The Negative Psychology of No

[Erwin_Br]

Jack Allin of Adventure Gamers has published an article titled "The Negative Psychology of No". Allin describes his belief that adventure games often punish their players too much by dismissing, without a proper explanation, perfectly able solutions that just don't happen to be the solution the developer had in mind.

"That won't work." "I can't do that." "No need to go down there." We've all heard these kinds of rejection lines so often that we take them for granted, blissfully unaware of the life-sucking erosion they inflict on our enthusiasm over time.  Or perhaps not so blissfully.  Not anymore.  The adventure genre is a niche for a reason, and I believe this constant negativity is a big reason why.

Read the whole article on Adventure Gamers.

[ad7venture]

I think one solution he didn't mention is for nothing to happen.  The widget goes back into the inventory.  Some of it is just poor design.  Why is it a hotspot at all?  Doors are the ones I hate, with the "I can't go there" remark.  Of course, we all get a little lazy as developers with our treatment of wrong solutions because games are so much work, but it does add a lot to the game if comments are individual and relate.  Multiple solutions are a can of worms as far as I'm concerned.  The easier solution will invariably be chosen so it basically makes puzzles easier, but at the cost of a lot more programming and art work.  It's one of those, "why can't these be simulations" remarks.  It's mainly because these aren't simulations.  Games like The Sims have over a million lines of code.  It is fairly easy to add physics puzzles with multiple solutions, since the code is already written in most engines.

[Erwin_Br]

Definitely agree with the door comment. If you don't want the player to go somewhere, don't make it look as if there is something there. E.g. don't create the hotspot, or don't create the door.

Sometimes it happens you have created an inventory object, unintentionally, that could be used for other purposes as well. It's always a good thing to try to avoid that, for example by avoiding objects that are too powerful (gun) or too generic (screwdriver). However, if you do stumble on it, I'm not against leveraging multiple solutions. It's either that, or removing the object altogether. It's just not good to dismiss a solution that makes sense.

[ad7venture]

I'm not in favor of generic objects for that reason.  I guess I would agree if they are used, but it leads to the too easy puzzle syndrome.  It doesn't matter if there was some nifty, combined object solution because the screwdriver will be the first thing that comes to mind.