By Force or Design?

I got a call from my brother the other day. He said he'd recently spent alot of time playing the Burnout Paradise demo. He said, "Finn, did you know you can't restart races." I replied that I was aware of the fact. For those who don't know, Burnout Paradise is a free-roaming driving game by Criterion. Players can drive anywhere in paradise city and do as they please. The racing structure is found at intersections, where players can initiate various racing events. Speaking on the phone with my brother, he explained that once you begin a race, you can only restart it by returning to the starting-line intersection. It should also be pointed out that players are not locked into any event that they begin. If players see something that interests them while racing, they are free to just drive away from the event and consequently drop-out, albeit willingly.

My brother took issue with this, what he called, "restriction." He asked me, "Is it ok for a game to force you to do something? Is it right to force players to play a certain way." He had a valid point. Burnout Paradise has a very specific and intentional design. Every aspect (or not) of the game is intended to support the overall open-world design. Criterion really wants players to play Burnout Paradise in a certain way. But I mean this is a good way; I think the notion is admirable, in fact. You see, Burnout Paradise is not a traditional racing game, its a sandbox game. What Criterion is really doing is asking players to let go of their expectations. You are not playing Need for Speed, you're not playing Project Gotham, you're not even playing Burnout, at least not in its earlier incarnations. Burnout Paradise is a beast all to its own. Criterion is asking players to accept a new type of game before even picking up the controller. They're asking you to dash your expectations for what a racing game is and play Burnout Paradise for what itself offers.Now, this sandbox type game has actually been done before, in a few ways. Need for Speed: Most Wanted, Midnight Club, and what I think most closely resembles Pardise, Rush 2. But Burnout Paradise arrives with a new generation of consoles and gamers, and more importantly, it really is different from all of the above.

The non-restart system is indicative of the entire game's design. Burnout Paradise has non-linear gameplay. The races themselves are mostly non-linear and the open-world is certainly non-linear. However, by not allowing players to restart a race, Criterion is literally forcing players to play a certain way. Now here is the real quesion: Is it ok to force players to do something just because you want them to play a certain way? Is it ok to restrict their playstyle?
I would argue, yes. This is what we do as game designers. We request players to assume specific playstyles all the time. You want to restart the race? Too fricken' bad. Adapt. Criterion is asking alot of players, and at the same time, they're really not asking much. Burnout Paradise wants you to have an open-mind. If you approach the game with certain expectations, like being able to restart, you will inevitably dislike the game. This is what my brother told me, "It is impossible to enjoy Burnout Paradise immediately, you have to play for at least three hours to finally realize the game's fun."

Ah! There it is! Criterion is saying "We want you to have fun. Trust us. Just give us a couple of hours and you will learn how to have fun within our world." So, is it right to force players to play a certain way? Heck yes. You need to have confidence in the fun in your game. You also need to ease them into your new playstyle, but thats a different matter altogether. Burnout Paradise is all about having fun in the moment. Fun is all around you, just explore a bit and you will find it. You won't be so disappointed about losing a race and not being able to restart because their is more fun to be had right in front of your eyes. In a way the game is even catering to our ADD generation.A final question: Would Burnout Paradise be more fun if it allowed you to restart races? Would the option detract from overall design? I think it would. I can gurantee that if players had the option to restart a race, 99% of the time they would. And then what? And then the game wouldn't be what it is. It would lose its open-world effect, and devolve into something more like a hub-world for a bunch of races. And thats no fun.

Burnout Paradise is innovative. In writing this rather rantesque article, I've come up with a definition of innovative game design. Innovative is asking players to let go of their expectations for what a game is. Innovative is breaking lose from the status-quo to becoming something different, something more than just convention. Innovative is saying, "We're not going to let things like genres decide what our game is going to be. We're not going to give in to give in to a predetermined definition of fun. We know what fun is. We're going to make that fun and give the players something they don't even know they want yet. That is innovative."

Burnout Paradise+Remix=Awesome

Earlier today I was watching this trailer for Burnout Paradise and I immediately noticed something very familiar. The music playing is the same as the intro music from Burnout 2: Point of Impact.


Awesome, no?
The act in itself of booting up Burnout 2 is fun. Because as soon as the Criterian logo hits, BAM, the music starts up and your in the game. Besides the fact that Burnout 2 is amazing in most every respect, that opening music does more to get me hyped than any other game I've played. (Its also possible that this song is featured in Burnout 3 or 4 or one of the other versions, but if so I havent played them enough to hear it.) I get a similar sensation when playing Metroid Prime or Ocarina of Time, the respective music and video introductions set a fantastic mood before the games even begin. Pretty sweet. Are there any games that have a similar effect for you?

Burnout Paradise: Design Boost

Cue overused cool song from Kill Bill

For the first time in the series, Burnout is free-roam. Previously, Burnout has always been about racing around predetermined tracks, like in most racing games. But now, Burnout is breaking out of its shell, with 30 miles of road to explore. However, Paradise is certainly not the first racing game to be free-roaming. Need for Speed: Underground 2 was also free-roaming, as was its sequel Most Wanted, not to mention the completely franchise unrelated Simpsons Hit and Run. There may be more I'm remembering at the moment too. But that's all besides the point. Because this is Burnout, one of the best racing series of the last generation, and extremely popular since its reinvention in Takedown. Burnout is being reinvented once more, and all the while retaining and amping-up the awesomeness from previous iterations.Its just another day for Bob and Bill until a rampant car careening through the air causes massive damage to both vehicles.

