of play to cre­ate an con­tex­tu­al­ly appro­pri­ate sense of urgen­cy.

In the first act, that level is zero. After wak­ing up in the mor­tu­ary with no mem­o­ries and dis­cov­er­ing that you can­not die, you are left to wan­der around the city of Sigil to learn about where you are, and your choic­es deter­mine your iden­ti­ty by chang­ing your moral align­ment, your class, and the atti­tudes and dia­logue choic­es you have with NPCs. There is no clear force out to get you, and the only objec­tive you have is the mes­sage carved on your back to seek out an object from a mys­te­ri­ous fig­ure named Pharod. The time it takes you to get your bear­ings and learn about the set­ting is designed to let you lux­u­ri­ate in the gor­geous design of the set­ting and swim around gen­uine­ly rich dia­logue.

Combats are most­ly option­al, you can explore any part of the city, and none of the NPCs give you the typ­i­cal “gath­er 5 mod­ron sprock­ets and bring them back to me” quests, save for one char­ac­ter that lamp­shades it heav­i­ly and embeds it in a ridicu­lous chain of fetch quests that are designed to irri­tate your char­ac­ter. As you explore the city and meet more peo­ple, you even­tu­al­ly find sev­er­al of your old jour­nals, and find your way to con­front Ravel Puzzlewell, the night hag who put you in this predica­ment.

The sec­ond act begins after Ravel tells you how your sit­u­a­tion arose, and the mys­te­ri­ous shad­ows that have begun to appear around you kill her before she can tell you where to find the solu­tion to your con­di­tion. At this point, the game shifts to a faster pace, as new areas are opened up for you to explore, and you sud­den­ly have a much clear­er goal: fol­low the trail the source of your con­di­tion, and put it to an end. This sends you trav­el­ing to pris­on worlds, extra-dimensional forges, and lay­ers of Hell itself look­ing for the secret to end­ing your tor­tur­ous cycle of rebirth. The scenery is just as rich, but the explic­it goal is clear­er and the forces stand­ing in your way are much more men­ac­ing. Rather than explor­ing for the sake of learn­ing your sur­round­ings, you are work­ing on locat­ing the small clues that add up to your find­ing the secret loca­tion of the source of your tor­ment.

The third part begins with the final stage of your hunt for the one who can tell you that loca­tion, and the final con­fronta­tion that decides your ulti­mate fate. This is an intense race through a col­laps­ing demi­plane on the edge of Hell, fight­ing end­less waves of pow­er­ful demons, and rac­ing to the fortress of the one who has been pro­long­ing your eter­nal tor­ture. The Fortress of Regret is not large, but the tremen­dous, des­per­ate efforts of your tor­menter kills your entire party, leav­ing you alone with your foe for a final con­flict that is bril­liant­ly writ­ten and which I have never seen topped. For the last hour of the game, you feel that the fate of some­thing truly immense rests on your actions. It’s grip­ping and heart-rending, and you absolute­ly can­not stop play­ing.

The urgen­cy of each act is com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent. When the game is meant to be explorato­ry and self-paced, noth­ing press­es you. When free-form explo­ration gets tire­some, you are given a focused goal with some flex­i­bil­i­ty around how you pur­sue it. Meaningful obsta­cles begin to push you toward your goal as the Shadows attack you when you spend too much time in areas you don’t need to revis­it. As the game draws to a cli­max, your path is short, direct, and astound­ing­ly intense. There is no chance to pause and col­lect your­self, and giv­ing you such a break would detract from the enor­mi­ty of your pur­suit.

Urgency Done Wrong

The con­verse sit­u­a­tion occurs when a game com­plete­ly fails to match the urgen­cy of your imper­a­tive with the game­play. I think the best exam­ple of this defi­cien­cy is in the Elder Scrolls titles, par­tic­u­lar­ly Oblivion. The gates of hell itself are rip­ping tremen­dous holes in the wall of real­i­ty, and Cyrodil will be flush with demons if a brave adven­tur­er doesn’t step forth to seal the breach. You are that adven­tur­er, and you can lit­er­al­ly spend years in-game col­lect­ing wild­flow­ers, with­out penal­ty, after the quest-relevant NPCs tell you that the world will sure­ly end if some­one doesn’t imme­di­ate­ly seal the Oblivion gates. There’s absolute­ly noth­ing dri­ving you to do any­thing. Ever.

