Lunchtime Discussion: Athletics

Yesterday I did something rather odd, I took part in the annual Seaboot Race in Hastings. As I don’t expect any of you to actually understand what that is I’ll explain. Basically you put on a pair of seaboots (essentially waders) and a funny hat, sprint 30 metres down to a lobster pot, turn around and sprint back up as quick as you can.

Sounds pretty simple but the seaboots make for some pretty hard running. Personally I did it in 12.39 seconds, which I don’t feel was all that bad for my first attempt. If you’re ever around Hastings in the first week in August you should come have a try.

What does this silly race have to do with anything? Well as I watched the other runners make their attempts I was trying to think about a topic to discuss today and then the idea of athletics struck me. In most games we think nothing of running, it’s a simple movement mechanic that doesn’t normally go beyond ‘push forwards to go faster’. At most you might asked to hold down a button to run faster. However how do things work when running is the game?

The classic move is to alternate hammering two buttons, one for each leg. Is that really that fun? I never find hammering on buttons to be entertaining as a mechanic, there’s no skill involved at all. It’s like claiming there’s some skill involved in mashing buttons in a fighter.

Sadly I’m not sure there’s a significantly better way to manage running, although perhaps swinging your thumbsticks back and forth with the right timing would require more skill than just hammering buttons. Maybe a title has already adopted this mechanic, I haven’t played every track and field title on the market.

Running isn’t the only example in athletics games, but it does seem to be a trend that something we’d consider a fairly low level mechanic in a normal game becomes the whole experience in these titles. Of course that’s because most events at an athletics meet are essentially one task taken to the extreme. Without this conversion of mechanic to game we’d be missing out on a whole sub-genre, but are the games really the best they can be.

Everyone can appreciate running, jumping or throwing something, so it seems odd these titles are often overlooked. Maybe it’s because we can so easily have the experiences portrayed in game that they do poorly. What’s your take on all of this? Are the games genuinely poor? Do we just not care?