🌱 Create subtree game over condition

[rwarnking]

Create this subtree and discuss basic structure.

Spawned by:

• 50

25.07.2024 Discussion

Since it was difficult for us to define the goal of a game and we already included tags for motivations it was proposed to add tags for the game over condition. This would yield a very similar result but might be more clearly definable.

A game over condition is generally independent of the goal or the end of a game, since the game can also be over when the player dies. Therefore the game over condition is directly related to conditions that let the player win or lose. Hence every end state that is available was reached by triggering a game over condition. This in turn means, that a game that does not have an end state would also not have a game over condition. Basically this tag identifies situations in which the game itself stops the player from continuing to play - this does also include situations in which the player would resolve the issue by reloading.

Especially noteworthy here are games, that integrate the player death into the game (DARK SOULS™: REMASTERED), creating a different approach to process a potential game over. The difference between those games and others would be visible via these tags, allowing the analyst to obtain information about the structure of the game.

While it is important to differentiate the game over condition from the goal of a game, since both can differ a lot, we choose to not differentiate between a good and bad game overs like death or finishing the game. Furthermore we decided for now to not include a special tag for loading a savegame since it is a very mechanical feature and usual for many games.

In general a lot of potential game over conditions would be of technical nature:

• finish last quest of the game
• reach final location
• kill final boss
• endure challenge

Basically this tag should also give a hint as to what the challenge of the game is, on a more technical level than the problem types subtree.

For the moment we reused information from issue #50 and decided on the following tags to choose from:

• win match
• beat final level
• kill endboss
• get high score
• survive as long as possible
• solve big level/puzzle/riddle
• reach end of storyline
• bring story to end
• follow storyline
• complete main quest line
• complete game
• no explicit goal
• death

These tag might be detailed enough while still given some abstraction level. To select the correct tag we agreed to prioritize quests and questlines over location based tags.

Ongoing problems that already were found are:

• Does the game end because the story is finished, or is the story finished because the game has ended?
• What about story that are not bound to quests?
• Games might not tell the player that there is a questline and not just one quest.

Nevertheless to validate our list we will iterate a list of games and assign those potential tags.

Game	@HendrikBrueckler	@ArielMant0	@rwarnking
Dota 2
The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim Special Edition
Mass Effect™ Legendary Edition
Minecraft
Borderlands 2
Among Us
Left 4 Dead 2
The Sims™ 3
Life is Strange
Papers, Please
BioShock™
Portal	kill final boss
Schach
Banished
Antichamber
SUPERHOT
Baba Is You
Gone Home
The Stanley Parable
Dead Space
Return of the Obra Dinn
Gris		reach final destination

Related Changes

• (25.07, Phase 4) Add new tag game over condition to metamechanics
• (25.07, Phase 4) Add new tags beat final level, win match, finish questline to game over condition
• (18.10, Phase 4) Remove tag beat final level from game over condition
• (18.10, Phase 4) Remove tag finish questline from game over condition
• (18.10, Phase 4) Remove tag win match from game over condition
• (18.10, Phase 4) Add new tags goc: none, goc: death, goc: permadeath, goc: reach endpoint to game over condition

[rwarnking]

When discussing the different tags that were proposed as part of game over conditions we found that it would be difficult to choose one of them. For example many games have a final quest that leads to a specific location to fullfil a specific task like _killing an endboss_. Choosing one of these would be difficult and arbitrary. Instead we chose to combine them to goc: reach endpoint which implies that the player needs to reach a certain point to complete the game. Similarly we discussed get highscore which is just another framing of goc: death since the game does not end by reaching a highscore but rather by death leading to a highscore.

The only further differentiation that was added, were the goc: none tag that implies that a game does not end (e.g. Minecraft) and goc: permadeath which is the opposite meaning that the game can end permanently.

[rwarnking]

Based on the discussion of the 18.10.2024 this tag was added to issue #60 after closing.