Contents  Introduction  Levels of  Abstraction  Mastering the  System  Personal Growth  Exiting the Maze  Hybrid Focuses  A Fourth Focus  Conclusion  Printable version

Exiting the Maze

To understand the third focus it is imperative that one already understands the first two thoroughly, as this focus is most easily visible by seeing where the other two focuses are not present.

A game that has no focus on mastering any particular system and no focus on character or environmental growth must be part of a different focus. The maze focus is when the player is put in a situation and must get themselves out of it, this is usually seen as a primary focus in games of the adventure genre.

In an adventure game the player is placed in a situation and given a story of what they generally are supposed to accomplish. The player then moves through the environments gathering items and performing a variety of different actions. None of these items are important for anything other than performing the actions though. The character is not really enriched or enhanced by owning the items, and the items are normally totally disposable after the specific actions they were intended for have passed.

In this way we can see that the character is not trying to augment themselves by gathering items. Also, the actions performed are really not fun, they are usually part of puzzles that need to be figured out and then performed. The fun part of this process is moving from one area to another, getting out of the current situation and moving into the next, much as one moves from the center to the exit of a maze.

Grim Fandango, or really any LucasArts adventure as well as games like Space Quest from Sierra, is a perfect example of a maze focus game.

In Grim Fandango you move through the game picking up objects which each have an intended purpose to be used as "keys" to unlock different puzzles that are presented throughout the game. The actions that the player performs do not require any skill in performing them besides understanding what the player needs to do, and usually the actions are totally unique from every other action beyond the use of interfaces like keyboards and mice.

The draw of Adventure games is usually given as enjoying the story, environment and dialogue. Adventure games often have a comedic bent to keep players interested through humor as they decode the puzzles, but they also have the draw of finishing something.

This draw is the same that applies to pen and paper mazes, as the player finds their way out of the maze and finishes it.

Mazes have been around for many centuries but they are not particularly fashionable or exciting forms of entertainment. So while it is accurate to summarize this focus of gameplay as a maze, it is not a very exciting term. However, one of the purposes in abstracting the gameplay from the content of the games is to give designers the language they need to explain their gameplay, and remove the ideology behind explaining games to players, which is where genres are more appropriate.

Next : Hybrid Focuses