{"id":118541,"date":"2020-09-25T18:35:00","date_gmt":"2020-09-25T18:35:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.gamasutra.com\/view\/news\/370800"},"modified":"2020-09-25T18:35:00","modified_gmt":"2020-09-25T18:35:00","slug":"dont-miss-make-me-think-make-me-move-dooms-deceptively-simple-design","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/2020\/09\/25\/dont-miss-make-me-think-make-me-move-dooms-deceptively-simple-design\/","title":{"rendered":"Don’t Miss: ‘Make me think, make me move’: Doom’s deceptively simple design"},"content":{"rendered":"

Doom<\/em> is known for its speed and straightforwardness \u2013 move fast, shoot demons. It’s a seemingly simple combination that, at the franchise\u2019s best, evokes an ultraviolent cognitive flow.<\/p>\n

But Doom\u2019s<\/em> apparent simplicity belies a core design that is difficult to achieve. For Doom<\/em> 2016 (which I argued was the best-feeling shooter of last year<\/a>), reaching design goals and staying true to what makes Doom, Doom,<\/em> was all about establishing clear development goals and maintaining a sharp focus.<\/p>\n

“From a high-level perspective \u2013 this is going to sound overly simple for a dev audience \u2013 but it was absolutely 100 percent ‘fun first,'” says Marty Stratton, game director at Bethesda-owned Doom<\/em> developer Id Software, where he\u2019s worked since the late 90s.<\/p>\n

“I know a lot of developers would say ‘yeah, of course, we all do fun first’…I dunno,” he said incredulously. “I think that was definitely a big, big thing for us, always. We let the game tell us what it wanted as we played it constantly, and always steered into the fun.<\/p>\n

“And that came back to the most fundamental design things: bad-ass demons with tons of personality, great guns, and fast movement \u2013 push-forward combat<\/strong> \u2013 that created [what we call] ‘combat chess.'”<\/p>\n

Mentioning the plodding, cerebral turn-based game of chess when explaining the fast-paced demon-slaying combat of Doom<\/em> sounds like a stretch \u2013 and maybe it is \u2013 but that concept is one that the development team was able to understand and use as a guide.<\/p>\n

“Making that combat chess really, really fun, and making it feel like you\u2019re on this ultimate power fantasy just was really, from a gameplay perspective, the guiding principle,\u201d Stratton said.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Push it real good<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Here\u2019s how Stratton and Id creative director Hugo Martin defined the idea of “combat chess”: speed<\/strong> of movement; individuality<\/strong> of the demons; distinctiveness<\/strong> of the weapons; overall power <\/strong>of the player; and the idea of “make me think, <\/strong>make me move.<\/strong>“<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

“Players play games because they want to think, whether they\u2019re playing a strategy game or whatever. We play games to think \u2013 to solve problems,” Stratton said. “In Doom<\/em>, the problem is combat \u2013 I\u2019m surrounded by 10 enemies, and I size them up based on how they look like and what I know they do.<\/strong>“<\/p>\n

Because of the speed of Doom<\/em>, all of the information needed to solve these “combat puzzles” had to be quickly digestible and understood by players. Pieces of the puzzle needed to be distinctive and available in order for players to solve them on the fly. “It\u2019s just about introducing those [puzzle pieces and tools] over time,\u201d said Stratton.<\/p>\n

Even before the start of the production of this latest Doom<\/em>, Id knew a thing or two about killing its darlings. Somewhat famously, Id got deep into development of a previous version of the game; a story-heavy interpretation of the franchise announced in 2008 that was later referred to as “Call of Doom”<\/em> due to its apparent inspiration from Call of Duty <\/em>and other shooters of that ilk.<\/p>\n

But a full-on cancellation of that project and a complete restart put the game on the path of Doom<\/em>\u2019s 2016 iteration. Taking “combat chess” from concept to a polished product was a process of playtesting and iteration. This involved constant editing and course correction; an exercise in staying focused on design goals<\/strong> and cutting and fixing what didn\u2019t jibe.<\/p>\n

For example, Stratton explained how for a period of time during development, the game\u2019s demon AI would run straight at players, aggressively closing the distance. “We\u2019d end up in these situations where you [as a player] would instantly start backing up \u2013 you\u2019d go on your heels,” he said. “It\u2019s a very natural thing [to do as a player]. It was basically 360-degree combat, with everyone coming at you from all sides.”<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

During playtesting, players would find a wall to back up against or a choke-point to take advantage of in order to stay alive, which was a cheesy way to play supposed chess.<\/p>\n

“The combat just wasn\u2019t working at all,” Stratton said. “It really took some effort to get everybody geared around the idea that demons, except for melee demons, should hold their position, and we can’t put too many melee demons in [an arena] at the same time, because then you lose that feeling of combat chess. If all the pieces moved all at the same time towards you, chess becomes very much not fun.”<\/p>\n

By having demons hold their ground longer than before, the design put the impetus on players to move in on enemy positions. “The player was [now] the one initiating, picking his way through the arena and through the space,” said Stratton.<\/p>\n

