Video Game Deja Vu: Reusing The Basest Mechanics

Deja vu isn't just a ridiculous movie starring time travel cameras and Denzel Washington's terrible driving, it's part of the standard operating procedure of the video game industry. Once a mechanic, no matter how good or bad, is introduced into a game, you can guarantee some new developer will twist it into their new property. Even if you are unaware of Diablo II, one of the grandfathers of the modern action RPG, it is extremely likely you have played a game with randomized loot, increasing numbers, and increasingly obnoxious mobs of monsters to kill with your increasing numbers and randomized loot. Dead Island is such a game. Worse, it is such a game that did not require such an overused system for marking progression.

In case you are mercifully unaware of Dead Island, it is a zombie-killing game set on an island resort. Your character (chosen from a mix of a washed-up rap star, a washed-up cop, a washed-up football star and a...receptionist) wakes up in a daze and rapidly becomes aware that the noises of humanity are replaced with the growls of monsters - worse, your character is unarmed beyond punches and kicks that do such minimal damage as to be more of a hindrance than a benefit. You search for weapons with increasingly ridiculous and colorful names, often by the fistful since weapon durability goes down extremely quickly; melee weapons are the only things you can find at first, and when you finally do find some guns it becomes apparent that finding ammunition is the real challenge. Between you and your objectives are an absolute sea of zombies that all want to eat you, personally - some of them have unique gimmicks, like having increased health or being only vulnerable in certain areas of their body. 

Unless you really care about the most general zombie apocalypse story in the history of zombie apocalypse stories, you're probably in this game for one of two things. One, you like screwing around with your friends. Running over people with a truck or throwing a propane tank at them and setting it off with a gunshot or thrown knife when they leased expect it is a fantastic way to pass the time and lose friends. That's all fine and good, and likely one of the better reasons to play the game.

The other is that you believe that bigger numbers are better, even when the monsters also inexplicably level up at the same rate that you do. If the monsters got easier to dispatch as you went along, that would be one thing, but when your damage output is equivalent to the monster's health, you're just treading water - the reason zombies get easier to kill is not your gear or stats, but you practicing at evading the AI and learning attack patterns. In other words, the whole system of leveling, of increasing weapon damage, all are vestigial action RPG staples that do not belong in a game ostensibly about survival. The only reason that numbers increasing exists in any game these days is because of Operant Conditioning.

There is a growing body of research on the topic of how video games reward us, how progression can teach us and engage us. Designers are becoming more and more ambitious with systems of rewards, finding ways of tapping in people's desires as thoroughly as possible - the specific desire itself doesn't matter, just the engineering of desire through reward. Generally speaking, when a game is called 'rewarding', the 'rewards' are intentionally small and frequent to keep you wanting more 'rewards'. Everything you get as a reward is temporary, either a removal of something bad (respawning enemies) or the gaining of something consumable (bundles of money you have to use on repairing your gear, or new gear to replace the old and that will inevitably be replaced by later gear). 

All Operant Conditioning teaches you, at least in the context of most action RPGs like Dead Island, is to repeat an action. Any time you see the little gear symbol by an object, you click a button and you get an item or resource. You use that item or resource to get past reflex-based challenges, like shooting zombies, so you can open more boxes in other locations. This action of Press Button To Open Box is repeated largely for its own sake, as the economy of cash-into-combat-capability is skewed in favor of the player - that is to say, provided you don't actively sabotage yourself or have bad reaction times, you will always have enough resources to stay in combat as long as the game makes it necessary. 

In short, the game gives you tons of boxes to open. Some of the boxes are shaped like dead zombies, some are backpacks and luggage, some are garbage cans. It's the same with Diablo II, Borderlands, Torchlight, Path of Exile, any game that relies on Numbers Going Up as the primary game mechanic. The presents you're opening may be shaped differently, as ancient clay pots or as goblins or as space biker guys with gas masks, but the function is always the same: to drive that human urge for surprise so you keep playing the game for prizes and numbers. 

Now, you can have a good game that uses Operant Conditioning as the primary mechanic. Offering positive feedback in bits and pieces is the primary way people and animals learn. Edutainment software - like one of the first PC games I played, Quarky and Quaysoo's Turbo Science - knows how to use positive feedback to teach you skills more useful than staying alive in a zombie game. Does that mean all games need to teach you science and math, or impart a meaningful and impact-filled story into your life? No. There's clearly room in the gaming economy for casual games and twitch games and even box-opening games, and that is squarely where action RPGs, and specifically Dead Island, fall.