Ice Climbers Review Draft 2

Hey guys,

This is my second draft of the Ice Climbers review that I am doing as a part of my assessment for my university work. This version has a few more sources on which the content of the article is based on and draws information from and therefore has a better academic basis behind it. Here it is:-

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Ice Climbers is platforming developed and published by Nintendo made in 1985 for their Nintendo Entertainment System (commonly know as a NES). It is a game with 25 years behind it and as such can be considered a ‘Retro Game’ and in comparison to mainstream games that are made today can be considered very basic. However, it is because it is basic that it is a good starting point to review a game critically, analyse its key gameplay aspects and see what makes them good or bad.

There are several ways that Ice Climbers could be analysed as games have been analysed in different ways by numerous writers. However, due to the sheer number of works that there are, to apply them all would make this either a very long review or one with too many unexplained points. Therefore, I have chosen to review Ice Climbers primarily using the work of Greg Costikyan’s article ‘I Have No Words & I Must Design’ and back it up now and then with other authors works. Costikyan breaks down all games into 5 key areas, ‘Interaction’, ‘Goals’, ‘Struggle’, ‘Structure’ and ‘Endogenous Meaning’ and it is this basis with which I will begin my review.

Costikyan begins his article talking about what Interaction means within a game and ultimately he defines it as the player’s ability to make choices. He says about games that “If it isn’t interactive, it’s a puzzle, not a game.”, therefore saying that a game must have good interactive choices to help shape it otherwise it will be something you just have to work out and then you can do it all the time, any time. If a game has choices it means there are elements of chance, it adds replayability and this leads to the game being good fun.

So how does interaction link in with Ice Climbers? Well the most obvious way is that the player controls their character and chooses their path up the mountain. The path up the mountain is whatever the player wants; they can break through any part they wish to get to the top, making it easy for themselves by avoiding enemies or deliberately heading towards them to challenge themselves – it is their choice and thus interaction is present in the game.

This is the limit of the interaction in the game as the player does nothing else except climb up the mountain avoiding the enemies – other elements of the game change but this doesn’t effect the interaction. Ice Climbers does an OK job of giving the player a choice but ultimately there could be more in this regard, they could choose different characters to play as, different difficulty levels, etc.

The interaction cannot be completely criticised though as moving up the mountain is the key mechanic of the game and, as outlined in ‘MDA: A formal approach to game design and game research’ by Robin Hunicke, Marc Leblanc and Robert Zubek, mechanics lead to dynamics and aesthetics which, in their terms makes up a game. The authors state that designers work this way around but the player sees the game in the reverse order. Therefore, although moving up the mountain is the only main mechanic in the game, as it has so much attention on it the end look of the game will benefit too and draw the player in.

Onto Goals, Costikyan defines goals as something that gives choices purpose: he says ‘But what makes A better than B? Or is B better than A at some times but not at others? What factors go into the decision? What resources are to be managed? What’s the eventual goal?’ Goals links into interaction, it takes the players ability to choose to do something and put a purpose behind it.

Ice Climbers is a strange game really in regards to goals as, unless you are playing with a friend, there is only one clear goal in the game – get to the top of the mountain. The player’s choices in-game are so restricted due to the simplicity of how the game works that ultimately Costikyan’s definition of goals being choices with defined outcomes never comes into effect. If there were two set routes up the mountain with one being better than the other or a choice of character with different abilities then the player would have a choice with an outcome that would affect the gameplay. As there is not this, Ice Climbers is a game where the player ultimately does the same thing over and over with the only variable being determined by the game itself – there is no freedom.

Next comes ‘Struggle’ which is apparent even before we look at what Costikyan makes it to be – the challenge the player experiences. Costikyan specifically says ‘We want games to challenge us. We want to work at them. They aren’t any fun if they’re too simple, too easy, if we zip through them and get to the endscreen without being challenged.’ It can’t be clearer than that – games should be challenging to make them enjoyable, this however, should be within boundaries (not too hard).

