How does pacing in video games make any sense?

I often here pacing come up when people talk about or review video games... My question is how does the concept of pacing apply to video games? It works for movies because they are designed to be experienced in one single sitting. With video games, you are expected to play a part of it at a time. so when one chapter of a game is quick paced and you decide to stop after that for the day then come back the next day to a slow paced chapter, isn't that annoying? The only pacing that makes sense to me in a video game is a consistent one. Fast paced all the time or slow paced and cerebral all the time. Pacing is for the movies. It does not make sense here. What do you think?

its a valid critique and it means different things for different games. the god of war series is paced well because santa monica didnt try to extend playtime by throwing in every scenario they could muster. they cut out everything but their best so there werent any down levels. compare that to mass effect games where bioware segments units of playtime. there are the missions with lots of action, but those are tempered by chats with squadmates and resource gathering. its a design with the intent that the player could do a mission in a sitting or do more but have the other activities as palette cleansers so they dont get burned out on the action. LoG-Sacrament

[QUOTE="LoG-Sacrament"]its a valid critique and it means different things for different games. the god of war series is paced well because santa monica didnt try to extend playtime by throwing in every scenario they could muster. they cut out everything but their best so there werent any down levels. compare that to mass effect games where bioware segments units of playtime. there are the missions with lots of action, but those are tempered by chats with squadmates and resource gathering. its a design with the intent that the player could do a mission in a sitting or do more but have the other activities as palette cleansers so they dont get burned out on the action. Allicrombie

Commando.

[QUOTE="LoG-Sacrament"]its a valid critique and it means different things for different games. the god of war series is paced well because santa monica didnt try to extend playtime by throwing in every scenario they could muster. they cut out everything but their best so there werent any down levels. compare that to mass effect games where bioware segments units of playtime. there are the missions with lots of action, but those are tempered by chats with squadmates and resource gathering. its a design with the intent that the player could do a mission in a sitting or do more but have the other activities as palette cleansers so they dont get burned out on the action. Allicrombie

but doesn't that only work if the downtime and action is experienced together in one sitting? I think the fact that games are designed to be played in many sittings suggests that the downtime is you switching games or stopping for a break. Slower segments in an action game are a bad idea especially when they tend to mean dead gameplay.

Pacing in Resident Evil games are utter balls, the early ones anyway. Still awesome games though.

Pacing in Resident Evil games are utter balls, the early ones anyway. Still awesome games though.

Ilovegames1992

I've only played the first Resident Evil and I thought it was appropriate. The whole game was about planning everything and solving puzzles. You really had to be careful so the slowness felt fitting. It allowed you to think things through. There was a consistancy there. Man I loved that game... I remember beating it in 1 hour and a half on my second play through for that infinite rocket launcher... What happened to that series :(

I think some of the best games with "good pacing" would allow for high-intensity action and moments to catch your breath regardless of what part of the game you're on (so, present in every sitting). Halo: CE comes to mind, especially with Bungie's old "30 seconds of fun" moniker. In a single level, there are moments of tension/traveling/stealth, then there are massive vehicular firefights, and the transitions never seem jarring.

But pacing is a double edged sword. You will never see anybody rate Call of Duty down for having bad pacing, because it's action-action-action all the time, and that's entertaining to us. The only time reviewers complain about pacing is when it's slow. This would never be the case in other mediums like TV or novels.

[QUOTE="Ilovegames1992"]

Pacing in Resident Evil games are utter balls, the early ones anyway. Still awesome games though.

Pikminmaniac

I've only played the first Resident Evil and I thought it was appropriate. The whole game was about planning everything and solving puzzles. You really had to be careful so the slowness felt fitting. It allowed you to think things through. There was a consistancy there. Man I loved that game... I remember beating it in 1 hour and a half on my second play through for that infinite rocket launcher... What happened to that series :(

A big gunfight might last 10 minutes or so, not a whole evening (which for me is about 2 hours). I like action parts interspersed with some exploration, maybe some platforming, possibly a cut scene for a bit of story/character development, etc.

Take the original Metal Gear Solid, for example. Great game, but poorly paced due to the amount of time you spend watching cutscenes vs. playing the game. Pacing can mean:

• The time spent between interactivity and noninteraction
• The length of time it takes for a game to get to interesting parts.
• The game's rate of progression (e.g. controlling the text speed)

At least, that's how I view pacing.

Pacing can also include elements on gameplay mechanics. How slow or fast the level up speed is, the rate at which you acquire increasingly more powerful and useful weapons/abilities, and even how large the travel area of a game is.

Some people watch a 2 hours movie in two sittings and some people play a 6 hours game in an afternoon, did you know?Black_Knight_00

Indeed, I watched about 40 minutes of the movie Thor, about three days ago and I don't feel like watching the rest.

