Playing Past Your Mistakes | Game Maker's Toolkit

In the manual for Elder Scrolls 2: Daggerfall,
Bethesda left a message encouraging players

to avoid the “replay the save game” strategy.

They said, “most computer gamers use the
save game to maximise their playing ability.

Anytime something goes wrong, they return
to a saved game and replay it until they get

it right.

The final history of their game looks like
an endless streak of lucky breaks and perfect

choices.

[But] role-playing is not about playing the
perfect game.

It is about building a character and creating
a story.

In fact, you will never see some of the most
interesting aspects of the game unless you

play through your mistakes.

If your character dies, by all means return
to your last saved game and replay it.

However, if your character is caught pickpocketing,
if a quest goes wrong, or some other mundane

mishap occurs, let it play out.

You may be surprised by what happens next”.

This is a noble stand against “save scumming”,
which is the art of returning to an old save

file the second you get spotted in a stealth
game, or lose a beloved team member in an

RPG, or get a bad roll in a game with random
numbers.

And it’s sorely tempting to simply undo
your mistakes or reset an unlucky event, but

- as Bethesda says - if you do that, you might
just miss some of the best anecdotal stories

the game has to offer.

You know, like coming “this close” to
dying, but turning it around and winning anyway.

Or killing a panicked guard, seconds before
they can raise the alarm.

Or an exciting extraction when your stealthy
plan starts to go hideously wrong.

Or having to sadly move on through the story,
while bearing the loss of your favourite party

member.

And so it’s a lovely sentiment.

But, ultimately, there’s no point putting
this sort of thing in the manual.

If you’ve got an intention for how players
should experience the game, you’ve got to

build it into the game itself.

So how can we make games where players don’t
want to return to a quick save at the first

point of adversity?

Games where you are, in fact, encouraged to
play on past mistakes, failures, and setbacks

- and potentially see some of the most interesting
aspects of the game?

Well, for some games, the strategy is to make
sure that setbacks are tolerable - and not

so critically damaging that you’re better
off just returning to a previous save point.

One way to do this is to give the game a really
wide “failure spectrum”.

That’s a term dreamt up by Tom Francis - creator
of Gunpoint and Heat Signature - and it describes

the range of states between perfect success
and total failure.

Think of a game like XCOM, where you can successfully
finish a mission with all your team members

alive, or botch your objective and leave with
two injured units, or come home without a

single living soldier.

Pretty much every game has a failure spectrum,
but some have a much more generous one, than others.

For an example, Tom points to the stealthy
open worlder Metal Gear Solid V, which has

a huge range of states between being a sneaky
snake and a, uh, dead snake.

So, if a guard sees you, he won’t immediately
start firing.

He’ll just come in to investigate more closely.

If you do get spotted, you enter into this
slow-mo reflex mode, to give you a chance

to headshot the guard in question.

Screw that up, and the guard will need to
manually call up his buddies for support,

giving you a chance to stop him.

And even after all that, Snake can still escape
and return to hiding.

Or enter combat.

Or even call in an helicopter and just take
the whole “espionage” bit of the MGS slogan

and dropkick it into the ocean.

You’ll only die if you manage to screw all
of that up.

So this is a huge failure spectrum, with all
sorts of states between completing the mission

without ever being seen, and bleeding out
on the battlefield.

And that means that mishaps aren’t so punishing
that you might as well reload - they just

shove you a little further down the spectrum.

But the thing about a failure spectrum is
that, in a lot of cases, it’s reversible.

And if you play well you can actually turn
things around and crawl back towards the successful

end of things.

That’s a big part of Far Cry 2.

This is another game with a generous failure
spectrum, thanks to its big health bar, loads

of healing syringes, and the buddy system
- where you can get one extra chance to keep

playing, after your death.

And it’s also a game where you’re constantly
facing setbacks.

You might find your guns jamming in the middle
of battle.

Or find yourself suffering from a Malaria
attack while sneaking past an outpost.

Or have your car break down, just as you’re
making a getaway.

But these setbacks serve a really important
purpose.

You see, in a 2009 GDC talk, designer Clint
Hocking explained that, originally, he wanted

Far Cry 2 to be all about intentionality,
which is achieved by having the game split

between two phases.

There’s a planning stage, where you survey
the scene, look for items of interest, watch

guard patrol patterns, and plan your escape
route.

And then an execution stage, where you actually
carry out your plan.

But the creators decided that they didn’t
want you to either have your plan totally

work, or totally fail.

Instead, they wanted you to suffer small setbacks
that would cause you to bounce out of the

execution stage and back to the planning phase.

