What Is a System? And How Did They Save Zelda?

the term systemic game is something that seems to be getting thrown around more and more as time goes on people don't like them anymore apparently they do again and even zelda's getting in on the action again and well i've got a bit of a confession to make about these kinds of games for all the talk of games that are obstinately about systems for the longest time i wasn't really sure what exactly made a game systemic this was a deep and well-kept personal shame for ages until i figured out that no one else really knows either one google for systemic games doesn't turn up any results for things you can actually play but a bunch of designers and writers as well as a weird youtube guy trying to explain to you how a systemic game gets made it's a really hard topic to concisely explain because system is such an abstract terrible term it basically just means a bunch of things working together not to mention the fact that all games already have systems in them and yet systemic games like deus ex and mgs5 definitely have a unique vibe that makes them feel different to play without really being able to articulate what makes a game systemic it's even harder to explain the strengths and weaknesses of this particular development style so that's what i've spent the last few weeks trying to do to develop a theory of systemic games that's easy to understand and allows me to talk about what makes systemic games better or worse in certain areas but crucially doesn't require me to spend 10 minutes trying to define the word system because that sounds really boring enter the legend of zelda which i think is a great framing device for concisely showing the differences between systemic and what i'm calling directed styles of design did you know that the legend of zelda was originally inspired by shigeru miyamoto's adventures in the woods as a kid he used to spend hours adventuring into caves finding cool wildlife and generally making his own fun so when he pitched the legend of zelda his intent was to translate his childhood fun into video game form which makes it a little bit weird that the vast majority of zelda games are kind of bad doing just that from the original legend of zelda all the way up to skyward sword zelda games had a gradual but clear trajectory away from exploring an unknown wilderness armed only with your wits and towards a series of cinematic tightly segregated and bottlenecked theme parks don't get me wrong i'm a big fan of most zelda games and they excel at tight dungeon designs brilliant audio visual moments and occasionally great stories but they're not exactly games about exploration adventure and discovery are they it wasn't until nintendo set things back to zero with the legend of zelda breath of the wild the miyamoto's thirty plus gyro vision was finally realized botw is all about freedom and player experimentation it's got a truly open world where you can head to the final boss straight away a bunch of clever problems for you to solve that rely not on figuring out arbitrary puzzle mechanics but your understanding of the way the world works and the ruins of hyrule are able to generate spontaneous stories seemingly at random by combining various rulesets together like this perilous climb up a tower whilst under guardian fire explosive chain reaction assassinations and of course self-inflicted electrical deaths breath of the wild isn't the only zelda game to have fire mechanics weapon degradation or terrain destruction but what sets it apart is how these mechanics interact and coexist with the player as part of a living systemic ecosystem take wind for example in skyward sword wind comes from the gust bellows and is used to do two things spin these windmills and blow away dust it doesn't meaningfully interact with the world in any other way and you can really only use this item when the game tells you to but in breath of the wild wind affects and is affected by the entire world it blows light objects around and is blocked by dense objects as shown in rin oya's shrine wind can also be generated by the weather system and by you with deku leaves or by fire which creates an updraft capable of lifting link into the air and don't even get me started on the fact that every object in the game has its own mass and density which allows for stuff like these weird balloon forts in master mode my point is all these mechanics rather than being separated and highly controlled all work together and interact organically to create a world that feels natural and responds in predictable consistent ways to your actions in a systemic game the player is just one portion of a dynamic reactive world that can theoretically exist all on its own for example each sim in the very creatively named the sims will live a complete virtual life get a job have kids and get trapped in a ladles pool and die completely on their own the player just gets to interact with them rather than being the star of the show and in sid meier's even more creatively named civilization the ai civilizations will go to war sign trade agreements and grow even without the player's input the key difference between systemic games and directed games such as walking sims or cinematic action blockbusters is that directed design produces games that are much more rigid in nature in order to give the player much more specific experiences where the mechanics are kept tightly under control this is where the real strength of systemic games lies rather than being funneled through a linear restrictive experience where you have to engage with the game in a particular way players get told freedom if it's possible within the game's system of rules and interactions you're basically free to do whatever you want this cultivates a much more experimental improvisational relationship with the game where the narrative isn't communicated to the player by the developer but instead the player gets to collaboratively create it for themselves the challenges players face in systemic games can also be sourced from the ecosystem of mechanics an awk leader that killed you might reappear at the worst possible time in shadow of mordor a wildfire might break out in far cry 2 or weird terrain generation in a survival game