Tomb Raider

Introduction

Tomb Raider is an action adventure game which was one of the first to have a female adventures characters who became very popular among players. The gameplay of Tomb Raider is solving puzzles trough ruins, temples and sometimes even cities or other exotic places to find relics or uncover secrets. Along the way, you will encounter several enemies which include humans, different types of animals and also mythical or fantasy creatures.

How it All Started

Toby Gard the designer of Tomb Raider had an idea to make an action adventure game, Where the player would be an explorer raiding tombs and go to the world of pharos (Laura Cruz, 2013). Initially the character was male but during design he had the idea of introducing multiple characters, so he also created a female character. The story was too complex to keep both characters because during design the team would have had to almost double the cut scenes, therefore Grad had to decide and discard one of the characters. The female character was designed in opposite norms of what an elite character would look at that time, for example her gender, outfit and physical built (GameSpot, 2011). Initially it was very risky to put a female character since almost 95% of gamers where male and that was going to be a drastic change for them. At first people where mad at Core (Core Design, 2013).

Initially the character’s name was Laura Cruise, but to make it more interesting to Americans they gave it an English name which happened to be Lara Croft. She was very unproportioned as anatomy, but that happened since they were very restricted in polygonal count and therefore instead of having a plain cylinder with textures they tried to get the female anatomy from the least basic shapes possible. As a character, she is what a lot of people would look up to, whether you are a male or female, because she is that Indiana Jones (George Lucas, 1981) type character where you can go explore for something and take care of the bad guys along the way (Core Design, 2013).

When Grad initially started pitching Tomb Raider he had to pitch it multiple times as no one believed that the game would work and that it was actually impossible to make in the first place. Tomb Raider was the first in its genre to be a 3D action adventure game, and there was no other test for the team to see how they were done outside the Nintendo 64 which had super Mario 64 in full 3D (GameSpot, 2011). Core design was developing Tomb Raider on the Sega Saturn and the PlayStation.

On its release in 1996, Tomb Raider became an instant success with the help of mixture gun fighting and puzzle solving. The game had a character that interacted physically with its environment which at the time was rare to see. The character could climb, swim, jump and fight with different types of guns even against a T-rex which also was an uncommon thing to do (GameSpot, 2011).

Gard was always certain that the game would be a success because he says that it was a mixture of other existing games put together with a new twist (GameSpot, 2011).

Tomb raider helped to solidify the PlayStation position as a dominant console platform from the consumer and developer side, and for it sequel, Core ditched the Sega Saturn version since the PlayStation development was much easier to work with. For its sequel, Tomb Raider 2 the team was focusing on deploying their game on pc’s and PlayStation (GameSpot, 2011).

Tomb Raider 2 was released in 1997 and made a greater success then its prequel. In Tomb Raider 2 the team could include what they left out in the first game since the team was much more experienced. For example, Lara, always was planned to have a pony tail but they could not make it work, it would bug into her body and backpack which they manage to make work in Tomb Raider 2 and they also introduced different types of enemies, outfits and transportation vehicles (Core Design, 2013).

Analysis

Before we owned a PlayStation when I was a kid, I didn’t have much experiences playing video games. I remember our first game on the PlayStation was crash bandicoot. Then a day after I was at my friend’s house where he showed me and let me play Tomb Raider, I immediately fell in love with this game. I discovered that I loved exploring and solving puzzles and I looked up at Lara as my heroin since she was so acrobatic, adventures and proficient in almost everything.

The game was hardcore and had no clues about where to go and what to do next. It was all up to you in exploring and finding which key fits where, and (probably because I was 7 years) I would spend weeks trying to solve a puzzle. But why would I do that and why did I enjoy myself playing a game so hard?

During one of our subjects at school named Psychology of Play I researched about player types and play motivations where I can answer to this question.

Lazzaro (2016) observed a lot of players playing games and noticed that while playing people experienced a lot of emotions and it was driving them to be engaged with the game, because in reality, players where just pressing a button. Games offer: Novelty, challenge, friendship and meaning; These are what players do to create these immerging experiences (AIGAdesign, 2016).

