Retro Game Review - Qix

I have chosen the game ‘Qix’ by Taito released in 1981 for my retro game review assignment. The objective of Qix is to fence off, or “claim”, a set percentage of the playfield by drawing a series of lines with a player-controlled marker to ‘box-off’ parts of the screen. The player has choice over drawing speed (slow and fast for differing amounts of points) and has to avoid numerous enemies while doing so.

 

Many retro games were designed in a completely different way to how many computer games are created now. Retro games were often based from original ideas or non-digital games, whereas many new games are simply evolutionary developments of pre-existing ideas or concepts which have been proven to work. Retro games are often seen as a sort of ‘bare backbone’ of digital games – Often comprised of only a small selection of core concepts and mechanics. Compared to more complicated modern games, this often makes retro games much easier to analyse and review to see what works about the games and perhaps why.

There are many ways to analyse games; Greg Costikyan for instance splits games into four different sections - Interaction, Goals, Struggle and Structure.

Costikyan defines Interaction as how, and how much the games ‘change with the player’s actions’ (Costikyan, 2002: 10) or even how ‘the game state changes in response to your decisions’ (Costikyan, 2002: 11).  In Qix, there is a large amount of interaction with the game – the player interacts with the game on a second by second basis.  So many possibilities will be going through the players’ mind: “Where should I claim next?”, “Can I make it?”, “Shall I go fast or slow?”, “Should I stop and wait for the enemy to move, but chance getting killed by another”.

But why would the player need to make those considerations? Why would you need to claim that place, why would you need to avoid doing that? Costikyan writes that ‘Interaction has no game value in itself. Interaction must have a purpose’ (Costikyan, 2002: 11).

Goals provide that purpose. In Qix, The player has many goals including staying alive, claiming 75% of the screen and getting the highest score that they can. This will change Interaction into decision making; ‘Interaction with a purpose’ (Costikyan, 2002: 11).

The more often decisions are made by a player; the more involved they will be in the game.

Completing Goals via interaction in Qix does not in itself make the game compelling; Costikyan writes that there is no thrill in victory if there is no struggle to get there. For this reason Qix uses a variety of game mechanics to ensure it is not easy to get to those goals. Qix includes 3 types of enemy, each with its own task in hindering the player. The “Qix” itself, whizzing around the game screen, makes it increasingly hard for the player to claim large parts of the screen at any one time. Varying numbers of “Sparx” additionally whizz around the screen edges where the player could otherwise sit in peace when not drawing lines – This stops the player from being able to sit in one place for very long at all. Finally the “Fuse” will appear and start gaining on the player if they stop while drawing a line (possibly trying to avoid other enemies by stopping).

Costikyan’s final section is structure. He defines game structure as ‘The means by which a game shapes player behaviour’ (Costikyan, 2002: 20), this may involve pushing the story along or any other type of progression toward the ultimate goal of the game. Costikyan believes ‘A game’s structure creates its own meanings.’ And he refers to this as ‘Endogenous meaning’ (Costikyan, 2002: 22). Qix does not really have any kind of storyline or definite progression in the game world and subsequently provides very little endogenous meaning. If you win, you get given the same blank screen with extra enemies to make it harder to complete the same goal. It doesn’t have fairies, characters or scenes to provide a story or situation to the player; it’s simply a few coloured abstract shapes which could represent anything. Yes, retro games are very basic, but even a retro game such as asteroids (which is also a series of abstract shapes) visually shows objects which represent something. The player can then relate to them and can subsequently create their own story and meaning based on what they see: “Asteriods is about a spaceship defending itself against asteroids within space”, and not “That diamond is attacking that hexagon for no apparent reason”.

The lack of structure and endogenous meaning in the game does not make Qix an awful game, but it does make the game very hard to relate to. The lack of progression also makes the game very repetitive; it’s like playing the same level over and over again, just a bit harder each time.

Zagal describes this type of progression as ‘Challenge segmentation’. It involves ‘self-contained challenges to be negotiated by the player, with successive challenges implying greater difficulty’ (Zagal, 2008: 178). Qix also includes a form of ‘Temporal Segmentation’ because each successive challenge has a time limit in which the game starts to get insanely difficult, which in turn acts as a sort of ‘cut-off’ time for the challenge.

Zagal explains three types of ‘Challenge segmentation’; Wave, puzzle and boss which are generally found in classic arcade games, and yet Qix does not fit into any of these categories. Zagal describes the first, ‘wave challenge segmentation’; as ‘a kind of challenge segmentation generally observed in games that requires quick reflexes and good hand–eye coordination’ (Zagal, 2008: 187), which initially seems to fit Qix very well. However, he then continues to say ‘A wave is a group of usually similar enemy entities that must be avoided or destroyed as they approach the player’ (Zagal, 2008: 187), which Qix does not include at all. Zagal also describes Puzzle and Boss segmented challenges, which again is completely irrelevant in Qix.

The Enemies in the game act as a way to keep the game moving at an incredibly fast pace. Venturelli mentions four concepts about pacing: ‘Movement Impetus, Tension, Threat and Tempo’ (Venturelli, 2009: 2).

