How player’s character’s health & life system affects the game flows of FPS game
20004585 Jia Liang Cai
Research Question: How player’s character’s health & life system affects the game flows of FPS game
Methodology:
I am going to use the qualitative method to collect and analyse the data from two games. Escape from Tarkov(2017) and Call of Duty 2019. Use Descriptive statistics and Jenova Chen’s GameFlow Model (2006) and hodent. C’s points to analyse the relationship between the health &system and game flow in these two games. By using the points from Gard. T and Burn.C I will also talk about a bit of game immersion, not as the main topic but as an add-on content and how it reinforces the game flows. Finally, I will Evaluate the limitations in the approach of this case study and explain why these are outweighed by strength.
Introduction
There are tons of published FPS games out there. Some of them are designed to offer relaxed and casual gameplay and others are built for simulating an intense, realistic combat experience. The health & life system plays a big role in helping to build these two types of unique gameplays. In this essay, I will compare the health and life system within Escape from Tarkov and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare (2019) and show how the game flows vary in these two games.
Before we make the comparison, Let’s just be clear be about the “game flow”. In Jenova Chen’s scholar, “Welcome to Flow in Games” (Chen,2006), she claims
“Designing a video game is very much about how to keep the player in the Flow and eventually be able to finish the game.” [1]
So basically, the game flow is a complete experience the player should feel when playing through the game and a successful game should provide appropriate to keep the player in this flow as long as he can. And from Celia Hodent‘s speech “The Gamer’s Brain, Part 3: The UX of Engagement and Immersion (or Retention)” She claims
“The Game Flow is about the Difficult curve, Pacing and Learning Curve.” [2]
The Player should have more challenges along with his improving skills. When the player got better in games, there should be just the right amount of challenges for them to conquer. But this is just an ideal condition, players might find the game it’s too hard to play or not challenging enough. Therefore, Hardcore and novice type of game flows are introduced to satisfy the player’s demand.
In this article, I am focusing on how the life and health systems in Escape from Tarkov and COD could help to form this “hard” or “easy” game experience.
Health system
The Health system has always been a general but important setting for the FPS game. It could be represented as a health bar or not visible at all. But they are all used for measuring the amount of damage the player takes. If the player got to shoot, he loses his health.
Escape From Tarkov’s Health System
In Escape from Tarkov, the player’s health is split into 7 body parts, They are head, thorax stomach, left/right arm, left/right leg. And each part got its sub-health bar. For example, In the beginning, the player got full health with 7 green health bars. if the player got shot to the left leg, the body part health bar will lose health and turn yellow. And now, the player will start moving slowly because of this wound and if the player has those medical first aids in the bag, he could use them to heal the parts. And each of these medical gadgets does different things, a pill could slow down the health lost per second and a gadget could heal up the body parts but none of them does immediate recovery.
On the other hand, if the player fails to heal his body parts in time due to lack of resources or time. His body parts will change to black eventually with total loss of that part’s ability. So, if the player’s leg turns black, he simply can’t walk anymore.
The anxiety is enormously high and increases every second. Player don’t just lose their health but also gains other drawbacks like slow walking, inaccurate shooting which will lead them to disadvantages. Shooting other players might not be the only priority now but curing wounds also become important. It takes time to get full recovery which means the high anxiety will stay for longer until the game character is recovered.
A new player would have to face all these problems at once. He needs to think about Like what pills do what affect, what time should I go for recovery, how long does it take to recover. The game experience changed dramatically from a normal experience to a high-intensity experience, and the panic level is high. It takes time to learn all these mechanics which dropped the player into an intense gaming environment suddenly that formed a unique hardcore game experience.
All these mechanics come around also boost up the immersion of the game. From “Use of auditory event-related potentials to measure immersion during a computer game” (Burns and Fairclough, 2022)
“It was also anticipated that immersion would be maximised during the HMD condition due to sensory immersion as this type of display completely occupied the visual field, i.e. ERPs would be of generally lower amplitude in the HMD condition compared to the LCD condition.” [3]
It’s like comparing a big clear zombie picture with cankered face and being exposed, to a pixel zombie with blocks. It’s about details.
In the same principle, the life system in Escaped from Tarkov offers much more details and give players more chances to experience being wounded. When a new player got shot in the game, he needs to check his health, find the medicine, and wait for the recovery, it’s just like recovering our wounds in the real life, it takes time and resources. And this “wound” has much more details and is more realistic which also boost up the overall hardcore experiences.
Call of Duty’s Health System
In comparison, the Call of duty is built in a completely different way. Players do have automatic health regeneration. The game uses blood icons and a screen filter to indicate the player’s health. Like the images (Figure 2) attached below. When the player got wounded, his screen will have several bloody splashes, but when he is in low health, the screen will have a shading filter. But if the player stops receiving damage for several seconds, this shading filter will fade away, and the character will regain full health back. It usually takes 5 seconds to complete this process.
Similar to the Escape from Tarkov, the player does stand in a vulnerable position when he got hit. But the difference is the health system is built relatively easy and the player does not need to care about how to get health back but has automatic regeneration which makes the recovery much easier. This health system works from the beginning automatically when the player starts playing the game which means the player won’t be challenged to learn all the medical skills but more focus on the combat. And he doesn’t have to worry about the time of regeneration, just stay back a bit and rejoin the battle after 5 seconds of waiting. This health system has “fewer details” that form a quick, fast-paced and relaxed game experience.
(Figure 2)
Life system
People never get panic when walking along a sidewalk in a park surrounded by grass, but they do get nervous when walking along a swaying single plank bridge with a bottomless chasm underneath it. Because one step on the grass wouldn’t get you into life danger but missing footing on the plank bridge could get you killed. These two environments offer us completely different feelings. And that’s the feeling of danger, the feeling of losing a life.
