Video game professionals unite on Twitter to answer this question, which is more mysterious than it seems.
Opening doors is not a unique characteristic of the human being. Everyone who has a cat in the house knows that many of them quickly learn to throw themselves against the knob or handles. After the roar, the sound of the feet indicates that they have already crossed the threshold. Something so everyday, which we all do every day, is not so simple when it moves to video games. Many developers have reached this conclusion, who have followed the discursive line started by Stephan Hövelbrinks, creator of Death Trash. According to his words, which PC Gamer collects, implementing doors is surprisingly complex.
“Doors are tricky in games and come with all sorts of bugs.” He claims that Triple A title developers hate them. He gives an example of the Assassin’s Creed saga, which despite having multiple elements, usually does without doors. Even so, the most recent production in the series, Valhalla, does introduce some of them, even in the puzzles. The tweet has quickly gone viral and soon received responses from other developers.
I don’t exactly know how many man-months went into the door system in Control, but more than most abilities and weapons, for sure.
– Sergey Mohov (@krides) March 9, 2021
Let’s talk about doors in games because a throwaway comment I made yesterday apparently touched a chord. Doors suck, devs hate them, and if your game doesn’t absolutely need doors, don’t implement them.
1 / thread https://t.co/x2SXjBku0v
– Damion Schubert, Zen Designer (@ZenOfDesign) March 9, 2021
Control took many months to design doors
One of them is Sergey Mohov, from Remedy Entertainment, who has said the following: “I don’t know exactly how many months it took us to make the Control door system, but more than the safe skills and weapons system.” Damion Schubert, ex of BioWare, has also participated in the debate. “Let’s talk about gates in games because it seems like the comment I wrote yesterday struck a chord. Doors suck, developers hate them and if your game doesn’t need any doors, don’t implement them. “
They refer specifically to the doors that we all know: they are doors that you click on, it opens and you can enter a store, for example. “You don’t find them in many games that still have a ton of features (I’m thinking of Assassin’s Creed or WoW) because they give more trouble than they deserve.” They cause artificial intelligence problems or interfere with the routines of the NPCs, who try to use the door at the same time as the player. Visually they also cause errors like clipping, when they don’t cause characters to get stuck. Even the mere act of opening it is an ordeal. They need a series of animations that do not always work, as the doors sometimes magically open automatically, which breaks the immersion.
Marcin Pieprzowski, previously at CD Projekt RED, told Kotaku that in the prologue of The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt there was a door that closed and that was unlocked right after finishing the final boss. However, the quality department found that there were 12 variables that were preventing that door from being unlocked.
Ultimately, when a door closes, a window opens. But in video games, it is better not to experiment a lot with them.