might provide an interesting barrier to exploration whatever the cause the player gets to feel like their experience is unique and not being forced upon them by a second party we can see this in immersive sims like dishonored where you can progress through the levels by playing through them in a variety of ways and regardless of which way you pick you'll end up telling your own unique story you could go full aggro and carve a bloody sweat through kanaka you could play with the stealth systems and clever ways of incapacitating enemies nonviolently to become a sneaky ghost or you could just kill bad guys in dumb hilarious ways it's up to you the game's actual objectives are just ways of pushing you into interesting situations that allow you to develop and test your systemic knowledge these electrified gates you need to bypass in kieran gindosh's pad will obliterate anything they're not attuned to so to get past them you'll need to short them out with an object reprogram them or find another way around through enemy infested territory all of which will lead to some cool encounters unlockable skills also add new possibilities and complications to your storytelling that let you push the game to its limits and feel like a genius for pulling crazy stuff off my personal favorite interaction is combining emily's ability to summon a doppelganger and another spell that links enemies together allowing you to safely dispatch entire groups by killing the doppelganger from safety and letting the effect get chained to everyone else because your clones technically count as killable human identities that doppelganger takedown wasn't even intended by the designers it's just a natural extrapolation of dishonored systems and a true emergent solution to the age-old question of what's the best way to cheese the [ __ ] out of this game moments like this are only possible when the systems in the game act in a way that's if not realistic then consistent in order to become a part of the complex web of systems at work and say hitman the rules of the system have to be clear enemies will always interact in the same way when they catch you trespassing hemetic poison always forces enemies to find somewhere to throw up and unconscious bodies like this lady i knocked out with a rake will always call civilians to go tell a guard npc who will then raise the alarm and eventually get me killed if the systems are inconsistent like in the case of immortal essential npcs and some of the newer bethesda games then the player's understanding of the game is compromised and it's much more difficult for them to get invested in the stories the game generates and makes creating their own emerging solutions and stories harder as well unfortunately the trick to making a great systemic game is a bit more complex than just tying all the systems together in a logical internally consistent way the greatest strength of systemic games namely their ability to create emergent stories and problems can also be their greatest weakness sometimes a systemic game with every part working correctly can still end up making boring frustrating or outright broken experiences during the development of the fantastic noita the developers who previously worked on such great games as the swapper crown physics deluxe and babrozyu ran into this exact issue noita for those who don't know is an early access roguelike that takes inspiration from that falling sand game everyone used to play in it classes when they were supposed to be learning how to use excel there's liquids that flow around and all have different densities explosives a bunch of different materials all with different effects like brittle ice and conductive metal the works just like in its inspiration neuter's world is governed by a set of systemic interactions oil can be ignited explosions destroy terrain acid melts through stuff you get the picture with all the effects in the entire game world going off at once not only did noita eat up ungodly amounts of processing power but also the systemic elements would just obliterate themselves and each level long before the player arrived as we can see in this early prototype so the devs decided not to simulate the whole world at once but to generate fresh terrain as the player explored and cleverly unload areas the player was far away from this means that the player gets to see and interact with all the world's emerging scenarios at their maximum chaos levels and is forced to deal with all the literal fallout the systemic nonsense creates rather than just wandering around in the aftermath being an early access game neuter still has some other kinks to work out not those kind of kinks you perv one issue that's still in the game as of writing is with these tunneling wormy boys who have a nasty habit of munching their way into between level shops pissing off the guardian shop skeleton and ending my run both the levels destroying themselves and the worm sabotage are natural consequences of neutered systems interacting and are certainly novel the first time around but they're not very much fun and so it's a real challenge for designers of systemic games to add take away and tweak things without restricting the player's sense of self-expression or compromising that systemic ecosystem derek you creator of the grand daddy of systemic roguelike spelunky has an interesting take on this he says in his book it's easy to add more and more things to a randomized game and rely on what i think of as the free value the randomization offers but to make it more than a glorified slot machine requires putting together a collection of systems and rules that is worth understanding behind a world that feels interconnected rather than simply hurling the player into a chaotic maelstrom of chance mechanical interactions spelunky's rules are fine-tuned to allow for the creation of specific kinds of stories there can be funny ones like how a single attack can piss off every short keeper in the universe at once there can be satisfying ones where you set up an ambush by manipulating arrow traps to kill enemies and there can be tense ones like when you're navigating down the ice caves as ufos destroy while little safe terrain exists these stories are all generated by nothing more