Taking Burnout free-roam requires several changes to the series staple. Even so, most everything, in so far as I know, is coming back. This includes traffic checking. As long as its not a bus, players can hit same-way traffic from behind, careening them through the air. I actually didn't expect this to return, considering the new free-roam approach, but I trust Criterion and it will probably work great. Boost still fills in the same way it has since Takedown, by near-missing, driving towards oncoming traffic, jumping, and a bunch of other ways. Pretty much, as long as players are driving they can boost.
Bringing a racing game into an open world isn't as simple as making an endless, branching, track. Besides, that's not Criterion's style. Paradise is a fully-realized world filled with roads and jumps and cars and anything else you'd find in a city. There a big difference between a free-roaming world and a linear track. And that difference is the freedom of movement. In most racing games, past Burnouts included, cars drive forward, and stay that way. There is no need to drastically shift direction or reverse. Paradise takes this into account with the introduction of an E-Brake. Players are now able to pull the E-Brake to switch direction with a quick spinning slide. This may seem like a small addition, but in fact it is beyond necessary. The world in Paradise has been designed from all angles. As opposed to linear tracks, now players will need to and want to shift direction. And therefore it is necessary to give them the ability to do so at any given moment: hence the E-Brake. Simple, yet clever in that Criterion adapted to the new format by designing driving in cooperation the free-roaming aspect. Another cool feature of the E-Brake slide is a sort of mini-game called Power Parking. Gamespot elaborates:

another recent addition to the series is a little side game called power parking, which sounds like it will pop up any time you find two cars parked close together on the side of the road. The idea is that you need to whip your car around using the E-brake and slide right into the parking space between the two cars.

Sounds pretty sweet to me. Already, Criterion seems to be packing Burnout Paradise with a ton of stuff to do, and all of it in a seamless fashion. Crash has been changed a bit too. Unless the crash is serious, your car will not cut into aftertouch, but will instead keep on going, retaining the famage from the collision. Considering the number of crashes players are bound to start in Paradise, this seems to me very wise. Triggering dramatic crash slow effects and camera angles ever 10 seconds would break up the action too much. Only when the car is guaranteed to be totaled will the dramatic crash effects kick in.Burnout Paradise looks really, really fun. In a way, Criterion is bringing emergent gameplay into the racing world. With little seamless minigames to play like the Power Park, instant online play, individual road records, and awesome driving craziness quite simply makes for a boat load of fun.

Burnout Paradise E3 2007 Trailer

Burnout Paradise is coming to 360 and PS3 later this year. The fifth entry in the series is developed by Criterion, per usual, and published by EA. Burnout 2 is one of my favorite games of all time, not to mention my favorite racing game, so it is with much eagerness that I await Paradise. The whole point of this is, a new trailer came out today and you ahve to see it. You really have no choice. Criterion has infused Burnout with alot of what made Rush 2 so good, and that is stunts.



GameTrailers

Update: Haha! I solved it. You can adjust the height and width of the movie manually. I divided the numbers by 5 and then subtracted that number from the original.

Burnout 2-Time Trials

I'm a huge fan of Burnout 2: Point of Impact. I bought the game years ago for my Gamecube and haven't stopped playing since. While the series didn't become too popular until the release of Burnouts 3 and 4 (great games in their own right), Point of Impact is still a fantastic racing game, and, actually, my favorite racing game of all time. For those who don't know, the Burnout franchise is developed by Criterion. The first two games in the series were published by Activision, the latter two, and the upcoming Burnout 5, were/are being published by EA, who bought out Criterion a couple of years ago.

The Super Car is King.

Back to the Burnout 2. There is so much to like about this game, so may great things. But lately I've been playing a lot of the Time Trial mode. Time Trial is in almost every racing game you can find, from San Francisco Rush to Mario Kart. The mode challenges players with racing against the clock and subsequently themselves. No other opponent racers are present on the track, just the player. As a lap of the track is completed, a ghost car replay runs in real-time, beginning the same time that you cross the checkpoint line. Players then race against an ethereal version of themselves, which is an exact recording of that player's best lap. Burnout 2 keeps track of three time statistics while racing, Record Time, Best Time, and Current Time. Record Time is the fastest time on the memory card. Best is the best time of that time trial session. And current is the second-by-second timing of the current lap. What I've found in playing time trial mode is a hierchial series of challenges.

First, players must beat the record time. Then, players must top that time. This usually requires boosting almost constantly while also running a perfect lap, or making it to the finish without crashing. Whats interesting is that this also requires players to be boosting as they cross the finish, something not possible during the first lap of the session. Once players have bested their record time by running a perfect lap, the real challenge begins. What unfolds is a series of increasingly difficult time's to beat. Players must not only race a perfect lap, but they soon realize that they have to race better than ever before as well. This means boosting more often, drifting better, and not running into walls. It's pretty amazing, and funny, to watch your ghost- self racing right in front of you. You find yourself saying things like, "What the heck! How is he going so fast?" Or, "Man, this guys good." Only to realize its yourself you speak of. Gotta love the self-animosity. But really, it effectively challanges players. At leat I think, "Hey, I can do better than that."The point of all this is the that instead of racing unpredictable AI, or even other human opponents, players create their own challenge. Each time trial session becomes more and more difficult as players vie to beat their own best performance. It's really fun to continually race yourself, always knowing two things: A, your doing better than you did before, your skill has improved. Or B, your doing worse than you did before, try harder. Time Trial mode is unique to the racing genre. No other genre allows players to challenge their own ability. Take advantage of it, if you haven't. Time Trials may be more fun than you think.

Qualify
Do you ever play time trial mode in any racing game?
-Have you noticed anything else that you like?
Could you see a sort of time trial mode being existant in another genre?
-How about RTS or FPS? How would a self-challenging system work for these genres?