This log will mostly be on writing the actual essay rather than further research, and how I would go about setting my time and such. The first thing I must admit was that I had forgotten I had a presentation to record. So I would have to divide my time between these logs, and the presentation and the essay itself.
How I plan to divide the essay
The goal is to write within a certain margin of 2.5k, I had planned to have the essay itself be segmented into four major parts, each of them defining and going over various subjects. The ‘introduction’ would define the subjects themselves: stealth, audio & visual feedback, and player immersion. Each would have to be roughly around 300 – 500 words.
Methodology would be pretty quick to describe, as I have done so in the introduction. The abstract would be written at the end. The ‘core body’ detailed my examination of two games through the lenses of what was defined in the introductory segment. The End Body itself was meant to be rather extensive, albeit shorter than the Core Body, as it was essentially a conclusion.
My methods don’t necessarily need to be explained in depth, however looking back to the writing I believe I should have been briefer in my definitions. This was so I could properly explore how the feedback played into the game’s immersive segments. In previous logs I’ve shown I had a decent understanding on Presence theory and its applications to virtual environments, which I do not believe I sufficiently conveyed in my dissertation. In hindsight I would likely go further into psychology and its applications to narrative elements of both games, through the lense of game mechanics that make Mark of the Ninja and Thief so fundamental to the genre, in my opinion.
The core body itself feels superfluous, in hindsight, I could have done better, however once again issues with time management and proper organisation have led to something I feel satisfied with, though not reflective of what I think I’m completely capable.
Immersion has numerous definitions depending on the context in which it is placed. Commonly known as physically immersing someone or something in a liquid (“thou hath been immers’d in oil!”). The video games industry and other entertainment industries have used this term as an analogy for being lost in an activity, like reading or writing, or in our case playing video games. So, that’s it? We’ve figured out what it means, everybody pack up and go home? Well not exactly.
A Theory of Spacial Presence, by Wirth et al. is explained in Jamie Madigan’s explanation around immersion in games through a psychological lense on Gamasutra. ‘Presence’ is just another name for ‘immersion’ albeit from a psychological point of view, and psychologists have identified multiple kinds. It is largely accepted that spatial presence is the typical version of presence that applies to video games.
Wirth’s theory on spatial presence, its a bit too complicated a diagram for me
Wirth’s theory explained that spatial presence happened in three steps:
* Players form a representation in their mind of the space or world with which the game is presenting them.
* Players begin to favor the media-based space (I.e., the game world) as their point of reference for where they “are”.
* Player becomes immersed in the game, sacrificing spatial awareness for their investiment into the game’s world.
The magic circle of the game becomes pervasive through various cues (sound, visual, movements, etc) and player assumptions about the game they’ve begun to play through. I’ve defined this as the (core player fantasy). When you play an adventuring game, you expect adventure. When you play a first person shooter, you expect using guns. So on and so forth.
Gordon Calleja identifies two types of immersion in his book “In-Game”: immersion through absorption and immersion through transportation. The former (absorption) is identified a the commonmost form of immersion in the video games industry, and the one Katie Salen and Eric Zimmerman pointed out as ‘the immersive fallacy’ in 2003.
At the time, more performant software/hardware allowed developers to pursue photorealistic audio and graphics, which spearheaded an obsession for pushing towards such realism in games. As a counter argument to this sudden movement, Salen and Zimmerman point out that anybody can be immersed in anything without necessarily it having to be as close to realism as possible. For instance, anybody can be immersed in Tetris, which is in no way as close to realism as possible. Instead they advocated for more engaging gameplay mechanics instead.
Calleja proposes another type of immersion, which is amade available through the evolution of “virtual environements within both the humanities and presence theory.” Essentially, video games may “absorb” our attention through a specific task, but many nowadays “transport” us to a fictional game world instead.
“A player who assimilates this game world into their gameplay as a metaphorically habitable environment can be thought of as being transported to that world. This experience is made possible by the anchoring of the player to a specific location in the game world via their avatar, which the game world and its inhabitants, including other players, react to.”
