Singel and multiplayer games explained!

Having come to the realization that a multi-player and singel-player session of a game are two different experiences, dealing in different frames as well as motivational factors, I found this article by our friend Jesper Juul. (It's not access restricted).

Here Jesper explains this difference in that, what we call, multipayer games are games of Emergence whilst singel-player games are games of Progression.

Jesper summarizes like this: "As a rule of thumb, the simplest way to tell games of emergence from games of progression is to find guides for them on the net. Progression games have walkthroughs: lists of actions to perform to complete the game. Emergence games have strategy guides: rules of thumb, general tricks."

And here is how I think this ties into our hypothesis concerning Hud elements:

- In any given situation in a game that leans more towards emergence there are so many more choices for the player make than in any given situation in a progression based game. I can win a game of counterstrike in a million and one ways, but I can only complete a dungeon in Zelda by doing certain things in a certain order.

This difference in freedom of choice creates a need for more and clearer information to base these choices on when playing emergent games. Since this information is so crucial to the players performance he/she is not too bothered by the the way it is presented. This will therefore, in general, tend to generate more Hud elements.

- I'd bet that all of the games in our HUDless list are games of progression!

Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth

This is footage from CoC:DCOTE - another hudless game. It has some nice hand animations and uses a lot of character dialogue to convey information - Also, the save points are really cool. I intend to play this on PC this weekend in the hope of learning more.

Jurassic Park: Trespasser

Can't help but marvel at how far ahead this game was in many respects.

Check out this video of how they use sound to convey info about the weapons. Read more about the game here. It has many similarities with ME and I think it is worth studying in detail - both the things that worked and the things that don't.

Interesting article comment

From an online article about "the death of the HUD" - comments section.


"I have no problem with losing the HUD, I only play CoD4 on hardcore anyway, and I've gotten used to not knowing my exact ammo level.

My wife (a gamer as well), and I both agree that losing directional HUDs (such as arrows, or any destination aids) is a big mistake. In a game, you don't have your natural senses to help you know which way to go, or which way you've come. It's way too easy to get lost. It also makes it harder to remember which way to go when picking the game back up after being gone for a while.

Health Bar - not needed, CoD4 does it best
Ammo counter - Halo did it well
Directional Aids - a must, whether a map or arrows, or even a sword like Colossus"

Subjective study: Games worth checking out

Here are some games I think we should include in our subjective study concerning "HUDlessness".

Jurassic Park: Trespasser - One of the first attempts at a HUDless FPS, with a lot of great ideas still unseen since its release in 1998.

Call of Cthulhu: DCotE and Peter Jackson's: King Kong - More recent attempts at making HUDless or near HUDless FPS games.

Resident Evil: Code Veronica (DC) - Besides from being HUDless the Dreamcast version of RE:CV had the interesting feature that you could see an EKG (health indicator) on the games "controller screen" (VMU).

ICO - HUDless and with lots of interesting "states" indicated by sound and graphical signifiers.

Dead Space and Alone in the Dark: Inferno - for their use of diegetic menues.

Metroid Prime - For its use of a diegetic HUD

Condemd - For how it handles 1st person melee and "forensic" sceenes.

List of HUDless games

The following is a link to a list of HUDless or near HUDless games that might be worth checking out in detail.

http://www.mobygames.com/game-group/hudless-games/offset,0/so,1d/