She explains that there are four keys to fun which are:

Figure 2: Four Keys to Fun

(Lazzaro, 2016)

• Hard Fun

• Easy Fun

• Series Fun

• People Fun

I am not going to go through all of them but in this case of Tomb Raider, for me was absolutely hard fun.

Hard Fun

Games are fun because they are hard to beat, it frustrates the player to develop the skill needed to advance in the game but when the player manages to master this skill, they will feel joy and surprise. Games are very good at challenging, letting you fail (you almost expect it that at a point or another you will fail, especially when you start a new game) but most important letting you try again as much as you like. Unlike school where failure is a big failure (AIGAdesign, 2016).

Figure 3: Hard Fun: Mastery Creates Fiero

(Lamata, 2009)

Lazzaro says that she uses this graph that is based on Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (2004) Model of Flow and she added more information from their research to explain hard fun. If the game does not become more difficult, you would become bored and no longer want to play, while on the other hand if the game become difficult too quickly you would get frustrated and stop playing anyway. So, there must be a balance between the two. But Frustration plays a huge role. By frustrating the player to almost a breaking point and then he manages to master the skill the player will feel proud or as Lazzaro likes to say “Fiero” (in Italian), much more than if it was an easy path. This encourages the player to get new skills (AIGAdesign, 2016).

Lazzaro (2016) also gives an example of hard fun on an application. She mentions a photo application that reward users by having most views, instead the application should give you new values and tips for you to be a better photographer. This will help you improve your skill and you would be proud of achieving such feat. She also continuous to say that another idea would be to level up while gaining skill to unlock new challenges once you master the current.

Hard Fun Players would say thing like:

• Playing to see how good I really am

• Playing to beat the game

• Having multiple objectives

• Requiring strategy rather than luck

(Lazzaro, 2004)

Hard fun is the love feeling frustrated because it leads to the feeling of winning. Give the player the tools and let them figure it out how to achieve the goal instead of sending more monsters in less time (AIGAdesign, 2016).

So probably, I enjoyed playing Tomb Raider because it challenged me and frustrated me so much that I felt really proud after solving a puzzle, although I don’t think that in Tomb Raider there was a balance between difficulty and skill. Even talking to my friends and or adults who were playing made me feel proud, since I was or ahead of my friends in the adventure or keeping up with adults. I think that a lot of players can relate to my experience since I used to talk a lot about the game and me and my friends had very similar experiences during gameplay.

To confirm the theory, I stopped playing Tomb Raider after Core Design disbanded and sold the game rights to Crystal Dynamics. They change the game play from hard fun to easy fun, where everything felt plane, easy and strait forward. I no longer felt any challenge in the game in solving puzzles.

Today Tomb Raider has a wonderful gameplay and experience but in my opinion it still lacks the challenge of difficult puzzles and paths since everything is marked with a king of white paint along the way. I hope that someday, they will remake Tomb Raider as hard as it once was but also keeping the improvements they have implemented.

References

AIGAdesign, 2016. Nicole Lazzaro | Games and the Four Keys to Fun: Using Emotions to Create Engaging Design. [Online] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EEmNRRRqgNc [Accessed 11 December 2016].

Core Design, 2013. History of Tomb Raider - Icons. [Online] Available at: For it sequel Core ditched the Sega Saturn version since the PlayStation development was much easier. [Accessed 21 December 2016].

GameSpot, 2011. Tomb Raider - Video Game History Month 2011. [Online] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7YQOBGJ88G0 [Accessed 21 December 2016].

Lamata, J., 2009. 1. Hard Fun: Mastery Creates. [Online] Available at: http://www.slideshare.net/moJoe/massivley-social-games-next-generation-experiences/29-1_Hard_Fun_Mastery_Creates [Accessed 16 December 2016].

Laura Cruz, 2013. Behind the scene of Core Design - The making of Tomb Raider. [Online] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B_j01Nm0gzU [Accessed 21 December 2016].

Lazzaro, N., 2004. Why We Play Games: Four Keys to More Emotion Without Story. Oakland, CA 94618: XEODesign.

Lazzaro, N., 2016. The 4 Keys 2 Fun | Nicole Lazzaro's Blog. [Online] Available at: http://www.nicolelazzaro.com/the4-keys-to-fun/ [Accessed 11 December 2016].