Talk:Synchronized Button Press

From GameOntology

Question about determining "membership" for this entry

Do we want to include questions for the parents in the list of questions? The first question really helps you determine if the input method is an instance of the parent class. What we want here are questions that help you decide among siblings of the parent class. --:michael

I completely agree with your point. To me, the heart of the issue is whether or not there is some entity being manipulated. So, we have a distinction between direct and indirect but there is also the case when there isn't really something being manipulated at all! (what are you really manipulating in DDR?) I guess the name of this entry does lead itself to that sort of confusion (we really mean something like "Synchronized button press when there is no manipulation". Hmmmm..any suggestions? --Jp 13:16, 21 April 2006 (EDT)

Should Shenmue, Dragon's Lair and QTE (quick time events) be examples of this entry?

Why are QTEs in Shenmue a weak example? The fact that QTEs pop up quickly doesn't seem to me to change the fact that they are synchronized button presses. DDR also requires fast reaction times to respond to the falling arrows. I'd say QTEs are a strong example of synchronized button press.

Are combos synchronized button presses? There's no visual or auditory indication of the sequence, but the individual button presses in the sequence don't necessarily correspond to the movement of an entity on the screen - only on the completion of the combo does an entity on the screen move. ----:michael

A typical combo in a fighting game should not fit under this entry. It is basically an indirect way of manipulating the avatar, right? After all, you perform the combo in order for the avatar to do something very specific. (a special attack).

The difference with the QTEs in Shenmue is that when the left arrow appears on screen and you press it in time, the main character (Ryu?) actually performs some action. Contrary to the fighting game combos, the player doesn't know WHAT the result of sucessfully completing the QTE will be (it's not always the same move, like in a combo). In fact, in some cases the button presses required are quite arbitrary with respect to the actions or movements the avatar might perform. (ie, pressing left won't necesarrily result in the avatar doing an action in a leftwards direction...)

Perhaps we should take out the QTEs as weak examples altogether? (I've made edits to the example!) (Dragon's Lair would also be the same case as QTEs)

Jp 21:40, 20 April 2006 (EDT)

Seems like we need another indirect method to handle QTEs/Dragon's Lair and combos (which are different from each other). Hopefully we're not straying to far into representation-land here (since we try to bracket out representation). From a gameplay perspective, is there really any difference between performing a QTE (where you see an animation of your avatar moving on the screen), but you're still responding to a timed event (the arrow) and performing a move in DDR where you don't see an animation on the screen? Dragon's Lair is interesting in that it has no out-of-world (heads up) indicators of when you should execute timed moves - you have to learn (mostly through trial and error) how to read the canned animation so as to figure out the arrows (in a sense, decoding the animation into timed arrows). From a gameplay perspective, you're not really controlling the movement of an avatar in a gamespace. What's the gameworld cardinality of Dragain's Lair, 0D? In fact, in a 0D game (like many of the Wario Ware games), it doesn't make sense to talk about controlling the avatar - "controlling" implies movement in some space - in a 0D game there is no movement, only synchronized button presses. So let's be careful that we're not excluding Dragon's Lair and QTEs as synchronized button presses purely for representational (rather than gameplay) reasons.

I see that Shenmue has been added as a weak example. The weakness comes from the fact there's a represented action in the space. If we made it a strong example, we could then explain why you're not really controlling the avatar.

michael

I'm not sure I follow. Are you suggesting we leave Shenmue as a strong example? Or are you saying that it is ok that is is a weak example because there is some representation of an entity the player is (very) indirectly controlling? --Jp 13:07, 21 April 2006 (EDT)

I'm suggesting that perhaps Shenmue is actually a strong example, if the individual actions being taken aren't real gameworld actions (selected from an implicit or explicit set, have different effects in the world, there's a real choice to be made). It doesn't feel like there's a real choice being made for QTE actions - the player doesn't know the set of actions available, only one action is the "right" action (all other's terminate the QTE sequence), so no real choice is being made. Therefore, the "control of the avatar" in individual QTE sequences is a representational illusion - there's actually just 0D gameplay happening. Michael 13:32, 21 April 2006 (EDT)

Ok, I'll edit Shenmue into a strong example. I agree that in this case there isn't really a sense of "control". The player doesn't have to decide whether to act/not act, which makes for a strong case of simply having to synchronize. Jp 22:15, 26 April 2006 (EDT)

I'm suggesting that there's a strong relationship between synchronized button presses and 0D gameplay. Perhaps all 0D games employ an Synchronized Button Press as their input method. Michael 13:32, 21 April 2006 (EDT)

I've added a note to that effect. However, I'm not sure that ALL 0-D gameplay games use synchronized button press. I like the distinction you made between the player having a choice or not. I think that synchronized button press implies no player choice, which would not necesarrily be the case of 0-D gameplay. Jp 22:15, 26 April 2006 (EDT)

Other issues to tease out

I'm suggesting that there are two related distinctions we need to tease apart. One is the issue of "real avatar actions" vs. "merely represented avatar actions" (that's the Shenmue distinction). Another is the issue of out-of-world synchronization indications (e.g. DDR arrows), vs. in-world synchronization indications (e.g. animation snippets in Dragon's Lair). Michael 13:32, 21 April 2006 (EDT)

I think I need to play some Dragon's Lair. I'm not sure how direct/indirect the representation of the character's actions are. Do you have a sense of controlling Dirk? In Shenmue you are usually controlling the character, so the QTEs are not THAT much of a stretch, it's almost like they've changed the "rules" on how you control the character. This is not the case of the "dancing dudes" you have in the background of a DDR game. They're just eye-candy. Jp 22:15, 26 April 2006 (EDT)