Ice Climbers is a game with a strong sense of struggle and is, in my opinion, the main driving force behind the game. What Ice Climbers lacks in its goals and interaction it makes up for in the elements of the game that make it a struggle for the player. As like many games, it has enemies and these are the main components that the player must try to overcome to complete the game. Ice Climber incorporates them well into the struggle of the game, giving the enemies variety in what harm they can do, increasing the numbers that appear as you progress up the mountain and altering the stage layouts to make the enemies appear in more hazardous locations. These enemies are the only real components for struggle in the game but they help make the game what it is as a whole, a challenging race to the top of a mountain.

An article by Doug Church entitled ‘Formal Abstract Design Tools’ details his own 3 design tools that appear in games and help make them work; perceivable consequence, intention and story. Intention and perceivable consequence tie in very closely with struggle, perceivable consequence is where the player can see that their actions have an outcome and intention is the player planning ahead and thinking about their actions. This appears evidently in Ice Climbers through the player overcoming the game’s enemies. It is clearly shown that if the player touches an enemy, they will hurt them and the player will lose a life – the loss of lives is a part of struggle but also structure, the next part of this review.

The fourth part of a game as defined by Costikyan is Structure, which he says as ‘To think of a game’s structure as akin to an economy, or an ecosystem; a complex, interacting system that does not dictate outcomes but guides behaviour through the need to achieve a single goal’. What he means by this is that structure is not the story of a game but rather the rules and restrictions that guide the player to the goal. If a game has no structure the player is allowed to use any means to beat it which not only removes the challenge but also the fun and everything that goes into it from a development point of view.

In Ice Climbers the structure is defined by the levels themselves and the elements of the game such as lives and continues. There are clear stages within the game as each new layer of the mountain is clearly separated from the other through the use of numbers and colours – this gives structure to the way the game progresses. This works well as it gives the player a clear sense of whereabouts they are and how much they have progressed, it makes it easy to see and recognise their achievement which can be very crucial to some players to getting the full enjoyment from the game.

Lives are a crucial part of almost any game as it makes it so the player can’t try endlessly at a game – this would remove any element of challenge that could be easily created this way. In Ice Climbers this is a key mechanic in increasing difficulty and adding challenge to the game as other than the enemies that can hinder the player’s progress of the game. Basically, in Ice Climbers the components of structure contribute to making the game work and enthralling players in the challenge of the game.

Finally, Endogenous meaning in a game means that something in the game creates its own meaning – it has no relevance anywhere but in the game. Costikyan attributes this to possessions or currency in a game, achievements or anything else related – they don’t exist in the real world and therefore hold no meaning or value. This is therefore a part of making games fun and making them work, a game must have components that players want to reach or obtain however these will ultimately not exist.

This is true in Ice Climbers, getting to the top of the mountain is the key sense of achievement one can get from the game, but the player has nothing to show for their efforts in the real world and doesn’t gain anything from doing it. Another gameplay element that holds meaning in-game but no meaning otherwise is the in-game score, the player will try to get the highest possible score for their own satisfaction and sense of enjoyment. The fact the player wants to do this though proves that the game works and has enough components and rewards that serve them some form of meaning.

As a whole, using the works of Costikyan as a base, Ice Climbers has all the elements required to make up what he defines as ‘a game’ and does so in such a way that the player can challenge themselves to beat the game and do better each time. What it lacks in certain areas (interaction and goals) it makes up for in other areas, particularly as this is a retro game which are known for their simplicity, and the game is ultimately fun to play through as a result of this.

As a final note on which I will end this review on, the simplicity of retro games is why they work. Modern games have numerous gameplay mechanics and in-game achievements, so much so that the reason people play them is different. James Newman in his book ‘What makes a videogame?’ sub-divides games into 2 types ‘Paidea’ and ‘Ludus’, the first being games the people play for fun alone and the second where people play games for an outcome. Retro games such as Ice Climber work despite their simplistic nature because, due to their simplicity, they are mostly paidea – people play them for fun. The player want an outcome but more often then not they do so purely because they enjoy it and nothing makes retro games more appealing than this.
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So, 'til next time - that's all folks!