Gamer Sense and Developer Shorthand
My Gamer sense is tingling!
So, you’ve just fought your way through hoards of powerful enemies. You may have wasted a lot of supplies, but you’ve made good headway into this dungeon. You open the next door, only to find an empty room, with naught but a save point and two gigantic doors. Oh lord; even though this may be your first time playing this game, you know what’s behind those doors. Yup, it’s going to be a boss fight.
We’ve all run into situations like these in games before and use them to our advantage. Whenever you see a waterfall, you know to check behind it. When you hear a sudden shift in the mood of the music, you know shiz is about to get real. When you beat the final boss, you brace yourself for even more because you know this is only his first form. This may be the first time we’ve played a particular game, but we know what’s coming. I dub this the gamer sense. It’s that realization, using nothing more than context clues provided by developers in countless other games, to predict what’s going to happen next in this one.
Developers use these clichés as a sort of shorthand to convey messages to gamers. When we see something shiny, the developer is trying to tell us that we’re going to need it. The best course of action, obviously, is to pick it up. Through frequent encounters with this shorthand, developers and gamers develop a language that can quickly convey information, without the need to resort to lengthy exposition to explain things. Understanding this language gives an edge to gamers versus those who don’t play as many games.
While it’s definitely true that more often than not that this is really just unoriginality on the part of the developers , we see this in all sorts of entertainment. We know right away what we’re getting into when we watch a romantic comedy. We go in expecting the couple to engage in awkward flirting, wacky misunderstandings, and to finally seal the deal with a kiss in the heartwarming finale. These cliches are what establishes a genre. RPGs, fighting games, platformers, etc. each have their own special little tropes as well, ones I’m sure that are familiar to you. Learning to read the distinctions between each of these games own special tropes can lead to increased understanding of the games you play.
-Astro
Tags: Astro, developer, Game discussion, Gamer sense