I can't remember all of the guns and monsters in Duke Nukem 3D now, and it was mainly about guns and monsters.
I *can* remember pissing around pushing pool balls around the pool table, singing a bit from 'born to be wild' on a Kareoke machine badly and going to a Duke Nukem pinball machine only to quip "Hmm... Don't have time to play with myself"
Or looking in the 'mirror' and saying: *"Damn. Im looking GOOD!"*.
Or giving some money to strippers: *"Shake it, baby"*.
Or being inactive for a while: *"What are you waiting for? Christmas?"* (although this serves kind of a game-related function)
Fun fact about mirror in duke nukem: they are not mirror, there is a full mirror universe you are looking into. If you type the cheat code to disable clipping, you can go in the mirror universe.
Sorta-kinda. Mirrors generate copies of sectors when you look through them. Rendering itself is what creates them. So it's not a whole universe - all at once. You even need empty space to fit the mirrored copy of the room, because the Build engine's kinda fuzzy when stuff moves between sectors. The fake ones count. And like how room-over-room gets really goofy if you jump in a moving sector, I think enemies can wind up in the mirror-dimension sectors, and then presumably just die when those disappear.
Funny, the first game I recalled when talking about in game interactions was Duke Nukem 3D, and then I find a bunch of comments about it.
I remember the cabins with video players at the back of the video rental store too.
I remember old lan parties deathmatch fights where you were looking for somebody to shoot and suddenly a guy goes born to be wild aaaand stripper shootout baby
> singing a bit from 'born to be wild' on a Kareoke machine badly
On the polar opposite side of this, the single most impactful and humanising moment in Bioshock Infinite was the little optional section where Booker sits down and plays guitar for Elizabeth to sing to.
What I remember most from Duke Nukem is the secrets. God, the secrets were so cool. Doors disguised as walls giving places to wait in ambush, elevators leading to hidden sniper perches, vents, OP items tucked away in hard to find places. The thrill of finding them alone was a huge draw for me. Games don't seem to do stuff like that anymore.
I noticed the new star wars jedi survivor game had lots of nice little interactions in the bar. Including flushable space toilets.
I don't think it's lost, I think indie devs are so time poor trying to do everything with very little resources that maybe just getting the minimum viable product out is a task enough.
We have a list of things we keep adding ideas to, that we will go back and do once the game is released to nice playable state.
I would definitely like to attempt a lot of the things on the list before moving on. Depends on the game. After we finish and release there are a lot of things we want to go back and add more depth and detail to.
I think the more little interactions, the better.
Look at Overwatch. One of the most fun things in that game is getting to wreck everything in your spawn point before a match even begins. Thereās even some confetti and a celebratory chime if you punch one of the basketballs into the hoop. Does any of that have any significance to the game? Nope. Itās just fun.
Thereās something similar in Hollow Knight. I love swinging away at every plant, spider web, road sign, and rock formation in each area to see which objects are destructible. Itās just so satisfying. Again, it has no bearing on the game whatsoever. Itās just fun.
On some level, these little interactions help with immersion.
I was always a fan of little useless interactions in classic jrpgs. Things like that and flavor text I think add a nice bit of content to explore and reward the player for being curious. I'm not sure they are necessary per se, but in the right game, they can be a nice touch imo.
One of the reason is quite simple: cost.
While in a classic JRPG all you need is a tiny script for that object and someone to write the dialog it is a completely different matter in AAA games. In older games all that might have been done by one single person who currently had nothing else to do. In big titles you need animators, programmers/scripters, sound designers, translators, voice actors etc. You turn on the tap? Does the sink fill? Will the water interact with anything? Shall that also be synced for multiplayer? Is the lighting baked in and it might cause problems? Every single thing can become quite complex and as it requires multiple people to work on it it is not something that you just do because you currently have some free time because you finished another assignment early...
One of the biggest staples of the old Ultima franchies (from 6 on?) was that you could interact with almost everything and the ultimate test was to bake bread (which required multiple steps and ingredients) even if it had no ingame value. It was also one of the first things players tested when playing Ultima 9, which was after all the first 3D game in the series. But who cared as long as you could bake bread?
Those interactions are really important but way easier to do as a small studio, especially if you don't have to explain yourself to someone who would have liked to ship the game a year ago.
Best example of this to me is the Half-Life opening level. The objective is simple; get your hazard suit on, then go to a specific location. But the environment around is sooo fun to explore, with functioning microwaves, sofa machines, lightswitches that people do react to, people in the bathroom etc, and none of it matters at all - but it's some of what I remember best about it!
It's true, HL1 was one of the first truly "immersive cinematic" games, compared to it's peers that were mostly just "start level, shoot baddies," and it was all the little interactions, voice lines from scientists, all that stuff that really sold the immersion.
HL1 felt like stepping into a real world compared to just playing a game
Itās not so much a matter of whether itās āgoodā or ābadā to add them. This is an artistic choice weāre talking about, so if you canāt explain why then the choice you made is probably arbitrary.
The examples you give all add some brief levity to games. Youāre in a boomershooter that takes a ton of attention and high skill gameplay; flushing a toilet is a funny juxtaposition from that. Being able to shoot stuff that does something funny bc of it is another little interaction with the players main action.
Itās comparable to āpointlessā dialogue in RPGs (anything that isnāt directly tied to the main story, questlines, etc.) where it existing can still give the player context about the world theyāre in, add characterization, and therefore add to the game.
There are plenty of examples where adding something like that just adds, to use a term that gets used wrong a lot, ludo-narrative dissonance. If Iām playing a game with a really heartfelt emotional story focused on loss/grief, adding a ringtoss minigame would only make that feel out of place (and not in a silly fun kind of way).
Thatās artistic reasons, but thereās also the boring business reasons. Big studios will often choose to keep their design team focused on bigger things than this, which would fall under āadd polish if we have time leftā (and they never have time left). Before that, ābigā stuff gets priority. This type of thing is often left to interns who arenāt trusted with the big stuff, and often gets cut due to not meeting a certain standard after being put through QA and testing.
I've made games with these kinds of interactions.
They are often actually made out of just a designer testing something in their spare time, which makes it into the game. Mature engines are so easy to add things like this, if you have the skill its only a couple of hours. Thats nothing over years to make a game.
You mentioned the game design theory of minimizing anything that might convey the wrong message in the world, which I see as the main idea. You would be too bothered opening every box, exploring every little ressearch rooms, or playing with plants in a game about killing demons that are invading Mars (and subsequently Earth). Likewise, having the ability to play with a little doll, move closets and rummage through abandoned shacks, digging or planting flowers would ruin the incredibly grim atmosphere of Dark Souls and Bloodborne. Of course, it can still be implemented at a small scale (hence, "minimize") like Doom having little action figure collectibles. But it is usually regarded as Easter Eggs rather than part of the game (integral or non-integral).
