Sam Fisher's Game Design Revolution

Sam Fisher. Rogue operative. Super spy. Killer. He died earlier today. He died because he ran directly into the knees of a man with an assault rifle. Not exactly something you're likely to see on 24.

Not something you're likely to see in the new iteration of the game, either. In an unprecedented move, Ubisoft have revamped the control method to prevent such unmitigated disasters befalling their secretive shadow-stalking hero. While many might dismiss this as a gimmick, or a dumbing-down of the gameplay, there is something in the intention of this change that could spell out wonderous things for the future of games - that the player experience is being considered and designed by game designers in new, deeper and more thoughtful ways. In other words, Ubisoft have finally developed a game that cuts to the core of what Splinter Cell was always about - being Sam Fisher.

In previous games, we weren't really being Sam Fisher. Instead, we took control of his body, with the capability to be like him, and were tasked by the game to learn how to behave in the fashion he might. This is the tried-and-tested formula of gaming - direct application of controls to the game enviroments. Push forward on your control stick, and Sam walks forward, bumping into barrels, walking diagonally into walls, and blindly charging into enemy fire at your command. When it worked - when we pulled off a move that Sam might have performed without our intervention, the game was on form, but all those little moments where the Sam on the screen didn't move like the super-spy he was supposed to be made the game feel ... well, like a game. Not the kind of thing non-games players would like.

This is the key part of the argument against this kind of game design - it requires a suspension of disbelief, a concession to the realm of the game, with no reason or rhyme as to why it has to be there. In fact, it only exists because there was not other options when the tenets of game design were first written 25 years ago. Had Splinter Cell been developed in 1984, Sam would have been a coloured rectangle, and it would have made no difference how he moved or why - we were always going to pretend he moved like a spy. As games marched on, and the realism of graphics improved, game control methods changed very little, and thus the depth of experience has, until now, always lagged behind the depth of visuals - and we've all made the concession, and let games away with it, because we love games so much.

Now, with this new Splinter Cell iteration, I believe Ubisoft are making an authoritative statement about the new era of games design - that its time to start considering the crux of the player experience, beyond "doing cool stuff". No longer will we be playing with an articulated Sam Fisher action figure, trying to mimic the moves we've seen him do outwith our control. Now, Ubisoft give us the real deal - we tell Sam where to go, we tell him what to do, but he gets to be himself.

So, as a gamer myself, I would call on designers everywhere to sit and think "what is the crux of the experience I am trying to deliver to my player"? Instead of making concessions to old control schemes, stop and think about how the player should feel when playing your game. Sit with a controller in your hands, close your eyes, and imagine playing - however your thumbs move, that's a good starting point. Now make sure the vision in your head is matched by one on the screen. Should a character blindly batter through obstacles, or would he climb around them? Would he sidestep along a corridor because he's looking to his left, or would he just turn his head?

The time has come for games to allow us something a little more than "doing cool stuff" - from now on, games can allow us to "have a cool experience" instead.