Flat Out 2 is a racing game. In the single player career mode you drive in race after race, building up your cash reserves till you can afford a better car, unlocking special events and the aforementioned better cars as you go. At first glance there’s not much scope for a story there, and you’d be right. The game makers haven’t even tried to tack on any kind of plotline and have only provided brief bios pf those you are driving against. So why do I find myself reacting as if I was a player in a larger tale?
Flat Out 2 is not a perfect game by any stretch of the imagination, its a full throttle arcade racer with some physics thrown in to make the crashes entertaining. There’s nowhere near the depth of customisation offered by the Need For Speed titles and none of the realism of Project Gotham or Gran Turismo. It is the Spiderman to the more refined racing games’ Dancer in the Dark, if you want to use a movie analogy. Obviously the story of the game has no significance whatsoever. It is however an example of how an entertaining yet shallow game experience prompts the player to build their own stories.
Throughout your career, from your first races in clapped out bangers to the grand finals where you should have reached the stage where you can afford the cream of automotive technology, you are racing against the same 7 drivers. Some of these drivers are destined to be your nemeses, beating you time and again on tracks you know backwards. I hate them with a passion.
For the first few races I didn’t pay that much attention to who the other drivers were as I was beating them fairly easily. The Derby class of races (for the clapped out bangers) was completed with out me breaking a sweat. Then I hit the Race series. Faster cars, new tracks, and slightly harder bots. I still beat them without much fuss but it wasn’t as easy as it had been. I found myself going back to the derby class and re-racing some of the cups available to build up enough cash to get the best upgrades for that little extra edge over my competitors. I was beginning to want to beat two or three specific drivers who were proving to be thorns in my side.
By the time I hit the Street series I knew who my rivals were and could name them. Sofia Martinez in her shining silver pickup and Jack Benton in his waspish black and yellow sports coupe. They are now people to me, rivals worthy of the name. And this is in a game with no literary pretensions, how has this happened?
Game makers can learn a lot from this phenomenon, with little or no influence in the way of plot and/or characterisation from them, a player of their game has been prompted to make an emotional investment. The game is far better for it, not because of anything that they have added to the game, more because of what they have left out. Deliberately or not, Bugbear, the developers of Flat Out 2, have made me want to complete it. Not through the promise of uber unlockables or some other mechanic, but by getting me emotionally involved.
Call of Duty 4 did this as well, though there was more thought put into the plot and such in that game. I actually had a bit of a lump in my throat at the end and a few times in the middle (I’m not going to spoil it for you if you haven’t played it). Here was an all action shooter which pulled at the heartstrings and got an emotional response from the player. So my advice (whatever that’s worth) to game developers is to get the player emotionally involved, give them something to give a damn about and your game will be more enjoyable for it.
So when deciding how to get the player invested in a game you have two options: If you’re going to run the plot on rails then you’d better make it a damn good one (a’ la CoD4)which doesn’t overpower the gameplay, or if you don’t want the burden of a plot tailor the AI so that the player feels they have a worthy opponent. Mindless cannon fodder are not fun to beat, neither are totally predictable driving bots.
Don’t just tell me a story, I can read a book for that.