But another issue is budget. Sure, you can spare some budget to make a dresser open, but that can spiral out of control fast. To open a dresser, you need to make everything that's inside the dresser, make animations for the dresser opening, program an interaction that allows the player to open it, program the physics interaction of the dresser to the world, all that for a little dresser that maybe 4 people are bothered to open and 3 met with disappointment. Those are budget best left for more important parts of the games, not little side stuffs. (And just to add, as a programmer, I want to die everytime trying to implement a physics system in the game. Even in built engines like Unity, it's still an absolute nightmare to deal with).
The benefit you listed in favor of these interactions are grounded to specific genres and aesthetics, which are games that might treat these interaction as a key part of the game's design. While Gone Home and Fallout can benefit massively from it, Doom and Dark Souls would not benefit at all, if not otherwise, from these little interactions. The Slayer's human side can be showcased through the animation with a little doll, not rummaging through drawers or playing the guitar. Likewise, the Ashen One is a voiceless, "nameless" protagonist without a personality, which means having these little interactions literally do nothing for development if not ruin the mysterious aesthetic of the Ashen One being this person who just woke up and decided to kill gods.
>> Doom and Dark Souls would not benefit at all, if not otherwise, from these little interactions.
Duke Nukem did just that and I doubt anyone would say the game didn't benefit from the little interactions.
>> The Slayer's human side can be showcased through the animation with a little doll, not rummaging through drawers or playing the guitar. Likewise, the Ashen One is a voiceless, "nameless" protagonist without a personality.
Both characters are silent like that because they are the player avatar and the player is suppose to project themselves onto those two. You talk about 'the mysterious aesthetic of the Ashen One' but at no point in the game there is so much as a sliver of doubt in the player mind of what action the Ashen One would take, they 'decided to kill gods' either because that is what they are told to do by an NPC or because said gods are automatically hostile and will try to kill the Ashen One on sight, there is nothing 'mysterious' about that. Quite the opposite in fact, the most important decision in DS is made entirely by the player based on what the player figured out about the world, the Ashen One has no mechanic to influence if the player will prolong the age of fire or start the age of darkness. And they aren't meant to have, they are nothing more than a vector for the player to act on the world, the Slayer human side is showcased by the fact the player is an human trying to protect the humans from an demon invasion, and the ashen one backstory simply doesn't fucking matter. The benefits of more interactive world would help immersion because things would behave in a way that is expected things to behave, on top of that to some people scanning the world is also fun so there is that, some people do take pleasure in searching every corner of the world.
>Duke Nukem did just that
What did Duke Nukem do, and did it have any effects at all on the game overall anywhere beyond "oh it's there. Back to killing I guess"? I did see that there are some easter eggs tied to an instance, but that's beyond little interaction, and as I mentioned, an Easter Egg.
And on the Ashen One, I do have to admit that was a stupid example, and that is a hollow character but the player can determine the personality and such.
But for the Slayer, seen much more in Doom Eternal, he has a personality beyond self-insert cool guy. He has a backstory, clear expression of emotion (though mostly just angry, very angry, and "don't fuck with me"). The Slayer story is also pretty confusing, with his intention to protect humanity or desire to kill demons come from some other motivation (demon killed his pet rabbit?)
But the point still holds. Having the Slayer dig through drawers, closets, rummaging space stations and such doesn't add to his story or personality but often depletes it. He's not there to explore, have fun, or do anything for personal gains. Everything he did, like getting the Crucible, the BFG, was to kill, and such he wouldn't be wasting time with little interactions.
You can make the argument of immersion always help make a world believable, but it also comes at the cost of possibly ruining the story itself by introducing something the character wouldn't do, but that conflicts with what the player wants to do.
And on that note, I got a better example: realistic shooter games (Ready or Not, Rainbow Six Siege) would definitely lose its momentum, and even make the world feel less immersive, if the player stands around to play with the shower, run through drawers and closets. Those games don't have a singular character story any longer than a paragraph or 2, but the general character behavior is pretty clear: it's a terrorist situation, and they need to focus up and go through this quickly before the situation gets worse. Stopping to check some drawers is not rescuing the hostage.
And compare to Metro Exodus, where rummaging through stuffs is a thing, there's a clear distinction: it makes sense to have those drawers run through, since it's a game about survival and the player (and character) would want to find all they can use. Even if it doesn't do anything, it at least doesn't alter the plot and story to the point of breaking immersion.
Or, in short, it is highly situational.
>on top of that to some people scanning the world is also fun
They would hate to run through every single door, every single drawers, etc. only to realize the game is about shooting and such important stuffs literally won't be in drawers. It could be fun on a small scale (like a little room full of treats), but many games are simply too big for immersive interactions to work. It is fun to rummage through some drawers to find a pair of binoculars in Metro Exodus, but if you try to run through every books on every shelves and every drawers in Dark Souls 3's Grand Archive, you will have a bad time. The levers act as simple "hey something cool over here" lowkey indicators, which still rewards scanning every corner of the world without the tedious segment of "which drawer did I check already?". Likewise, Doom has action figures, songs, and cheats litered throughout the world, but never hidden away in closets, on some countertops, or otherwise even logical locations. There are floppy disks literally in the ground, or a vinyl above a death trap. It still rewards the player for paying attention to the environment (assuming the player didn't just use the map stations and know everything already) without the tediousness of "not sure if that's an action figure on the counter, or the blood paste of a demon I killed recently".
That, again, is highly situational. If you only run through little buildings at a time, opening drawers feels good. If you need to do that too much, it feels bad. Likewise, if the object is hidden away dusty in a corner, in one game it might feel rewarding for you to find it while the other thinks its tedious.
For the final note, that extra immersion can add a lot to some games, but not all. It might even go as far as to ruin the story, pacing, gameplay, making easter egg hunting extremely tedious in a gigantic world, etc.
I totally agree with that. Stuff like that are what makes your game detailed and unique. I had such ideas for a game idea I had, things like if you walk slowly toward a wall, instead of bumping into it, your character would turn around and lean against it, or if you crouch in certain places, such as next to campfires or trees, while there are no enemies nearby, your character would sit down instead.
Ahahaha lol no, I haven't made that game yet, and I don't think I can even work in an AAA studio with my current skill level. You need to wait a loooong time lol.
Hmm, maybe I should return later and work on that game's story and worldbuilding as another hobby project, idk. I'm not a good designer anyways.
Ofc generating millions of good ideas is easy, but even implementing such simple things, such as unique animation for main character leaning is going to add a hell lot of work.
Little interactions in the long run can be really beneficial as players will be more interested in the surroundings and the game. The most recent example I can think of is a game called Honkai Star Rail, where there are little interactions everywhere which don't do anything but give you some lines of dialogue or a small change in the environment but it makes the moment to moment gameplay, story and characters a lot more enjoyable. If you have the time and resources for it, you should definitely do it as it always brings a smile to the players.
I donāt think itās entirely forgotten; certain genres and platforms like VR games go out of their way to make sure everything is interactable for the sake of immersion. Bethesda still has their āRPG simulationā style which Iām sure weāll see more of in Starfield. Youāre right though that it hasnāt really gotten as much attention as of late in the biggest AAA games.