Venturelli describes tension as being ‘the perceived danger that a player might become the weakest side’, and threat as the ‘actual power of the opposing forces’ (Venturelli, 2009: 2). He also describes ‘Movement Impetus’ as ‘the will or desire of a player to move forward through a level’ and ‘tempo’ as ‘the time between each significant decision made by the player’ (Venturelli, 2009: 3). These four concepts play very important roles within Qix; much more than the segmentation.

Within Qix the tension and threat work together – the tension and threat in the game are created by the enemies travelling around the screen – threatening to reduce your lives, and effectively corner you and/or kill you. Whether it is possible or not, it seems that in Qix the tension is too great: ‘the perceived danger that a player might become the weakest side’ (Venturelli, 2009: 2) is always huge because the player is always the weaker side in the conflict. In Qix the player never has any means of beating or becoming more powerful than the enemies (like they might do in games such as Pac-man), which will quickly become disheartening for the player as they are effectively fighting a losing battle.

The ‘tempo’ in Qix, in the terms of Venturelli, would be described as very low. ‘Lower tempo represents more frantic decision-making by the player’ (Venturelli, 2009: 3) and therefore offers an ‘intense’ form of play.

The ‘Movement Impetus’ in Qix is always the players’ will to complete the level and to move to the next. Venturelli mentions two techniques; ‘Adding and replacing’ (Venturelli, 2009: 5) When adding, additional mechanics are progressively added to the game (this may include new abilities or other such unlocks) whereas he describes replacing as the act replacing some non-core game mechanics with others. These two methods obviously give two different effects; the first usually increases the difficulty, whereas the second would push players toward many different ways of playing. Qix does not have either of these methods and instead is generally difficult to play from the beginning; it doesn’t have player upgrades or introduction of new enemies – the game simply throws all of the available mechanics your way when the game starts.

In addition to this; the enemies in Qix are very unpredictable. Brathwaite and Schreiber cover many reasons why chance is implemented into games but I believe the main reason why it has been used in Qix is to ‘prevent solvability’. Brathwaite and Schreiber state that adding a random element to a game often removes the ability to solve the game because ‘making the same exact decisions may lead to different outcomes’ (Schrieber,2009: 70). If the enemies were not sufficiently unpredictable, the player would be able to find a pattern within the game. This is often a very bad thing because, as Venturelli notes, ‘when there are no more surprises, there is no more fun. If all the patterns have been figured out, the game becomes uninteresting.’ (Venturelli, 2009:3).

However, Costikyan also notes that ‘If the game is too hard, players will find it frustrating’. Unfortunately, (although everyone will find it different) I found this was the case with Qix; the large number of enemy types and unpredictability of each one means that the game is seemingly too difficult to beat, and subsequently easy to lose interest in. Yes, the game does need some form of chance within the game to prevent solvability, but it seems Qix has either too much randomness, or too many entities which include it. The Qix enemy itself is incredibly unpredictable – It is fast, it changes speed, size, direction and paths within milliseconds – this, combined with the other random enemies on screen, seems to create too much randomness and very little skill within the game.

In conclusion, Qix is home to many original and unique mechanics and ideas. The designers of Qix have managed to create a game which induces a large amount of interaction by the player which allows them to make many purposeful decisions with the help of many goals. The designers of Qix have implemented ways to hinder the players from reaching these goals and creating struggle while doing so. The sources of struggle within the game have also been very cleverly used to move the game forward using tension and threat, and achieves this very successfully. Additionally Qix uses various forms of randomness and chance to prevent solvability and subsequently increasing replay value. Unfortunately Qix also has many negative points; Qix has very little (if any) structure within the game and subsequently creates no endogenous meaning. Without endogenous meaning the game has no relation to the player, very little meaningful progression and becomes very repetitive very quickly. Because of this, the player will be moved forward through the game with successful use of tension and threat, but there will be nothing different for the player to experience when this happens, rendering that movement they made to be almost useless. Despite the designers of Qix correctly choosing to use chance to reduce solvability, they have consequently also created a wall of randomness which almost removes the ability for players to make purposeful decisions due to the unpredictability of all possible outcomes.

In my opinion, Qix has an astonishing amount of potential as a successful game – It has many mechanics and components which already show promise of a great game. After all, Qix seems to be based from one of the most popular toys of its time – The Etch-A-Sketch. Unfortunately it seems that quite of the few mechanics of Qix contradict with each other or are too overpowering within the game. I believe a few added mechanics and overall tweaks could make Qix into a very fun and interesting game.

Bibliography

Costikyan, G. 2002. I Have No Words & I Must Design: Toward a Critical Vocabulary for Games. Proceedings of Computer Games and Digital Cultures Conference. pp. 9 – 33.

Schrieber, I.; Brathwaite, B; 2009. Challenges for Game Designers.  Charles River Media: Boston.

Zagal, J. Fernández – Vara, C. Mateas, M. 2008. Rounds, Levels, and Waves: The Early Evolution of 

Gameplay Segmentation. Games and Culture. Volume 3 Number 2

Venturelli, M. 2009. Space of Possibility and Pacing in Casual Game Design: A PopCap Case Study. VIII Brazilian Symposium on Games and Digital Entertainment.

P.s. excuse me if the formatting is shocking - i copied and pasted from a word document.