What does Gameplay Customization mean to a particular game? What is the ideal level of game customization for that game, and how is it achieved?  These are the questions that must be considered when enabling users to modify their experience, and while there are many wrong answers, and few, if any, right ones, we can apply concepts from past games to those we make in the future.

While many will naturally assume that when I say Gameplay Customization, I am referring to merely changing a characters look or attributes based on the choice of the end user, the reality is that the term attempts to encompass a much larger scope. What I truly mean when I say Gameplay Customization, is the concept of allowing the user to broaden or narrow the gameplay elements that they directly interact with throughout their experience.  A bit of a high-minded sentence I know, but some examples of what I mean should shed some light on the simplicity of the over-arching concept.

Medieval 2: Total War- Quite possibly the best example of this concept, both in terms of execution and consumption by a mass market, Medieval 2: Total War(M2:TW) stands tall as a poster-child for user-determined gameplay depth.

Featuring a civilization component complete with economic, diplomatic, and cultural management, M2:TW can appear to be daunting upon first glance. However, each of these elements are largely automated by default, while others have available default options, allowing the player to determine how much control over these respective features they wish to exert.

Additionally, M2:TW offers, quite possibly, the deepest Real-Time Strategy combat to date. Typical battles can last an hour or more, and some may be nearly unwinnable without supreme planning and tactical expertise. Luckily, for those not so inclined to endure such lengthy battles, the option to increase game speed, pause, stop or completely automate the battle at any time are available to the player. The game goes a step further by allowing the player to automate the battle directly from the main map screen without forcing the player to enter the battle screen.

Any combination of choices surrounding depth, in Medieval 2, can be incredibly rewarding, and focuses largely on allowing the player to cater game experiences to their liking. 

Marvel Ultimate Alliance- Marvel: Ultimate Alliance, by and large takes aim at a more casual audience, favoring quick combat, amazing special effects, and multiplayer play. However, for those that get that tingling sensation as they fell wave after wave of foe by Wolverine’s adamantium claws, there lies a richer experience beneath the surface.

As you play through the campaign you are awarded with experience, money, and equipment. By default, Ultimate Alliance handles all leveling and equipment upgrades for you, and in a game with twenty-plus characters, this is a welcome feature to most gamers. For those that would like complete control over their characters statistics, abilities and equipment however, Ultimate Alliance gives you access to each character’s skill tree along with an inventory sytem that allows you to equip various items you find or purchase from an in-game vendor.

While Ultimate Alliance remains an absolute blast without this enhanced level of control, it is intensely gratifying to a smaller set of its players to be able to choose the exact setup of each of the game’s characters as they slice and smash their way to victory.  

The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion-  No discussion on the subject of Gameplay Customization would be complete without mentioning The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. As fans of The Elder Scrolls will know, it is quite possible to invest hundreds of hours into play without so much as breaching the game’s main quest line. While it is often hailed for this reason, it is often condemned for its lack of focus, a result from the very same implementation.

Oblivion presents it’s gamers with a myriad of ways to interact with its virtual world. Beyond the main quest line, lies a series of enthralling sidequests for entrance into various guilds, discovery of game lore, or aquirement of powerful weapons, to name but a few. Players are also free to roam the wild expanse that Oblivion offers, choosing to interact with Non-Player Characters(NPCs), visit towns and research game lore at their leisure. When a player is ready, they may quickly and easily access the main quest line via their mini-map and auto-transport themselves to the next quest location.

However, this kind of engaging freedom tends to have a ”lotus-eater” effect in the case of yours truly. The franchise succeeds so undeniably to the end of Gameplay Customization that I feel it slightly undoes itself in the process. How can this be so? Oblivion raises the bar so high with the wealth of content that it provides the player when it comes to these sub-quests and extraneous activities, that I feel places an undue amount of pressure upon the main quest. Somewhere along the line, while looting bandits for ancient swords, gaining access to the Dark Brotherhood guild, and discovering the identity of The Gray Fox for the thieves guild, the fact that all of Tamriel is about to be destroyed by Hell incarnate somehow seems a bit less urgent than it probably should, and the quest that has been placed on the shoulders of your character, the world’s saving grace, just gets tossed on the back-burner.