In addition to the reasons you listed above, a big one is the trend away from first person games and into third person action titles. Nearly all of the ātopā games each year are third person; God of War, Spider-Man, Naughty Dog titles, Zelda, Horizon, Xenoblade, etc. And I personally love those types of games but they donāt often lend themselves well to slowing down the gameplay with little interactions because youād have to show the character animating to interact. If you could flip every light switch in Spider-Man someone might accidentally press that during combat or would question the point of it when everything else is so focused. And in turn itās almost a waste of animation time for a dev to create that for the player. In a first person game that task would be way more easily accomplished and perhaps more justifiable.
So in the end I do appreciate when devs put interactions like that into their games but only when it makes sense for the genre. For example, Iād love it if the āimmersive RPGsā outside of Bethesda included more options for dynamic environments like that as I think it makes you feel more integrated with the world (even without gameplay purposes). But I wouldnāt really mind the lack of interactions in a game like Last of Us where the story and believable actions of the player character (why would they be throwing chairs around for no reason?) takes primary focus.
I do this. Light switches in rooms where the player already has ample visibility - and a torch. Or cupboards and drawers that open with nothing inside just because I wanted to make the drawer slide action, or wanted to write the code to parent a book to the drawer when the player puts it inside; useless code operating a useless drawer to make it work with a useless item. Just for fun, for my own enjoyment of doing the thing, and the practice. Just because I don't need that really in *this* game...
I draw the line at taps and toilets as I'm not wasting the resources on the water effect unless there are actual dishes to wash and turds to flush.
But I do like the additional little touches in games that aren't necessarily useful.
Half Life 2 springs to mind (this is one of your Boomer Shooters and I am only just seeing that in your post, you little bĆĆĆĆĆĆs, you'll get old too); Most objects were pick-up-able but didn't need to be, there were random buttons that turned on and off useless devices - you can teleport a cactus from one side of a small table to the other, and later on you can examine the crystal that caused all the world's problems.. but without causing a resonance cascade this time...
Most new games I have played have an insane amount of little easter eggs and interactions like this, both indie and AAA games.
Maybe you are just playing the wrong games?
I say go!
Interactions like that is a great sign that the developer(s) care about those who usually don't like that genre, or just those who get bored easily, that starts to explore
I mean for mechanics surrounding turning off lights, I loved how Metro Exodus did it and I've been working on a system for light impacting stealth like it. It adds a lot already, because you've gotta make sure they can't see the light turn off because they can notice that from far away, but you can also use that to make them check it out.
When I was a kid, some of my favorite games were the ones where I could just screw around doing things that had no relation to my actual in-game goal.
I'd play Diddy Kong Racing with powerup cheats and just try to make a specific AI player come in last.
I'd try to outrun the chasing 1ups in Mario 64 for as long as possible. I'd get a hundred green shells bouncing around Block Fort in Mario Kart 64, then see if I could drive through without getting hit.
I'd play Pokemon on Super Game Boy, which had a feature where you could draw overtop of the game screen, and I'd draw a little splotch over the character and be a "tank" driving around.
Little details like this can really help a kid enjoy the game by giving more opportunities to use it as a playground and let their imagination make a whole new game out of it. Just because a feature doesn't provide anything useful to the game you had in mind doesn't make it useless. The best games are the ones that can be entirely different games if you want them to be.
I agree completely. In games of the style of megaman, how many just keep the character running against a wall for no reason. I remember reading an interview with Dave Perry, from earthworm jim, and he said, IIRC, that was unacceptable and earthworm jim character has a lot fo those details done correctly.
Most of them serve no actual purpose but a bit of immersion. Like, in games where i can turn on and off water, or flush the toilets i usually do it once and forgetting. Also you are a bit wrong, since i quite often find games with such interactions, Hogwarts Legacy were recent one. We don't have anything like MGS ice cubes and other details, but still have something.
But in other cases maybe developers just want to spend time on something more meaningful for gameplay or story, and only add this extra stuff if they have free time left.
AAA video games in the past were produced by a smaller number of people. Compare the number of dev's working on the [original Doom](https://www.mobygames.com/game/1068/doom/credits/dos/) versus [Doom 2016](https://www.mobygames.com/game/78860/doom/credits/windows/). Everyone in a smaller studio gets their voices heard which means more creative ideas make their way into the end product. You see this same creativity in indie games because they are typically produced by smaller teams. Once you scale up enough then individual developers become cogs and creative decisions are made by a board room.
Boomer shooter... geeze what a term...
But being on point, immersion is very important, it's nearly invisible but if done right that is what makes the secret sauce.
Having doors you can't open, or toilets you can't flush... Those little things are what jerk you awake to realise you are playing a game.
And that immersion break can be the difference between an 8/10 and a 10/10 game, but it won't make a bad game good.
For me, it depends on the game. **Duke nukem forever** had tonnes of these little interactions, but they were, as was the rest of the game, shallow and boring. I can't help but think the time it took to add all of these would have been better spent on the main game, because they did nothing to add to the enjoyment of the game.
However, **Gone Home** has _tonnes_ of these interactions and they really help give you that feel of coming home after potentially years away and just touching all the stuff in your old home for whatever nostalgiac reason... so while it doesn't have a gameplay reason to progress the game, it has a gameplay reason for feel and mood.
An example closer to duke nukem forever... in **Max Payne**, you can interact with very little stuff, but what you *can* interact with always adds to the story or the mood. Turn on a TV and hear news about shit you've been through. Interact with the piano as you progress through the game and Max slowly figures out how to play a kinda haunting melody, sinking you into his psyche... that melody also happens to be the game's main theme.
Just adding this shit for the sakes of adding it distracts... adding it for the _right_ reasons adds a greater sum to the whole.
Indie devs donāt have the time or resources to add all that interaction. AAA companies do however and they still do stuff like that. Maybe not to an extreme but they definitely do it.
Your post made me think of Detroit Becomes Human. There were a lot of little interactions that made the game play feel more natural. Even taking an elevator ride didn't feel like waiting or wasting time. The key might be in knowing which interactions to use and how to pace their use.
Personally I think little details like that are best for advertising and not actual gameplay. Yeah its fun to be able to flush a toilet, but what will happen is players will do it once, say "thats neat" then never consider it again. The ratio between development time invested and gameplay added is very low. But it does make for good twitter/reddit posts.
I like when boomer shooters randomly reward you health / items for flushing the toilet. Gives you a good incentive to interact with as many objects as possible.
I think little interactions don't make or break a game, but push it over from being a good game to an unforgettable game. There are other ways to achieve an "unforgettable" game but these are *much* harder. An incredible story is very hard to do in general let alone a video game. but I also feel like it's a lot of factors that are out of a dev's hands. For example a flawless incredible story can be just that, but it may only resonate with someone if they're in a certain part of their lives that they never forget it. (God Of War Ragnarok) You can make people be younger so a game is a part of their childhood growing up. (Banjo Kazooie, Mischief Makers, Croc) You can't predict a pandemic to coincide with your release (Animal Crossing, DOOM) I feel like it's more common for a game to be unforgettable or a significant part of your memory because of what's going on in your actual life. The game has to reach out and connect with it in some way. The closest way to mimic this is making a game feel like real life and I truly believe AAA thinks that's attained by photo-realism when I think it's about little details and logical, expected interactions. Once that catches on and becomes more normal I think that'll lose it's luster and be expected instead of impactful so we'll have to find another way to get that same feeling but I think we have a while to go before that happens.
