Racing Game Development + Insights
Design an exhilarating escape the police in a getaway car game with a simple speed changing mechanic that relies on dexterity + utilize feedback loops to regulate the game’s pace & challenge so everyone can experience the thrill regardless of their skill level.
My favourite learning from the textbook that I explored in this cycle was feedback loops!
I’ll be referring to them as reinforcing and balancing feedback loops rather than positive and negative feedback loops in this post. In reinforcing loops, as the name might suggest, a change to one element directly causes a change in another element in the same direction which may force the system toward an extreme (Fullerton, 2018). Conversely, balancing loops may force the system toward equilibrium to counteract the changes (Fullerton, 2018).
I was interested in how I could use feedback loops to regulate challenge and the pace of my game, specifically to make it a challenging and thrilling experience regardless of the player’s skill level. Moreover, GCx2 is a “racing” game but there isn’t actually any racing involved. Nevertheless, I wanted to create the impression of thrill and momentum in the game so I looked to reinforcing feedback loops which can “promote divergence” (Fullerton, 2018). In this case, it would be rewarding players who are successfully changing gears by giving them an advantage, contributing to a sense of momentum from the player’s enhanced progress. But of course, balance is also required “to keep the game from resolving too quickly” (Fullerton, 2018). Maintaining player engagement involves regulating challenge and as fun as speedruns can be, GCx2 wouldn’t be very fun if it was too easy and fast to enjoy.
The three feedback loops in GCx2.
Below I’ll be further detailing my exploration of these concepts and how they influenced the design of PX goals, M2M gameplay, as well as the overall game.
PX Goals and M2M Gameplay
I’ll just quickly talk about the PX goals and how they influenced the design of the mechanics, specifically the M2M gameplay.
For GCx2, players will spend the majority of their time moving and changing speeds to avoid obstacles and escape the police. This gameplay should be exhilarating, thrilling, and allow for some level of momentum to be built but not to the point where the game is no longer challenging. That being said, the game should be challenging for everyone in the sense that it accommodates for different skill levels. The mechanics and gameplay described below should facilitate this (hopefully).
GCx2 has three gears and respective speeds that the player can switch between. First gear is slow, second gear is medium, and third gear is fast. Changing gears is the player’s prerogative; players can be punished or rewarded depending on their success with gear changing. This “success” is based on the obstacles encountered by the player as they drive—players must drive over the obstacle at 1st gear for a successful gear change. Driving over at 2nd gear minimally allows police to catch up faster driving at 3rd gear will significantly allow the police to catch up. These details will be further explained below but the general gist here is that players should be alert and ready to switch gears at any time if they want to win effectively.
Players thus cannot safely drive at any speed for the whole time as they will fail to escape the police.
The obstacles in GCx2 are mainly inspired by typical road hazards or things you shouldn’t drive over. Speedbumps, oil spills, traffic cones, etc. They all currently have the same effect though as the consequence of driving over them is inflicted by and dependent on the player’s gear upon collision.
I’ve thought about other potential “events” that could happen like traffic lights or animals crossing the road but I’ve decided to focus on the current ideas which should facilitate the PX goals quite nicely already :D
Moreover, obstacles should appear frequently so the player is forced to change gears frequently. This could lead to close calls for the player which could be scary if the police were hot on their tail.
These are some ideal placements that I kept in mind while developing the spawning system for the obstacles. I had the oil spills spawn as waves, similar to how you might use a wave spawner for an arcade shooter game. The player's goal would be to travel in 3rd gear as much possible so they should move left and right, avoiding the obstacles or changing gears to avoid allowing the police to make progress.
The progress bar is a visual representation of the player’s escape progress. It also shows the progress of the police as well. Progress increases by different increments depending on the player’s current gear/speed (1%, 5%, 7.5%). Failing gear changes will increase the police progression by 2.5% for semi-fails and 10% by complete fails. At the moment these numbers are all arbitrary guesses in respect to the game’s pace. They’ll have to be tested and iterated thoroughly until the ideal pace is found. When the player progression = 100%, the player has successfully escaped. IF the police progression is equal to or greater than player progression though…then it’s off to prison you go!
Now I'll be highlighting some key ideas in GCx2...
