Official_Xbox_Magazine_USA_Issue_202_July_2017

OpiniOn
inSider
Steve Hogarty is...
The Fixer:
Steve jiggles the handle on the trope of the unopened door
Here’s an experiment you
can try right now, using
nothing but the pair of hot
meat hands God blessed
you with. Stand up and
stride purposefully to the
nearest door. Grab the handle with grace,
civility and confidence. Give it a twist,
wink to an unseen observer, and then give
it a tug. Observe how this door swings
open. Open as a plum. Now walk through
it. Enjoy the simple pleasure of moving
from one room to another, in a way that
you have never permitted yourself before.
(This introductory paragraph is presented
with apologies to the small percentage of
OXM readers currently residing in jail.)
However, if you want to try this trick in a
videogame, you’ll be sorely disappointed.
You can push on them, pull on them,
you can even sing them sweet, sweet
lullabies, but videogame doors don’t
work like real-life doors. Most doors in
games exist not to allow safe passage
between two adjacent spaces, but simply
to decorate what would otherwise be a
featureless wall. Like those bowls of fruit
you get in people’s living rooms. They look
pretty, but aren’t edible, and that is one of
the worst crimes I can think of.
The Problem
Videogame doors are as useful as a Wile
E. Coyote painting of a tunnel on a cliff
face. They are the level designer’s closest
ally and cruellest facade, a trope now
so ubiquitous that we have all become
numb to its presence. Somewhere along
the way, we’ve come to accept that
most doors in games don’t actually
lead anywhere or do anything. Like the
unbreakable window, the bottomless
pocket, and the invincible tree, the
unopening door has managed to weave
itself into the gaming lexicon.
Locked doors are so universally
recognized that level designers have to
think of clever ways to convince us to
even attempt to walk through doors in
“Doors that can’t
open usually have
a gaping hell portal
in front of them”
games. Visual cues are the most common.
Doors that actually open are signposted
by fluorescent green lights and screaming
neon arrows, or left slightly ajar in an
enticing manner, with dark shadows
curling out into the corridor.
On the other hand, doors that don’t
open are grey and badly lit, often with a
cardboard box, wet floor sign, or gaping
portal to hell strategically positioned in
front of them. That there are so many of
this kind of fake door versus the opening
kind, curtails any sense of freedom that
games could otherwise offer, and makes
me resent the rooms I can enter.
The Solution
The reason for all this barring of access
is intuitive enough: If you could just stroll
through any door in any game you could
go anywhere in the entire world, which
would mean at least a couple of extra
days’ work for the level designers, who are
far too busy making DLC. We can’t have
that, so let’s move on.
Instead, let’s design our games so that,
while every single door can be opened,
they nearly always lead somewhere you
don’t want to go. Perhaps one could lead
to a room in which your family are sitting
around the dinner table, and an awkward
topic has just come up. Another might
lead to a room with nothing but a ceilingto-floor
screen displaying a live feed of
your own face as you sit drooling on the
sofa with Dorito shards littered across
your chest. A bunch of rooms could
simply be screaming pigs. The point is
that they’d all be real doors, and that they
would open and shut as hinges intended.
Of course, the unintended side effect
of my excellent solution is that games
would mostly be rooms filled with the
mortal shrieks of slaughtered swine, and
it would become very difficult to hear any
dialogue or navigate the world without
incurring some degree of psychological
trauma. But I’m afraid that’s the job of
some other poor fixer to sort out. It’s my
role, nay my great privilege, simply to
solve gaming’s numerous problems with
my brilliant ideas—not to stick around to
oversee their implementation or justify
them in any way, to anyone. n
Steve writes for City A.M when he isn’t in
trouble kicking down locked doors
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