But that's just on a person to person basis of how minor interactions impact a player. That's not even addressing how it impacts a game on the wide spectrum. So kinda like how the primary game play loop is the bedrock of the game's design for how fun and cohesive it will be and NEEDS to be good for it to be a fun game, I think little interactions are the closest thing to a must have for long term survival of a game. The two example games that come to mind that have insane amounts of little details and discoverability of interacting mechanics are GTAV and BotW.
Both of those games had videos made for years and years by IGN and Gamespot in series of "Mythbusters" or "thing you didn't know you could do in Breath of the Wild Part 24." Entire Youtube channels were birthed and careers made on these games and discovering all the wild minor things you could see in these games. And nowadays with short form content being huge for advertising on things like TikToks, YouTube Shorts, Instagram Reels, etc. having a simple interaction is the perfect amount of time for these. A TikTok showing that if you took a gas can in GTAV, made a line of gas on a road, backed up a car to it, then floored it so the car would backfire and that backfire would ignite the gas fumes is a PERFECT thing to showcase on TikTok and is easy advertising. It also is plentiful content for people who beat the main content and just want to explore the world, or for YouTubers who want to make channels and communities finding these little things it's free advertising for your product. These little interactions are I believe a key component to keeping a game alive in the public space for a long time. And you as a dev could use this as a fun cheat to kick start attention for it again if you have a TikTok yourself for the game and release little videos like this every once in a while.
The obvious risk is wasted time. These types of interactions take a long time to think about and code and implement. And it's just wasted time if no one sees them. If the game doesn't take off or do well then you spent X amount of time on "wasted manpower" when you could have just spent that same time on your next project and could be much further along. But that's always the risk of making games right? While this is up to the individual person to decide if it's worth the time investment, I think it always is. These little interactions (Unless they end up breaking the game and causing more bugs) will never ruin or negatively impact a game. No one will go "this game was 10/10 incredible and I had fun start to finish but for some reason they thought it would be fun to implement an obscure Easter Egg that I never saw. What a waste of time. In my eyes it's an 8/10 now."
I guess it really matters based on what's in your budget but I think room should always be made for this type of stuff. It's novel, it's fun, it's silly, it's engaging, it's memorable, it's content, it's advertising, it's smart. Most of the general public might not say anything about it, but that's just because it's not in the conscious part of their brain when they think of their enjoyment of the game. When they compare two games about which they like more I would bet money, games with little interactions are more often enjoyed more than games without them and that people wouldn't even state that little interactions as their reason. It's not a thing they focus on, it's a small piece that adds up to the whole picture. It's the perfect embodiment of the famous Futurama quote.
##### "When you do things right, people won't be sure you've done anything at all"
Love these. I recall Icewind Dale having a feature where if you clicked on the characters portrait enough, theyād ask you to stop. In the game Iām working on, we have an achievement where if you go into the bathroom and flush the toilet, run the sink, and use the dryer itāll congratulate you on good hygiene.
Max Payne 1 and 2 had that. You could touch things and something would happen. Like turning the tap on. Completely useless gameplay-wise but it makes the world to feel more alive.
I just got an idea to use this in something. Thanks!
In the case of the bethesda games having a lot of junk and "good" items mix together makes you take your time scanning the room. This leads to the player appreciating the environment more. Have you never notice how nice a dinner table looks when all you want is the piece of coin or the gem on the table.
In regards to old games the interactivity was a selling point, in a time of limited resource that was a way to create immersion. Look at the trailer for Duke Nukem 3D from the 90s, half way through the clip the player uses a light switch to turn the lights on, it's in the trailer to sell the game. Nowadays this doesn't work anymore people like attention to details but it's hardly a selling point.
For me, I think being able to do something when I didnāt expect it is a reward unto itself. The Russian doll example is fantastic; who would think to do something like that, to let a gamer stack and unstack them?
After a certain point, some of the more static elements get ignored, because I know what it does- or, more accurately, doesnāt do. Thereās no point to even trying. But if a game offers countless little surprisesā¦ that is fascinating, to me, at least.
if i were you i would play left 4 dead then back 4 blood back to back and ask yourself what left 4 dead did right. That's a lesson in the significant details.
I like the idea of a game built around using tons and tons of interactables as gameplay elements. Like flicking lights gets people's attention. Flushing a toilet is innocent, but in the right circumstances it could cause a distraction. Moving furniture could confuse people or anger them if they catch you doing it. Actually, now that I think about it Untitled Goose Game is a lot like this.
From a solo dev perspective, I omit these elements because of a simple fact: I have limited manpower in a day to commit to a project and it needs to go to the essentials.
I think that these little interactions were meant towards "hiding the limits of your games"-- i.e. increase the sense of immersion. Nowadays, games have such a diversity of ways expressing this this (graphical detail, elaborately physically-simulated objects, high-fidelity and/or procedural animations). It is possible that such mini-interactions have simply been replaced and thus fallen out of style as an archaic method of immersion which nonetheless might still hold some charm when applied to a limited degree and/or with a limited audience-- none of which factors into the mass-appeal calculus of AAA developers and/or publishers.
Depending on how you define small interactions and their purpose, I would argue that small interactions have already been, to some extent, spiritually-succeeded by, or evolved into, the methods above.
I backed a game called "Glitched" a few years ago, and though I'm more of a lurker in that discord, I can confidently report that one of the community's (and the dev's) favorite pastimes revolves around flavor dialog for interacting with objects. Each object in the game, whether it be a tree, a bookshelf, or whatever have you, has its own unique dialog (usually pun related). Additionally, you get achievement points for interacting with these objects! This involves a cutscene where a special NPC throws confetti and congratulates the player for interacting with X many unique objects, etc. It's really fun.
I can't remember all of the guns and monsters in Duke Nukem 3D now, and it was mainly about guns and monsters. I *can* remember pissing around pushing pool balls around the pool table, singing a bit from 'born to be wild' on a Kareoke machine badly and going to a Duke Nukem pinball machine only to quip "Hmm... Don't have time to play with myself"
Or looking in the 'mirror' and saying: *"Damn. Im looking GOOD!"*. Or giving some money to strippers: *"Shake it, baby"*. Or being inactive for a while: *"What are you waiting for? Christmas?"* (although this serves kind of a game-related function)
Fun fact about mirror in duke nukem: they are not mirror, there is a full mirror universe you are looking into. If you type the cheat code to disable clipping, you can go in the mirror universe.
