Bluhman's guide to Cliches

[MrMister]

Originally posted by Osmose
A large portion of the cliches people talk about were done in a single game, but because the game was so popular people assume it's a cliche. Or, even better, some were never used but people call them cliches so much that everyone assumes it's a cliche.

Just make a freaking game and don't worry about if someone else did the same thing before you. Worries like that are a sign that you aren't confident in your game.

Why yes, this IS a shitty guide!

[Kilyle]

Dragons Are Not Always Evil

First, there's a distinction between Western and Eastern dragons.  Western dragons have often been all about greed, hoarding things they cannot enjoy (treasure, and human women).  Eastern dragons are quite different from this, and, if I recall, they sometimes embody wisdom.  Anyone have more info on that?

At any rate, for one example of "good" dragons, go watch the anime series Slayers.  There were two groups of dragons; one group destroyed the other group; the remaining group considers themselves to be the servants of order/Good in direct opposition to the Mazoku (demons) who serve chaos/Evil.

On video games?  Does Breath of Fire portray dragons as evil?  I mean, c'mon, they're the heritage of the main character (but then, I've forgotten much of that series... should go play it again, sigh).


Reason for Cliché Training

Osmose, I generally appreciate your input, but you're dead wrong on this subject.  Studying the clichés and patterns of the past helps you to see things from a new direction.  It helps you avoid some of the more common eye-rolling moments, understand certain things that drive gamers up the wall (check TVTropes.org for a page on a waist-high impassable fence... I forget the exact title, and the site's down at the moment), and turn a pattern on its head to give the audience a bit more bang for their buck.

The line between clichés and tropes, and between tropes and "occurred once in one movie that everybody has seen," is not always clear.  Some people may consider a certain thing to be a pattern when it isn't.  They may consider something to be a cliché when it isn't.  Some people get it the other way around, and think that their favorite game (or show) invented X when X has been around since Greek theatre (or since, say, some 50's film noir)--TV Tropes again has a page on that subject.  This doesn't mean that lists of clichés aren't useful or that they shouldn't be studied.

Realistically, you can't make a good piece of original writing--game or otherwise--without studying the writing of the past.  Well, perhaps I'll soften that a bit.  If you haven't studied what other people have done, your chance of making a good piece of original writing drops drastically.  Originality comes directly from understanding what others have done.  It builds on the past.  Consider any invention: Cars came from wheels and gears and experiments with explosive power.  Refrigerators came from ice boxes and understanding how pulling heat over to one spot makes another spot cooler.  Computers came from electricity, circuits, LED, magnetism, etc., etc., etc.  Everything you have in your life is built on a foundation of what has come before.

The point of clichés, as opposed to just general studying?  Well, the whole point of writing is to communicate some thought or feeling, and to make the audience react in a certain way.  And clichés tend to make the audience react in an undesirable way: They laugh when they should be crying, or get irritated when they should be anxious and jumpy.  Since a good deal is known about which patterns cause the wrong reaction, studying these patterns can help you steer the audience toward the right reaction without getting derailed on the details.

[SaiKar]

The first couple were funny and true, but the longer I read the more I realized that these were becoming downright useless. I think the breaking point was this one:

 

Dungeon Design 102
When you are confronted by two doors, the closer one will be locked and its key will be hidden behind the farther-away one.

Avoidable: Yes
Reccommeded: Yes. Make more than two doors.

What kind of recomendation is that! Make more than two doors? Sometimes rooms have two doors! It's okay for rooms to have two doors!

A lot of the suggestions involved letting relatively minor things fatally kill a character, such as falling from a height or getting poisoned. Yeah, that's a great game. I leveled this guy up to 54 and he ate a berry in the woods and died.

Circumventing even a fraction of these so-called cliches (as Osmose pointed out, the vast majority of them seemd to be one specific event from one specific game) and basing everything firmly in reality and common sense would either 1) bog down the game with insane numbers of meaningless systems caculating how fast people should be able to walk, the last time they ate, who the stole from and if they have the means to take revenge, and God only knows what else and 2) squeeze every last drop of fun out of the game.

