Disclaimer: The games mentioned here aren't necessarily pioneers of a feature but meant to illustrate it's function.
Before all of the answers only revolve around automapping one should consider the original reason Matt made his post: The importance of maps for games.
I thought about this extensively before (not necessarily thinking I'm right about it ;-) and I assume that Matt mostly meant that maps are inherent in the design of many games - and especially: Game genres.
The player moving on a map - whether 2D (Ultima), pseudo-3D (Dungeon Master, Ultima Underworld) or fully 3D (recent RPGs) - and how this map (= his world) is structured is a more important aspect than the kind of mapping the game supplies the player with (automap, fixed picture or nothing at all).
I don't say that automaps are unimportant but for a designer/programmer they are mostly a matter of resources (at least before PCs became common) like Matt already pointed out and are often only an interpretation of the game's data structures.
Personally, I thought that the commercial death of the text adventure (because of 2D graphics) was equally logical like the growing success of automaps. Not only because players are getting lazier (automaps *are* comfy) but because a very large 2D-world needs some kind of simplification and a fully 3D-one needs abstraction.
One could even say that the ship radar in the game Elite (or Star Raiders!) is some kind of automap: It shows the player the next target to battle in the form of a blip. This is pretty much exactly what you use an automap in an RPG for - except that the goal is different: You either have or want to explore everything or find specific locations - and an automap helps you do it.
With this we are back at the game map itself:
Removing the "fog of war" (Sword of Fargoal) or "filling" the map (Temple of Apshai, Phantasie) is one of the reasons such games are liked by a lot of players. This activity gives the player the joy of accomplishment! Remember the game Q*Bert? What glorious feeling when all tiles where the same new color!
An inversion can be found in the countless Pac-Man variants: To remove everything, to "clean" a map. Pac-Man clones sometimes even come in pseudo-3D clothes: Crystal Castles for example.
Of course you don't need an automap if the whole map is on-screen at once, like Bill pointed out, giving the Phantasie series as an example.
But what if the game map is much larger than the screen?
A game world can consist of a single screen. But a game world seems to be infinitely larger if it consists of several screens - either by flipping between them or by scrolling under the player.
We can argue for hours what defines a (game) world but we'll surely agree that most (game) worlds are larger than what the subject (the player) can absorb at once.
It doesn't stop here: A world is only a part of what's called a "universe" - and we stay true to the literal sense: A universe includes everything. All worlds, all subjects, all information.
Games often use the term "universe" to suggest a scale of grandeur to the player - there have even been games on tiny 8-bit platforms trying to suggest it right with the title, like "Omnitrend's Universe" which I'm sure most readers here are aware of.
But what does a world or universe imply? The complete immersion of the player into a separate habitat where the rules and laws may be different to ones in the world he physically knows.
What are maps in such a context?
They are simply the foundation for both the designer and the player! The designer who wants to build a world needs to define a data structure that could be very simple (xy-matrix) or very complicated (linked list of fields) but which must be shown in a way that the player can understand where he is, what he sees and how he may travel or otherwise manipulate himself or objects on the map.
Of course there's practically no limit of how a world is built - except for the resources the target platform. Therefore we have another problem: What should be included into the game world (map)? Logically, we need a set of design goals.
Some of these goals have already been mentioned in Matt's post and the following ones above this one: "making sense" (exploring, understanding, filling a map) or atmosphere (showing stuff not necessarily needed to be manipulated).
I disagree with Chris regarding automaps as I see much value in them but he has a point about two things: The player doesn't necessarily need one (comfy feature...) and it may distract someone - like reading movie subtitles instead of trying to understand the actors.
I believe Ultima 3 was the first game in the series that offered a limited automap by letting the player "peer a gem" which showed a rough, but complete map of his surroundings. This consumed a map gem every time the player used it so it also had an economic spin - a good compromise? Try that today and the games magazines will punish you for it!
On the other hand we could examine a game like Ultima Underworld: It's automap was considered groundbreaking at the time as it not only looked good, fit the world (by using a pergament-like surface and appropriate drawings) but it also let players make annotations. It showed the outlined of landmarks but not the names of them.
I don't think many players thought that this automap was detracting them from the very engaging 3D world around them but instead helped to navigate it. Automaps became tools in this moment, sometimes indispensable ones.
