The Division Should Have Been More

We have a lot of loot-driven games in the gaming medium, and they are often fun ways to kill some time and baddies. For the uninitiated, loot-based games are centered around a gameplay loop of killing baddies for new items and equipment, using the loot that's better than your own equipment, then using that new equipment to go kill bigger and badder baddies. It's a simple yet satisfying progression system that provides a steady influx of tangible rewards that can be used to earn even greater rewards. Game franchises like Diablo and Borderlands have used this system to great effect. Diablo starts the player with weak weapons and very little armor, and has them finding better weapons and armor as the game progresses. Borderlands is all about the guns, grenades, and passive buffs. You start with a simple pistol that does nothing more than shoot bullets, then find bigger guns that add elemental damage to their bullets or just explode. Both series feature simple premises, that make the loot-driven system the focus of the game. Diablo pits the player against the denizens of hell, and Borderlands drops the player on at lawless planet full of colorful people who let their humanity fall by the wayside in favor of madness and anarchy. Both games use violence at the main way to interact with their worlds and the people/ creatures in them, and they make it work by distancing the gameworlds from reality enough that the violence as main interaction passes without much attention. Tom Clancy's The Division does not have that luxury. The Division is undoubtedly a slick game with an engaging gameplay loop. As a loot-driven game it's great, but it's missions and premise cry out for The Division to be more than looting and shooting.

My Minimap Problem

Hey folks, I’m back to writing blog things. I’m sure you were heartbroken while I was off writing in other places (my attempt to start a website), but no need to fret. So, how about them video games, huh?

By their very nature, video games of every stripe have to communicate volumes of information to the player. In most games, elements like health and equipment are placed around the borders of the screen in an handy dandy heads up display (or HUD as I’m going to continue calling it. Handy dandy heads up display is just too much to type more than once.) In many open games, with larger worlds for players to explore, the designers will add a small map to the HUD. This minimap shows where the player is in the world around them. The main functions of the minimap are exploration, enemy placement, and GPS directions. Each of these functions is helpful but they all lead to the same issue, which is the focus of this article. Every function of the minimap, where useful, creates the potential to distract the player (namely me) from the gameworld that the level designers and artists worked so hard to create.

Note: In this piece I will be detailing my own problems with the minimaps used in video games. First, I will explain the minimap function then I will go into the issue this creates for me. I am not a game designer. I am writing this because it’s on my mind, and I believe we should be constantly analyzing and discussing all facets of game design. I am coming from the direction of an academic fascinated by the narrative forms and mechanical devices of video games.