Eliminating "the hero needs to be a guy using a sword" cliches in the name of variety is good. Eliminating "the characters need to shower after working up a sweat" in the name of reality would just draw attention away from the fun parts that matter.

The key is abreviated reality. It's assumed that the characters eat when hungry, sleep when tired, wash their clothes and bathe themselves in inns, spend some downtime relaxing every so often, get minor illnesses and injuries, and all the normal stuff that happens to people. But it doesn't need to be shown unless it adds something to the story. Most RPGs programmed in the maker have far too little content as is - no sense wasting a progammer's time with the completely trivial. Save the energy for the fun parts of the game that matter!

[Meiscool-2]

Wow. Someone actually posted a cliche on mapping?

Hey. My houses have roofs. I guess my game is cliche. Oh ****, they have walls too. Someone help me around this NO! FLOORS TOO!?

[Archem]

I could avoid that one easy. Guess you've still got a thing or two to learn about mapping, eh Meis?

[j_master]

go archem, fight fight fight!!!

[Kilyle]

SaiKar, on the subject of "abbreviated reality," you're absolutely right: Bogging a game down with minute "realistic" detail is one of the most time-consuming ways to kill a game.  I've had to realize that myself at times.  Sometimes I think I've figured out a way to fix something about World of Warcraft that bugs me, only to realize that the alternative I've come up with would be so much worse (in terms of fun).

So, yeah, we needn't shower after every few battles.  And even if we march straight from the sewers to the throne room, most players won't give a second thought to the incongruity.  Might even be a culture in which bathing is frowned upon (likely to make you sick, either in folk tales or in reality (contaminated water?)).

Doesn't mean we can't get a "bathe and change clothes" moment before a royal audience.  I know I've seen movies where this was a big deal (and a chance for the snooty steward to disparage your peasant aroma).  Can't think of an example, but I know I've seen this, and more than once.

Cliché?  No, the lack of personal hygiene is an example of abbreviated reality, as you said.  Most people won't notice or care.  Those who put a little extra time in can deal with it, but most game crafters won't need to worry about it.

Food?  Most games, not necessary.  Some games, an interesting add-on.  After I found out how to get food, I enjoyed that aspect of Exile.  Also Might and Magic...3, I think.  Again, judge your audience; there's a sliding scale between abstraction and realism, and your game falls somewhere on that scale.  If you're a gritty post-Apocalyptic tale of survival, gathering rations might take on a major focus.  A more cartoony style, such as Secret of Mana, is far less likely to highlight the chance of starving in the desert (except via cutscene of being rescued).


I won't say I have the best continuity between posts, but in skimming my previous post, I see that I pointed to one negative effect of a cliché: It causes the wrong emotional reaction in the player.  A scene that is meant to make them cry instead makes them laugh.  A hair-raising escape from the clutches of evil leaves them rolling their eyes.  The heroic quest to locate the only weapon capable of defeating the demon boss comes off as less than heroic because you're hunting down the Sword of Ultimate Power via a trek through the Forest of Evil and the Swamp of Unending Despair.

Seeming unrealities that the player never notices, or never focuses on--such as the lack of sustenance over a five-day hike, or the King's lack of comment on the mud you just tracked across his floor--those aren't clichés in the sense of something you should Really Avoid.  They're just video game oddities.

[A Forgotten Legend]

This thread is becoming a class of philosophy on how to make a game or something .i liked this thread until that happened, now i try to avoid this thread... anymore cliches? please?... this post is ritorical, please don't get mad at me.  

[Kilyle]

I think pinning down a distinction between the useful clichés and the ones that don't belong on this post is probably a good thing.  But, yeah, too much talking.

If you want a good supply of useful patterns that you can browse from here till The End of the World As We Know It, go check out that site I mentioned, TVTropes.org -- it's a Wiki with tropes (patterns before they become clichés) about many different media, including video games.  You'll likely find several dozen pages that relate directly to some of the clichés listed on this thread.  It's the main reason that I'm not adding to this list at the moment -- it's all on TVTropes, and I don't want to duplicate too much.