
Why Sonic the Hedgehog is 'incorrect' game design - klez
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/jul/27/why-sonic-the-hedgehog-incorrect-game-design
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jandrese
IMHO the article is right that Sonic is a terrible platformer, because it's
not a platformer. It's a speedrun game. It's all about memorizing the map and
being able to make twitchy inputs to get the biggest rewards. It's a
fundamentally different kind of game than Super Mario Brothers, even though
they look superficially similar.

~~~
colanderman
But Sonic fails as a speedrun game too. There's always some slow moving
platform you need to time jumps around that breaks a thrilling run through a
level. Not to mention that finding the chaos emeralds is almost impossible if
you just plough through each level.

~~~
Retric
Chaos emeralds are just achievements they don't impact game play.

~~~
andybest
Yes they do, collecting them enables you to turn into Super Sonic (in Sonic
2+)

~~~
Retric
Article is in reference to the original game where they just change the
ending.

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rainmouse
Or perhaps people get quickly tired of the same formulaic garbage. Endless
superhero movies in every scene that go exposition, cgi action, witty one
liner. Repeat.

That nearly every 3 minute pop track follows the same formula as the scenes in
every James Bond movie.

Some things are just popular. Snakes and ladders technically isn't a game. You
have ZERO agency in the outcome of events but it's based upon a game that's
been played at least since the Indus Valley Civilisation 3000 BC. It's when
committees and statisticians get involved that the fun goes away. Hence the
endless reboots and sequels of exponentially more funding yet almost always
fall short of the originals.

~~~
scottLobster
A lot of strategy games and RPGs suffer from the same.

Starcraft II for instance was a lot more fun IMO when it was new and the
strategies hadn't been refined. I remember wasting a ton of time/resources
turtling, building a giant mass of carriers and then steam-rolling the map,
just because I could and thought the visual of a dozen carriers sweeping the
map would be awesome (it was). Good luck doing that now in a public server.

Too many games have obsessive fans that are hell-bent on discovering the
mathematically perfect way to play a game, and once the one or half-dozen
working formulae are discovered, that's it. No one else can play any other way
and hope to win, and that really takes the creativity and fun out of it. I'm
not sure where these people come from, I got into video games as a distraction
from math homework, not an extension of it. :P

~~~
taurath
At the same time, I've seen almost no PvP games based on randomness that
really end up working. Hearthstone has a huge RNG element - which deck you're
up against, what cards you get etc. People minmax their decks from rank 20 and
below (out of 25), and while there is some difference in decision making it
really doesn't fulfill the dream of having many different viable strategies
and the ability to use them - usually 3-5 "meta" decks that everyone knows
about are more powerful than most.

Thats why I think co-op games end up being far more satisfying, since they
don't have to balance out a player vs player arms race.

~~~
scottLobster
For a physical example of one that does, I found I quite enjoy Magic The
Gathering draft games (everyone's given 20 mana of their choice then forced to
assemble a deck on the spot from a bunch of sealed, random booster packs that
get opened and passed around in an orderly fashion).

In most cases you can still make a viable deck, but everyone will have to deal
with largely mediocre cards they wouldn't have picked given the chance.
Granted the system isn't perfect, but it seems to effectively level the
playing field and encourage creative deck-building. Not sure if Hearthstone
has an equivalent mode.

~~~
taurath
They do, and its called arena - It costs $1.50 to do a round and you're out
after 3 losses. Its entirely luck based since the only people winning (its a
tournament format) are those that get a lot of really good cards.

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Fej
The notion that a work of art could be "incorrect" is absurd on its face. Just
because a game (in this case) does not remain confined to accepted norms does
not make it "incorrect". The use of this word is pretentious as all hell, as
if the author is the be-all-end-all of art criticism.

If one does not like a game, we have a word for that: "bad". There are plenty
of bad games to analyze. Why the author picked _Sonic the Hedgehog_ is beyond
me.

As he said: it works. Therefore, to twist the word "incorrect" to its breaking
point as he does is ridiculous.

~~~
lucideer
The fact that he put the 'incorrect' in quotes indicates that he likely agreed
with you on the use of the word and the you probably missed the intent of his
use of it.

Unlike 'bad', a subjective word indicating opinion, 'incorrect' is objective:
anything can be incorrect according to a certain set of parameters, and the
author is selecting a particularly traditional set here from the book in order
to frame the discussion.

He's not implying that Sonic is bad. He calls it a masterpiece!

It's quite likely he's also a Lorde fan.

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cwyers
I can find several other examples of games that are "incorrect" in much the
same way, and I don't just mean Sonic knockoffs. Doom is pretty much a seminal
moment in game design, and it looks nothing like the "ideal" design of Mario.
I think the game design principles that are being tossed around here are very,
very far from being universal.

~~~
setr
It's not even clear that they're correct for the one example they go by. It's
difficult to argue that "teaching" is essential to good design; to me it's
just important for on-boarding (that the "tutorial" stages aren't canned info-
dumps and dreadfully slow, interruptive, and staged events that treat the
player as incomprehensibly incompetent).