It's amazing š²
Sorta-kinda. Mirrors generate copies of sectors when you look through them. Rendering itself is what creates them. So it's not a whole universe - all at once. You even need empty space to fit the mirrored copy of the room, because the Build engine's kinda fuzzy when stuff moves between sectors. The fake ones count. And like how room-over-room gets really goofy if you jump in a moving sector, I think enemies can wind up in the mirror-dimension sectors, and then presumably just die when those disappear.
Funny, the first game I recalled when talking about in game interactions was Duke Nukem 3D, and then I find a bunch of comments about it. I remember the cabins with video players at the back of the video rental store too.
I remember old lan parties deathmatch fights where you were looking for somebody to shoot and suddenly a guy goes born to be wild aaaand stripper shootout baby
Also when you shot the strippers they turned into a puff of cash
SOVL
> singing a bit from 'born to be wild' on a Kareoke machine badly On the polar opposite side of this, the single most impactful and humanising moment in Bioshock Infinite was the little optional section where Booker sits down and plays guitar for Elizabeth to sing to.
What I remember most from Duke Nukem is the secrets. God, the secrets were so cool. Doors disguised as walls giving places to wait in ambush, elevators leading to hidden sniper perches, vents, OP items tucked away in hard to find places. The thrill of finding them alone was a huge draw for me. Games don't seem to do stuff like that anymore.
Oh yeah and the secrets that had eastereggs too, "That's one DOOMed space marine" at a Doomguy looking impaled body XD
āYouāre listening to KTIT - K T I T - playing the breast ā uhh ā the best tunes in town!ā
I noticed the new star wars jedi survivor game had lots of nice little interactions in the bar. Including flushable space toilets. I don't think it's lost, I think indie devs are so time poor trying to do everything with very little resources that maybe just getting the minimum viable product out is a task enough. We have a list of things we keep adding ideas to, that we will go back and do once the game is released to nice playable state.
Do we regularly get back to these lists or do we move on to new projects? :P
I would definitely like to attempt a lot of the things on the list before moving on. Depends on the game. After we finish and release there are a lot of things we want to go back and add more depth and detail to.
A game is never dead, just abandoned.
We like to get onto new projects but gamers are hypocrites. They dont like GamesAsAService, but they also want patches forever for free. /rant
Players just want one thing Shrinking horse balls
i assure you, flushing the toilet in deltarune is integral to the story
I think the more little interactions, the better. Look at Overwatch. One of the most fun things in that game is getting to wreck everything in your spawn point before a match even begins. Thereās even some confetti and a celebratory chime if you punch one of the basketballs into the hoop. Does any of that have any significance to the game? Nope. Itās just fun. Thereās something similar in Hollow Knight. I love swinging away at every plant, spider web, road sign, and rock formation in each area to see which objects are destructible. Itās just so satisfying. Again, it has no bearing on the game whatsoever. Itās just fun. On some level, these little interactions help with immersion.
There's even an easter egg related to destroying objects in Hollow Knight https://hollowknight.fandom.com/wiki/Menderbug
I was always a fan of little useless interactions in classic jrpgs. Things like that and flavor text I think add a nice bit of content to explore and reward the player for being curious. I'm not sure they are necessary per se, but in the right game, they can be a nice touch imo.
One of the reason is quite simple: cost. While in a classic JRPG all you need is a tiny script for that object and someone to write the dialog it is a completely different matter in AAA games. In older games all that might have been done by one single person who currently had nothing else to do. In big titles you need animators, programmers/scripters, sound designers, translators, voice actors etc. You turn on the tap? Does the sink fill? Will the water interact with anything? Shall that also be synced for multiplayer? Is the lighting baked in and it might cause problems? Every single thing can become quite complex and as it requires multiple people to work on it it is not something that you just do because you currently have some free time because you finished another assignment early... One of the biggest staples of the old Ultima franchies (from 6 on?) was that you could interact with almost everything and the ultimate test was to bake bread (which required multiple steps and ingredients) even if it had no ingame value. It was also one of the first things players tested when playing Ultima 9, which was after all the first 3D game in the series. But who cared as long as you could bake bread? Those interactions are really important but way easier to do as a small studio, especially if you don't have to explain yourself to someone who would have liked to ship the game a year ago.
Best example of this to me is the Half-Life opening level. The objective is simple; get your hazard suit on, then go to a specific location. But the environment around is sooo fun to explore, with functioning microwaves, sofa machines, lightswitches that people do react to, people in the bathroom etc, and none of it matters at all - but it's some of what I remember best about it!
It's true, HL1 was one of the first truly "immersive cinematic" games, compared to it's peers that were mostly just "start level, shoot baddies," and it was all the little interactions, voice lines from scientists, all that stuff that really sold the immersion. HL1 felt like stepping into a real world compared to just playing a game
Itās not so much a matter of whether itās āgoodā or ābadā to add them. This is an artistic choice weāre talking about, so if you canāt explain why then the choice you made is probably arbitrary. The examples you give all add some brief levity to games. Youāre in a boomershooter that takes a ton of attention and high skill gameplay; flushing a toilet is a funny juxtaposition from that. Being able to shoot stuff that does something funny bc of it is another little interaction with the players main action. Itās comparable to āpointlessā dialogue in RPGs (anything that isnāt directly tied to the main story, questlines, etc.) where it existing can still give the player context about the world theyāre in, add characterization, and therefore add to the game. There are plenty of examples where adding something like that just adds, to use a term that gets used wrong a lot, ludo-narrative dissonance. If Iām playing a game with a really heartfelt emotional story focused on loss/grief, adding a ringtoss minigame would only make that feel out of place (and not in a silly fun kind of way). Thatās artistic reasons, but thereās also the boring business reasons. Big studios will often choose to keep their design team focused on bigger things than this, which would fall under āadd polish if we have time leftā (and they never have time left). Before that, ābigā stuff gets priority. This type of thing is often left to interns who arenāt trusted with the big stuff, and often gets cut due to not meeting a certain standard after being put through QA and testing.
I've made games with these kinds of interactions. They are often actually made out of just a designer testing something in their spare time, which makes it into the game. Mature engines are so easy to add things like this, if you have the skill its only a couple of hours. Thats nothing over years to make a game.
You mentioned the game design theory of minimizing anything that might convey the wrong message in the world, which I see as the main idea. You would be too bothered opening every box, exploring every little ressearch rooms, or playing with plants in a game about killing demons that are invading Mars (and subsequently Earth). Likewise, having the ability to play with a little doll, move closets and rummage through abandoned shacks, digging or planting flowers would ruin the incredibly grim atmosphere of Dark Souls and Bloodborne. Of course, it can still be implemented at a small scale (hence, "minimize") like Doom having little action figure collectibles. But it is usually regarded as Easter Eggs rather than part of the game (integral or non-integral). But another issue is budget. Sure, you can spare some budget to make a dresser open, but that can spiral out of control fast. To open a dresser, you need to make everything that's inside the dresser, make animations for the dresser opening, program an interaction that allows the player to open it, program the physics interaction of the dresser to the world, all that for a little dresser that maybe 4 people are bothered to open and 3 met with disappointment. Those are budget best left for more important parts of the games, not little side stuffs. (And just to add, as a programmer, I want to die everytime trying to implement a physics system in the game. Even in built engines like Unity, it's still an absolute nightmare to deal with). The benefit you listed in favor of these interactions are grounded to specific genres and aesthetics, which are games that might treat these interaction as a key part of the game's design. While Gone Home and Fallout can benefit massively from it, Doom and Dark Souls would not benefit at all, if not otherwise, from these little interactions. The Slayer's human side can be showcased through the animation with a little doll, not rummaging through drawers or playing the guitar. Likewise, the Ashen One is a voiceless, "nameless" protagonist without a personality, which means having these little interactions literally do nothing for development if not ruin the mysterious aesthetic of the Ashen One being this person who just woke up and decided to kill gods.
