Proactivity vs Reactivity in games

The vast majority of games are about reactivity, you're always reacting to stuff thrown at you. But can we talk about proactive games? What games let you plan your approach first and then execute said plan? Why are such games sorely lacking nowadays compared to the past? Are current normalfags too afraid of being an active agent in their lives? What are your favorite games with this philosophy?

I remember a thievery thug band simulator about robbing facilities in industrial world that had that kind of gameplay.

I like games that switch between the two, kinda.
Minecraft is a good example (could be a much better one but the game is unfinished and never will be finished now), but you can be proactive and go out and explore and build and do what you like, but it becomes more reactive at night and in caves when monsters attack and you're forced to be a bit more defensive.


Syndicate?

Designing for player agency is hard and requires time and resources. It's common sense for game designers to limit the amount of player agency. Most of the players will take the most obvious option most of the time.

And in the end, the player is still stuck inside the designed parameters, so any player agency in a video game is merely an illusion.

No, not asscreed shit, i forgot the game, really. It was very old and niche.

Hide ID and move on with your lives (pity it doesn't work across threads)

At the beginning of the mission, Alien Swarm and Payday 2 have a map where you can draw on and plan what to do with your teammates. This is entirely an in-game tool and the game doesn't really enforce any obligation to stick with it (it probably won't be better anyways).

It's really hard to make people proactive.

This has more to do with how games are viewed generally and how video game stories tend to be written

Games that are purely productive are generally seen as sim like. Like you're playing Rollercoaster Tycoon or something. You're given enormous amounts of choice right at the start and there's no real story.

In more story driven games having a purely reactive storyline is very easy to implement because it's basically the default mode of play. The player is told to do something, you go do it, you get rewarded for it. Games have done this since Super Mario Bros.

Reactive storytelling is very common in media nowadays because it's very easy to write and you don't really need to do lots of setup for things. Why are these two characters fighting? It's not important. The plot is thrust upon the character and it impacts him/her very little.

There are a few games that have proactive characters who make choices for themselves. A good example is Thief the Dark Project where the main character Garrett is a thief who lives in a world which treats such an occupation harshly. During the tutorial level he even makes a decision to abandon the organization that trained him since a child because he finds being a thief more fun. Throughout the entire game he's mostly operating on his own and doing his own thing and during the very last level of the game "Into the Maw of Chaos" he's robbing the antagonist because as he puts into his own words "i've never robbed a God beforeā€¦"

A really good comparison between sequels is Saints Row. Saints Row 2 is a perfect example of a game with a proactive main character. The main character busts out of prison at the very start and the rest of the plot happens solely due to the main character's decisions. He breaks his friend Johnny Gat out without anyone telling him to do it. He recruits other people to be in his gang. He leads them to war against the other gangs. He comes up with plans of attack against them. IE: He goes after The Brotherhood's guns shipment, he decides they should rob a Ronin casino to get their attention and make them come after them, he decides to take the Son's of Samedi's drugs for himself and sell them. As the game goes on he does purely sadistic shit for his own reasons like he murders Maero's girlfriend by locking her in the trunk of a car and letting him run her over. He straight up tortures a dude and burns the flesh off his hand after he gets the information he wanted. He impales an old man with a Katana entirely so he'll burn to death. Etc. You are never under the impression the main character is anything less than "The Boss"

By comparison in Saints Row 3. You are told to do everything by someone else. The main character almost stumbles through the plot drunkenly and comes across like his entire operation would fail if his lieutenants just resigned the next day. The main character does hugely illogical things entirely because he's told to by other people. Like he asks why he can't just assault the villain's headquarters and he's told "well we don't know if he's actually there". So instead they do pointless shit beforehand before eventually just assaulting it anyway. He asks why they don't just murder Kilbane instead of going through a pointless training sequence and a wrestling match and he's told "well we need to break his spirit". You get told the only way into a house is to be smuggled in naked as a "Sex slave' and when the main character goes "fuck that" you get told "quit being a bitch" and the main character does it anyway. The main character is like a child in the third game and the fourth and you're not so much the "boss" as much as the errand boy who does all of the work for other people. Whenever people state the writing in SR3 was worse, almost nobody points out that the general structure of how the plot was written was objectively kindergarten in comparison to the previous game.

Like I said earlier it has to do with terrible writing and writing the story piecemeal out first and stitching a general plot out at the last minute. I doubt anyone gave a shit about what the story to Saints Row 3 was and just wrote all of the missions first. Then created a story later and came up with excuses as to why you were doing what you were supposed to.

I appreciate the input but I'm more interested in gameplay situations. In Deus Ex you're constantly told what your next objective is but still you choose how and when to engage with enemies, or even which path to take. This is what I'm talking about, I don't think the MC deciding what his/her objectives are instead of a superior to be that important. You mentioned Thief, and the gameplay aspect applies to it as well.