The prob­lem with Oblivion is that all of your objec­tives, no mat­ter how triv­ial or dire, are of equal impor­tance. Nothing moti­vates you to com­plete any of them aside from tra­di­tion­al adventurer’s avarice. This is part of the appeal for many peo­ple, as you can sim­ply do what you want to do and explore a tremen­dous and beau­ti­ful world at your own pace, seek­ing as much com­bat or com­merce as tick­les your fancy. As much as I enjoy this, the plot states direct­ly that inac­tion will lead to hor­ri­fy­ing con­se­quences, and fails to deliv­er on that threat. If the game tells me the world will be flood­ed with demons unless I do some­thing, then it should bloody well flood the world with demons if I spend my time try­ing to steal every fork in the world.

This is not to say that I dis­like the Elder Scrolls games, as I adore play­ing Morrowind and Skyrim. I do, how­ev­er, think it harms them as art to have such a jar­ring dis­par­i­ty between the threats in the nar­ra­tion and the threats in the game. Morrowind worked slight­ly bet­ter by hav­ing a lurk­ing, loom­ing dread in Dagoth-Ur rather than an unstop­pable army con­stant­ly boil­ing forth from hell itself, and Skyrim at least drops a giant freak­ing drag­on on my head if I spend too long muck­ing about in the mid­dle of nowhere. Still, all of them have a rather absent sense of urgen­cy, as there is no reward or penal­ty for com­plet­ing objec­tives swift­ly or over the course of months in the game. The nar­ra­tive they are try­ing to build feels as impor­tant as the mean­ing­less copies of the Biography of Barenziah on the book­shelves of every last cit­i­zen of Tamriel.

The Continuum

As with most of my ideas, urgen­cy as a dimen­sion of games-as-art is a con­tin­u­um. Some games work at each end and every­where in between. Deus Ex plays won­der­ful­ly along that con­tin­u­um by alter­nat­ing between wide open city streets that you can explore at leisure to tense sce­nes of escap­ing from giant col­laps­ing build­ings. Some games stick firm­ly to the full-blown panic end of the spec­trum: bul­let hell titles and fight­ing games are short, intense bouts of fran­tic strug­gles to stay alive and defeat your oppo­nents. Titles like Civilization give you all the time in the world to plan and design what you want to see, never forc­ing you to end your turn pre­ma­ture­ly or set­ting dead­li­nes for your goals.

Urgency is a tool in the game designer’s kit, and good exe­cu­tion depends on match­ing the urgen­cy of the game­play to the nar­ra­tive goal you are try­ing to rein­force. Part of the rea­son that ran­dom com­bats in Final Fantasy titles irri­tate the liv­ing crap out of me is because they inter­rupt my desire to com­plete a goal; it feels like the game is need­less­ly obstruct­ing my desire to accom­plish the objec­tives it sets out for me. Planned encoun­ters are fine, as I am per­fect­ly will­ing to fight through a fiendish gauntlet of ene­mies if it makes sense for me to do so. Random encoun­ters like fight­ing yet-another-goddamn-goblin while trav­el­ing from point A to point B, how­ev­er, do very lit­tle to enhance my sense of pro­gress and achieve­ment, and some­times ham­per it by con­sum­ing pre­cious min­utes of game time imped­ing my pro­gress. Combat events may be intense and require action and strat­e­gy, but if they don’t build on my sense of pro­gress, then they are fail­ures. “Urgency” in the sense of “act now or die” doesn’t always com­ple­ment my use of the term.

What It All Means

My mis­sion here at the Analytically About Games is to take games seri­ous­ly as art. Sometimes this means explor­ing sin­gle titles like book reviews, exam­in­ing the details of a game as aes­thet­ic expe­ri­ences and offer­ing com­men­tary. More often, I try to artic­u­late what aspects a game can pos­sess that enhances its value as art, such as its sense of immer­sion and how its inter­face pro­vides an expe­ri­ence that can­not be had through a dif­fer­ent medi­um. A robust vocab­u­lary for dis­cussing games as art helps peo­ple under­stand why I love games so much, and why I think they can and should be taken seri­ous­ly as enrich­ing expe­ri­ences.

My thoughts above are offer­ing a term that may or may not wind up being use­ful in look­ing at other titles. The core themes that I’ve writ­ten about are immer­sion and inter­ac­tiv­i­ty, how they are not syn­ony­mous in games, and how they are essen­tial com­po­nents to under­stand­ing games qua games and games qua art. Urgency is anoth­er dimen­sion of both, and a good game will prob­a­bly lend itself to being dis­cussed in such terms. It may not stick, but it might inspire insights into other titles you’d like to share on our hum­ble blog.