Oblivion highlights one of the most important facets of Gameplay Customization – balance. If a game exists simply to serve as a portal to some type of sandbox implementation, void of any over-arching premise, then somewhere along the way, the scope of the game was lost. While it is rare that any game completely neglects its core concept in favor of less crucial features, it is far more often the case that fringe features take a more primary role in the game experience than they should, and in effect, stealing the thunder from the game’s premise.

Maintaining the entertainment value of the core game must always be key. Whether on a budget of nothing with one part-time developer, or with ten million dollars on a staff of three-hundred, there are both incredible games and catastrophic busts. The secret to attaining the former is situational from game to game, but through defining what makes the core game entertaining, and always working toward that end, we give ourselves the best shot at creating something truly spectacular.

I have always been an ardent supporter of video games as a serious medium for higher modes of thought. Games like Xenosaga, Metal Gear Solid, The Final Fantasy series and more recently Mass Effect, have brought a great deal of existential questions to the forefront, challenging our moral fabric with sweeping dialogue and extended cut-scenes. And while, as previously stated, I am a fan of such content, the average gamer looks for entertainment in much more concise forms. So the question remains, how can we create games that do not settle for the status quo, yet appeal to millions of gamers worldwide?

I call this concept Immersion Control, a process by which you allow the player to have as much control as possible over areas of storytelling, game world customization, and interface. By giving the player the reins in determining how rich their experiences are, we can uniquely craft an independent gameplay experience for each of our players. So, how is this all applied? In this first section, I will talk about how Immersion Control is applied to the art of storytelling.

There has long been a catch 22 in trying to create novel game stories. Creating a story not based on any previous subject matter can be extremely complex, and usually results in a give and take relationship. On one hand, you have players that find themselves completely enthralled in a game’s universe, wanting to know the most intricate details of their virtual worlds, while on the other you have those who would much rather get to the heart of what the game lets you do. By attempting to serve one of these parties, you often create a disservice to the other. While it is crucial that a game’s story engage its audience, there must be a careful balance between story and gameplay to satiate crowds favoring either. Let’s take a look at how some modern games have tackled this complex problem.

• The Lord of The Rings : Battle For Middle Earth  – LOTR:BfME employed a unique take on cut-scenes. Though they understood the importance of relaying such content to their players, they did not force the gameplay experience to be interrupted, choosing to display them in a small portion of the Heads-Up Display or HUD. For those that wished to get the full effect, clicking on the cut-scene would then bring it to full-scale, thus allowing players to experience the story in a much more intimate way.
• Mass Effect- By creating entirely interactive storytelling sequences, Mass Effect provided players with a feeling that they were always in the driver’s seat. Additionally, Mass Effect allowed players to venture as deep into the “rabbit hole” as they wished, engaging Non-Player Characters or NPC’s with a seemingly endless amount of dialogue while still allowing the option to end almost any conversation in a few short moments.
• Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter -Similarly to LOTR:BfME, GRAW utilized the concept of displaying video inside the HUD, using it to create a video link to their commander, fellow soldiers, and logistical information, such as maps and video feeds of other areas of the game world. Unlike LOTR however, GRAW used cinematic content in real-time, creating scripted events that would impact the player as they played the game. To go a step further, all loading screens were replaced with interactive travel sequences where players could move around in a variety of vehicles as they received their next set of orders. 
• Resident Evil 4 -Using a concept that I first discovered in Legend of Dragoon, Resident Evil 4 presented players with cinematic camera angles during combat, creating the sensation of an interactive film. By allowing players to time a button press in certain scenarios, the developers created a beautiful, yet immersive way to deliver a cinematic experience to their audience. While they were certainly not the first to use this technique, they utilized it to great success.

As you can see, I am hardly the first person to think about these design considerations, and these are but a few examples of ways that developers have managed incorporate story and cinematics to serve a broad audience. With an ever increasing market and more competition than ever before, delivering high-quality stories in an accesible manner proves to be a challenge for aspiring game developers.