Oh Shit Moments (belated warning: profanity)

Have you ever had an "oh shit" moment when building something?

"Oh shit" moments usually start like this:

- Something isn't working. 

- I can't quite put my finger on what that thing is.

- This might mean the whole thing is broken.

 Until you say to yourself "Oh shit!" You experience a paradigm shift, and it's completely obvious what direction you need to head next. And then of course, you're kicking yourself for not realizing it sooner. That's an "oh shit" moment.

My two favorite "oh shit" moments happen in the development of two of my favorite games, FTL and Subnautica. Without their "oh shit" moments, these games would probably not be as massively successful as they are.

FTL

In a popular GDC talk, the developers of FTL discussed their design process, which is essentially making a bunch of different prototypes while adhering to a core play experience of "be the captain of a spaceship subjected to layered problems and solutions." 

Perhaps their biggest "oh shit" moment was when they were attempting to model spaceship combat concretely, with the player and enemy spaceships flying around 2D space broadsiding each other. This was a successful design in older games. But FTL also had crew management. This led to an at-times interesting but ultimately frustrating experience: engaging in real time combat, then zooming in on your ship to see everything is on fire. The level of micromanagement required was overwhelming.

At some point, the design paradigm shift happened. Captains don't fly the ship, the pilot does. Why not abstract out the positional combat, and simply have the ships on one screen, side-by-side? This change enormously simplified the player experience to its intended values: crew management dealing with problems, while delivering problems to the other ship.

Subnautica

Charlie Cleveland, creative director of Subnautica, discussed a similar "oh shit" moment in early prototypes when they were trying to figure out how to expand on one of their emotional pillars: the thrill of the unknown.

The team was able to tap into some thrill feelings: the underwater setting alone made it very easy. But part of the creative direction included an emphasis on non-violent interactions with the world's creatures. This seemed to be at odds with the traditional survival loop: explore, fight creatures, take their stuff home, craft new things. People were buying the alpha, but not as many as was needed for Subnautica to be successful. Then someone came up with the Reefback Leviathan.

In Subnautica, Reefbacks are giant turtle/jellyfish creatures that swam near the surface of certain regions. They have no loot, they don't try to eat you, and they serve no story purpose. In the first version, they didn't even move! Yet when playtesters encountered them, they went nuts over seeing the giant, floating, scary-looking monsters. When the team saw that, it was their "oh shit" moment. They knew Subnautica would be all about encountering giant creatures underwater.

My most recent "Oh shit" moment

I've had several "oh shit" moments when developing This Godforsaken Rock. In fact, while the core concept and emotional pillars have always been the same, I would say at different points it fit into several different genres. But here's the most recent "Oh shit" moment.

While trying to capture some gifs of combat, something was bothering me: It's very hard to tell what the hell is happening sometimes. On the NPC turn, I set things up so only NPCs act, but kinda in a mini free mode: they all act simultaneously. To me, it was much more organic, and meant the NPCs could "react" to each other. But viewed from a turn-based mindset, it looks like pure choas.

The NPC turn is where things should be the clearest... that's where you can get feedback on how well you made decisions on the PC turn. I tried slowing things down, creating a "cinematic" effect when NPCs attack, zooming in on currently acting NPCs, and none of that helped. If anything, it made everything jerky and nauseating.

Then I realized: Oh shit! You know, PajamaWolf, it's probably not a good idea to run the NPC turn in real-time.

Not good, PajamaWolf.

OBVIOUSLY the NPCs should go one at a time. It wouldn't look very realistic, but with a turn-based game clarity is more important. I can focus on one actor at a time, and tell the "story" of what they do that turn. It can be suspenseful watching the badass bandit leader bear down on your PC,  but only if there aren't seven other things happening at the same time. It would even help reinforce the idea that this is meant to be a turn-based game in gifs and videos.

What the hell was I thinking? (Narrator: "He wasn't") The new implementation is being tested right now, nearly ready for the next update. 

I'm sure there will be more "oh shit" moments in the future. I wonder what else I'm doing very, very wrong that I'm in denial about! You would probably know better than me at this point.

We're not alone

Many other games had "oh shit" moments. Did you know at one point the original Diablo was going to be turn-based? That Civilization was going to be real-time? Did you know that Into the Breach was going to have grand strategy elements? Or that Goldeneye 007's major selling point, Multiplayer Mode, was snuck in last-minute without the knowledge of the publisher?

These stories remind me that while we designers need to stick to our guns at times, it is also extremely important to listen to our team, fans, ourselves about what the game is trying to be.

So tell me about one of your "oh shit" moments.