Clint describes this type of gameplay as improvisational.

It’s this idea of constantly moving between
planning and execution - but within a single,

continuous playthrough.

And so that’s another benefit of making
people play through mistakes and bad luck.

Because suffering adversity causes you to
change your goals in an exciting, dynamic

way - so you can claw your way back to victory.

Like in a shooter - if you take a lot of damage
you’re forced to change your focus away

from combat - and towards getting into cover,
finding health packs, or maybe even crafting

a medkit.

And in a stealth game, getting spotted means
you’re forced to run away and get back into

cover, or just give up on sneaking around
and deal with your enemies in the old fashioned way.

And this only works if players don’t reload
their save game the second they get thrown

off course.

So to reduce the chance of this happening,
Clint made sure these setbacks were small,

unpredictable, and recoverable.

Things like Malaria attacks and jamming guns
might wreck your plans but they’re far too

tiny to warrant a reload, they’re easy enough
to turn around, and are often completely unpredictable

when they’re about to occur.

“It is exactly because the loss is small
and unpredictable that players don’t attempt

to reload the game to escape it,” says Clint.

Now all of this falls apart if the player
is rewarded for perfect play, or punished

for making mistakes.

Meaningless ranks and achievements for never
getting spotted in a stealth game are fine.

They’re aspirational rewards for highly
skilled players.

But if making mistakes will cause the rest
of the game to be significantly harder, then

it’s no surprise that a player will reload
to a previous save game the second they screw up.

Back to XCOM: losing soldiers and suffering
casualties means you’ve now got to recruit

feeble rookies, making you less likely to
succeed at future missions - creating a nasty

positive feedback loop of death and failure.

No wonder, then, that some gamers will resort
to save scumming to keep their favourite soldiers alive.

It’s just too harsh, otherwise.

Perhaps a better approach is to try and make
failure as interesting as success.

Look to the Shadow of Mordor games, where
getting killed by an Ork captain means that

they’ll remember you and bring up your history
in a later encounter.

So if there’s no tactical benefit for perfect
play, and there are meaningful outcomes for

imperfect play, then gamers will naturally
want to roll on past their mistakes and let

events play out naturally.

Of course, one easy way to fix all of this
is to simply remove the ability to reload

a previous save file.

In Darkest Dungeon, the game is always saving
over the top of your file, making it near

impossible to rewind your mistakes.

Developer Redhook Studios did this for two
reasons.

For one, they wanted players to have to live
with bad decisions, and truly awful dice rolls.

This is a game where rotten things happen,
and you’ve got to deal with them.

And also because they wanted players to really
struggle over whether they should take certain

risks - knowing that they can’t just restore
a previous save game if things don’t go

their way.

In a 2016 GDC talk, designer Tyler Sigman
says

TYLER SIGMAN: “Permanent consequences were what we were after.

We want you to, at all moments, be like, ‘should
I go a little further and get a little more treasure.

Do I think I can make to the end of this quest
even though these two characters are afflicted

and this one is almost dead?’

And to do that you know we needed this terrible
save system that is just really really mean”.

Other games do this too, like survive ‘em
up The Long Dark, which automatically saves

over your game the moment something bad happens
- like getting attacked by wolves or hurting

yourself - so you’re forced to keep playing
from that most dramatic point.

And ultimately, this is pretty common in console
games, where saving your progress isn’t

so easy to do and you must rely on actual
save points or checkpoints.

This doesn’t mean you can’t let players
easily save their game when they need to take

a break, though.

In Dark Souls you can only permanently save
your progress at bonfires - but you can suspend

your game at any point.

This quits the game, and lets you continue
from that point next time you play.

But then that save is deleted, meaning you
can’t rewind to that point if you do something silly.

So, there are lots of compelling reasons to
keep players in the game - and not reaching

for the quick load button the second something
goes wrong.

Screwing up causes you to dynamically shift
your goal, and do something different for

a while.

Awesome stories can occur when things go horribly
wrong.

And risky play is far more meaningful if you
can’t just rewind and try again.

But it can’t be up to the player to enforce
this pure way of playing.

I’ve quoted Civ 4 man Soren Johnson before,
who says “given the opportunity, players

will optimise the fun out of a game”.

So if designers really want to keep players
in the experience, they’ve either got to

lock off easy save scumming, make setbacks
so tolerable that they’ll want to keep going,

remove rewards for perfect play, or make failure
as fun as success.

Only then will players “let things play
out.

And be surprised by what happens next”.

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