However, a game like Ultima Underworld is limited to it's levels and the automap clearly showed the limits of the levels. This confined the player not only virtually but also mentally and while this fits the subterranean world (-> Ultima "Underworld") it isn't necessarily the best solution for a wider approach like an overworld game.
Consider the epic saga Baldur's Gate.
Starting with the very first entry these games used an interesting approach:
- The player (party) moves on a pre-rendered, detailed map that used fog of war to hide enemies and give the player a reason to explore it (as an aside: This kind of fog of war was the only kind being technically possible on a pre-rendered map).
These detailed maps had fixed dimensions, fit a specific part of the game world (a building, a town, part of a forest) and practically showed everything when uncovered. They were atmospheric but they were limited by scale and they were fixed: A chest could only be opened but not removed, for example.
- As the BG saga is pretty epic Bioware also included a map with a larger scale: The World Map. This map links to the (overworld) area maps but travel between them is independent and interruptible (by travel encounters like enemy ambushes).
This kind of map not only amplifies the feeling of epic proportions but also suggests to the player that there may be something "between" the area maps. Something that exists and may not be crucial in this game but perhaps in a later one in the same game universe, as Baldur's Gate of course used the Forgotten Realms scenario.
This is also an incredibly simple (and clever!) way to integrate map expansions - which is exactly what Bioware did with the "Tales of the Sword Coast" scenario.
Older games like the Ultima series featured the game world as a whole continent (complete with smaller islands) and each new Ultima had to reinvent the whole continent, getting more detailed and more complicated with each iteration.
While this resulted in more fun for the hardcore fans it also made the games increasingly inaccessible for more casual gamers that couldn't or didn't want to delve too deeply into these worlds.
While I personally still think that Ultima 7 is one of the best CRPGs of all time and will remain it for several reasons it is clear that it was way too detailed for the majority of gamers. Providing too much detail can result in questions like "What do I have to do with XYZ?" - something an experienced gamer will seldomly ask.
While crossing the fine line between RPG and simulation if often fell on the latter side - something that may result in work (in a simulation laws have to be accepted and obeyed by the player) instead of fun.
Richard Garriott, realizing this, limited the scope of the next Ultima in the series, "Ultima 8: Pagan", drastically, as most people here know. He also tried to make the game more accessible by catering to the video game crowd that translated fun with the correct timing of jumps.
Alas, the plan backfired as the traditional Ultima games had developed a specific kind of fans that were grounded in moving on maps at their own leisure and new gamers couldn't be won because the game was still too much of an RPG. A big patch was released later but it was too late: The game failed in both markets.
I think that Baldur's Gate was the necessary evolution of the Ultima principle which was overdoing the construction of the game world by tiles. BG used separate areas, manageable by the player and linked them via an easily accessible overworld map. While the game is still as epic as the common Ultima it is broken up in comprehensible chunks, with not too much detail. On the other hand it still leaves enough room for the player to conceive it's game world as being unrestrained. Baldur's Gate became an enormous success and helped revitalize the RPG-genre.
The next evolutionary step came in the guise of the game Morrowind which itself was a descendant of two earlier games by the same publisher.
Morrowind, an action-oriented RPG, used the first person perspective and simulated a full 3D world - complete with much unnessary, but atmospheric fluff like spoons, fruits and commodities.
While practically anything can be manipulated - like in the real world - the player didn't feel much need to collect stuff like kitchen equipment as it had little value.
More interesting was the way the designers integrated the map and the map travelling:
- The player could literally roam the entire island (as large as a small continent) by foot
- or he could use so-called land striders to travel between fixed outposts instantly (only increasing game time)
While this wasn't exactly an innovation it paved the way for the next title in the series: Oblivion, which made travelling even more comfortable. The game provided the player with a complete map of the island that gradually exposed landmarks like caves, cottages etc. and each landmark could be comfortably travelled to, without any risk.
This proved too comfy for some players who started to play the game without this easy-travel feature - as it occured to them that this wasn't realistic enough. It was like driving a car by switching on a GPS navigator, choosing the destination and -presto!- you arrive without even kicking the gas pedal.
This mechanism surely made following the main plot line very easy if a player already visited the area before: He could literally click himself from scene to scene, from climax to climax. I, for example, finished the main plot within two hours after exploring nearly the whole rest of the game and gaining a high enough level first.
It will be seen how comfy map travel will get in the future but I'm certain that Oblivion wasn't the last statement.
