How to Handle Ambient Challenges, or The Plea

Let me start by saying that ambient challenges aren’t going anywhere. Whether they’re used as game-length padding (Fable 3), to add to the tone of the game (Red Dead Redemption, Saints Row2), or to annoy the hell out of gamers everywhere (Gear of War, Soul Caliber IV), they’re here to stay. And that’s fine with me; well-implemented ambients can add another layer of depth and challenge to the game for the player that wants it, while not getting in the way of players who just want to make it through the main game/story. The problem is when ambients are poorly implemented.

Let’s start with Red Dead Redemption. On top of a top-notch main story, Redemption offers a diverse lineup of ambients. You can go treasure hunting, following vague to very vague treasure maps to bars of gold. You can go hunting, sharpshooting, flower picking. You can go bounty hunting. You can break horses, work as a night watchman, search for new outfits that give you various benefits. And all of this is pointed out to you. Pull up the menu screen and there’s a listing under Challenges. Pull up your map and it points you toward wanted posters, jobs, good hunting areas. There’s no hand holding; even if you know where the cougars are, you still have to kill them with your knife to complete one challenge. The rewards are great: money, fame, unlocked abilities.

On the other hand, Fable 3, a short game to be sure, is padded with two extensive ambient quests: Find (and shoot) 50 gnomes and find 30 books. Both challenges have their problems. The hunting of the gnomes is aided by a counter on the map screen that tells you how many gnomes are in any given location and how many in that location you have found. Because of this, I enjoyed the gnome quest. It was still a challenge (knowing which needle the haystack is in saves you time, surely, but you still have to go through the straw), but I never felt like I was wasting my time on it. The books, on the other hand, are another story (that’s a joke about books). For 25 of the 30 books, you’re given no direction. Nothing. When I finally gave up and went to the Internet, I found that I had walked right by most of them. But, because I was walking a foot to the right instead of a foot to the left, my avatar (I believe his name was Steve) had no idea a book was there. Granted your dog will sometimes point a book out to if, if he isn’t busy fighting/running around/barking at treasure/being hung up on a corner, but for the most part, you walk right past them.

Fable 3’s books commit the double mistake of a) not offering the player a way to narrow down the search and b) not offering a reward for finding them. The gnomes challenge also offers no reward beyond a completed quest, some seals, and some gamer score points. And that’s for, let’s say, 3-5 hours of game time per quest, depending on how Internet happy you get. Even Fallout 3’s bobble heads offered substantial stat bonuses in return. The quests aren’t bad ideas though, they’re just poorly implemented. Some sort of reward system would have made me feel like Lionshead valued my time as much as I do, as would a helpful way of narrowing the search down.

Bad ambient can even sometimes spoil a game. Soul Caliber II is my favorite Soul Caliber game, largely due to its extensive Quest Mode, that has you criss-crossing a map, engaging in different challenges (Don’t block in this battle! Use your mind to press the buttons! Blindfold!) for money and new weapons. But I stopped playing Soul Caliber IV after a few hours, largely due to its Tower of Souls mode, which has you climbing a tower and completing challenges for new pieces of equipment (armor, swords, hats). The difference is that the game doesn’t tell you what the challenges are. Instead, you’re given vague clues (Guard! Look to the stars! Embrace the abyss!). Here, there is reward, but no direction. You’re just told that there are things to unlock, and everything is unlocked differently. That’s no way to run an ambient challenge.

Of course, I can just run to the Internet to find out how to unlock new hats or find gnomes or dog tags. But I shouldn’t have to; that’s poor game design. It’s great that it’s an option (an option I used toward the later end of Redemption’s Treasure Hunt challenges), but it shouldn’t be a necessity, as it is with Soul Caliber IV and Fable 3. Video games, more than any other form of media, can be an immersive experience, but going to the Internet to hunt down a list that tells you where meaningless trinket #37 is takes you out of that experience.

Ambient challenges aren’t going anywhere. And I’m fine with that. But they need to be implemented in a way that respect’s the gamers and respects game design. A good ambient challenge should be a challenge and should have some sort of reward, beyond gamer score points. The gamer should be made aware of the challenge at some point throughout the game in a clear and concise way (this can be highlighted in the story or pointed at in the Achievement list or a separate challenge list). And the challenge shouldn’t require the Internet; it should be doable, in game, without send you on wild goose chases.

This isn’t a definitive list of requirements; some of Halo 3’s skulls were hard to find and Braid’s hidden stars are ridiculous in their hiding places, but then, they offered rewards. But these are things that designers need to consider when designing ambient challenges.

And please, don’t use them to pad game length. If your game isn’t good to begin with, having to find 50 gnomes/books/bananas isn’t going to help.

Read Watch Listen: Intro

I can only remember my father writing two things: notes, both to himself and others, and a list of every movie he has ever seen.

His notes were mostly reminders, both to himself and others. Notes of things to tell my mom, Hilda. Notes to me to do this or that. If he didn’t write it down, he would forget, remember days later and proceeding to tell my mom some story she had already heard elsewhere.

The list was extensive, covering several notebooks. Every time my dad saw a film, whether in the theatre or on video or after happening across it on television, he would make careful note of the date. He kept the notebook in my parent’s bedroom and would pull it out and bring it to the kitchen table in the breakfast nook, the breakfast nook that also served as the lunch nook, dinner nook, homework nook, and snack nook. Ballpoint in hand, he would clearly write (no small feat, given his cramped handwriting) what he had seen and when. I remember watching him hesitate to put down a film me and him planned to see in a few days on our annual family vacation. He left it blank, saying that he couldn’t put it down until he saw it, but really, I think he liked pulling the book out, flipping through until he found his current page, taking the time to write, however briefly, about what picture he had seen, for no other posterity than his own. I remember asking him, from time to time, as I got older, if he had seen this film or that film. He’d say, “I can’t quite remember. I’ll have to check my records later tonight.” And sure enough, I’d see him that evening, thumbing through one book or the other at the kitchen table, until he found it. He would come find me and fill me in, telling me everything he could remember. “Let’s see, I saw it in March 1972, so that would have been…Athens? No, no, I think it was in Valdosta, with your mother. I went to see her for the weekend. That’s right, that’s right.” Then he would put the notebook up, back where he kept it, until the next time he needed to consult it.

I inherited my dad’s love of cinema, along with his bad memory. I’m twenty-five now, but one day I won’t be. I spent most of my middle school years buried in book after book, but I can’t remember half of them now. With this in my mind, I’m starting a blog titled Read Watch Listen, writing about the things that I read or watch or listen to. I tend to go through a lot of various media, some texts more eclectic than others and I’d like to have a record of it, perhaps a little more detailed than my dad’s notebook. One day, it might be nice to consult it and see what I saw all those/these years ago.