G. Calleja, In-Game pg 27, 2011
Basically, game worlds that do a good job at transporting their player into their fictional reality will see said players immersed into the game. But how is this done? Lazaros Michailidis, Emili Balaguer-Ballester, and Xun He in their examination of immersion, Flow and Immersion in Video games, associate immersion with the Flow state theory, claiming certain criteriae ought to be met to reach it:
merging of action and awareness;
clear goals;
immediate and unambiguous feedback;
concentration on the task;
perceived control over the activity;
loss of self-reflection;
distorted perception of time;
intrinsic motivation toward an activity
This however, is closer to immersion through absorbption than transportation. What Jamie Madigan puts forward is far more in line with what we’re attempting to define. Madigan explains there ought to be a certain richness in the feedback and information:
Multiple channels of sensory information (sight, hearing, detail, movement, etc);
Completeness of sensory information (the less the player has to fill up the better), i.e: Assassin’s Creed where city streets are full of people going about their daily lives;
Cognitively demanding environments (requires focus from the players which will emphasise their mental faculties and allocate brain power to navigating the world);
A strong and interesting narrative, plot, or story (books are capable of immersing their readers with text alone, a strong story or plot will immerse the player regardless of medium);
There are immersion breaking moments that would ruin the facsimile of player immersion: uncalled for tonal shifts in the narrative, difference in setting such as ur sci-fi elements in a heroic fantasy world, repeated reminders that the player is in a game, such as achievement pop ups, tutorial pop ups, etc.
After more source hunting I eventually honed the question down to the following, with a fancy title on top: “Stealth Games: Shadows and Sounds, or ‘How do stealth games make use of audio and visual cues/feedback to improve the player’s immersion'”.
The sources I found discussed at length the composition of stealth games, their general attributes as well as common systems that are found in most games. For example, many games give guards simulated ‘eyes’ and ‘ears’.
The former will make use of vision cones to spot the player within line of sight. However a single vision cone makes the AI easily exploitable, which renders them useless. As such, when dealing with vision cones many games make use of multiple cones in addition to the direct vision. For example in Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell, guards have a primary sightlight, then a much wider cone to simulate peripheral vision, and finally vision cones at the back to simulate the ‘sixth-sense’ of having someone over your shoulder.
From Youssef Khatib’s “Essential Building Blocks of Stealth Play.”
For cover scenarios, games might use raycasts instead to determine whether or not the guard can see the player. Once again, depending on the complexity of the game, guards might raycast to various body parts instead. Depending on the amount of bodyparts properly connected by the raycast, the player will be spotted.
Awareness meter in Dishonored 2
A final common factor to stealth games is an awareness meter, that makes it so players aren’t immediately spotted when they are seen by guards. Depending on the conditions in which the player finds themselves, such as being in the distance, in dim light, immobile or crouched, the enemy’s awareness meter will fill up to eventually detect the player. When this happens, guards will become alert and start searching for them, or attacking them if within direct line of sight.
Youssef Khatib’s State Machine for Guard awareness
Guards can also be made aware of interesting objects that tell of the player’s passing: open doors, mines, dropped objects, etc. In return, this might place the guards and enemies in a searching state until they inevitably track the player down should the latter not change position or move.
In Thief, guards can exchange information depending on what they’ve discovered. In one of my playthroughs, I had left a door openleft a door open and ignored a guard, only to find out that the NPC had communicated my actions to other patrols which led them all to remain in a curious state, swords drawn and making my playthrough a tad more difficult.
Youssef Khatib’s hearing sense diagram.
Simulating hearing becomes more difficult, however put simply: all sound in stealth games have a distance depending on the volume of said sound. Tossing a stone is going to create sound that travels less than firing a gun. Guards have a predetermined range of hearing, and should the sound waves reach that range, then they are made aware of it. Thief thrives off of its soundscape, allowing both player and guards to closely monitor each other’s movements through listening to the sounds they produce. Mark of the Ninja makes all of these typical systems clear to the player due to the 2D limitations of the medium, in an effort to reduce ambiguity and increase the clarity of how systems work.
A dimly lit street in Thief: The Dark Project
For Thief its clearly delineated shadows and the light gem at the bottom of the screen, as well as the audio cues that are emitted by enemy NPCs and guards. Thief does keep a certain amount of ambiguity, however, which creates an air of tension and an immersive sense for the player to judge whether or not their actions will be safe. Tom Leonard, Lead Programmer, puts this as: “Its about getting the player’s heart pounding by holding them on the cusp [of being found].”