Disclaimer: The games mentioned here aren't necessarily pioneers of a feature but meant to illustrate it's function.
Before all of the answers only revolve around automapping one should consider the original reason Matt made his post: The importance of maps for games.
I thought about this extensively before (not necessarily thinking I'm right about it ;-) and I assume that Matt mostly meant that maps are inherent in the design of many games - and especially: Game genres.
The player moving on a map - whether 2D (Ultima), pseudo-3D (Dungeon Master, Ultima Underworld) or fully 3D (recent RPGs) - and how this map (= his world) is structured is a more important aspect than the kind of mapping the game supplies the player with (automap, fixed picture or nothing at all).
I don't say that automaps are unimportant but for a designer/programmer they are mostly a matter of resources (at least before PCs became common) like Matt already pointed out and are often only an interpretation of the game's data structures.
Personally, I thought that the commercial death of the text adventure (because of 2D graphics) was equally logical like the growing success of automaps. Not only because players are getting lazier (automaps *are* comfy) but because a very large 2D-world needs some kind of simplification and a fully 3D-one needs abstraction.
One could even say that the ship radar in the game Elite (or Star Raiders!) is some kind of automap: It shows the player the next target to battle in the form of a blip. This is pretty much exactly what you use an automap in an RPG for - except that the goal is different: You either have or want to explore everything or find specific locations - and an automap helps you do it.
With this we are back at the game map itself:
Removing the "fog of war" (Sword of Fargoal) or "filling" the map (Temple of Apshai, Phantasie) is one of the reasons such games are liked by a lot of players. This activity gives the player the joy of accomplishment! Remember the game Q*Bert? What glorious feeling when all tiles where the same new color!
An inversion can be found in the countless Pac-Man variants: To remove everything, to "clean" a map. Pac-Man clones sometimes even come in pseudo-3D clothes: Crystal Castles for example.
Of course you don't need an automap if the whole map is on-screen at once, like Bill pointed out, giving the Phantasie series as an example.
But what if the game map is much larger than the screen?
A game world can consist of a single screen. But a game world seems to be infinitely larger if it consists of several screens - either by flipping between them or by scrolling under the player.
We can argue for hours what defines a (game) world but we'll surely agree that most (game) worlds are larger than what the subject (the player) can absorb at once.
It doesn't stop here: A world is only a part of what's called a "universe" - and we stay true to the literal sense: A universe includes everything. All worlds, all subjects, all information.
Games often use the term "universe" to suggest a scale of grandeur to the player - there have even been games on tiny 8-bit platforms trying to suggest it right with the title, like "Omnitrend's Universe" which I'm sure most readers here are aware of.
But what does a world or universe imply? The complete immersion of the player into a separate habitat where the rules and laws may be different to ones in the world he physically knows.
What are maps in such a context?
They are simply the foundation for both the designer and the player! The designer who wants to build a world needs to define a data structure that could be very simple (xy-matrix) or very complicated (linked list of fields) but which must be shown in a way that the player can understand where he is, what he sees and how he may travel or otherwise manipulate himself or objects on the map.
Of course there's practically no limit of how a world is built - except for the resources the target platform. Therefore we have another problem: What should be included into the game world (map)? Logically, we need a set of design goals.
Some of these goals have already been mentioned in Matt's post and the following ones above this one: "making sense" (exploring, understanding, filling a map) or atmosphere (showing stuff not necessarily needed to be manipulated).
I disagree with Chris regarding automaps as I see much value in them but he has a point about two things: The player doesn't necessarily need one (comfy feature...) and it may distract someone - like reading movie subtitles instead of trying to understand the actors.
I believe Ultima 3 was the first game in the series that offered a limited automap by letting the player "peer a gem" which showed a rough, but complete map of his surroundings. This consumed a map gem every time the player used it so it also had an economic spin - a good compromise? Try that today and the games magazines will punish you for it!
On the other hand we could examine a game like Ultima Underworld: It's automap was considered groundbreaking at the time as it not only looked good, fit the world (by using a pergament-like surface and appropriate drawings) but it also let players make annotations. It showed the outlined of landmarks but not the names of them.
I don't think many players thought that this automap was detracting them from the very engaging 3D world around them but instead helped to navigate it. Automaps became tools in this moment, sometimes indispensable ones.
