The Hidden Purpose of Hub Worlds

hub worlds and video games have always been a bit of a mystery to me I love classic hubs like Mass Effect's the Normandy Hyrule Field and blood bombs yharnam as much the next guy but for the longest time I couldn't really figure out why I mean it's not like they have any particularly cool challenges in No More good story moments and wouldn't it just be quicker and cheaper for developers to just make them into a menu and that way players could get to the content they actually want to play much quicker right it wasn't until later on that I realized I was being a massive big dumb idiot Hubbs despite their often unassuming nature do some very important work behind the scenes and even though we don't realize it we rely on them to do a lot of the heavy lifting when it comes to helping us understand and interpret games correctly to help demonstrate how they do exactly that let's take a look at one of the best hubs ever the Firelink shrine from our good friend Dark Souls I'm gonna be circling back around to it between points because you know that way it's like the hub of the video huh huh No well I'm gonna do anywhere up yours the most obvious job of the hub world is probably to be a kind of training area a low-stakes playground for you to practice and muck around in before having that knowledge tested later on Princess Peach's castle in Super Mario 64 is grated this specifically in teaching players the ins and outs of 3d movement which at the time was a terrifying new frontier how terrifying exactly Sonic's face in Sonic Adventure levels of terrifying the castle exteriors most obvious path forwards forces you to learn how to orient yourself relative to the camera as you swing around here to the left which helpfully also shows you the moat and this lake which are perfect spots for practicing swimming inside the castle is much the same story these coins appeared teach you about ledges and jumping from sloped surfaces and the staircase that shows you these two locked doors also curves round to show you the entrance to the first level bobomb battlefield and points you where you need to be going other Mario hubs pull this off too by placing the entrances to harder world behind trickier platforming challenges Delfino plazas harder to reach areas like pianta village a hidden behind obstacles that are relatively easy to conquer like this big rocket jump but served to introduce platforming concepts you'll need later such as in the approach to the final boss fight of course the Firelink shrine does this too and in a uniquely darksouls way once the tutorial has taught you the controls filing picks up the much more difficult snack of teaching you how the game actually works starting by introducing you to the interconnected world of Lordran the entire shrine is built on these curving spiral patterns will constantly be looping back to old areas even after leaving and getting some way into the game Dark Souls loves bringing you unexpectedly back home after defeating the gargoyles or the Capra demon the obvious path forwards actually brings you right back to Firelink which just so happens to be a very convenient starting location for an adventure into blight town all the deaths which is where you need to go next in order to fight quelaag these constant trips back to the hub firmly establishes not just violent status as a central area but also the place you should always return to after beating a major boss there's also the skeleton graveyard that serves as the eventual entrance to the catacombs now Koen beginner advice for Dark Souls is the people shouldn't fight the skeletons and well that's basically true but that undercuts one of the most important lessons Firelink has to teach you and that is to fight smart instead of hard these skinny boys will wreck or start a character but some careful exploration will net you a weapon that's much more effective against them the Morningstar in exploring the graveyard new players will also learn that optional harder challenges connect cool rewards like this badass right-hander but also that there's usually more than one route forwards namely the path to the undead burg that hopefully gets shown whenever you respawn after getting chopped into bids by skeletons in games where the player has a lot of freedom like in Dark Souls hubs are a blessing for designers there aren't very many other places you know a player will repeatedly return to making hubs the ideal spot to give them a helping hand when and where they need it most not only a hub Wells a very clever way of introducing players to the mechanical concepts they need to know hubs can also be used to communicate the themes and story of a game in a passive nonverbal way in World of Warcraft Wrath of the Lich King dalla Ram was the main hub city of the new continent Northrend it's this flying wizard town that both the Alliance and horde had to squeeze into together Dalaran fields small and cramped at its heyday heroes of both factions filled the streets and had to reluctantly share the same shops trainers and quest givers there was this sense that you and your adventuring buddies were having to make do turning a neutral mostly civilian Enclave into the beachhead in the fight against Arthas and of the Alliance and horde work so screwed they were having to work together this one d'harans presence was a relatively small part of northrend but it added so much to the flavor and feel of the expansion that it became this beloved part of the game so much so the blizzard brought it back a few years later down the line in Legion where the Alliance and horde had to team up again under similar circumstances if a game's regular level zones or quests I like the verses of a song then a hub will be the chorus it's the repeated central theme of the world old story and a way of tying everything together on a conceptual level because they're a constant feature of the game they guess revisited over and over again hubs can cement