REBUTTAL TO: Psst…Got a Secret?
Philip Bloom’s editorial, “Psst…Got a Secret?” presents his view on secrets in games, and how obvious they should be. He claims that game designers have a duty to mark paths leading to the secrets in their games, and provides a number of reasons for doing so. Unfortunately, his argument falls apart as punctuated by his statement, “Well, because people are paying for your game, for one.” A game designer is not obligated to show the player where “secrets” are, and I think Bloom’s editorial’s weakest point is his ignoring the very definition with which he begins his editorial.
The entire point of secrets in games is to provide a little something that the player might stumble across on repeated play-throughs of the game. Please note use of the word “might.” Secrets should not be necessary in order to beat the game. I don’t need to find the 1up mushroom in world 1-1 of Super Mario Brothers in order to throw Bowser into the lava, nor do I need to find the rupee-giving Moblins throughout Hyrule in order to topple Ganon. I agree that if something is necessary for the player to do (say, dashing against a bookcase to get the Book of Mudora in Zelda:LttP) then there must be clues. If there aren’t, it is indeed bad game design.
Unfortunately, Bloom makes a different claim in his editorial. He wanted every element of the game to be potentially spelled out in some form so the player would have a fair shake at finding it. This is silly. Players aren’t paying for secrets any more than a game should be judged on the secrets it has. Game secrets (or “easter eggs”) are meant to be stumbled upon unexpectedly. The first easter egg, put into the Atari 2600 title Adventure, was the designer’s name, because Atari wouldn’t allow game credits at the time; it was also nigh impossible to discover on your own. If someone who sought credit for their own hard work left no indicator as to where their name was hidden…then why should there be a giant neon arrow pointing at every clock Elixer? Secrets were meant to be found accidentally, then spread around via word of mouth. Nobody is going to enter “PAKKUN PAKKUN PAKKUN PAKKUN” or “ICARUS FIGHTS MEDUSA ANGELS” as their Kid Icarus password accidentally—but both are beneficial to the player.
The Tales of Symphonia example Bloom presented seems to me that the designers of the game hoped the player would experiment with their (fun) battle system, to find hidden techniques and special abilities. Why, exactly, should these be spelled out? Didn’t the fun of RPGs used to be discovering things on one’s own? I wouldn’t even call these techniques secrets—merely hard-to-discover abilities.
Since Bloom offered two in-game examples, I will do the same. My first example is bad secret design: Donkey Kong Country (any, but I only played the first two). In this game, the player is graded (by percentage) on how many hidden rooms and items they find. These hidden rooms often require the player to ram into every wall with a barrel, jump offscreen, into certain pits, etc. However, there are only clues about 60% of the time. This means that 40% of the game itself (getting the high rating, which the player clearly sees they can/should do) is entirely secret. This is bad game design—because game elements that should be hinted at are secret. Note the hidden rooms themselves are only secrets because the designers are lazy. Each successive DKC title added more and more “hidden things” to find, which the player was always graded on. This made for frustrating gaming which I obviously stopped taking part in. An example of a good and true “secret” in DKC was the fact that you could go above 100% and get 101%.
Good secret design can be found in the Metal Gear Solid series. In MGS2, there are a number of hidden codec conversations that can only be found in certain locations. If you go into first-person mode right in front of a girlie poster, Snake makes a kissing sound. In the original game, if you call Mei Ling repeatedly, she will stick her tongue out. In MGS:Twin Snakes, you can shoot Mario and Yoshi for health, or repeatedly watch Meryl in her jail cell to see different things. None of these are necessary, and none of them affect getting the Big Boss (perfect) ranking. They are merely there to delight players who might stumble across the details while playing through for a third (or eighth) time.
I would agree with Bloom saying that elements of the game proper must not be secret, but at the very least hinted at during the game. However, secrets remain exactly as Merriam Webster defined: something kept hidden or unexplained.
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