Everyone must have played an action game sometime in their
life (unless you never touch games ever), but that really brings up the
question, "what is an action game?" You might think it's a no
brainer, but if you ask around (and yes I have asked around) the answers you
get are often quite different. Some of my friends say fighting games are action
games while others say shooters are actions games and still other say RPGs. So
really...what is considered an action game? Is there such a category? and if so
what type of game fit this category? I feel like this is going into a
philosophical debate that has no correct answer, but since this is a blog about
beliefs, especially the various beliefs of Imagiro Studios, we will dive into
the discussion of this question.
As with our previous post on the essence of stealth games,
we said that stealth games are games around inaction which is opposite of
action (no duh), and we defined action as the ability to make split second
decisions to alter some result in the game. An example of this would be
apparent in a shooter. Moving left and right in sight of an enemy is a split
second decision that determines if you are going to get hit and die or avoid
damage. Driving games are quite similar in this respect when going into a
corner, whether you drift or not will determine if you crash and lose or come
out ahead. So to generalize, action games includes all games that allows the
player to make split seconds decisions that somehow affect the fate of the
player. Action as a category is too general and encompassing, however, that
also means no one is wrong when they said shooter, racing, fighting, or RPGs
are action games. I guess that's why there are other categories out there to
further describe the genre of games.
So as always, we here at Imagiro Studios are game lovers and
we all have different preferences when it comes games. Thomas (our programmer)
likes games with deep strategy and as well as anything goes brawl games such as
TF2 and Warframe, DnD, and most RTS. John (our 3D modeller) on the other hand
prefers MOBA such as DOTA 2 and a lot of RPGs such as WoW, FF online, and
various other console RPG titles (I think the last one he was hyped about was
Ni no Kuni). Mike (our animator) tries out anything he can, but being a car
enthusiast, he strictly prefers racing games as well as games where you can
drive around like GTA series (there has always been some discussion about the
causal relationship of his car preference, is it because he like cars leading
him to like racing games, or is it because he likes racing games that made him
interested in cars....it will remain as a mystery forever). With such diverse
preferences within the team alone, we obviously have a lot of different views
on what an action game needs, Cars says Mike, guns and stunts says Thomas,
leveling and abilities says John, all this discussion doesn't really yield an
answer since no one is really wrong. However, we do agree on the fact that it
is about split second decision making and that those decisions determines some
later outcome.
One thing in common is that the pace of actions games are
generally quite fast where consecutive actions/commands must be executed to
progress. Although consequences of those actions might not be evident
immediately, but they will (or at least should) affect the overall result of
the game, this signifies that the consequences of the actions should be rather
insignificant compared to stealth games. (We hope we proved our point somewhat
here, it was confusing trying to put it into words) Therefore it should be
quite clear what is needed to make an action-oriented game. Generate a fast
tempo in gameplay that allow players to do a lot of things to grant certain
degrees of control over the environment and ultimately the player's
performance.
Several things we considered when discussed about
action-oriented games. One of the biggest issues is the degree of control over
environment. Before we go any further, we thought we should clarify what it
really means. For us at Imagiro Studios, control over the environment means
that the environment can be altered to the player's favour. Unlike in stealth
games where the player must take what was given in the surrounding and find a
way around the various death traps, we like giving the player ways to fiddle
with the surrounding and use it to gain an edge over other players or AI. Of
course, the environment also includes the player itself, the specific model
that represents and answers the actions executed by the player, such things
apply to arcade fighting games like Street fighter, King of fighter, and
various other fighting games. Now that you know what we mean by control over
the environment, the question of "how much?" should spring up (and no
it's not how much money), the degree of control given to a player in an action
game can be a delicate topic, too much control doesn't allow for a game to be
too fast pace and allows too many decisions which generally confuses the
players and make your programmer pull his own hair out. We can't give an
accurate answer ourselves on this matter, but do keep in mind of the
relationship that more action available the more programming and more training
the player must go through. Also keep in mind that more is not always better
(was thinking of megaman, shoot, jump, jump and shoot). As there are too many
things to cover in the "action" genre, we will stop here with the
discussion. As we explore more specific genre, we will be providing more
detailed thought process that we go through here at Imagiro Studios.
P.S. Youngjoon (our concept artist) always seems to be left
out in the main body of the article, so we are here to make it up to him by
designating this segment to him. His game preference is quite similar to John,
we do play DOTA 2 together sometimes, but lately he's been too busy to sit down
and play, so he is leaning towards mobile games.
