More Natural Clues

In the first level of Deus Ex, the player is tasked with breaking into the statue of liberty (which has been taken over by terrorists). One of the many ways to do this is via the security computer at the front entrance. If the player cannot hack the computer, they still have the chance to discover its login information elsewhere in the level. In order to avoid having the player tediously comb through the level in order to find the information, the developers included it several times throughout the level. This is good, because it makes it unlikely that the player will miss the login information provided they go look for it.

However, this introduces some awkwardness if the player realizes how many chances they had to find the login information. This is by no means a serious problem with the level, but it doesn't make it feel any less weird to find what is essentially a duplicate of a clue you """discovered""" 5 minutes earlier. There are some sneaky ways for developers to avoid this: you can remove the other clues from existence the moment the player finds one of them, but I am interested in some ways of designing this sort of clue-finding gameplay without any trickery.

The Insight

I am going to tell you a story. I became aware of the fixed gear scene in Toronto through researching the alleycat races that take place in the city. Recently, a shop has opened in Kensington Market which caters to this community by selling parts/services, but also by hosting group rides and other events. The other day, I was at The Jumps and saw someone had placed a sticker from this bike shop onto one of the signs.

Had I not already known of the shop, I would have no doubt researched the name and discovered the associated activities. This real-life example exemplifies how I think clues in games should look. Rather than duplicating the same information all over the place, the information the player is looking for can exist in one or a few places supplemented by more numerous "satellite" clues which nudge the player in the right direction.

The advantages of this approach are partly evidenced by my anecdote: doing clues this way gets rid of the awkward feeling that information is artificially placed so as to be unmissable. This might also make following clues more engaging to the player, if they are following a trail rather than wandering until they find the One True Clue.

The only disadvantage is probably that it's harder to make clues like this than it is to duplicate one piece of information around your game.