In gameplay the answer is simpler. It's far easier to just put the player into a polished linear experience than to segment the game.

It's also generally seen as better since if the player is presented with too many options it risks him getting overwhelmed/lost or not viewing every option equally. Like there's a ton of games where you're told "oh you can sneak by these guys" but it's actually way easier to just gun all of them down with your firearms. This is increasingly more common in modern games like Deus Ex Human Revolution where while you can stealth it's more like a separate runthrough you do rather than a logical approach to how you'd handle a situation since your default mode of dealing with situations is as a first person shooter. Deus Ex 1 is a rare example of a first person shooter/rpg that presents it's options at a somewhat equal importance.

>I don't think the MC deciding what his/her objectives are instead of a superior to be that important
It's generally pretty huge and makes the story more personal and makes you connect to the main character. JC Denton as you mentioned gets told what to do for the entire game and the only reason he's memorable is due to his stilted dialogue and memes. Otherwise he's just another late 90s, early 2000s vidya protagonist. Compare him to someone like Max Payne where the main character goes on a rampage to get revenge and you'll notice the latter is drastically more interesting because you wanna see the end of his journey a lot more. How much less interesting would it be if Max had a sidekick who told him where to go for the entire game? Most people remember the story to Max Payne way more than the story to Deus Ex. Especially after the first few levels since most people don't even remember what happens after Hong Kong.

Your mind on relativism


Dunno OP. It gets clunky, tedious and absurd managing so many aspects. tactical/strategy RPGs are pretty nice and compact for executing strategies. Grand Strategy games just give me headaches.

Tacticool open world games like Ghost Recon Wildlands and Metal Gear Solid V tend to give a lot of room to scout and plan your infiltration, firefights, and escape routes.

If you want something a little less casual, Rainbow Six 3 gives you the option to meticulously plan your fireteams' every step through the non-linear maps before beginning the mission. Thief 2's story is linear, but gameplay-wise you have more freedom than Deus Ex.

In an interesting twist Swat 4 is structured in such a way that you're given lots of options to deal with situations but the ideal options are actually based on procedure. Like checking doors before entering and segmenting your team into different fireteams and approach from different angles. It's a game that recommends at all times to not improvise and instead act in the most conservative way possible. Especially since due to the randomized enemy placement in levels you can never truly know if there's a group of enemies behind a door waiting to kill you or nobody at all.

SWAT 4 is still the only game that keeps me on the edge whenever I playthrough it. You never know what the fuck will be behind the next door or who will run in.

I realize that there's a specific story they're trying to tell, so it's not really within the premise of the game to allow it, but I would have loved if Persona 5 allowed you to have a more active role in how your group operated. Making decisions about how you operate, and who you're going to target and when, could have been a lot more interesting than having a set in stone series of plot points. I felt like I got railroaded into mess after mess by a bunch of reflexive Japanese teenagers who don't think about the big picture, despite supposedly being their leader.

RS3 also has randomized enemy positions. Both games involve a lot of restarts.

Commando and that commando clone Robin hood game. Then there is Frozen Synapse.
There is also that Madness flash game where you plan your character's path through a level rather than controlling him directly.

The reason is that, almost everyone wants to be led by the nose, and become confused and disappointed when they are offered too much choice. This is especially the case when they feel the need to complete the whole game, do everything, because then they don't think which order to do things in, or which one to do first.
There can be measured against this, by forcing a choice or encouraging multiple replays of a game in order to experience it all - by having multiple paths and endings.
Thief, Deus Ex, there aren't many.
Alpha Protocol is another example, and feels somewhat similar to deus ex in terms of overall mission structure.
You develop your character, use the tactics you see fit, and choose the order of missions and how you deal with levels.
It forces you to make decisions and each playthrough is different, there is no savegame.
Duke Nukem 3D had a degree of choice, you could travel through a lot of the levels based on your own choice and direction of exploration.
Ufo: Enemy unknown from 1994, had a story and a time progression, but let you decide the order of most of the events - you were the hunter.
The future was inescapable, you had to find a way to deal with the problem.
Morrowind I don't think succeeds, it is open and you can choose what to do, but there is no real motivator or direction. The time element is also missing.
The rainbow six games were designed to be proactive from the outset, planning the attack on a map. Multiple routes and tactics possible, but with a singular objective in mind.

This kind of level design and therefore gameplay, died out with the likes of half-life, where they stacked in unavoidable scripted events, and pushed you into them so that their time spent scripting, and designed that event was not wasted.
This escalated in subsequent games, until the point where the player is barely involved.
The bigger the budget, the more time and money spent on a scripted element, the less they are willing to chance the player not experiencing that 5% of the budget.
Also, when they ask for choice and decision making, thought, tactical foresight or skill, they are reducing the player base to a far lower percentage.
If only 15% of the players will have the ability or determination to complete the game, that means 85% who are not - and people don't like buying something they won't be able to finish.