However, a game like Ultima Underworld is limited to it's levels and the automap clearly showed the limits of the levels. This confined the player not only virtually but also mentally and while this fits the subterranean world (-> Ultima "Underworld") it isn't necessarily the best solution for a wider approach like an overworld game.
Consider the epic saga Baldur's Gate.
Starting with the very first entry these games used an interesting approach:
- The player (party) moves on a pre-rendered, detailed map that used fog of war to hide enemies and give the player a reason to explore it (as an aside: This kind of fog of war was the only kind being technically possible on a pre-rendered map).
These detailed maps had fixed dimensions, fit a specific part of the game world (a building, a town, part of a forest) and practically showed everything when uncovered. They were atmospheric but they were limited by scale and they were fixed: A chest could only be opened but not removed, for example.
- As the BG saga is pretty epic Bioware also included a map with a larger scale: The World Map. This map links to the (overworld) area maps but travel between them is independent and interruptible (by travel encounters like enemy ambushes).
This kind of map not only amplifies the feeling of epic proportions but also suggests to the player that there may be something "between" the area maps. Something that exists and may not be crucial in this game but perhaps in a later one in the same game universe, as Baldur's Gate of course used the Forgotten Realms scenario.
This is also an incredibly simple (and clever!) way to integrate map expansions - which is exactly what Bioware did with the "Tales of the Sword Coast" scenario.
Older games like the Ultima series featured the game world as a whole continent (complete with smaller islands) and each new Ultima had to reinvent the whole continent, getting more detailed and more complicated with each iteration.
While this resulted in more fun for the hardcore fans it also made the games increasingly inaccessible for more casual gamers that couldn't or didn't want to delve too deeply into these worlds.
While I personally still think that Ultima 7 is one of the best CRPGs of all time and will remain it for several reasons it is clear that it was way too detailed for the majority of gamers. Providing too much detail can result in questions like "What do I have to do with XYZ?" - something an experienced gamer will seldomly ask.
While crossing the fine line between RPG and simulation if often fell on the latter side - something that may result in work (in a simulation laws have to be accepted and obeyed by the player) instead of fun.
Richard Garriott, realizing this, limited the scope of the next Ultima in the series, "Ultima 8: Pagan", drastically, as most people here know. He also tried to make the game more accessible by catering to the video game crowd that translated fun with the correct timing of jumps.
Alas, the plan backfired as the traditional Ultima games had developed a specific kind of fans that were grounded in moving on maps at their own leisure and new gamers couldn't be won because the game was still too much of an RPG. A big patch was released later but it was too late: The game failed in both markets.
I think that Baldur's Gate was the necessary evolution of the Ultima principle which was overdoing the construction of the game world by tiles. BG used separate areas, manageable by the player and linked them via an easily accessible overworld map. While the game is still as epic as the common Ultima it is broken up in comprehensible chunks, with not too much detail. On the other hand it still leaves enough room for the player to conceive it's game world as being unrestrained. Baldur's Gate became an enormous success and helped revitalize the RPG-genre.
The next evolutionary step came in the guise of the game Morrowind which itself was a descendant of two earlier games by the same publisher.
Morrowind, an action-oriented RPG, used the first person perspective and simulated a full 3D world - complete with much unnessary, but atmospheric fluff like spoons, fruits and commodities.
While practically anything can be manipulated - like in the real world - the player didn't feel much need to collect stuff like kitchen equipment as it had little value.
More interesting was the way the designers integrated the map and the map travelling:
- The player could literally roam the entire island (as large as a small continent) by foot
- or he could use so-called land striders to travel between fixed outposts instantly (only increasing game time)
While this wasn't exactly an innovation it paved the way for the next title in the series: Oblivion, which made travelling even more comfortable. The game provided the player with a complete map of the island that gradually exposed landmarks like caves, cottages etc. and each landmark could be comfortably travelled to, without any risk.
This proved too comfy for some players who started to play the game without this easy-travel feature - as it occured to them that this wasn't realistic enough. It was like driving a car by switching on a GPS navigator, choosing the destination and -presto!- you arrive without even kicking the gas pedal.
This mechanism surely made following the main plot line very easy if a player already visited the area before: He could literally click himself from scene to scene, from climax to climax. I, for example, finished the main plot within two hours after exploring nearly the whole rest of the game and gaining a high enough level first.
It will be seen how comfy map travel will get in the future but I'm certain that Oblivion wasn't the last statement.
take care,
Calibrator
take care,
Calibrator