Contextualizing the Formal Elements
In a racing game, the player’s main objective is to cross the finish line. There’s usually a secondary goal to this like “be the first to cross the finish line” or “cross the finish line as fast as possible”. Then there’s also the context of the race. Who’s racing? Where are they racing? Why are they racing, to win something? But that’s enough rambling for now, I just wanted to highlight the initial thoughts and guiding questions I had while brainstorming ideas. That actually brings us to my most important point—the challenge of designing a racing (objective) game with a single-player versus game player interaction pattern.
So, why was this a challenge? It comes back to the context of races and the feelings that should be aroused. Let’s talk about the two arguably most important aspects of the race: who is racing and why. First let’s consider the significance of the two aspects: together, they invite a very powerful feeling of competitiveness that’s truly characteristic of racing games. You’re racing against other people to cross that finish line first, to beat them. That’s why all good racing games either have a multiplayer mode or have sophisticated AI to tap into players’ competitiveness that gives racing games their thrill. The human intelligence and general unpredictability factor (or the supplementary sophisticated AI) make the outcome unpredictable. If the player knows that they’re going to win every time, then it’s not very fun or interesting at all which reiterates the importance of considering predictability in games (Fullerton, 2018).
So yes, it’s difficult to evoke those competitive feelings so strongly associated with the racing genre. I can’t develop a multiplayer game and I can’t develop a sophisticated enough AI for CPU racers either. That’s when the other context elements come in, namely the “why”. If I can’t evoke competitiveness then maybe I can try inciting the thrill of an escape. Under this, I can design different conflicts that make the outcome unpredictable while also exploiting two very powerful elements of narrative and premise to make the experience more engaging.
In summary, the overall design goal here is to contextualize the formal elements of a race game to compensate for the lack of adequate competition. Inspire the thrill of a racing game outside the conventional race.
So how did I set out to accomplish this with my design? First I considered the objective of the game (and subsequent tone) as the main contextualizing formal element. Fullerton (2018) defines objectives as a means of giving “players something to strive for. They define what players are trying to accomplish within the rules of the game” and also highlights how objectives can set the game’s tone (Fullerton, 2018). With this in mind, I thought about escapes and their connotations, the common feelings surrounding escape games (and the general notion itself).
Emotions and words I associate with "escape".
…and many more. I believed there was significant overlap between a racing game and an escape game so why not utilize an escape objective that’s facilitated by a racing mechanic?
Considering the tone was also great for setting the PX goals as well. Additionally, it also prompted me to consider how “escaping” is the premise for my race game and my main method of contextualizing the race. I can’t effectively evoke competitiveness to engage my players so I’ll exploit the premise instead.
The general idea behind a premise in games is to create engagement by providing context to the formal elements and subsequently, the players’ actions (Fullerton, 2018). Moreover, this has a secondary benefit of allowing us to emotionally involve players “in the interaction of the formal elements” (Fullerton, 2018). This is incredibly important for the formal elements of GCx2. The “escape” premise heightens the consequential feelings behind the gear changes and the progress bar which would otherwise be quite insignificant and arbitrary.
The knowledge that you, the player, are on the run and escaping the police contextualises the progress bar and the gear changing mechanic; it manipulates the player to feel thrill and exhilaration. There is an intent behind the actions: you’re successfully getting away, you’re increasing the distance between you and the police…or maybe you’re doing the opposite, fear is blending with thrill as you fail to change gears and allow the police to catch up.
This also speaks again to the importance of obstacles in single-player versus game interaction patterns (Fullerton, 2018). These obstacles contextualise the gear change too! I need to complicate the escape for the thrill and exhilaration that will be missed from the lack of competition in this single player versus game.
2. Feedback Loops: Regulating Challenge and Pace
Note: These feedback loops weren’t implemented but the designs were very important to the game. They’re also interesting explorations of the theory so I really wanted to share them here.
The second key idea that I explored was the concept of feedback loops to regulate challenge and pace of progression. Feedback loops had mystified me prior to this unit. I knew they existed but without an in-depth exploration, I still struggled to understand the terms and effects of “positive and negative feedback loops”. Here I’ll be discussing the three feedback loops I designed for GCx2 and why I thought they were necessary.