I'm more inclined to the idea that good design is found in the ability to
explore a ruleset, and the ruleset being interesting enough to justify
exploring it. The art, music, themes and such all supplement the exploration
of that ruleset (or even help define it). Good "levels" push you to explore
the ruleset in ideally unintuitive ways, and lays the foundation for further
exploration in future levels.

Ideally, the game shouldn't "teach" you how to play. It should simply exist as
a world, and its rules, and you'll figure out the rest. Incentivized to
explore particular areas of the world/rules, but thats about it.

Bad design comes from limiting your ability to explore. Rules that appear
general (applies to all NPCS), but it turns out you can't punch the kids,
because. You can normally jump around as much as you want...but this
particular area you have to sit down and walk because its movie-time. You can
run around as much as you wish, but here there's an invisible wall because
you're not at the designated level for it.

Or the lack of things to explore. Poorly designed procedural generation games
like No Man's Sky and Borderlands come to mind. The generation rules
constantly produce different/new things... with little difference to your
actual ability to interact with the world. It gets boring, fast, because it's
not affecting the ruleset to any interesting degree. But a proper roguelike on
the other-hand has you forced to explore corner cases of the ruleset every
time you find a new enemy with some special combination of [dangerous] skills.
The roguelike ruleset is potentially interesting (and expansive), and the
procedural generation pushes you to explore all its corners. No Man's Sky has
a much more limited ruleset, and the generation leads you to explore all its
corners... very, very quickly.

And then ofc you have other aspects like compositional rules and feedback
loops that allow the player a much freer exploration, of the world, to the
point that you have genres defined around it (eg simulations, grand
strategies, etc).

~~~
sqeaky
Other than the guns where is the procedural generation in Borderlands?

~~~
setr
The guns is the only procedural generation, but also where the meat of the
marketing and gameplay was meant to revolve around.

ofc, the guns were entirely uninteresting three hours in, and so what you're
left with is the relatively weak level design, coop mechanics and mechanically
simple enemy design. These would have all probably been fine, maybe even good,
if the guns actually offered what they meant to: constantly changing gameplay
(and so you'd see interesting combination of native mechanics + the new gun's
mechanics).

Instead you just have a weak coop shooter.

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waqf
All great art violates some existing genre conventions — if it doesn't, then
by definition it's generic art.

~~~
logicallee
What conventions did Michaelangelo's David violate?

~~~
chmod775
Using the grandparent's understanding of "generic", art could be generic, yet
still exceptionally good/well executed.

~~~
tnecniv
I was reading a comment on a jazz album and it essentially said "expertly done
but doesn't move the genre forward so meh."

I think people forget that sometimes you just want a good, standard jazz
album.

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beeswax
I loved Sonic on Master System, Game Gear and Mega Drive/Genesis and was
completely thrown off guard when I played Sonic Generations on the 360 decades
later ("whoa how can anyone keep up with that pace?").

Once you embrace that pacing (which has been there all the time) you'll be
able to appreciate that special kind of game/level design. It seems that Team
Sonic was able to apply that principle to Quote a good number of titles with
the IP.

Back in the days the controller would have been soaked in several people's
sweat ofc and there were no persisted save points. If you want to improve on
persistence, priorities and quick decision making: Go play these games on
their original hardware (or at least don't use the emulator's snapshot
abilities).

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syphilis2
Another retrospective look at Sonic's design (2014):

[http://redlettermedia.com/pre-rec-sonic-the-most-
overrated-g...](http://redlettermedia.com/pre-rec-sonic-the-most-overrated-
game-ever/)

~~~
wodenokoto
That was a really good analysis of Sonic.

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jack9
> Sonic is incorrect game design

Roguelike also require repetition to learn and master, in conjunction with
skillful assessment. Games are the exploration of a fixed environment to
discover and exploit linear optimizations for abstract goals.

Historically, this has been a training tool for children and students, to
prepare for life challenges. e.g. Wargames are for those who are students of
war. There's nothing inherently wrong about the game design of Sonic, which is
why the conclusion does not fit the stated premise.

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terrage
I would also like to point out that one of the greatest parts of the Sonic
games IMO was the ability to enable the in-game debug mode, allowing edits to
the level with various sprites. A definite source of childhood curiosity with
gaming/code/design.

[http://sonic.wikia.com/wiki/Debug_Mode](http://sonic.wikia.com/wiki/Debug_Mode)

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git-pull
For anyone here who wants a very well-made nostalgic dive into the art / feel
of Sonic the Hedgehog, namely Sonic & Knuckles, I recommend this:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DdxQmgC2Bhw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DdxQmgC2Bhw)

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AdmiralAsshat
By this logic, all on-rails shooters are 'incorrect' game design.

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rootedbox
Green Light is just a bad song.

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ddingus
Or, "Why The Guardian does not understand Sonic games."

