Detail vs. Imagination

This week I wanted to talk about one of the types of game balance mentioned in the lectures: detail vs. imagination. This type of balance stands out from the rest to me, as it is vastly different and inherently hard to achieve. It also has a pretty substantial impact in the scope of the game, but I feel like it is being used less and less in the industry today.

I want to talk about an older game I have mentioned on these blogs before that I think balances detail vs. imagination well. Then I want to compare 2 games from the same series that vastly differ in their balance between detail and imagination.

The game I wish to talk about is Master of Orion, a turn based 4X strategy game set in space. While it is inherently easier for strategy game to achieve a good balance between detail and imagination, I feel like observing this balance in a simpler environment will be easier to learn from. Everything in this game is abstracted to the player, and is shown through symbols or images that represent things well in the game world. One of these things, is how the player interacts with his/her own empire. The player's avatar in the game world is that of an emperor but the avatar is never really shown to you in game. This makes it so that its easier to imagine yourself be in the game world. The interactions between the avatar and the empire are done through screens that represent different facets of the empire: scientific, military, or espionage. These are the only things that are really relevant to gameplay so they made sure to have some sort of personal representation that you could interact with.

This brings in the imagination factor into the system, where you are shown what your people look like through one simple and brief interaction. When you go back to the main game screen, where all you see is stars and numbers that are supposed to represent your empire, you can imagine what is happening in the worlds below. This goes hand in hand with your interaction with other empires, which are done in a very similar way. The image that you are presented with, along with text gives you just enough detail for your imagination to fill in the rest of the details. What other species look like, their intentions, the fact that some of your people are sent as ambassadors etc.

Compare/Contrast

This is where I want to compare 2 games with vastly different levels of detail. I want to compare the original Fallout game with Fallout 3, as the latter introduces an extraordinary amount of detail to the genre. I played Fallout 3 first, and while it won awards and was critically acclaimed, I felt like there was just something not right with the game.

In the original Fallout, there was minimal detail, and all of your interactions with characters and some other game objects were done through text. The game world was introduced with a pre-rendered cutscene, so that your mind has a reference to go back to when not given enough details. This works really well because this provides great context for your mind to follow. The experience created by this effect is something like reading a book. By making you imagine some of the details in the game, the mind is intertwined in the experience and therefore more connected. You feel more investment in the world and characters, because partly you are the one that helped create them in your mind.

On the other hand, when I started playing Fallout 3, there was a very high amount of detail on everything. It was impressive, and immense, but somehow, something felt ... off. The character interactions weren't the things I imagined anymore, and felt really rigid, cold and lacking of life. Even though they had full facial animations, and expressions, the experience it created was not up to par with the one I had imagined in the original Fallout.

This is where detail can have adverse effects on the overall experience, and as Jesse Chell mentioned, only detail what you could do well.