3/20/2014 5 Lessons from The Stick of Truth for Game Makers

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Clayton Margeson

Assistant Director of Admissions

After graduating from the University ofNorth Carolina at Chapel Hill, Claytonmoved to Chicago in the summer of2008, and has since worked as arecruiter for PeopleScout, an AccountManager for Groupon, and currently acts

5 LESSONS FROM THE STICK OF TRUTH FOR GAME MAKERS

After experiencing releases like Superman on the Nintendo 64

andTransformers: The Game, a good licensed game may sound like an

oxymoron. Nevertheless, South Park: The Stick of Truth is definitely alicensed game--and it’s actually very good. Here are five lessons thatevery game maker can learn from this very unlikely source.

Good story comes from good characters. One would think EricCartman and company would have gotten old after 17 years, but for thevery large, active core of South Park fans, they haven’t. But enjoyable TVshow characters do not always translate well into a game. This is part ofwhat makes the success of The Stick of Truth so unique: Cartman andthe other familiar characters who appear in the game continue to

3/20/2014 5 Lessons from The Stick of Truth for Game Makers

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as an Assistant Director of Admissions atTribeca Flashpoint Academy. During histime in Chicago, he has establishedhimself in the improvisational theatercommunity, performing weekly at iO, thePlayground, and various other theaters,while also writing freelance gamereviews for honestgamers.com. Whenhe isn't doing all of those things, he'splaying video games.

entertain despite the change in medium--because they weren’t altered toappease a new generation or distilled into three funny lines that theyrepeat over and over. Instead, The Stick of Truth (like the TV show it wasbased on) hurls its rich pool of truly funny characters into a world that isevery bit as funny and bizarre as they are. An open-ended world gamelike The Stick of Truth only works if you want to explore the world--luckily,this one is loaded with great characters, which makes it all the morerewarding when players discover them.

The fun of combat is tension and release: Whenever a turn-based RPGhits the market, there’s usually some sort of gimmick that makes thecombat “more” than turn-based. Although these attempts are often badlyexecuted, The Stick of Truth (which utilizes a series of Quick Time Eventsthat force you to press buttons to complete your attack) is surprisinglysuccessful. Why? Because it creates tension and release. When anenemy is up to attack, the player is watching like a hawk for their cue toblock. The game ramps up the difficulty so, at first, missing a block is nobig deal--but, by the end, missing a block could mean instant death. Atthe same time, a failed attack could mean the difference between threerounds of combat and five, which, in turn, means more chances to miss ablock and get wiped out. With the stakes raised, players breathe a muchbigger sigh of relief at the end of every boss battle, and it doesn’t allowroom for the player to get bored.

Battles shouldn’t wear the player down. Too many high-stakes battleswill quickly cause user fatigue, which has led to a decline in JRPG-stylegames where players have to grind for hours to take on the next boss.The Stick of Truth maintains a high difficulty level, but without theencounter-heavy style of previous turn-based RPGs. Since players cansee their enemies before encountering them, they can also destroy themwith the environment. Shooting arrows at hanging lights, turning onswitches to electrocute puddles, and even exploding barricades with“magic” gas, players can knock out enemies without fighting them andwithout paying any sort of penalty. Sometimes that just means fightingone less enemy; other times it means completely clearing a screenwithout fighting at all. It rewards exploration and problem-solving, ratherthan just button-mashing.

Don’t drag it out. With a humble runtime of 11-13 hours, The Stick ofTruth is shorter than most RPGs--and that can only be a good thing.Even in this comparably brief romp through the world of South Park,gameplay starts to slow down at a certain point when the player is taskedwith embarking on a long journey. Anyone familiar with JRPGs may havethought at this point that they were about to experience the dreaded“padding phase,” where a game forces players to take a drawn-outjourney just to make the game feel longer. Luckily, the game quicklypulls up and out of that slump the moment players enter a 16-bit versionof Canada. The Stick of Truth doesn’t pad out the journey and artificiallyextend the game. It gets to the point, and that feeds directly into...

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Know what you’re going for. Lots of games try to be too many things atonce: an action movie, a multiplayer experience, an advertisement for theAmerican military, a first-person shooter. The Stick of Truth delivers socompletely because it is just one thing: South Park, done like South Park,with art and music like South Park and gameplay that seamlessly integrateswith a story from South Park. The tone, the style, the crass language and,yes, even the disturbing images: it all fits together and tells a cohesive storyin the way only South Park can. And that’s all--no more, no less. The game issimply exactly what it set out to be, and that simplicity serves both thecreators and the audience very well.