While I was a bit naïve back then and Mortal Kombat is an old and dated-looking game by today’s standards, the point is, from an early technological age, videogames have constantly strived to immerse players into its virtual world by mimicking the look of the real. While videogames are not quite photorealistic-looking just yet, with each passing generation, they get less and less far off. First-person shooters like Crysis and Killzone look so realistic that they are sometimes portrayed as killing-simulators for young children from the mass media.

 

And yet, even though videogames have evolved tremendously from a visual standpoint, there is an old, outdated gameplay mechanic that still exists today which detracts from the immersion that the graphics are trying to provide; I’m referring to re-spawning enemies.

A game development theory has always been this: in order for gamers to have fun, they need a point of contention. I.e., they need something to kill. Therefore, killing bad guys = fun. Ergo, the more bad guys you have, the more fun should ensue. Thus, the simple idea of infinitely re-spawning enemies was born.

 

This gameplay mechanic was cheap and efficient because all a low-budget developer had to do to provide “fun” was to constantly spawn off-screen enemies at players until they advanced past certain invisible checkpoints. Just look at any old-school 2D beat’em up.

While that mechanic served its purpose well for what the technology was back then, there is a distinct imbalance between how real a game LOOKS as opposed to how real a game PLAYS nowadays.

Since the majority of games made today are now in 3D, instead of having enemies simply appear from off panel, game developers have opted for “spawn closets,” or also known as "Monster Closets." Respawn closets are more or less areas that will infinitely pump out enemies at you. Some closets are more like spawn areas and will constantly spawn enemies forever, forcing you to run through these sections, whereas other respawn closets will allow you to kill everyone around the area, but will re-spawn the same enemies when you return to that location several minutes/footsteps later. When you think about it, isn’t that a silly notion if you were to compare it to a real life scenario? In real combat, enemies simply do not keep coming out of monster closets once killed (at least, I hope not….cause you know, that would be quite scary. Zombies, anyone?)

 

 

Take for instance Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare. One of the most realistic-looking games released so far, Infinity Ward’s first-person shooter used a combination of enemies-stay-dead sections in conjunction with enemies re-spawn forever sections. Combining these two design philosophies together is one of the greatest things you can do to destroy immersion. Personally, when I play first-person shooters, I like to kill as many enemies in the area as I can before my journey forward is a safe one. While this tactic works for many parts of Infinity Ward’s shooter, often times it will get you killed when you run into one of the “oh-s***,-the-enemies-keep-re-spawning-here” sections. During these segments, the game somehow expects you to know that you’re supposed to run through these parts. This confusing disconnect completely destroys the veil of immersion that the game attempts to recreate and makes you think of the medium as nothing more than it is: a videogame. It is a system that pushes trial and error, and as you know in real combat, there is no room for trial and error. Once you’re dead, you’re dead; that is, unless you’re a zombie.

While I am not here to debunk the age-old formula that killing enemies = fun, I think there are better solutions then infinitely re-spawning enemies. Take for instance Valve’s Half Life games. Rather than using spawn closets, Valve’s award-winning first-person shooters simply use well-designed levels with smartly woven enemy placement. If you really analyze Valve’s work with the franchise, you can tell that the developer designed the levels and enemy placement in conjunction with each other. In City 17, the fictitious setting for the game, the enemies stay dead. In addition, your foes will often approach you from logical vantage points, rather than simply running towards you from out of a spawn closet. They may be appropriately stationed at a guard post, jump down at you from the roof, slide down from helicopters, bust open previously locked doors to get at you, etc…In addition, when backtracking, the game usually triggers logical events from which more enemies should appear, i.e. an alarm going off, etc…

Of course, every genre needs a different treatment and I’m not trying to throw out the mechanic of re-spawning enemies altogether. If you look at Valve’s other popular first-person shooter, Left 4 Dead, you will notice that the game is actually littered with spawn closets, but by using a complex set of algorithms, Valve has created an artificial intelligence system known as the “AI director.” The game’s AI director keeps gamers on their toes and does not allow players to predict where enemies will re-spawn from. The system simply pushes you to move forward but in a cautious manner. For the most part, the gameplay is fun, well-paced, and unpredictable.

 

So in other words, if a game is going to use spawning enemies, all that I ask from it is that it have the decency to fool me to keep me guessing so I’m not able to subconsciously break down the game’s rules, making the entire experience mundane and chore-like.

One game that isn’t shy about letting you know about its re-spawning enemies is Far Cry 2. Ubisoft’s ultra-realistic looking open-world shooter is quite aggravating to play because once you’ve cleared out an enemy outpost and walked maybe 100 feet away from it, all the enemies will more or less re-appear in the same positions they were standing in before. This is especially annoying when you realize you have to go back because you forgot to flush the toilet (because I mean, who likes a smelly bathroom?).

Alright, perhaps now you may be thinking, “but, Jimmy, it’s an open world game. Are all the enemies just supposed to stay dead? Where then would be the point of contention? Wouldn’t that eliminate the fun?” While that would be a very astute question, I would have to say you’re getting ahead of yourself and not letting me completely explain myself; so chill out, bro.

One game that does the open world thing justice is Fallout 3. If you went into a building or dungeon in Bethesda Softworks’ action RPG and killed everyone in there, the enemies would stay dead. The only time these areas would generally repopulate is if you triggered a story event that would bring about more enemies to said area. In addition, the game’s large roaming landscape always had tons of roaming marauders and bandits to attack. If these enemies were in fact re-spawning enemies, I sure as hell couldn’t tell; ergo, immersion = still intact.

While designing games this way certainly requires more thought, time and money on part of the developers, I personally think that with the amount of those resources being spent on making games LOOK realistic, they could perhaps ration just a little of that over to the gameplay department so that they can FEEL realistic too.

What do you think? Let us know how you feel by posting comments below.