I spent roughly seventy hours playing Death Stranding.To tell the truth, it’s been a long time since a big game has made me so excited and can keep playing.It brings me a series of complicated emotions, not completely moving, not completely fun.Happy, humorous, sad, depressed, moved … These emotions are not all positive.This is different from common video games. After playing and ending the main story, I have been thinking about where this emotion comes from.This is a complicated problem, and the game looks very sexy under the advanced aesthetics of the producer.Whether it’s art style, plot setting or play.I must say that Hideo Kojima is an extraordinary producer.
There are many points worth analyzing in this game.I should focus on the core design of the game.Aside from visual factors, how does its design in playing give players these special emotions?So I want to focus on analyzing the design of “asynchronous online”.”Asynchronous online” is a common game design.There is a very obvious example in the Dark Soul, the mark that other players will leave in your world.You can see its operation, death process and so on.But today, it has some particularity.
I also thought about analyzing from other aspects.For example, from the story or the world view in the game.But they are not typical enough, which does not involve the core mechanism of the game.Or it is only a part of literary creation, and we should analyze it separately.It is just a rich story that all big games should do.It’s just different in creating atmosphere.What I need is to analyze the different reasons from the perspective of a designer.So I didn’t choose to analyze it from the plot.Instead, asynchronous online, which is more related to the core gameplay, is chosen as the breakthrough point.
Hideo Kojima made it clear that he did not recommend playing this game offline.”My idea is to make” Death Stranding “a game that feels like a single person but naturally connects you with other players.”The reason for this suggestion is simple.In Death Stranding, ladders and ropes laid down by players, bridges and highways built by players may all appear in the world of other players.Through this mechanism, you can get help from others during the game, and others can also get your help during the game.
This is very touching to me, because “asynchronous online” not only appears as an egg in the game.Its existence can change the course of your game.
About “Asynchronous Online”
I searched for some information, in fact, there were similar games very early.
People used to play chess by mail centuries ago.They fill in the corresponding content on the card of a specific format, send the letter to the opponent, and then wait for a reply
Limited by the postal speed, it will take about 30 to 60 days for every 10 steps of a game, and the time span of a complete game will often be extended to more than one year.
I’m surprised how people play.
In the mid-1960s, the board game Diplomacy was put on the game magazine fanzine, which is the most famous postal game.
Players who want to participate write to the magazine to register, and get the rules and start time of the game from the magazine.After the game starts, players in each round should write down their specific operations and send them to magazines.Each round has a time limit, usually one week.After receiving the emails from the players, the magazine will carry out the corresponding game settlement work, and publish the actions of each player and the final results of each round in the magazine.
Mail games were very popular in the 1980s.Later, personal computers became popular.People began to play games by e-mail.
“WebWar II” is the earliest “e-mail type” game that uses e-mail instead of traditional e-mail.
Later, the Internet became popular, and this online method was more used in online games.Such as cultivating online games.
It is probably because of this ability to create online experience in stand-alone games that asynchronous online has won the favor of many large-scale games recently.
In Dark Soul , players can leave eye-catching messages on the ground.These messages may remind you that there are hidden walls ahead, or deceive you to jump off a bottomless cliff.Because messages have a fixed format and choice of words, players can’t really “speak freely”. In some cases, players must use some “awkward” sentences to express their meaning.After further understanding the plot, the player can easily feel the feelings that another player once felt.