A guard is alerted to the sound of a gong behind him in Mark of the Ninja.
For Mark of the Ninja its the player’s sprite turning into its darker form when hidden in shadows, and the way systems are displayed make for a more binary perception system. If you’re in the enemy’s vision cone, you’re visible. If you’re in light, you’re visible. If you make noise, guards will be attracted to said noise. This grants the player more control over their environment, which emphasises the mastery your character is supposed to have over lowly thugs and basic guards.
Even then, handicapping awareness and detection systems is essential in order to give the player an enjoyable playthrough. Players will feel cheated if they’re noticed by a guard from the other side of the game map, even if their character is in an open field. In a sense, many stealth games push for a semi-realism that borderlines on immersive simulators more than video games.
Sources Used:
Mark of the Ninja (Klei Entertainment, 2012) Thief: The Dark Project (Looking Glass Studios, 1998) School of Stealth, Game Maker’s Toolkit: https://youtu.be/Ay-5g36oFfc Essential Building Blocks of Stealth Play
Following a presentation with tutors, I came up with two questions that would possibly be useful for this unit:
How does « Mark of the Ninja » and « Thief: the Dark Project » make use of audio and visual feedback to improve the player’s immersion?
How has player agency and freedom of gameplay influenced the development and evolution of stealth games from 1998?
As a result of discussing with my tutors, I chose the former (option 1), seeing as I had a better understanding of both games rather than the second. It was also more specific than the latter, which was encouraged.
So, following this I was given some feedback on how to make the question more concise as well as where to start from in terms of research.
Defining ‘stealth’ in a more concise manner would help narrow the question down. Did I mean a genre, a section of gameplay, or a specific mechanic? Defining ‘visual and audio’ feedback was also important. Did I mean a hud, or player mechanics? Finally defining immersion in a comprehensive manner was also crucial, seeing as its what my question banked on.
With this in mind, I set off to find some primary and secondary sources, many of which I was already familiar with before trying to detail my research question. Here is a list of what I’ve found for the time being:
* How Thief’s Stealth System Almost Didn’t Work (2018) Youtube video, added by Ars Technica [Online]. Available at <https://youtu.be/qzD9ldLoc3c> [Accessed: 26th of April, 2021].
* Mark of the Ninja Developer Interview with Nels Anderson of Klei Entertainment (2012) Youtube video, added by VGS – Video [Online]. Available at <https://youtu.be/tFx3sKnBaf8> [Accessed: 26th of April, 2021].
I have a certain attachement to stealth games, from Metal Gear Solid 3, to Dishonored 2, much of my time in games has either been playing some overly complex roleplaying game like Pathfinder: Kingmaker and Pillars of Eternity or skulking around elaborately put levels, assassinating and thieving my way through metric tons of content. In fact, most games I have finished happen to be of the stealth genre.
It would appear natural, therefore, for me to eventually do or write something around the stealth genre as a whole. So, I knew my question was going to revolve around something I found particularly interesting was how the stealth genre conveys its atmosphere and information to the player. At first the question wasn’t necessarily obvious to me, but I had a habit of watching documentaries and making of videos of games like Mark of the Ninja, and Dishonored. Most notably, this one:
Funnily enough I had never been interested in Mark of the Ninja prior to watching this video, most of my stealth experiences had been along the lines of Hitman, Assassin’s Creed or Dishonored. I thought it would be interesting to discuss how this game and another (which I had no yet decided) would convey the sensation of being a stealthy assassin and rogue.
The problem was that Mark of the Ninja was a topic that many people had already dissected and examined to the point I would be hard pressed to find anything new to say about the game. It is largely recognised as the model 2D stealth game, and has since then proved to be crucial for any other stealth game since.
Feeling like I needed to use a game that provided a similarly niche level of detail and reputation, I discovered Thief: The Dark Project. I had heard of it before, of course, but never truly taken a proper look at it. Again, my main method of research for these games was video essays, documentaries and reviews.
With both games identified, I’ll give a quick once over of each game, some history behind the developers, and why I chose them.
