NiGHTS into Dreams

Part one - the score system

First of all, I'm certainly guilty of not playing NiGHTS as much as I should. I have put a lot of time into it (at least £500's worth, I would've thought), but I keep telling myself I should play it more often, considering how often I bore everyone to death talking about how brilliant it is. The thing is that it's a game of such rare quality I feel in some danger of somehow spoiling it; it's an indulgence. If it were a cake it would be one of those massively fattening chocolate cakes with more sugar than most people can stomach (this isn't to say I'm better than anyone, by the way.) Something like that, anyway. NiGHTS is a treat in the true sense of the word and, although it has more play value than almost any other game it should still be reserved for special occasions. I've deliberately not called it replay value as that somewhat implies you're repeating things, but with NiGHTS you're moving ever forward, exploring and discovering with every play. That's down to some design ideas which still strike me as genius to this day.

The most important aspect of the game is its drive towards improvement by way of score; this system is so well-balanced it lends itself to almost infinite possibilities (though not scores.) Every item is worth a certain amount of points until you release the Ideya - at this point you get a bonus relating to how many seconds you took, and from then on all points are worth double. Simple. When you collect two or more items in quick succession you get a Link bonus - the more items you connect, the higher the bonus. Even one or two extra Chips represents an achievement when added to a Link.

For example, a course might feature two sections containing ten items each. If taken separately, the player will get two Links of nine - if she or she is able to connect them (through Paralooping or an extra item found somewhere) that can become twenty or more, which is much more valuable. This is an extremely simple example - more common in NiGHTS is the use of "teaser" items which promise massive coninuous Links "if only" they can be used as connectors. The first time the player successfully achieves that continuous Link forms the achievement/satisfaction stage - the player has proved his or her goal to be attainable, and often recognises the quality of the game design and the understanding of the player's mind.

After this achievement has been repeated (even improved) a few times comes the "expectation" phase - the player has proved it can be done and now expects him or herself to achieve it the majority of times. Failure to do so often results in increased determination in the player, an incorporation of stage four. In other games such failure could easily lead to frustration and eventually rejection, but in NiGHTS the margin of success* (not error) is so slim that the player knows it would only take an incremental improvement to fulfil his or her expectations. Either way, the sense of satisfaction more than compensates for any frustration the player might feel at their incompetence; if it were so easy to achieve, the sense of pleasure would be considerably reduced.

The stage of expectation is shared with that of altered objectives - the player has demonstrated his or her first target is attainable, and so begins to conjure up other ways in which their score could be improved: getting to the Ideya Capture a second earlier, executing a tighter Paraloop to save more time. Again, the margin of success for these targets is often extremely slim, but a brilliant consequence is that these skills are transferable across all courses; there are familiar item layouts and sequences in many courses, resulting in similar opportunities for continuous Links and so forth. This creates a cogent, ever-progressing score narrative* encapsulating the entire game - a high score in one dream is likely to enable you to improve in another and so on. In this manner, the levels are connected through the player's development, not the plot's; targets achieved influence the player's expectations and confidence as well as their abilities and awareness of what is possible within the game.

I've tried to investigate and theorise the NiGHTS score system as best I can, but there have been inevitable omissions, particularly the boss multiplier system. What's here, however, is (pretty much) most of what I think is important to NiGHTS's score-improving ethos.

Next time = A-Life and music in NiGHTS into Dreams

Margin of success - the distance between fulfilling and failing the desired objective.

Score narrative - the progression and improvements the player makes in his or her score over the game's lifetime.

When Simon Adcock told me about Harvest Moon on the GameBoy Colour years ago, I remember laughing at him and telling him a farming game sounded boring. Clearly I was a very, very foolish youth, but I believe I've made up for lost time. However, exactly how much time has been lost to one of the largest timesinks ever? Let's see.