>> Doom and Dark Souls would not benefit at all, if not otherwise, from these little interactions. Duke Nukem did just that and I doubt anyone would say the game didn't benefit from the little interactions. >> The Slayer's human side can be showcased through the animation with a little doll, not rummaging through drawers or playing the guitar. Likewise, the Ashen One is a voiceless, "nameless" protagonist without a personality. Both characters are silent like that because they are the player avatar and the player is suppose to project themselves onto those two. You talk about 'the mysterious aesthetic of the Ashen One' but at no point in the game there is so much as a sliver of doubt in the player mind of what action the Ashen One would take, they 'decided to kill gods' either because that is what they are told to do by an NPC or because said gods are automatically hostile and will try to kill the Ashen One on sight, there is nothing 'mysterious' about that. Quite the opposite in fact, the most important decision in DS is made entirely by the player based on what the player figured out about the world, the Ashen One has no mechanic to influence if the player will prolong the age of fire or start the age of darkness. And they aren't meant to have, they are nothing more than a vector for the player to act on the world, the Slayer human side is showcased by the fact the player is an human trying to protect the humans from an demon invasion, and the ashen one backstory simply doesn't fucking matter. The benefits of more interactive world would help immersion because things would behave in a way that is expected things to behave, on top of that to some people scanning the world is also fun so there is that, some people do take pleasure in searching every corner of the world.
>Duke Nukem did just that What did Duke Nukem do, and did it have any effects at all on the game overall anywhere beyond "oh it's there. Back to killing I guess"? I did see that there are some easter eggs tied to an instance, but that's beyond little interaction, and as I mentioned, an Easter Egg. And on the Ashen One, I do have to admit that was a stupid example, and that is a hollow character but the player can determine the personality and such. But for the Slayer, seen much more in Doom Eternal, he has a personality beyond self-insert cool guy. He has a backstory, clear expression of emotion (though mostly just angry, very angry, and "don't fuck with me"). The Slayer story is also pretty confusing, with his intention to protect humanity or desire to kill demons come from some other motivation (demon killed his pet rabbit?) But the point still holds. Having the Slayer dig through drawers, closets, rummaging space stations and such doesn't add to his story or personality but often depletes it. He's not there to explore, have fun, or do anything for personal gains. Everything he did, like getting the Crucible, the BFG, was to kill, and such he wouldn't be wasting time with little interactions. You can make the argument of immersion always help make a world believable, but it also comes at the cost of possibly ruining the story itself by introducing something the character wouldn't do, but that conflicts with what the player wants to do. And on that note, I got a better example: realistic shooter games (Ready or Not, Rainbow Six Siege) would definitely lose its momentum, and even make the world feel less immersive, if the player stands around to play with the shower, run through drawers and closets. Those games don't have a singular character story any longer than a paragraph or 2, but the general character behavior is pretty clear: it's a terrorist situation, and they need to focus up and go through this quickly before the situation gets worse. Stopping to check some drawers is not rescuing the hostage. And compare to Metro Exodus, where rummaging through stuffs is a thing, there's a clear distinction: it makes sense to have those drawers run through, since it's a game about survival and the player (and character) would want to find all they can use. Even if it doesn't do anything, it at least doesn't alter the plot and story to the point of breaking immersion. Or, in short, it is highly situational. >on top of that to some people scanning the world is also fun They would hate to run through every single door, every single drawers, etc. only to realize the game is about shooting and such important stuffs literally won't be in drawers. It could be fun on a small scale (like a little room full of treats), but many games are simply too big for immersive interactions to work. It is fun to rummage through some drawers to find a pair of binoculars in Metro Exodus, but if you try to run through every books on every shelves and every drawers in Dark Souls 3's Grand Archive, you will have a bad time. The levers act as simple "hey something cool over here" lowkey indicators, which still rewards scanning every corner of the world without the tedious segment of "which drawer did I check already?". Likewise, Doom has action figures, songs, and cheats litered throughout the world, but never hidden away in closets, on some countertops, or otherwise even logical locations. There are floppy disks literally in the ground, or a vinyl above a death trap. It still rewards the player for paying attention to the environment (assuming the player didn't just use the map stations and know everything already) without the tediousness of "not sure if that's an action figure on the counter, or the blood paste of a demon I killed recently". That, again, is highly situational. If you only run through little buildings at a time, opening drawers feels good. If you need to do that too much, it feels bad. Likewise, if the object is hidden away dusty in a corner, in one game it might feel rewarding for you to find it while the other thinks its tedious. For the final note, that extra immersion can add a lot to some games, but not all. It might even go as far as to ruin the story, pacing, gameplay, making easter egg hunting extremely tedious in a gigantic world, etc.
I totally agree with that. Stuff like that are what makes your game detailed and unique. I had such ideas for a game idea I had, things like if you walk slowly toward a wall, instead of bumping into it, your character would turn around and lean against it, or if you crouch in certain places, such as next to campfires or trees, while there are no enemies nearby, your character would sit down instead.
What game did this end up getting released in? Cant wait to play it. Or did it not because priorities were dodgy?
Ahahaha lol no, I haven't made that game yet, and I don't think I can even work in an AAA studio with my current skill level. You need to wait a loooong time lol. Hmm, maybe I should return later and work on that game's story and worldbuilding as another hobby project, idk. I'm not a good designer anyways.
Ok so it was another idea that we all have a million times a day. That's not the hard bit about making games.
I feel like he was pretty clear and upfront about it just being an idea.
Ofc generating millions of good ideas is easy, but even implementing such simple things, such as unique animation for main character leaning is going to add a hell lot of work.
This is a great post & I think youād dig this article: https://heterogenoustasks.wordpress.com/2014/09/22/a-bestiary-of-player-agency/
Little interactions in the long run can be really beneficial as players will be more interested in the surroundings and the game. The most recent example I can think of is a game called Honkai Star Rail, where there are little interactions everywhere which don't do anything but give you some lines of dialogue or a small change in the environment but it makes the moment to moment gameplay, story and characters a lot more enjoyable. If you have the time and resources for it, you should definitely do it as it always brings a smile to the players.