than spelunky's rules in action arrow traps are activated by anything the shopkeepers have a hair trigger and ufos move towards the spelunka only firing when they're directly above him and yet there's that little tiny touch of directorial intent in there for example spiders will always drop straight down making them a natural candidate for some sneaky arrow trap action derek used influences very much hands off but it's crucial for ensuring that spelunky remains fun and never gets frustrating derek hugh also goes on to explain how simply by tweaking the enemy's spawn rates individual levels can be made to feel very different from each other contributing to a universal narrative for each run the further you explore into the jungle for example the higher proportion of enemies will spawn as man traps which have a habit of devouring everything else leading to really tense engagements where you've got to sacrifice less dangerous creatures to the carnivorous plants in order to slip by a far cry from the earlier levels filled with monkeys which spawn earlier on who are much more of a funny often suicidal nuisance other systemic games can do this too in rim world raiders grow in strength proportionately to the combined material wealth of your entire colony meaning that they're a constant threat and even when you get lucky that wealth won't last forever or in total war games where the inherent balance of power between factions creates predictable game states that end up giving each empire a lot of character the high elves will nearly always confederate under tyrion the skaven always have incredibly unstable empires constantly on the verge of collapse because their economic and defensive buildings suck and everyone likes to bully scar snake the goblin because he has the weakest star in the game these tweaks are ultimately little more than statistical changes but each one helps to give its respective system its own unique feel from monkeys to worms to wind to whatever the hell is going on here it's clear to see the systemic games are different not because they're special or contain something other games don't but because of their difference in perspective they embrace the emergent and simulationy properties of the digital medium to create experiences that let the player get immersed into reactive dynamic worlds that can tell stories with minimal amounts of direct authorship they can be used as a springboard to let players have adventures explore mechanics and make their own fun by giving them the tools they need to gradually understand how to manipulate the world without ever truly putting them in the spotlight it's easy to see why a lot of people think systemic design is the future that all games should start taking cues from breath of the wild or dishonored or spelunky to create reactive worlds that contain almost limitless potential experiences but i'm not convinced systemic games are great and we've barely scratched the surface of what we're capable of making with this approach but as i've hopefully shown here systemic games do have limits and there are things that other more directorial styles of game design do better by using systems in different ways take the experience of playing highly linear narrative games like near auto tomato or hellblade senua's scarface these games tell stories in a way that will be impossible to do in any other medium by giving us a physical empathetic link to the characters tightly controlling what we can and can't do and ensuring we see things in the right order for everything to make sense the big emotional moments and incredible set pieces director games have to offer only work because players don't have the freedom to skip to the end or experience the story in a different order these games use systems which are at best opaque and inaccessible and at worst directly misleading but ultimately that doesn't make them worse just different breath of the wild might be able to recreate the childlike feeling of going on a wilderness adventure but it will never match ocarina of time's ability to tell a coming-of-age story or even skyward sword surprisingly amazing boss fights and that's okay whilst figuring out what systemic games are all about is pretty tricky the most important lesson to take away is to broaden our perspective and see that systemic games are just one element in the massive gaming ecosystem and by understanding them we can enrich every other style of game just like how a systemic approach revitalized zelda and how a bit of hands-on fiddling turns spelunky into an all-time classic understanding and mixing different styles and approaches is what contributes best to our evolving understanding of the systems involved in game design does this mean that the wand of gamalon probably has a small but significant place in this system unfortunately yes look i mean i don't make the rules sometimes we've just got to deal with it okay oh boy i'm so hungry i could eat an octo rock hello hello and thanks for watching the video if you enjoyed it then please consider liking it subscribing to the channel and telling your friends by writing down the contents of the video on a small scroll rolling it up attaching it to a rat and then setting it free he'll know what to do while you're here you should also check out tgbs a cool channel a bit like mine that focuses on playstation games from yesteryear and devil may cry lots of devil may cry now that's all well and good but i wouldn't be here without my wonderful patrons if you want to support the show check out the link in the comments and in return you'll get cool bonus content and infinite absolution for any and all adblock related sins my top tier patreon supporters also get a shout out and those fine friends are alex deloch assaran elno 94 baxter heal brian letariani calvin han colin hermann chill daniel medjez dirk jan karen beld evie feats a lot ibathon jesse rein jonathan christensen joshua binswanger lee berman lucas slack lunar eagle 1996 mace window 54 manuki max philippov patrick romberg philby the bilby phony homeless pym roger band prospero ray's dad sam myers samuel vanderplatz strategy in ultima yaron miren and ciao thanks for watching thanks for listening to all that yet again and i will see you around bye