Also, please note that most of these numbers (duration of effect, conditions to trigger, etc.) are all arbitrary at the moment and would require much playtesting and iteration for sensible, effective choices.
Positive (Reinforcing) Feedback Loop
I was first inspired by the textbook’s example of a positive feedback loop. Fullerton (2018) gives the example of a player scoring a point and subsequently receiving a free turn; “this reinforces the positive effects of the scored point, creating an advantage for that player.”
I was really interested in this, particularly in how I might use it to build momentum for the player. Creating a larger gap between yourself and the other racers (or in this case, you and the police) is always satisfying in a thrilling way. To capitalise on that success and those feelings, building momentum and speeding up the pace a little could heighten that thrill.
If the player successfully changes gears 5 times in a row, it triggers Jesus take the Wheel Mode. The player is rewarded and can further the momentum of their progress with a 3 second shield + speed boost. This should also increase the pace and motivate players to successfully gear change since it feels good to be invincible.
Negative (Balancing) Feedback Loop
I added a balancing loop that should help players who are having more difficulty since the controls of the game require a level of dexterity that isn’t necessarily natural for inexperienced gamers. Fullerton (2018) asserts that negative feedback loops can have balancing effects and bring the game towards an equilibrium to negate changes that might give players advantages over others. GCx2 has a single player versus game interaction pattern, so in this case the game is “balanced” so the player isn’t constantly disadvantaged for their poorer skills.
Players who are having trouble can activate Cruise Control mode in which they’ll have to navigate left and right but will travel in 3rd gear and automatically change gears upon collision with obstacles for 5 seconds.
These feedback loops exist to account for the predicted skill gaps (due to required dexterity to play the game) Hence why they’ve been designed as feedback loops to regulate the pace and challenge of the game. I don’t think they’ll nullify each other, even if they have opposite conditions to be triggered (5 successful gear changes for positive loop, 3 unsuccessful gear changes for balancing loop) because I’m assuming that most players will fall into 3 categories:
In other words, I don’t think they’ll cancel each other out because the good players probably won’t trigger the balancing loop and the bad players probably won’t trigger the reinforcing loop.
Second Negative (Balancing) Feedback Loop
Now, I have made a very bold and significant assumption there that could severely compromise the “balanced” level of challenge presented by GCx2. In that respect, I think a second balancing loop could also be introduced to make things harder for those adept players. If they keep triggering the reinforcing loop then the pace of the game could be too fast and overall gameplay could be too easy to be enjoyable (Fullerton, 2018). If the player triggers Jesus Take the Wheel thrice consecutively, then the game will enter Hell on Wheels mode.
10 seconds Stuck in 3rd, must now narrowly avoid driving into all obstacles because you can’t safely drive over them anymore AND (just in case some players were already doing this) the police are now faster as well to add to the pressure so if you do crash into an obstacle, it’ll be more devastating since the police can catch up to you that much more easily.
Interesting strategies could be used by players who make note of the feedback loops, maybe players will start missing gear changes on purpose sometimes to avoid activating Hell on Wheels. Reminder that driving at 2nd gear isn’t advisable because even though it’s less severe than 3rd gear consequences, it’ll allow the police to catch up much more easily.
It was difficult to observe anything particularly interesting or receive feedback beyond "it was fun and it has potential" or "I'd love to see the feedback loops in the game" with how minimal the prototype was. Since this post was quite long, I'll refer back to the implementation goals:
For the sake of testing the M2M, the GCs would either increase or decrease the progress bar. The "police" were not implemented; the player simply had to keep playing until their progress hit 100%.
I was able to identify a potential issue in respect to the PX goal of the game being challenging for all players, regardless of skill. It seemed that experienced gamers, especially those who play games that require the player to use numbers to switch characters or weapons (same mechanic as changing gears essentially) found it quite easy to play. I'll speak more on this and discuss a solution to this problem (other than implementing the feedback loops) in the postmortem post.
That's all for now, thanks so much for reading!
Fullerton, T. (2018). Game Design Workshop : A Playcentric Approach to Creating Innovative Games, Forth Edition (4th ed.). CRC Press LLC.