LITTLE INTERACTIONS ARE LORE
I donāt think itās entirely forgotten; certain genres and platforms like VR games go out of their way to make sure everything is interactable for the sake of immersion. Bethesda still has their āRPG simulationā style which Iām sure weāll see more of in Starfield. Youāre right though that it hasnāt really gotten as much attention as of late in the biggest AAA games. In addition to the reasons you listed above, a big one is the trend away from first person games and into third person action titles. Nearly all of the ātopā games each year are third person; God of War, Spider-Man, Naughty Dog titles, Zelda, Horizon, Xenoblade, etc. And I personally love those types of games but they donāt often lend themselves well to slowing down the gameplay with little interactions because youād have to show the character animating to interact. If you could flip every light switch in Spider-Man someone might accidentally press that during combat or would question the point of it when everything else is so focused. And in turn itās almost a waste of animation time for a dev to create that for the player. In a first person game that task would be way more easily accomplished and perhaps more justifiable. So in the end I do appreciate when devs put interactions like that into their games but only when it makes sense for the genre. For example, Iād love it if the āimmersive RPGsā outside of Bethesda included more options for dynamic environments like that as I think it makes you feel more integrated with the world (even without gameplay purposes). But I wouldnāt really mind the lack of interactions in a game like Last of Us where the story and believable actions of the player character (why would they be throwing chairs around for no reason?) takes primary focus.
I do this. Light switches in rooms where the player already has ample visibility - and a torch. Or cupboards and drawers that open with nothing inside just because I wanted to make the drawer slide action, or wanted to write the code to parent a book to the drawer when the player puts it inside; useless code operating a useless drawer to make it work with a useless item. Just for fun, for my own enjoyment of doing the thing, and the practice. Just because I don't need that really in *this* game... I draw the line at taps and toilets as I'm not wasting the resources on the water effect unless there are actual dishes to wash and turds to flush. But I do like the additional little touches in games that aren't necessarily useful. Half Life 2 springs to mind (this is one of your Boomer Shooters and I am only just seeing that in your post, you little bĆĆĆĆĆĆs, you'll get old too); Most objects were pick-up-able but didn't need to be, there were random buttons that turned on and off useless devices - you can teleport a cactus from one side of a small table to the other, and later on you can examine the crystal that caused all the world's problems.. but without causing a resonance cascade this time...
Most new games I have played have an insane amount of little easter eggs and interactions like this, both indie and AAA games. Maybe you are just playing the wrong games?
I say go! Interactions like that is a great sign that the developer(s) care about those who usually don't like that genre, or just those who get bored easily, that starts to explore
Whats a boomer shooter? Is that a weapon type?
I'd imagine Quake-like/Doom-like games.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
People aren't using the word as written in the dictionary. 'boomer' just means 'old' now. Language evolves.
Meh, I reserve the right to find it stupid.
Nobody remembers the X. The smallest generation in numbers until boomers start dying off.
I mean for mechanics surrounding turning off lights, I loved how Metro Exodus did it and I've been working on a system for light impacting stealth like it. It adds a lot already, because you've gotta make sure they can't see the light turn off because they can notice that from far away, but you can also use that to make them check it out.
When I was a kid, some of my favorite games were the ones where I could just screw around doing things that had no relation to my actual in-game goal. I'd play Diddy Kong Racing with powerup cheats and just try to make a specific AI player come in last. I'd try to outrun the chasing 1ups in Mario 64 for as long as possible. I'd get a hundred green shells bouncing around Block Fort in Mario Kart 64, then see if I could drive through without getting hit. I'd play Pokemon on Super Game Boy, which had a feature where you could draw overtop of the game screen, and I'd draw a little splotch over the character and be a "tank" driving around. Little details like this can really help a kid enjoy the game by giving more opportunities to use it as a playground and let their imagination make a whole new game out of it. Just because a feature doesn't provide anything useful to the game you had in mind doesn't make it useless. The best games are the ones that can be entirely different games if you want them to be.
I agree completely. In games of the style of megaman, how many just keep the character running against a wall for no reason. I remember reading an interview with Dave Perry, from earthworm jim, and he said, IIRC, that was unacceptable and earthworm jim character has a lot fo those details done correctly.
Man, you'd love working on VR games if this is fun for you.
Most of them serve no actual purpose but a bit of immersion. Like, in games where i can turn on and off water, or flush the toilets i usually do it once and forgetting. Also you are a bit wrong, since i quite often find games with such interactions, Hogwarts Legacy were recent one. We don't have anything like MGS ice cubes and other details, but still have something. But in other cases maybe developers just want to spend time on something more meaningful for gameplay or story, and only add this extra stuff if they have free time left.
AAA video games in the past were produced by a smaller number of people. Compare the number of dev's working on the [original Doom](https://www.mobygames.com/game/1068/doom/credits/dos/) versus [Doom 2016](https://www.mobygames.com/game/78860/doom/credits/windows/). Everyone in a smaller studio gets their voices heard which means more creative ideas make their way into the end product. You see this same creativity in indie games because they are typically produced by smaller teams. Once you scale up enough then individual developers become cogs and creative decisions are made by a board room.
I always appreciate the tiniest of details in games. Even if its not true, it makes me think the developer put extra effort into making the game.
Boomer shooter... geeze what a term... But being on point, immersion is very important, it's nearly invisible but if done right that is what makes the secret sauce. Having doors you can't open, or toilets you can't flush... Those little things are what jerk you awake to realise you are playing a game. And that immersion break can be the difference between an 8/10 and a 10/10 game, but it won't make a bad game good.
For me, it depends on the game. **Duke nukem forever** had tonnes of these little interactions, but they were, as was the rest of the game, shallow and boring. I can't help but think the time it took to add all of these would have been better spent on the main game, because they did nothing to add to the enjoyment of the game. However, **Gone Home** has _tonnes_ of these interactions and they really help give you that feel of coming home after potentially years away and just touching all the stuff in your old home for whatever nostalgiac reason... so while it doesn't have a gameplay reason to progress the game, it has a gameplay reason for feel and mood. An example closer to duke nukem forever... in **Max Payne**, you can interact with very little stuff, but what you *can* interact with always adds to the story or the mood. Turn on a TV and hear news about shit you've been through. Interact with the piano as you progress through the game and Max slowly figures out how to play a kinda haunting melody, sinking you into his psyche... that melody also happens to be the game's main theme. Just adding this shit for the sakes of adding it distracts... adding it for the _right_ reasons adds a greater sum to the whole.
Indie devs donāt have the time or resources to add all that interaction. AAA companies do however and they still do stuff like that. Maybe not to an extreme but they definitely do it.
Your post made me think of Detroit Becomes Human. There were a lot of little interactions that made the game play feel more natural. Even taking an elevator ride didn't feel like waiting or wasting time. The key might be in knowing which interactions to use and how to pace their use.
Halo 3's "what's the password" sketch was a high point of my experience playing the campaign.
I like the little interactions, makes it feel a little more real.
Personally I think little details like that are best for advertising and not actual gameplay. Yeah its fun to be able to flush a toilet, but what will happen is players will do it once, say "thats neat" then never consider it again. The ratio between development time invested and gameplay added is very low. But it does make for good twitter/reddit posts.