Harvest Moon: A Wonderful Life

This is the first Gamecube version of Harvest Moon - HM: Magical Melody is due in March 2006, which is brilliant - and happens to be phenomenally addictive. It's so addictive, in fact, that I'm on my second copy as my first one decided to get itself a new owner. Anyway, let's take a look at the figures...

Each day in HM:AWL takes about half an hour or so, and there are 40 days in a year. Therefore, each year is about 20 hours of gameplay time; quite a considerable amount. I am currently about to finish my fifth full year on the farm (I've done a whole year in the past week or so), which means I've put about 100 hours into it. That is officially "a lot."

Now let's take a look at the handheld version, Harvest Moon: Friends of Mineral Town. Again, I'm on my second copy of this as my US version (brought across from America - best. Birthday present. Ever.) wouldn't connect with my European HM:AWL. The days are much shorter in FoMT - about ten minutes, if that - but there are 120 of them in a year. So that's about 20 hours a year again (funny how that works out!). I seem to think I was on my fifth year in my first version, and now I'm in the Summer of my third year, so that's about two and a half years. Seven-and-a-half times twenty is about one hundred and fifty hours - that's a lot of bus and train journeys, not to mention entire days laid waste to its inescapably addictive charms.

So, as a very rough estimate, about 250 hours of my life have been sacrificed to the deities of Harvest Moon. In that time, I could have:

Finished one novel and started a sequel;
Tested the limits of human endurance by going without sleep for over ten consecutive days;
Earned over £1,000 working a crappy minimum-wage job;
Probably cracked PSO Ultimate mode;
Improved as a musician by an inconceivable amount;
Thought at great length about how to improve the world, and come up with several clever ideas for implementation;
Actually done something.

The third point is quite a pertinent one, really. I'm not one for jobs, as you know, but to think that I could have actually earnt some real money instead of in-game gold is quite funny, really. Doing any of these things, however, wouldn't have earnt me any genuine insight into the world of farming, which I value above (most of) these.

If that's what I could have done in the time I spent playing just TWO games - about FARMING, for fuck's sakes! - how much more could I have got done if I hadn't played ANY games? Well, to calculate that I'd need to work out how many hours I've spent playing games in total, which isn't really possible. Here are some fairly general figures, though:

About 250 - 300 hours on Phantasy Star Online;
About 300 - 400 hours on the Shining Force III trilogy (I think - this one is hard to work out, really);
About 50 - 100 hours on Transport Tycoon Deluxe and Locomotion (just a guess, really; probably much higher);
Somewhere in the region of 100 hours on various Sonic games (probably much more, but about 50+ on Sonic Adventure and Sonic Adventure 2);
70 or so hours on Paper Mario and Skies of Arcadia Legends (combined).
Pokémon Ruby, FireRed and Colosseum have sapped about 200 hours or so.
SNK vs. Capcom: Card Fighter's Clash! (Best. Game. EVER.) - 52 hours.

I can't imagine the amount spent on all the other games combined - NiGHTS, Burning Rangers, Mario Party, Fire ProWrestling, WarioWare Inc., Shining Soul, SNK vs. Capcom: Match of the Millennium, Neo TurfMasters (LOTS of hours in those two) have all sucked a lot too.

By now I think I should be beginning to realise exactly what my gaming addiction has cost me in terms of money, friends, skills and tangible achievements, but in truth, I can't help think about how truly awesome these games are, and how happy I am to have spent so much time with them. I know, it's super-geeky, but it's the truth. Pretty much all the games I've mentioned here are masterpieces or very close to them, and are all brilliant experiences I'm more than happy to have enjoyed. For the purposes of closure, however, let's try and put a figure on it.

Total hours spent gaming (taking a median value where I've made vague guesses):

About 2,500 or so.

I originally said about 2,000, but that's pathetic. It's probably even above 3,000, but I'll go for 2,750.

2,750 hours @ £5.50/h = £15,125.

That's shit. I'm glad I stuck with my games.

The proper version looks much better, but Javascript won't work. Never mind.

Happy! Mario 20th