The Gamer's Quarter - Issue #6 - TextFiles.com

mentioned above, pacing can make a
short game feel longer than it is and
vice versa.)
Now, open-ended “sandbox” games
like Grand Theft Auto and Oblivion are a
bit of a different beast, but only at face
value. What they do is simply offer the
player the choice to create their own
pacing. These games offer up a host
of things to do in their worlds, but it
mostly just boils down to two options:
Do I feel like advancing the story right
now or do I feel like exploring the world?
In these games, there is still a clear
divide between the story aspect and
the gameplay aspect, despite how well
integrated the two may be. At the end
of the day you’re making the choice to
either advance in the game or just
screw around.
Portable games, like those on cell
phones and the DS, are perfectly paced
because they are designed for on-the-go
playing. Short, punchy, and to the point
is the definition of perfect videogame
pacing. Yet this does not necessarily
exclude longer games from the pacing
club. The Half-Life games are around
twenty hours in length and feature the
best examples of pacing in a videogame
that we as gamers have probably
encountered in all our years of playing.
It manages to marry its story to its
gameplay completely and in a way that is
transparent to the player. It isn’t broken
up by cutscenes but truncated by various
scripted events. In between fighting off
Combine soldiers and solving physicsbased
puzzles, we encounter various
characters that explain the happenings in
the story and gently prod us along to our
next destination. The sense of progress
manages to keep up with the scope of
the game, and since there is only ever
one true, yet not immediately apparent,
“path” through each area, we never get
lost or have a chance to get bored with
what we’re doing. The player is never
walking on foot for too long before they
encounter an area that requires a vehicle,
one provided up front and in the greater
context of the story of course, to advance
with what they’re doing. Despite all of
this, the Half-Life games still manage to
stay close to the point and tell the story
they’re trying to tell while guiding us
through each scenario and giving us new
options with which to be engaged.
Pacing is more and more important in
this modern era of game design because
we, people who have been playing games
for years, are growing up and moving
on with our lives and do not have eighty
hours to spare towards a single game
anymore. It’s largely the reason I’ve
given up on the RPG genre, aside from
a few specific titles. I simply don’t have
the time to waste plodding through
repetitive, careless game design and
mediocre story points to get to the good
stuff. I prefer games that only take up ten
to twenty hours apiece, because if the
pacing is all in place and the design is
tight I have the incentive to go back and
play through the experience the game
provides me multiple times.
The larger gaming community
doesn’t immediately recognize the issue
of pacing, but it should; for our sake
and for the sake of the hard-working
developers and designers that toil long
hours to bring us the rich experiences of
escapism we so crave.
96 The Gamer’s Quarter Issue #6
A Brief Note on Pacing in Videogames
97