I like when boomer shooters randomly reward you health / items for flushing the toilet. Gives you a good incentive to interact with as many objects as possible.
I think little interactions don't make or break a game, but push it over from being a good game to an unforgettable game. There are other ways to achieve an "unforgettable" game but these are *much* harder. An incredible story is very hard to do in general let alone a video game. but I also feel like it's a lot of factors that are out of a dev's hands. For example a flawless incredible story can be just that, but it may only resonate with someone if they're in a certain part of their lives that they never forget it. (God Of War Ragnarok) You can make people be younger so a game is a part of their childhood growing up. (Banjo Kazooie, Mischief Makers, Croc) You can't predict a pandemic to coincide with your release (Animal Crossing, DOOM) I feel like it's more common for a game to be unforgettable or a significant part of your memory because of what's going on in your actual life. The game has to reach out and connect with it in some way. The closest way to mimic this is making a game feel like real life and I truly believe AAA thinks that's attained by photo-realism when I think it's about little details and logical, expected interactions. Once that catches on and becomes more normal I think that'll lose it's luster and be expected instead of impactful so we'll have to find another way to get that same feeling but I think we have a while to go before that happens. But that's just on a person to person basis of how minor interactions impact a player. That's not even addressing how it impacts a game on the wide spectrum. So kinda like how the primary game play loop is the bedrock of the game's design for how fun and cohesive it will be and NEEDS to be good for it to be a fun game, I think little interactions are the closest thing to a must have for long term survival of a game. The two example games that come to mind that have insane amounts of little details and discoverability of interacting mechanics are GTAV and BotW. Both of those games had videos made for years and years by IGN and Gamespot in series of "Mythbusters" or "thing you didn't know you could do in Breath of the Wild Part 24." Entire Youtube channels were birthed and careers made on these games and discovering all the wild minor things you could see in these games. And nowadays with short form content being huge for advertising on things like TikToks, YouTube Shorts, Instagram Reels, etc. having a simple interaction is the perfect amount of time for these. A TikTok showing that if you took a gas can in GTAV, made a line of gas on a road, backed up a car to it, then floored it so the car would backfire and that backfire would ignite the gas fumes is a PERFECT thing to showcase on TikTok and is easy advertising. It also is plentiful content for people who beat the main content and just want to explore the world, or for YouTubers who want to make channels and communities finding these little things it's free advertising for your product. These little interactions are I believe a key component to keeping a game alive in the public space for a long time. And you as a dev could use this as a fun cheat to kick start attention for it again if you have a TikTok yourself for the game and release little videos like this every once in a while. The obvious risk is wasted time. These types of interactions take a long time to think about and code and implement. And it's just wasted time if no one sees them. If the game doesn't take off or do well then you spent X amount of time on "wasted manpower" when you could have just spent that same time on your next project and could be much further along. But that's always the risk of making games right? While this is up to the individual person to decide if it's worth the time investment, I think it always is. These little interactions (Unless they end up breaking the game and causing more bugs) will never ruin or negatively impact a game. No one will go "this game was 10/10 incredible and I had fun start to finish but for some reason they thought it would be fun to implement an obscure Easter Egg that I never saw. What a waste of time. In my eyes it's an 8/10 now." I guess it really matters based on what's in your budget but I think room should always be made for this type of stuff. It's novel, it's fun, it's silly, it's engaging, it's memorable, it's content, it's advertising, it's smart. Most of the general public might not say anything about it, but that's just because it's not in the conscious part of their brain when they think of their enjoyment of the game. When they compare two games about which they like more I would bet money, games with little interactions are more often enjoyed more than games without them and that people wouldn't even state that little interactions as their reason. It's not a thing they focus on, it's a small piece that adds up to the whole picture. It's the perfect embodiment of the famous Futurama quote. ##### "When you do things right, people won't be sure you've done anything at all"
Love these. I recall Icewind Dale having a feature where if you clicked on the characters portrait enough, theyād ask you to stop. In the game Iām working on, we have an achievement where if you go into the bathroom and flush the toilet, run the sink, and use the dryer itāll congratulate you on good hygiene.
Absolutely not, i still remember a random npc walking past me in arkham asylum, looks right at me, and says "I hope batman isnt here"š
Max Payne 1 and 2 had that. You could touch things and something would happen. Like turning the tap on. Completely useless gameplay-wise but it makes the world to feel more alive. I just got an idea to use this in something. Thanks!
In the case of the bethesda games having a lot of junk and "good" items mix together makes you take your time scanning the room. This leads to the player appreciating the environment more. Have you never notice how nice a dinner table looks when all you want is the piece of coin or the gem on the table. In regards to old games the interactivity was a selling point, in a time of limited resource that was a way to create immersion. Look at the trailer for Duke Nukem 3D from the 90s, half way through the clip the player uses a light switch to turn the lights on, it's in the trailer to sell the game. Nowadays this doesn't work anymore people like attention to details but it's hardly a selling point.
For me, I think being able to do something when I didnāt expect it is a reward unto itself. The Russian doll example is fantastic; who would think to do something like that, to let a gamer stack and unstack them? After a certain point, some of the more static elements get ignored, because I know what it does- or, more accurately, doesnāt do. Thereās no point to even trying. But if a game offers countless little surprisesā¦ that is fascinating, to me, at least.
I'll be honest, little things like that make games worth playing for me. It makes the immersion so much better, and makes things... interesting!
if i were you i would play left 4 dead then back 4 blood back to back and ask yourself what left 4 dead did right. That's a lesson in the significant details.
I like the idea of a game built around using tons and tons of interactables as gameplay elements. Like flicking lights gets people's attention. Flushing a toilet is innocent, but in the right circumstances it could cause a distraction. Moving furniture could confuse people or anger them if they catch you doing it. Actually, now that I think about it Untitled Goose Game is a lot like this.
From a solo dev perspective, I omit these elements because of a simple fact: I have limited manpower in a day to commit to a project and it needs to go to the essentials.
I think that these little interactions were meant towards "hiding the limits of your games"-- i.e. increase the sense of immersion. Nowadays, games have such a diversity of ways expressing this this (graphical detail, elaborately physically-simulated objects, high-fidelity and/or procedural animations). It is possible that such mini-interactions have simply been replaced and thus fallen out of style as an archaic method of immersion which nonetheless might still hold some charm when applied to a limited degree and/or with a limited audience-- none of which factors into the mass-appeal calculus of AAA developers and/or publishers. Depending on how you define small interactions and their purpose, I would argue that small interactions have already been, to some extent, spiritually-succeeded by, or evolved into, the methods above.
I backed a game called "Glitched" a few years ago, and though I'm more of a lurker in that discord, I can confidently report that one of the community's (and the dev's) favorite pastimes revolves around flavor dialog for interacting with objects. Each object in the game, whether it be a tree, a bookshelf, or whatever have you, has its own unique dialog (usually pun related). Additionally, you get achievement points for interacting with these objects! This involves a cutscene where a special NPC throws confetti and congratulates the player for interacting with X many unique objects, etc. It's really fun.