themes in the mind of a player through sheer repetition in deep rock galactic a co-op space mining game the hub world is this great low-budget corporate housing where you could hang out with your fellow tours between missions oh by the way the player characters the dwarves I don't know why when you combine their presence of a bar your boss balki and your ear to stop kickin barrels around and the blatant disregard the game has for your lives you're left with a hub that gives this awesome slacker movie vibe with you and your friends trying to get by under the thumb of the man and inject some fun into otherwise at least or work conditions if deep broken opted for a much more generic theme the hub world will be little more than a glorified and particularly konkey menu but by embracing and ironic late-stage capitalist aesthetic where your bosses will even charge you for party hats and care more about the expensive equipment than your lives the game engenders this weird sense of camaraderie in spite of the odds for example a tradition my team developed was a pre mission drink followed by throwing our mouse into the drill in order to piss off our supervisor they cost money and basically didn't help us at all but thanks to some stellar hub design it was a highlight of my time with the game and set the stage for many a truck and death the violin shrine of course also execute on this concept fantastically it's one of the few safe-ish areas in the game and rather than being this grand Bastion against the darkness Firelink feels like the last tiny speck of light and hope fighting against the darkness on all sides after beating a major boss you inevitably have to return to the shrine and it's in this return that you're given a chance to self reflect and see how far you've come and that's what Dark Souls is about really try and think over seemingly insurmountable odds Dark Souls loves looping you back to our areas and specifically through fire link because it's a way of physically demonstrate to your increased mastery remember when those dumb skeletons kicked your ass at the beginning of the game well now you get to come back and utterly destroy them on your way to the two of giants as a way of demonstrating your newfound power isn't that neato in addition to being a way to introduce people to playing a game hubs can also be a really clever way of keeping people playing and stopping them getting bored to illustrate this point I'd like to direct you to Exhibit A doom 2016 and Exhibit B Wolfenstein the new order at first glance they might appear to be very similar games they're both throwback II high-octane shooters they're about the same length they're published by the same company and they've both got similar rave reviews so why is it then that of all the people who've played these two games almost twice as many have actually finished Wolfenstein the answer surprisingly can be found in the presence of a hub world each mission in Wolfenstein be on the first few ends with a trip back to the cries out circle we are made to do some odd jumps for the characters chats people a bit or go exploring in the sewers for some low stakes slower paced gameplay the Christ house circle is this safe area a place where you don't have to constantly scan the environment for loot ammo and angry Germans giving you an opportunity for a well-deserved break one of the problems all media faces is the tendency for human brains to attenuate which is a fancy word meaning get used to if you subject a brain to the same stimulus over and over again you're gonna need to continually ramp up the intensity to stop people getting bored this is dooms major stumbling block there are no breaks it's nonstop action all the time and bone that's a lot of fun there's only so much doom can do to keep you engaged and eventually he'll start to run house theme for most people this is around the first trip to hell it's thought that the game isn't fun anymore it just stops feeling new and exciting around the halfway mark Wolfenstein however smartly sites that's this problem by using hubs as a seamless connection between levels keeping you engaged but thinking about the game in a different way by spending some time doing odd jobs for sent or having a very nice chat with Anya you give the part of your brain responsible for FPS gameplay a bit of a well-deserved break fire link also fills this rope really well between its eventual collection of shopkeeper NPCs the law vessel and it's relatively central location the shrine quickly becomes this nexus you'll spend a little bit of time in after each Big Boss providing a natural start and end point to play sessions as well as a way of thematically separating the various areas of Lordran while in fire link you're thinking about how you're gonna level up what supplies you'll need and which areas you've yet to visit and not about the deadly terrifying skeletons by giving you the time and space you need to chill our and calm down in a hub world the mystery and terror of dark souls as baddies never becomes routine and you always want to keep playing hubs can train players setting up their expectations for what lies ahead their greater summing up the themes of a game plus they provide crucial downtime and a change of pace to keep engagement high but these things more or less can basically be done by other game mechanics so why are hubs so important what's the one thing only they can do well that only becomes apparent when we change them in most games an individual level is pretty fire-and-forget you go there beat the challenge and then move on but hub worlds are a constant fixture and by changing how a player perceives them developers can change the entire feel of a game late in Deus Ex mankind divided story a huge riot breaks out for very spoilery reasons and suddenly the city goes from a safe if unwelcoming and grimy central location to one of the most dangerous Maps in the game crawling with cops and security robots that can down you in