Amnesia dev makes the case for why lying to players is sometimes good game design

V3N0M

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[h=2]“My major takeaway from making Amnesia is a deeper understanding just how game mechanics, that may or may not be there, shape how the player experiences things.”[/h] - Thomas Grip discusses the relationship between game mechanics and player experience.



Amnesia: The Dark Descent made use of a ‘sanity meter’ that, after players were exposed to prolonged darkness or disturbing imagery in-game, would gradually decrease and start affecting the appearance of the world around them.


But, as Frictional Games creative director Thomas Grip explains in an interview with Ars Technica, most of the urgency around that meter is entirely in players’ heads.


There’s no failstate relating to the sanity meter in the game, but Frictional Games went out of its way to obscure that fact from players. Instead, implied urgency (and an outright lie or two) were used in-game to make players conscious of their current sanity status, without bringing up issues of balancing fear with difficulty that sprung up in earlier builds of the game.


“We had a sanity meter, we had some sanity effects, and then there was no real fail state, and it worked better," he says. "Then we don't really say what the consequences are for this but the player assumes if you're gonna lose your mind I'm not gonna be able to play him, he might die, he might, you know, be harder to control, he might attract the attention of monsters and so on and so forth.”


It’s a system Grip explored in depth in a Game Design Deep Dive on Gamasutra a few years ago, and a feature he tells Ars Technica helped to change the way he approached the relationship between game mechanics and player experience in later games.


“It was how we shape the player experience, like in Soma we wanted the story to be about something a bit deeper than just scaring the player, and had we not done Amnesia before it, we would not have the ideas and even the language to speak about it,” Grip tells Ars Technica.


“At this point, we started to think about things in what's in the systems, and what's in the player's mind, and that sort of thing, whereas before system and player's mind was basically the same. After Amnesia we learned how to split them, and we learned how to use that to our advantage.”
 
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  • Necrokiller Necrokiller:
    Consoles can't even catch a break in titles developed exclusively for them 😢
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  • Necrokiller Necrokiller:
    "All of this lends the game distinctly last-gen look at times, which is compounded by image quality and frame-rate issues."
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  • Necrokiller Necrokiller:
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  • Chandoo Chandoo:
    no jokes.
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  • Chandoo Chandoo:
    faraany3k said:
    So while Playing Control, I found a journal which said that a bathroom is missing in Islamabad Beurue of Control. With Alan Wake and Control seems to be connected worlds. Even our city is in the universe as well. No wonder those Trail 5 and Trail 6 are haunted.
    did you know you can see @NaNoW credited in the game too ? :p
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  • faraany3k faraany3k:
    So while Playing Control, I found a journal which said that a bathroom is missing in Islamabad Beurue of Control. With Alan Wake and Control seems to be connected worlds. Even our city is in the universe as well. No wonder those Trail 5 and Trail 6 are haunted.
    Link
  • EternalBlizzard EternalBlizzard:
    faraany3k said:
    What is peoples obsession with Battle Royale genre. 6 minutes to find a match, 3 minutes to setup a match, 2 minutes to land, 10 minutes for scavanging maybe 2 3 gunfigts and its over. Multiplayer landscape is looking absolute dogshit.
    I tried playing Apex Legends once. Couldn't find a gun for 5 minutes straight. If I found a gun, I couldn't find the right ammo for it. Got killed fighting with my fists. Uninstalled it the next day.
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  • faraany3k faraany3k:
    What is peoples obsession with Battle Royale genre. 6 minutes to find a match, 3 minutes to setup a match, 2 minutes to land, 10 minutes for scavanging maybe 2 3 gunfigts and its over. Multiplayer landscape is looking absolute dogshit.
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  • M muneebjahangir:
    skip the villain arc
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  • EternalBlizzard EternalBlizzard:
    iampasha said:
    I usually stay away from animes. Vinland saga changed the way i look at my life, and my experiences within. I recommend every breathing human being to watch this animated masterpiece at least once fromstart to finish.
    After I watched it, I never felt like i watched a show. It was a friggin journey. I got way too attached to Thorfinn and seeing him grow up and find himself and get rid of all the negativity inside of him was just pure bliss.
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  • iampasha iampasha:
    EternalBlizzard said:
    Vinland Saga > Berserk
    I usually stay away from animes. Vinland saga changed the way i look at my life, and my experiences within. I recommend every breathing human being to watch this animated masterpiece at least once fromstart to finish.
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  • Necrokiller Necrokiller:
    Crapcom's RE Engine expose hogaya saaeen. This shit ain't worth experiencing on any platform. 🤷‍♂️
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  • Chandoo Chandoo:
    When a $399 console provides the same experience as a 4090. Yikes indeed saeen :sneaky:
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  • Necrokiller Necrokiller:
    that's a yikes saaaen
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  • Necrokiller Necrokiller:
    " Both PS5 and Series X have an unlocked frame-rate here, with performance that generally lies between 30fps and 45fps. That makes for a stuttering and inconsistent output in general play, no matter what you are doing at any given time."
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  • EternalBlizzard EternalBlizzard:
    Vinland Saga > Berserk
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  • faraany3k faraany3k:
    I absolutely hate parry and Sekiro made me love it, i hate sci fi and Mass Effect made me love it. This is the definition of genre defining experiences.
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  • Necrokiller Necrokiller:
    Forbidden West Complete Edition now available on your fav websites. And Nixxes showed Crapcom how it's done 👍
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  • Necrokiller Necrokiller:
    RE Engine is just utter shit for anything other than corridor design remakes
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  • Necrokiller Necrokiller:
    This is a console first developer. LMAO
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  • faraany3k faraany3k:
    With how great cod warzone has translated onto mobile. Mainstream Consoles have lost its value even further. Maybe console gaming was associated with TVs and how TV is not the primary source of media consumption anymore, consoles will lose its 200 million core audiences even further.
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  • Necrokiller Necrokiller:
    Even VRR can't rescue it 🥲
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  • Necrokiller Necrokiller:
    And yet PC version has the highest score. RIP who plays it on consoles.
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    Necrokiller Necrokiller: Consoles can't even catch a break in titles developed exclusively for them 😢