Interactive experiences at the Walt Disney World theme parks are nothing new.
Whether it’s the multiple choice ending of Horizons or the many exhibits of Communicore
and Innoventions, it’s an element that has been part of the parks for decades.
Over the years as technology and the video game industry continued to advance, so to
did their presence in the parks.
Today the parks offer everything from mobile games to help pass the time on lines to interactive
quests around the parks to rides themselves that are digital games.
No matter where you look, interactivity is growing at Disney.
You can’t lose.
Literally though, you cannot lose, and maybe that should change.
Now I don’t intend to argue that the interactive or game elements at the parks should go anywhere.
I actually think they’re really great.
Since the first days of Disneyland in 1955, the purpose of these parks has been to immerse
guests in other worlds and stories, and if the explosion of the video game industry over
these last few decades has taught us anything, it’s that having an active and impactful
role in the narrative you’re experiencing makes it so much more immersive and visceral.
However if there was a word I would use to describe Disney’s approach to that interactivity,
it would be timid.
Because you see what most of these experiences are missing, which is still very common in
the world of video games, is a fail state.
A way to lose.
A set of conditions that draws the line between success and failure.
While not every experience calls for a fail state, the lack of one can mean the difference
between a narrative carrying a sense of weight or feeling like a shallow distraction.
Take Mission SPACE for example.
The attraction puts you in the role as one of four astronaut trainees who are about to
attempt a simulated space mission.
Each rider is seated in front of two key buttons that are meant to trigger specific ship actions
during the mission.
If the rider matches their cue and hits the button, that action is triggered and the mission continues.
If the rider misses the cue and doesn’t hit the button however… well, the computer
takes over and triggers it for you, continuing the mission in the exact same way it otherwise
would have if they did hit the button.
The interactivity in this ride is entirely superficial.
It carries zero weight in the outcome of the mission.
Now in defense of Mission SPACE, it’s over 15 years old and the technology likely wasn’t
polished enough to allow for the kind of branching narrative that would have added depth to the ride.
The upcoming Millennium Falcon: Smugglers Run at Galaxy’s Edge promises to offer that
level of depth by altering not only the ride experience based on your performance, but
also the exit area of the ship.
If that attraction lives up to the promise, it’ll go a long way in proving that Disney
is dedicated to adding weight to interactivity.
And in fairness, neither experience is pitched as a game.
They’re not sold to us as something to win or lose.
They’re more similar to a Telltale game or Quantic Dream game, where the narrative
experience is most important, and the idea of “winning” and “losing” are set aside.
Then there are attractions like Buzz Lightyear’s Space Ranger Spin and Toy Story Midway Mania.
Those are competitive games so in a sense they do have a fail-state, it’s just dependent
on how well or poorly the other players do.
If you get less points than the player next to you then you’ve lost.
However even this is something that Disney tries to mitigate by setting up a rank system.
So even if you lose to an opponent you still achieved the rank your score falls under.
Beyond that there are other experiences that aren’t attractions that are sold as game-like
and that’s where I’d love to see Disney step it up.
Agent P’s World Showcase Adventure, Sorcerers of the Magic Kingdom, and A Pirate’s Adventure:
Treasures of the Seven Seas are all described in one way or another like a game.
Agent P challenges you to “test your skills” by solving puzzles using clues.
A Pirates Adventure describes it’s experience as missions that need to be completed.
and Sorcerers is by far the most game like, giving you actual cards to use as spells against
combatants, all in a larger plot to foil the main boss, Hades.
These are setups that are perfectly primed to be more traditional games.
Yet unlike a traditional game, it’s impossible to actually lose in any of them.
So here’s what I’d like to see Disney do: I would love for them to expand on these
three specific experiences in order to introduce the idea of losing, even if that loss is represented
by a dead end.
Take a concept like Agent P, which is a fantastic basis for an interactive game, and introduce
real puzzles into it.
Don’t spoon-feed the guests the answers.
Give them the clues they need and let them work out the solutions on their own.
As it exists now the game mostly consists of triggering real life events at the location
you’re in and asking you to simply input the number or word they give you.
Similarly, the practical effects of A Pirate’s Adventure are brilliant and absolutely wasted
on the shallow interaction of just going from point to point and starting the scene.
The “mission” consists purely of waiting to see a logo pop up at the end of every scene
and then going to the next location that dons that logo.
Imagine how much more satisfying completing those treasure hunts would be if every location
instead gave you a riddle, with the elements of the scene offering the clues that need
to be pieced together to figure out the next location.
Now Sorcerers of the Magic Kingdom is without a doubt the most complex of the three.
While the easy mode is mind numbingly easy, the medium and hard modes offer more depth
to the gameplay that forces the player to think and strategize.
However even then, the biggest risk a player faces is losing a one-off combat encounter
and being forced to try it again at another portal until they win.
I’d love to see Disney introduce one more mode: Hardcore Mode.
A mode in which losing a set number of combat encounters would trigger a loss that either
forces you to start that particular villain’s quest over, or maybe even the entire game.
Imagine how much more intense a battle would become with that loss looming over you.
More importantly, imagine how much more satisfying the win would become when you beat it.
And really, that’s the crux of why I’d want to see these changes.
It’s not to simply make life harder for guests.
It’s because greater challenges offer greater satisfaction when they’re overcome.
It’s why people play really difficult video games.
It’s why people sign up for races or get into sports.
We feel good when we overcome a challenge, but to do that we need an actual challenge.
Now there’s an argument I suspect might come up when it comes to these proposed changes,
and it’s that they’re unrealistic when you consider that so many guests at the Disney
Parks are children.
Would such challenges and risk of losing be fair when the experiences are geared towards kids?
Well, yeah, it would.
Video games are more ubiquitous today than they’ve ever been before, and that includes
the entire generations of children who partake in them.
Those kids are no stranger to the idea of games and the idea of losing in games.
Kids are smart, and they often jump right into games because they are more than capable
of overcoming the challenges they present.
And personally I think it’s just as important to have those experiences growing up of being
challenged and potentially losing at a goal just as much as it is to experience overcoming
that challenge and winning.
Walt Disney once said that he didn’t believe in playing down to children, and that they
should have to reach to learn about and understand things just as adults to.
And while that quote comes from a time that predates video games and the era of interactivity
in his parks, I believe it’s just a relevant today.
Anybody who has played video games over the last half century can probably recall a time
that they were especially challenged.
A super difficult boss battle.
A puzzle that really stumped them.
That seemingly unreachable platform.
Likewise, they can probably recall that elation that came with beating that boss, solving
that puzzle, or finally reaching that platform.
It’s an amazing feeling, and one that I hope we see more of at the Disney parks.