a matter of seconds turning even basic level traversal into a stealth gauntlet and really hammering home the new hostile nature of the game another great example is blowing up the Normandy at the start of Mass Effect 2 which comes totally out of left field even if you do get it back a few hours later the intro is a symbolic act destroying and rebuilding the old hub to reflect the game shift into a new darker tone and its massive combat overhaul a changing hub can also reflect a change in how the player feels when a game's story recontextualizing old information and opinions Nier automata starts it's androids versus a be a robot story in a beautiful overgrown City but as the story becomes darker more complex and morally gray the city itself becomes more and more ruined filled with craters and the corpses of giant battle BOTS as well as other things that I er I won't spoil a hub world is a way to connect different levels and areas sure but it's also a way to connect a player to the game itself a hub is our window into the game a lens that focuses and changes how we perceive it your home based nur survival game like ocean not included is your central frame of reference for the entire world view created going from a tiny shelter in a hostile world to a massive fortress growing in tandem with your increased mastery of the world and your changing relationship with the game it was upon coming to this conclusion that I realized that hop well to just one manifestation of a key idea of video games that of a conceptual foundation a jumping-off point that allows you to understand and engage with the more abstract and complex ideas again presents a games hub or foundation needn't be a physical space they could just be an idea that serves as your connection to the game Final Fantasy 15 ragtag band of boys or a hub onto themselves with the entire game removing around the gangs relationships and character development X comms underground base and spaceship hubs help your decisions feel more important as well as allow you to get rid of the soldiers you'll be sending it to die between the big imposing world map that it will snippets of radio chatter and the snapshots of your soldiers life outside the battlefield ex-cons hubs give you the sense of brutal agency the linear series of missions never could okay okay I'm kind of stretching the definition of hubs here you call me but let's go back to that original question what are hubs actually for I think now we can confidently say that they're a way of bringing together and connecting parts of a game the player included that would otherwise struggle to organically fit together in a way that makes sense if you want a chemistry simile and let's be honest who doesn't they're kind of like an emulsifier hubs ease the transition between different gameplay and narrative ideas and form a single central place the showcases everything they gave is about and that leads us right onto Dark Souls and the filing shrine Dark Souls is a game that is outwardly hostile to the player and uncompromisingly difficult but beneath that is a game that's fundamentally about hope about the drive to surpass what you thought were your limits the finally trine is an area that's constantly growing and expanding with new characters and routes right up until the end each one presenting you with a new challenge to overcome from the graveyard skeletons right up to gwyn lord of cinder Firelink shrine is a knee all parts of microcosm of Dark Souls as a whole and also its beginning and end its your introduction to the world of Lordran and also the way out it's the perfect hub a place to learn a place to understand a place to resent but most importantly a place to connect hello and thank you for watching this video was brought to you in part by support from my supercool patrons some of the names of which you should be able to see on your screen right about now if you'd like to support the channel please consider chipping in a few bucks or if you don't want to spend any dosh do the whole like coin subscribe thing and post the video somewhere you think people will enjoy it as part of the top tier patreon supporter level I give some brilliant people a very special shout out and they are Alex the launch AXIRON oh no 94 Baxter he'll Brian Atari I Calvin Han Daniel metas Dirk Jan Karen bailed feets a lot either olufsen jesse rhine jonathan kirkin s'en joshua binswanger leet - lucas slack lucas Mora lunar eagle 1996 mace window 54 patrick Romberg raised dad samuel van der plants strategy in Ultima and chow and for all you YouTube commenters who served in pronouncing the names wrong you're probably right so if I have been pronouncing your name wrong please send me a message and I will do the best I can to pronounce it properly a future sorry right thank you very much for watching and I will see you around bye

Channel: Adam Millard - The Architect of Games

Views: 479,371

Keywords: Architect, Architect of games, AoG, Adam, Adam Millard, Review, Video Essay, Analysis, Critique, Video Games, Gaming, Pc Games, Hubs, Hub worlds, Dark Souls, Mario, Deep Rock Galactic, Deus Ex, Deus Ex Mankind Divided, Firelink Shrine, Bonfire, Best Hub Worlds, best hub levels, hub level

Id: -KUJawKKDdU

Length: 14min 57sec (897 seconds)

Published: Wed Mar 20 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/NotTryingToBeSassy]

This is all pretty commonly-observed stuff. Still a great video, but the sequel is much better:

"The Hidden Purpose of Stairs: -proceeds to talk about elevating your position for 15 minutes to max out ad revenue-"

[u/worll_the_scribe]

great video. I respect hubs more than ever now!

[u/Bropiphany]

Definitely stretched the definition a little like you said, but overall a very good video! You provided some design food-for-thought that I hadn't thought about before. A lot of it was commonly-observed stuff like another commenter said, but vocalizing them was nice. Hubs are definitely an excellent tool for game developers.