Press 'H' to Build Hell: On Prompting the Player to Action

In this article I examine the use of prompts in video games and compare their funtions in regard to game writing.




It seems like an innocent call when an in-game text in Sid Meier's Civilization prompts the player to take her first action in the game: Press "b" to built a city . What she doesn't know yet, but afterwards experiences soon, is that she actually lays the first stone of the road to hell. Once she builds that city, the game dynamics starts to cycle around her like a shark before its deadly attack.

Of course it is not the prompt that builts hell. The prompt just prompts us to do something we don't know the meaning of yet. But what do prompts in games really do? Can we define an area of function for them or can we distinguish between types of use? On the other hand, are there good ways to employ them, could we eventually suggest some rules of thumb for using prompts? Can we regard prompts as category of their own or are they only a subcategory of another major category of game elements?


Prompts as a way of Exposure

If I had to place the prompts subject in a book about screenwriting, I would have placed it under the chapter about exposure and the techniques of exposure. Hence, it seems like that a broader category for prompts exists. But then, I would have also thought of referring to prompts in the storytelling techniques chapter. And surely I would have addressed the prompts issue in many other chapters. Is this multi-functionality a property of prompts or is it the result of the different contexts in which they are utilized?

It seems to me that many prompts function as informative elements of the game, helping us in our orientation and revealing us the some of the parametres of the game. For instance, they ask us to use a input device assigned to a function... like in our above example "press 'b' to build a city". The prompt informs us on or teaches us about how to build a city. Hence we can conclude that prompts have a informative function.(We can regard them also as paradigmatic, as they reveal the elements in the list of the game's possibles.)

But then there is another prompt: Build more cities! You should build more cities to grow your civilization. This prompt does not inform us about a function. It intoduces an aim, points at or suggests a goal. This time the syntagmatic character seems to be stronger, since it asks us to utilize the city building option in a sequential, meaningful way. It is also a warning about -if we borrow a term from Fernand Braudel- the "big grammar" of the game: The limitations that game physics pose upon us and the trends that the inhabitants of the game domain are forced into due to the the long term effects of game dynamics.

A few turns later we face another prompt: to choose the first from a variety of research topics. This prompt faces us with a decision... and that is a dramatic situation. Just having chosen, now the city asks us what to produce next: a prompt for decision again.

We can say that many of the prompts are shapers of meaningful action (gameplay) as step by step, they show us how the world works (how our interaction with the game materializes in the game's domain). The way things materialize also gains meaning during the process. It appears that what materializes in the game world has also a value within the context of the game (game-defined value as well as player-defined value, and of course, how they translate into each other).


Luring the Player into Play

Prompts are also important in the early of the game. The prompts at the start of Civilization seem to have some important functions that can be compared with those techniques applied in the introduction act of a screenplay: They capture our attention and immediately lure us into the conflict. They confront us in the first seconds with the game dynamics that will challenge us all along the game. If there wouldn't be a prompt, the risk would be that we walk around aimlessly on the map, missing the game, finding no meaning/value for our acts, not understanding the reasons and goals we are here for. We would seek for information on what our goal is, how the world we are in functions and how we can influence it and its outcomes. A bad designed interface would leave us stunned, us not being able to really initiate the game, although the game seems to have started and we expect to find processes of interaction (mutual influencing) as well as feedback about this interaction. So using a prompt in such a situation can be a clever design decision: The first few seconds in which the player decides to continue or not, are not wasted, they are effectively used to get the player into the game. They are used to get him influencing and reward him with feedback: A city appears on the map, then the city screen opens. Actually the game world starts to opens itself.


Establishing a Player Vocabulary

We can say that prompts follows common wisdom: A game is best learned by playing it, not by listening to explanations about it beforehand. When we play board or card games it happens very often that the more experienced player suggests just to start to play and adds "you will understand when we progress into the game". We learn the rules, the properties of the game world and the funtions of game elements when the time comes to apply them or when we are subject to them. In other words, we get the answers to "what's next?" and "how?" when we need them. (Or from the POV of the designer: when the game seems to need them to influence the player.)

(A note on influencing: Influencing does not necessarily mean that an action or the dynamic of the game changes the game world in a recognizable way. It can be also mental, e.g. changing the idea of the player about himself or her status in the game.)


The Timing of Exposure

But getting something when we need it, raises another issue: that of timing. This leads us to a simple rule in screenwriting: The best moment to reveal an information is the moment where the spectator asks for it. Only then the information will be absorbed "naturally". The best informations are those that doesn't make us feel like we are informed. Bad timing causes suspicion or worse, it pulls us out of immersion. The flow seems to be interrupted or it feels like the game needs reference to the outside world to explain itself or make itself work. All this casts doubts on the realism and believability of the game.

In screenwriting, two techniques regarding the timing of exposure are very often mentioned: Of one -giving information exactly at the moment in which the spectator begs for it- we talked already. The other one is to reveal information within a dramatic context where we are focused on the plot/event and do not realize that we are also receiving information about the how's and why's of the game. The first time our city is attacked, could be an example: It is a dramatic moment, raising tension. But Voila!: we have learned another fact about the game without really noticing: That our cities can be subject to attack... and simple reasoning might carry us even a step further: Expecting that we might attack cities, too. We try it of course!

Civilization is in many regards very good in timing since it almost never allows us to think "what's next?" or "how?". This is partly a result of the way in which the mechanism of the game works: New features are triggered or revealed in a back-to-back fashion: A finished research means, a new research theme has to be chosen. A finished building in the city means, a new unit has to be chosen. There is no pause inbetween. It is rather necessity than calculated timing that confronts us with new prompts... but it works particularly well. It puts us into the "next" before we can even ask for it and tells us "how" by pointing at the action/function that we might employ. The game takes the initiative and guides us all along the game. In bad designed games however, you would ask yourself questions like "what's next?" and "how?" very often. Worse games would even lack the answers to these questions...


The Presence of the Designer?

Admiring Sid Meier's skills, I faced a merely philosophical problem. It is only in this first prompt (press "b" to build a city) that it seems like someone outside of the game world speaks to us. Who is it who asks us to build a city? Is it a narrator? Is it the game? Or is it the designer of the game who otherwise shows so much effort to erase the traces of his presence in/behind the game? It's the designer who seems to ask us to play the game. But asking the player to play, is to tell her that you need her to make the game work: You refer to the outside world. You speak about what you should not speak.

Image from the Apolyton Forums


What this article useful? Do you remember games with outstanding uses of prompts? Leave a comment and share with us.
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