GCG: Students Attempt to Replace Cutscene with Gameplay

GameCareerGuide, which has a weekly Game Design Challenge for aspiring game-makers, recently posed this challenge: suggest gameplay that could replace a cutscene, specifically, the opening cinematic to Stubbs the Zombie. The results, which are available on the site, are in; only two people managed to solve this tough challenge. The purpose of the challenge was to push aspiring developers to really think about how game designers convey information. Writers live by the creed, “Show, don’t tell,” but for game developers, the maxim is closer to, “Let the player do; don’t show or tell.” Only two submissions were able to truly get to the root of the challenge and provide information through gameplay and environment rather than a cinematic. In the pre-cursor article before the solutions are shared, Manveer Heir, a game designer and the lead author of the challenges, writes, “the player [should feel] as if she is responsible for the learning, rather than being told what is going on.” He also uses an example from BioShock to explain more concretely exactly how game creators convey information through gameplay. Not surprisingly, the best solution offered was from a professional developer, Mike Wilson, a community assistant at Rare. What made Wilson’s entry exception was his methodical way of first identifying everything the player needs to know, and then explaining step-by-step how the player will come to know it. The other solution came from Justin Phillips (no affiliation provided), who noted that cutting the intro cutscene to the game would get the player “straight into playing the game.” Phillips also created some useful storyboards to better show what the player will do when learning the information from the to-be-cut cutscene. GameCareerGuide has made the storyboards available in full. The weekly competition continues this week with a much lighter challenge: come up with the Collector’s Edition content for the game Terminator: Salvation. As always, professional developers are welcome to participate. The full rules of the challenge are available on GameCareerGuide.com.