The life system builds differently in both games and it’s all about 1 life vs infinite life.
Escape From Tarkov ‘s life system
In Escape from Tarkov, once a player’s character is confirmed dead, the player will lose all the equipment he got in that round and start from zero. The Player will surround by this type of feeling during the whole gameplay which is not so friendly to the beginners.
Imagining keep dying and losing all your stuff every time but you just barely know the game. The difficulty is enormous for a starter and the cost of learning to survive in this game is huge. For instance, A brand new player just starts playing the game, he doesn’t know the map and where to go, how to use those guns. But if he got killed, he will lose anything he got and send back to zero like everyone else. The player doesn’t just learn the game but also gained a huge frustration every time he died which could form stressful gameplay overall.
And even it’s a wealthy player with great gadgets could increase his survival rate but won’t change these mechanics. The gadgets are randomly generated which could be found on the map and some of them are only purchasable in the game market for a price. Such as the night version goggle which is a super rare item that values 2000 dollars in the market. Losing all your expensive gadgets in one round that cost you so much time and money could lead to an even higher frustration level. This type of life system also boosts the immersion of the game, it makes the “Death” in-game more realistic. Like Toby Gard claims in Action-Adventure Level Design: King Fu Zombie Killer（Toby Gard,2010）.
“Everyone stores simplified constructions of reality in their mind; schemata that codify the critical features of the world around us. We use our schemata to recognize and interpret everything we experience […] When we are creating worlds in games, immersion is only possible for the player if we can convince the players that the space is authentic (whether stylized or not.) If the critical features on-screen don’t match up with the critical features of the player’s schemata, then he or she will not be fooled by it.” [4]
People all have different understandings of death but there is one point in common- once we die, we are not coming back. Losing all valuable gadgets, going back to zero. Sounds exactly like “Death.” This life system not just creates a unique hardcore game flow but also draws a great immersion that makes the game more engaging.
Call of Duty’s life system
The call of duty on the other hand provides a complete life system. Unlike the Escape from Tarkov, the COD player got infinite health and respawn point and don’t lose anything when they are dead.
For example, if a player dies in the team deathmatch mode in call of duty, he could instantly respawn back on a certain point on the map with the same gadget he used last life. Every time he failed; he barely loses something. No gadgets lost means each player’s life is cheap.
The player could die 100 times around but don’t need to worry about other things than combat. Because he only gained knowledge and skills over time and none of his equipment could be taken away which formed quite relaxed gameplay. It’s like dropping off the bridge but you don’t need to worry about death or something, because you are the “superman” in this game and that will not be any penalties for making mistakes. Everything here is built for fun and relaxation.
Evaluation
But the game flow or the game experience could vary between different players. The personal Game experience could make a huge difference. Like the Graph Shown below, it indicates the flow channel with a white background which represent the experience we what the players to feel, an interesting game experience. But when a skilful player who has been playing FPS for years plays the Escape from Tarkov, he may not experience the same hardcore feeling that other players do. Because he already got used to the FPS mechanics and he could turn the original hardcore game flow into a “COD” style relax game experience by running around and killing people and feeling bored eventually which leads him to the A4 point.
On the other hand, COD could be a hardcore game for certain players group. Like a player who spends his whole life playing MMO or RPG games and just wants to try out some new games. He probably will find COD quite hard because he got no experience of playing this type of game. Considering the COD is a quite fast-paced FPS, he may end up dying again and again but not having fun playing this game which leading stressful and have him located at A3 with a high anxiety level.
These are the number of subjective factors that could influence the result of game flow, such as graphics, music, lighting. As game designers, we are aiming to build or make a game that everyone could enjoy but it’s technically impossible possible to achieve. Hence, we need to have limits or set some boundaries to this case study by assuming the players with a standard knowledge of FPS game and this case study is set on an ideal circumstance and only focusing on the health and life system impacts that effects the game flow.
References
1. CHEN, J.
Welcome to Flow in Games
In-text: (Chen, 2006)
Your Bibliography: Chen, J., 2006. Welcome to Flow in Games. [online] Jenovachen.com. Available at: <http://jenovachen.com/flowingames/designfig.htm> [Accessed 2 January 2022].
2. BURNS, C. G. AND FAIRCLOUGH, S. H.
Use of Auditory Event-Related Potentials to Measure Immersion during a Computer Game
In-text: (Burns and Fairclough, 2022)
Your Bibliography: Burns, C. and Fairclough, S., 2022. Use of Auditory Event-Related Potentials to Measure Immersion during a Computer Game. [online] Available at: <http://researchonline.ljmu.ac.uk/id/eprint/287/> [Accessed 5 January 2022].
3. HODENT, C.
The Gamer’s Brain, Part 3: The UX of Engagement and Immersion (or Retention)
In-text: (Hodent, 2022)
Your Bibliography: Hodent, C., 2022. The Gamer’s Brain, Part 3: The UX of Engagement and Immersion (or Retention). [online] Gdcvault.com. Available at: <https://www.gdcvault.com/play/1024055/The-Gamer-s-Brain-Part> [Accessed 5 January 2022].
4. GARD, T.
Action Adventure Level Design: Kung Fu Zombie Killer
In-text: (Gard, 2010)
Your Bibliography: Gard, T., 2010. Action Adventure Level Design: Kung Fu Zombie Killer. [online] Gamasutra.com. Available at: <https://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/4413/action_adventure_level_design_.php> [Accessed 5 January 2022].