Those factors combined mean a much lower market size for games that are fun and interesting, so the publishers simply don't allow them to be made.
Look at what happened to Halo.
Bought out by Microsoft, made xbox exclusive, went from "huge open world" to linear corridor shooter. They also removed coop when they finally released it on the pc 2 years later, with a simplified, console shooter.
It's money and time. Designing a more proactive game is more difficult and needs a developer with thought and foresight, with the integrity to make something good, instead of only thinking about what will sell the most units.
See Duke Forever. The player nearly need not be involved.
I'd like to see more examples posted, I think it will make it easier to identity the elements that make the games good.

tl;dr

Costs more time/money/effort/thought to make proactive, choiceful games.
Games are full of scripted sequences now, designers don't want to waste the resources by letting players avoid them. Scripted sequences are 1000 times easier to make than decent AI or emergent situations.
Less players will buy it or be able to complete it.
Publishers only want money.

Mount and blade was alright for choice, but a bit repetitive and boring in progression.

I like fighting games and to an extent most competitive games for both aspects, you have to be proactive in how you approach and open up an opponent but you also have to have reactive skills to weather a storm when you have the lower hand while making sure to keep an eye out for openings to push for an advantage.

Old mmos like ragnarok online just drop you off after the tutorial and you can go fuck yourself.
In monster hunter, at least ones on PSP, you are mostly on your own too and unless you attack first or get deep into some predator's territory you won't even be attacked by anything.

tl;dr devs are lazy egotists and consumers are retarded

I don't think you will find any planning games beyond the early 2000s because devs consider the internet to ruin these games and the 1% intelligent people is no longer the majority of computer owners.

The first Rainbow 6 is the same, you plan the team's actions on a map then you can view it play out. The problem is the difficulty made it impractical to get that to work and you pretty much have to play yourself wearing a ridiculous bomb armor outfit instead.

Even all the 'tactical/strategy' games always have magically appearing enemies that make planning pointless in favor of forcing trial and error.

As in you're a bombstrapped police officer or a bomb disposal suit?

I can't remember the name but I vaguely recall playing something like that. What an awful feeling to be able to picture the game in your head but not have a name to pin it to

It's not so much restarts as much as how you approach things differently. In something like SWAT 4 you're encouraged to not use your most lethal weapons like firearms to deal with a situation. You're encouraged to use things like CS gas or flashbangs and incapacitate suspects

It puts things into a different context, it makes it so just killing dudes in an efficient way isn't the best option. Following procedure like not killing them if they don't fire at you and using non-lethal options like the beanbag gun or your taser is more encouraged.

To be entirely honest I was never the biggest fan of Rainbow Six because I always felt like the game could have been faster. SWAT 4 however really always encouraged me to slow down and improvise less.

God, I wish that were me.

Consider that reactivity will condition the player to be proactive. For example, most everyone with two brain cells to rub together can get past the trials and tribulations of even the hardest games, but although this is a praiseworthy feat, this is merely the tip of the iceberg. The people that love the mechanics so much that they'll seek to master every aspect of gameplay will go far and beyond mere reactivity and invent their own parameters of operation. This is the kind of autism that speedrunning is born from. Speedrunning, as autistic as it may be, is a type of proactive response to the game's systems which seeks to approach the typical reactive gameplay from a new perspective. There are numerous different proactive responses like this, such as no damage runs, going for a high score, going for a certain grade in games that give you performance grades, playing the game using a specific handicap, etc.

Also, consider that too many possibilities can make for quite a dull experience. Minecraft is only as fun as your ability to proactively create new content with which you may amuse yourself. Open world games like Red Dead and Asscreed and GTA are only as fun as the activities in which they allow the player to participate, both in terms of what the devs have created as challenges and the off-the-cuff mischief the player can invent for himself. Personally, I prefer games that expect reactivity but that can be approached with a specific objective in mind (i.e. I'd rather play a fists only SL 1 playthrough of Dark Souls or a Nuzlocke challenge of any Pokemon game than waste time collecting those feathers in Asscreed II or GOING BOWLING in GTAIV). Luckily, virtually all games are like this. I'd even say that the best games to ever exist are those that can maintain a balance between reactivity and player agency.

Think of the world we live in and how the modern youth think. Proactivity is dead, the age of kneejerk reactions and instant gratification are upon us.

May I inquire as to what some of those might be?

You can make most games like that by removing or limiting the ability to save.

It's just called Syndicate, user.

Grand Theft Auto?

halo games do this pretty often by dumping you into stealth setups where you can get the drop and often sneak through large portions of encounters by meleeing unaware enemies.

Geometry wars