Martin said there wasn’t anything inherently “wrong” with how the creatures initially behaved \u2013 other games have enemy AI that swarms players. But that tack didn\u2019t follow one of Doom<\/em>\u2019s core design filters, which is “push-forward combat.”<\/p>\n

Martin added, “We just edited a lot of stuff, and said we don\u2019t<\/em> necessarily want the player to have multiple ways to accomplish their goals<\/strong> \u2013 there\u2019s only one way to play Doom<\/em>\u2026We cut a lot of stuff that is completely valid in a lot of [other] games, just to get the game to feel like Doom<\/em>.”<\/p>\n

Doom<\/em>\u2019s combat, Stratton said, is designed to make you feel like you\u2019re up against overwhelming odds \u2013 that all of the demons of hell are coming at you at once. But even though there might be many demons in an arena at any one moment, you\u2019re actually only going up against a small amount of them at any given time.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

It’s basically chess<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

“You almost need the capability to engage one guy, and think about one guy, and then move on to the next guy, then the next guy, then the next guy,\u201d he said. The team wanted players to prioritize their engagements with enemies on the fly. This approach heavily influenced level design, as designers needed to give players opportunities to break line of sight with certain enemies, but force them to keep moving.<\/p>\n

Stratton said, “We did hit a point where we got the AI doing the right thing and the arenas [were] coming together with the right kind of geometry, and it really started to feel like it should \u2013 like I\u2019m maintaining my control, but I\u2019m always playing the game in a way we\u2019re intending players to play.”<\/p>\n

The team behind the new Doom<\/em> wanted to recapture the essence of the original game, and one of those key elements was speed. Id wanted to move away from the more plodding survival horror pace of Doom 3<\/em> and return to a rock and roll-inspired, high energy format.<\/p>\n

Stratton said he couldn\u2019t remember exactly how many times the team changed the game\u2019s speed, but he knows it definitely increased from the earliest prototypes to when it went into full-on production. “We knew early on that it needed to be fast, under control, and we had to make a game that worked equally well on PC and consoles,” he said.<\/p>\n

One of the game\u2019s developers put together a movement map that became Id’s test bed for nearly every change made in the game\u2019s development. “It was just a matter of finding a balance and testing,” Stratton said.<\/p>\n

In the game, players could also set up rune abilities to boost their speed, so more speed was also available if players wanted it. Martin also noted that it\u2019s not just actual player speed that makes Doom<\/em> feel fast. The feeling of speed is also enhanced by the size of the game\u2019s arenas, and the enemy encounters.<\/p>\n

“The right size arena, with just the right amount of space, actually made the player feel even faster<\/strong>,\u201d he said. “Your top-end speed is good but you\u2019re more agile than you are fast. If you\u2019re in the right space, it can just feel perfect. We spent a lot of time during development finding exactly what the right-sized spaces are for Doom <\/em>to make you feel quick and agile, but still under control.”<\/p>\n

Doom<\/em> cuts the cruft from the modern first-person shooter format. There\u2019s relatively little dialog, there are “missing\u201d mechanics like reloading, and the tools provided to players in order to progress require little overt explanation or tutorializing.<\/p>\n

Like many things that “just work,\u201d reaching that level of simplicity was not so simple. “It\u2019s funny,\u201d said Martin, “because we still talk about this stuff now [at Id]. It\u2019s kind of gotta be simple \u2013 like Apple simple. We really feel like if the audience can\u2019t understand [a complicated idea] really fast, I mean in seconds, then it just doesn\u2019t [belong] in the game.”<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Stratton explained one anecdote in which the team edited for simplicity. He said at one point during development, the team was considering whether or not the player had enough information to know at least where to go. For a while, Doom<\/em> developers experimented with having a voice in the player\u2019s ear; a helper. They wrote some lines, keeping the dialog “light and cool,\u201d he said, and even implemented it in several levels at one point.<\/p>\n

“It works in tons of games,” Stratton said. “More games have it than not, where someone says, ‘Hey, you gotta go do this!’ Fundamentally, that works. It worked [in Doom<\/em>]\u2026at a mechanical level.”<\/p>\n

But what works in other games won\u2019t necessarily work in your own game. “For Doom<\/em>, when you played it, you\u2019re like, ‘I don\u2019t wanna hear this fucker,” Stratton said. “Get him out of my head, because this is my<\/em> game. This is me making the choices.”<\/p>\n

This type of trial and error happened throughout the game\u2019s development. The team made sure to cut the extraneous material that fell outside of the game\u2019s filters, and in the end there was a focused, cohesive end product.<\/p>\n

“There are those moments where you implement something and you implement it well, and make it exactly like you want, but when you play it you\u2019re like, ‘This just isn\u2019t us. This isn\u2019t our game,'” said Stratton. “Those are all good learnings.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Doom is known for its speed and straightforwardness \u2013 move fast, shoot demons. It’s a seemingly simple combination that, at the franchise\u2019s best, evokes an ultraviolent cognitive flow. But Doom\u2019s apparent simplicity belies a core design that is difficult to achieve. For Doom 2016 (which I argued was the best-feeling shooter of last year), reaching […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":118542,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-118541","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/118541","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=118541"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/118541\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/118542"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=118541"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=118541"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=118541"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}