[QUOTE="Allicrombie"][QUOTE="LoG-Sacrament"]its a valid critique and it means different things for different games. the god of war series is paced well because santa monica didnt try to extend playtime by throwing in every scenario they could muster. they cut out everything but their best so there werent any down levels. compare that to mass effect games where bioware segments units of playtime. there are the missions with lots of action, but those are tempered by chats with squadmates and resource gathering. its a design with the intent that the player could do a mission in a sitting or do more but have the other activities as palette cleansers so they dont get burned out on the action. Pikminmaniac

but doesn't that only work if the downtime and action is experienced together in one sitting? I think the fact that games are designed to be played in many sittings suggests that the downtime is you switching games or stopping for a break. Slower segments in an action game are a bad idea especially when they tend to mean dead gameplay.

books and television series are generally intended to be experienced in multiple sittings. even in films, its not unheard of to have an intermission. creators often dont know exactly how their audience will experience their work and they cant account for every possibility, but they can have a pretty good idea. the mass effect series places in characters to get players involved in a variety of the gameplay types in a play session. the crew members will often tell the player that a squadmate wants to speak with them.

also, i dont think pacing is only important for storytelling either. ill go back to the god of war series. they are certainly action games, but the developers know they dont have the deepest systems to work with. instead, they have a short term cycle of combat, platforming, and puzzle solving to prevent it from getting repetitive (and a long term delivery schedule of new abilities). even games with genuinely good combat systems like dmc3 adhere to these two methods.

[QUOTE="Allicrombie"][QUOTE="LoG-Sacrament"]its a valid critique and it means different things for different games. the god of war series is paced well because santa monica didnt try to extend playtime by throwing in every scenario they could muster. they cut out everything but their best so there werent any down levels. compare that to mass effect games where bioware segments units of playtime. there are the missions with lots of action, but those are tempered by chats with squadmates and resource gathering. its a design with the intent that the player could do a mission in a sitting or do more but have the other activities as palette cleansers so they dont get burned out on the action. Pikminmaniac

but doesn't that only work if the downtime and action is experienced together in one sitting? I think the fact that games are designed to be played in many sittings suggests that the downtime is you switching games or stopping for a break. Slower segments in an action game are a bad idea especially when they tend to mean dead gameplay.

Wow. How short are your sessions? 2 minutes? Even battles in shooters lasting 10 minutes have highs and lows to them. Some of it is dictated by the programming, some of it controlled by the player. It could come in the form of well-placed cover where the cover is a slower part until you decide to move another cover point or shoot all the enemies from where you are. It could come in the form of providing a few seconds between waves of enemeis, or trigger points the open up monster closets. Pulling back to a longer time frame, it becomes more evident. Between battles are areas where the player travels either in a vehicle or along a corridor. This is your downtime until you hit a kill box where a battle takes place.

Pick any shooter campaign, Left 4 Dead, Battlefield, Halo, Killzone, Gears of War. There's pacing there.

Even in platformers, there are easy enemies dispersed between more difficult enemies or environmental puzzles.

Action games, racing games... there's pacing in nearly all games where the designer intends it.

I think you're just having a problem getting your head wrapped around the sense of scale that pacing can exist in. Differences in pacing can occur in a span of a minute.

Being able to create a natural sense of pacing without the player really noticing is where good game design comes in.

Pacing is important for games, though it's not as important for handheld games since they are meant to be played in short bursts (not all are, but a lot are designed with that in mind). I thought Uncharted 1 had horrible pacing, and it just got old having to kill wave after wave after wave of enemies in some spots and then randomly the whole thing is cut in order to do some puzzle thing. It would have been better to have had the enemies more spaced out rather than in one area. Uncharted 2 fixed a lot of that, for me at least, and it didn't seem as out of place to have a random puzzle appear. Still playing the 3rd one, but it seems like it's gotten even better, which is to be expected as a game gets further in a series.

I think that most games have at least average pacing, so it's not really that noticable as being part of the game, but when it goes wrong, it is really noticable.

Really, any medium that is an extended type of story (i.e. book, movie, TV show, video game) has some sort of pacing, it's just that it's usually not noticable unless it's done poorly.

Put it this way...Modern Warfare and Battlefield have absolutely no pacing. My feeling about pacing is that it's representative of how fast you want to go through the game. Games that don't give you a choice have no pacing. Games that give you a choice in when/how to start the next objective are a good benchmark for judging pace.

Put it this way...Modern Warfare and Battlefield have absolutely no pacing. My feeling about pacing is that it's representative of how fast you want to go through the game. Games that don't give you a choice have no pacing. Games that give you a choice in when/how to start the next objective are a good benchmark for judging pace.

edgewalker16

Has to do with juxtposition between the action and other elements like character development, plot, etc.

In most games each "mission" is broken up into a 30 minute sequence, after that you come back to base, dump loot, find minerals, explore, talk to crew, etc.

That's pacing.

Basically it lets the game be played in 40 minute blocs of time where you get 30 minutes of action and 10 minutes of explore/talk/loot/sell.

It's all very subjective.

For example some people only want action. So the 10 minutes of "downtime" after every mission is just boring.

Depends on the game, but it matters more in heavily story driven games. It's essentially the same as in movies, just broken up over a longer period. To use a simple example, imagine a movie that spends 2 hours developing the plot, reaches the climax and then ends 10 minutes later. Now consider a game that dump 30-50 hours in, hits the climax and then throws you into the final boss battle and ends directly afterwards. This can work depending how the story is told, but it can also fail miserably.

Bad pacing can also manifest in less obvious ways. A character can be introduced late in the game, but a disproportionate amount of importance can be placed on them with little time for character development. Pacing is all about how various elements of a story are split up along a timeline. Doesn't matter if the timeline is 2 hours long or 50 hours.

A combination of fast-paced moments and slow-paced sequences is what I like, and of course a well paced story always helps.

Well TC, an example would be in FFXIII-2; great game but odd pacing towards the end. The narrative is really cranking up at this point, you're getting drawn in and can't wait to see the conclusion and then BAM a giant, boring platforming section which takes a considerable amount of time to traverse. It sort of throws you off the story for a bit and then it starts picking up again. It's a bit of a chore and breaks up the action.