Playing GTA4 and thinking about how much a minimap can ruin this type of game. GTA and Red Dead 2 both become whole different games when you turn it off, in a weirdly instantly-refreshing way. In RDR multiplayer, I got a friend to turn it off as we were just riding our horses around, and not even 5 seconds later he went “holy shit”.
The downside is that Rockstar’s mission design, which has changed 0% since 2001, can’t really accommodate this. You need the radar blips, because they can think of no other way to direct your attention. But GTA4 has an option to show only blips, no GPS route or street layout, and it’s amazing. The city has a ton of interesting shapes and verticality, and even if I’m trying not to look at it, the minimap stops my brain from absorbing that. On some level, I just stop thinking in 3d.
That’s what the “holy shit” reaction is, I think. With a map onscreen, your brain passes every input through it automatically. The second you disable it, it’s like a whole different brainchunk is engaged. You get a different brain-sensation. Losing the overhead layout and GPS route reframes the blips and they’re suddenly not in your way. You start to find find the places you’re looking for based on general direction and context clues, which are plentiful. You can learn the street and suburb names and know the general area an NPC is talking about from their verbal directions. Most of the missions actually remain playable this way, even though the designs are always so simplistic, and now you’re actually present in the world.
It reminds me of something I talked about in my video about Half-Life 2’s AI – where at the last minute, some illconsidered system blocks a ton of great work from falling into place. In HL2 it’s the resupply crates keeping the AI from getting to execute, in GTA it’s your eyes and mind getting constantly pulled away from the env art that’s most of the game’s appeal. Both things make the game worse, and both undeniably are why most players are able to complete it at all.
in reply to @joewintergreen’s post:
reminds me of Nier Automata’s solution. there’s a minimap but it’s intentionally kind of shit, missing small details and unable to see through buildings or tree cover
it’s obviously designed to avoid the problem you’re describing, but then there’s in-game dialog where they’re like “oh yeah the mapping satellite sucks; it’s like twelve thousand years old and we can’t fix it” lol
that’s rad
this is also HUGE for breath of the wild / tears of the kingdom. the minimap kills those games, and all of my friends poke fun of me for playing in pro hud mode but THEY DON’T KNOW WHAT THEY’RE MISSING
can’t remember the exact genesis of the term but it was either LGS or Ion Austin that coined “playing the HUD”, and yeah it’s fuckin kryptonite for good level design! and we lost to it on Bio1 even though those levels were generally linear as hellll. AAA director brain allergic to players not having Progress shoveled into their faces at warp speed.
“playing the hud” is a great term
“playing the HUD” is fantastic, didn’t know someone came up with a term for it. i ran into that as well a while back, players concentrate on the most optimal way to complete things and almost completely abstract themselves away from the game’s world
I was a UI Programmer on GTAV and RDR2, I’ve since switched to UX Design, in part of learnings and failings on those games. You’re right about the games being better without a mimimap. To RDR2’s credit, they did provide some ways to easily toggle minimap visibility. GTAV has something like 6 different options for levels of information on the minimap, but there was no effort made to surface those settings to players, so it was up to the most highly engaged users to find, understand, and change those settings, which means only a handful out of hundreds of millions of players ever experimented with the settings. Many/most players do need the aid of a minimap, so it’s a good option to provide as a default, but we need to get better at evangelizing for other modes in-game. Exploring these massive, beautifully realized worlds is so much more exciting when wandering around rather than playing the minimap like a game of Pac-Man.
Thanks for chimin’ in! Yeah, I actually love RDR2’s approach – to me, ideally the design would all hold up without a minimap at all, but the way I play is “nothing, and when I tap alt, The Big Minimap” and i’m very happy with it and the fact that I discovered it without trying. The “compass only” mode rules also.
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