Channel: Adam Millard - The Architect of Games

Views: 217,937

Rating: 4.9244537 out of 5

Keywords: Games, Gaming, Video Games, PC Gaming, Videogames, Adam, Adam Millard, Architect, Architect of Games, Aog, Review, Retrospective, Analysis, Critique, Video Essay, Zelda, Skyward Sword, Breath of the Wild, Breath of the wild 2, Ocarina of Time, Miyamoto, Systemic, Systems, Hitman, Hitman 2, Dishonored, Dishonored 2, Noita, Early Access, Rougelike, Spelunky

Id: 9RvbIP4yDvU

Length: 16min 46sec (1006 seconds)

Published: Tue Oct 29 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/thebeardphantom]

This video really annoyed me.

The author starts off by saying that systemic games were disliked and then liked again by the general gaming public, citing two articles as the entirety of backing up that statement.

They then go on to state that no one really knows what a systemic game is, which if taken at face value is a ludicrous statement. Does that include the developers of the games the author is talking about? Does that include other seasoned game developers? Does that also include Mark Brown? The very person who has made several videos on this exact topic and that this video directly pokes fun at? This seems minor but it’s kind of ridiculous to say “no one knows what a systemic game means” and then go on to say not only things I already know, but stuff I’ve heard in other YouTube videos. Typically explaining what systemic game design is takes under a minute. Why is this video 16 minutes long?

The authors citation for no one knowing what a systemic game is: If you google “systemic games” you don’t get a list of games that are systemic. What? I really hope more research went into this point than what the author insinuated. Because this point should really be backed up by instances where someone explained it poorly or incorrectly. Speaking of which...

By the end of this video I was convinced that the author doesn’t know what systemic game design is. One of the ending points made is that Breath of the Wild will never compare to Ocarina of Time in terms of storytelling because of being able to go to the final boss immediately in BOTW. Except BOTW’s narrative design has nothing to do with systemic gameplay or design. The author talks about openness, player choice, and freedom so much that I think they are confusing systemic design with those concepts.

Let’s say BOTW had a completely linear main story. You have to go to specific points on the map and do specific missions in a set order. That wouldn’t affect it being a systemic or open world game. This is how other systemic games like Hitman or Deus Ex work. That’s how most open world games work, like GTA, Horizon Zero Dawn, and Watchdogs 2. BOTW 2 could have a completely linear main story to have (arguably) the best of both worlds. BOTW’s story doesn’t hold up to other LoZ games because it went with an entirely nonlinear story progression track. Not because it’s a heavily systemic game.

So in the end it’s a 16 minute video of someone claiming that no one knows what systemic games are, which is false, and they are here to clear everything up, which they don’t, and in the end leave the viewer with incorrect conclusions.

[u/camycamera]

Oh wow, in the video he mentioned a game called Noita. I have never heard of Noita until now. Because yes I did play that physics-simulator game in high school, and I had no clue I wanted a game like that. Reminds me of Liero a bit too.

It's funny too since I have been playing Baba Is You which is also made by these same guys. Excited.