Time is on Our Side, Yes it is

Time is on Our Side, Yes it is

Time keeps ticking, ticking, ticking into the future and He was in the right place at the right time - are probably two of the best suited expressions to plainly explain the largely abstract concept of time. In reality, time is continuously marching on and every major event in a person's lifetime will happen in due time (That means that one day, VADAR will get laid. Keep hope alive! - Six). Everything happens when it happens, and if you happen to be in the right place at the right time, or, in the wrong place at the wrong time; you will either reap the benefits, or suffer the consequences of fate. Time is probably the most important concept of human existence - an unbeatable adversary; you cannot bend it, ignore it, embrace it or cheat it. So why has it been explored so little in single player video games?

Before I delve into the matter at hand, let me just say that MMORPGs and certain other multiplayer titles, which meant to emulate a persistent world similar to an actual reality, will not be the subject of my discussion in this article. Why? Because 'the events' that happen in an MMORPG world that are dependent on time - while important to the concept of human communication and interaction in a persistent virtual world - don't play any significant role in single player games. Secondly, multiplayer games, which are another perfect example of time dependent games, are not really the main focus of our discussion, as they too don't have much bearing on how we play single player games.

Many single player games are different. Instead of depending on the passing of time, and building key events around a schedule that must be executed in a certain time period, the developers, in most cases, disregard time, or include it as a purely cosmetic addition. Single player games are usually based on scripted events. It's as though the passing of time is triggered once we hit a switch, or stand in a pink circle (in GTA: Vice City - the reference game in this article - 2Lions). An event is triggered, and then, we might be tasked to do something in a certain amount of time, or simply do something regardless of how long it takes us to get the job done. In the meantime, even though the minutes tick away on screen, the world is at a virtual standstill. All the key actors are waiting for you in limbo, waiting for one scripted event to finish so that another one can start.

So is this good or bad for gameplay?

The concept of scripted events has its good and bad sides. The good side is, of course, its simplicity. Imagine how hard it would be to program a single player game where time was persistent and the key events that advance the plot were outside of the player's direct control - which is exactly how it is in real life. Miss your flight and you'll have to wait a while to catch another one, or worse yet, you won't even make it to sunny Barbados. Translate the same situation to a video game - what if you were in a game, you got lost on the map, and never made it to the airport? Would that prevent a whole series of important gameplay events from ever happening? No one can predict everything that can happen in life, and so, no one can predict what players might do in a video game. It would be virtually impossible to make a persistent single player world that consists solely of time dependent events. No one could pull that off - at least not yet - just as no one could actually make a game that is so vast it can truly emulate a modern urban environment (go anywhere, do anything).

Still, this is hardly the end of the world for game developers, and I think there is still hope for those programmers who want to make time a bigger factor in their single player games. Here's an example: Tommy Vercetti is supposed to meet up with a drug dealer in one of the missions in GTA: Vice City to buy some smack. The game requires these two to meet in order for the player to proceed further, and there is nothing wrong with that. But, let's suppose Tommy decides to fool around a bit first; for a couple of hours, or even a day or two. Why not make it so that the drug dealer has a certain simplistic timeline of his own. He likes to sell drugs at the corner at 3pm; then he goes to a nearby motel and feels up some hookers, before he heads out to do some damage at the local bar. Wouldn't it be cool if the developers included those simplistic time dependant routines that repeat for two days, and an abundance of clues at the corner where the drug dealer does his business for Tommy to pick up on if he's indeed late? Each of these time dependent meetings with the drug dealer could be slightly different. Tommy could get in a fight at the bar, or decide whether or not he wants to interrupt the dealer's meeting with the hooker at the motel... Further more, if Tommy is more than two days late, things could get even trickier and he might have to bust the drug dealer out of jail - but since he's promised to deliver the goods to the Scottish rock band (play the game and you'll know what I'm talking about) in no more than two days, and his deadline is about to expire, he will have to race his ass off to get the goods to the Scottish rockers in time. Suppose he races his ass off and still arrives at the agreed meeting point with the rockers thirty minutes late. Then suppose that the Scottish rock stars had their own simplistic timeline, and there were plenty of clues left behind for Tommy to figure out where they could've gone next. We could even take this idea a bit further and make it so that some nonessential events that Tommy could've accepted if he hadn't promised to buy dope for the rock stars are not available any more, since he'd been tardy. We could even make the plot nonlinear by alternating it somewhat depending on the time it took Tommy to finish the mission. We could alternate it in a major way, or just slightly change it so that the player gets the illusion of the passing of real time in a persistent world.

The abovementioned example doesn't in any way represent a good attempt at simulating a persistent world. It does, however, create an illusion of the passing of time in a single player game - just like you create an illusion of exploration in a game world. For one, such a concept is not that hard to pull off in terms of game design; yes, it takes a bit of extra effort, but not much more than what already goes into expanding the game world in terms of accessible areas to explore - working on the exploration factor. With the mighty addition of the save game option the player is given the chance to control time, and yet, in a way, the game time is ever so slightly controlling him. The benefits of such a concept are that players are given a greater sense of immersion and that the game's replay value goes beyond simple exploration incentives like finding a secret area or a secret level. Players are given whole new "secret" areas by replaying some of the events at different times or in different time intervals. The point is that you cannot overcome the scripted nature of a single player game no matter what you try. You cannot program in vain and predict all the possible actions that players might take. You can, however, expand gameplay by making the concept of time a more important factor than it was so far - used as a simple timer in mini-games or whatnot. You have to make it apparent to the players that, at least to a degree, their actions, and the time it takes them to perform those actions, cause a certain effect on some other immediate events or key actors in the game. We've seen a good example of this; or a valid attempt anyway; in the latest Elite Force game. It's very unfortunate, however, that the developers didn't work on it more.

The concept of the causality of time can be used for more things in video games than just setting a timer for mini-games or representing the day and night cycles. It can be used to expand the gameplay, and add more replayability that is not strictly bound to the key events or undiscovered areas. It's like another dimension in an attempt to create a deceivingly real and immersive single player game world.