Comments on: Breaking the fourth wall

By: Jurie

Jurie — Tue, 11 Nov 2003 05:38:48 +0000

Hmmm…. interesting. So you could also say:

Suspension of disbelief is subjective for each audience member: what may be disruptive for, say, Jamie, may not bother someone else. As designers, we have to use our sensibility and insight into the typical player’s experience to make decisions (supported by the judicious use of user testing perhaps).

Breaking the fourth wall is subjective for the designer. She takes a decision to put something in the game. Hopefully she is in some way aware of the concept of the fourth wall, and of the consequences of breaking it.

By: tobe

tobe — Mon, 10 Nov 2003 23:40:16 +0000

Breaking the fourth wall might easily be mistaken for actually expanding the user interface.
The user interface in theater, for example, is sometimes extended to draw the audience into the play by actually letting the actors converse _with_ the audience over short time periods, which does not ruin, but strengthen the immersion.
An addition to interface could recently be found in the latest Kojima-game ‘boktai’, which features a UV detector to measure the sunlight, a crucial element in the whole game. This is used in various ways, so I happened to come across a section where my avatar was blown off a small bridge by the wind frequently. After I fell twice, the in-game sidekick asked me whether I thought that the sunlight influenced storms and wind… I covered the sensor with my thumb, and voilá, the winds got weaker and eventually subsided. I was not, however, able to attack, since my thumb was busy keeping the light out of the game.
This little episode proved to expand the game’s setting across the screen’s boundaries, without breaking the suspension of disbelieve.

By: Jamie Fristrom

Jamie Fristrom — Mon, 10 Nov 2003 18:12:51 +0000

That was a brilliant line in Day of the Tentacle. Don’t remember who I lent that to. Must acquire new copy.

Saying not to break the fourth wall was an overgeneralization on my part, I admit. I might as well have said you should never break the fourth wall in a movie. Still think Zelda would have been better my way, though.

By: Jurie

Jurie — Mon, 10 Nov 2003 16:07:08 +0000

Those are good examples. It is really hard to justify (in a clear and logical way) why that works in The Sims but would not work in other, very similar situations. You need a certain sensibility to judge these things. (A background in writing probably helps to develop this.) This sensibility must be applied consistently, and this can be a big problem in game development. You need a lot of authority as a game designer to be able to overrule everyone else and say: now this character can address the player, but now he can’t. Creating an environment where the right people have the right responsibilities, and then finding the people who can assume those responsibilities is very hard. It is a reason why some games fail even when everything else goes right.

By: Timothy Burke

Timothy Burke — Mon, 10 Nov 2003 12:15:01 +0000

As you say, it all depends. One of the most brilliant fourth-wall breakings I can think of, where it reinforced the mood of the game, is The Sims–where at a number of points, a sim will look up with exactly the correct head positioning to be looking where the player’s head is likely to be, as if the sim is gazing upon the deity that controls it, and sometimes gesture in entreaty.

Then there are fourth wall breakings which are amusing *and* inaccessible enough that you only get to them if you’re trying to, easter eggs of a sort–say, for example, the responses you get from your units in Warcraft or Starcraft if you click them enough times. Doesn’t break immersion, and provides an amusing acknowledgement of what bored players are likely to do with the mechanics.

But I agree that when a fourth-wall acknowledgement comes in direct violation of the emotional mood or fictional setting the game is otherwise laboring to establish, it’s annoying as hell, and one of the key signals that games are still being created by people with limited creative skills who have played too many games and are stuck in a hopelessly inward-looking referential frame.