The quest for a Wiki-less Game

Question

I often see that a community will make a wiki for games that have a large amount of elements, I am attempting to create an in-game application of a "wiki" keeping track of what has been found or done to remind you of something you may have forgotten without having a 'terraria problem' where you need it to do anything.

How can I encourage a wiki-less community that focuses on figuring things out themselves rather than having a wiki open at all points in time?

Understandably, this is a near-impossible task but I still want to try and figure out a way that makes it far more inefficient to look at a wiki than search for it in game. The reasoning for this is that the player experience is greatly hindered by searching up answers to problems found in a game.

Answer 1

There are great answers here already, so I want to add another perspective:

Players making a wiki for your game does not mean your game is unplayable without a wiki.

I think wikis also exist as an expression of love for a game. After all, there is a Dora the Explorer Wiki with ...*checks again*...4240 goddamn pages. I doubt these are needed to watch Dora, though.

Answer 2

Don't tell the player how to play your game

The reasoning for this is that the player experience is greatly hindered by searching up answers to problems found in a game.

Who are you to tell the player that their way of playing your game is wrong? It might be hindering for you, but maybe other players enjoy scanning a wikipage, making a wikipage, or excel documents.

Fun™ is inherently subjective and game developers often make the mistake of trying to force fun into their game while ending up taking it out of.

Give warnings and hints

That being said, warn players if they make irreversible decisions and possibly hint about the outcome.

When playing Witcher 2 I was a bit annoyed that sometimes quests would fail when I would complete another quest, because a certain character would leave. I ended up reading online how to do certain quests in order so I wouldn't miss anything. The best way is to design quest lines where this doesn't happen. Second best way is to give the user a fair warning that other (open) quests can't be done once this quest has been completed.

Have a pleasant UI

Make your UI nice for the eyes and intuitive to use. If it's cluttered and/or unintuitive (looking at you, europa universalis) players will get their information elsewhere.

Encourage, don't punish

Don't add arbitrary punishments like timers to levels that will make the player fail (xcom2). Instead, provide bonuses if a player finishes faster. Players tend to look up solutions when they get stuck (can't beat the level in 12 turns). Getting a bonus might be an incentive to keep trying, although arguably some will also look at a solution.

Answer 3

Fundamentally the problem you have is:

“Given the opportunity, players will optimize the fun out of a game.”

The original article that quote is taken from is worth reading: https://www.designer-notes.com/game-developer-column-17-water-finds-a-crack/

The core of the point is that you need to understand the motivation for why the player is using the wiki. Some players will never use the wiki - they want to figure everything out for themselves. Some will likely use the wiki regardless of what you do.

The interesting problem is the player who might go either way. In that case you need to understand what was the trigger for the average player to open the wiki?

Ask yourself is there some mechanic you can add that stops that trigger from occurring?

• Is it rewarding to discover stuff yourself - meaning is there a sense of achievement?
• Can you provide other rewards/bonuses while the player is trying to figure something out - so they don't feel like they are wasting their time / it would be quicker just to open the wiki?
• Can you provide multiple ways to figure out the thing that needs to be figured out?
• Does it make sense to randomly drop solutions to problems, if the player takes too long - to ensure that progress is made?
• Does it make sense to allow the player to ask for a hint in some way?

Answer 4

The more random you make everything in your game, the less it can be wikied (to coin a term).

Having said that, it will probably also make your game very difficult to develop, balance and maintain. At some level of your code, there is always going to be a framework or structure of some kind, even if that is meta-meta-meta-meta structure, structure can still be documented. And naturally, a completely structureless game is also not really a playable game.

Of course, if it's that abstract, I'm not sure how enjoyable it could be, since the broader the scope, the harder it is to balance, and the more levels of meta you have, the closer to an infinity of possibilities you're getting for gameplay. Good luck wrestling that particular hydra.

Also, procedural generation is its own entire sub-science of games programming that can take years to learn. But if it you're interested, by all means go for it. It's fascinating.

Answer 5

I believe the main reason someone will start looking online for answers is because the game doesn't give them those answers. If there's some in-game way to look up the exact damage formula, or where to go to advance a quest, or the drop tables of every enemy so they can find a certain item, then as long as said resource is correct and well-built, players will most likely default to using that resource instead of an external one.

You may notice that this directly contravenes the desire of wanting players to "figure it out themselves". But just because the game lists everything out, doesn't mean the player will automatically understand how they all work together, or what the optimal strategy is. And you don't necessarily have to reveal everything immediately, as long as the player's never thinking "I need to know X right now, where is it?". Besides, many casual players will naturally not look anything up (online or otherwise) until they feel stuck.

None of this is going to stop at least three wikis from appearing, of course. Advanced players will always want/need to know more than you ever thought necessary. Speedrunners will want to share tricks and glitches. Devoted fans will want to advertise and analyse the lore to bring in more new players. You could always try the direct route and make a wiki yourself, which would in theory allow you to control its content (and maybe have the game use it directly), but the moment you tell people "no" about documenting something, they're gone to make their own.

Fundamentally, this question is "how do I keep people here instead of going elsewhere?". And the answer to that is almost always: "do what they need better than anywhere else".

Answer 6

This is not a good solution.

You can be openly hostile to the player.

Nothing is stopping you. It's your game. You can obfuscate everything.

Randomise names; items, places, menu options, everything. Hide every detail. Tell them nothing. Encrypt game data at rest. Use abstract iconography that means nothing.

Make the mechanics as obtuse as possible. That item that make you deal double damage? Secretly it also disables your ability to crit. That enemy that always seems to bug the game and cause it to crash? That's intentional.

Tell the player nothing. Make them doubt everything. Hate them with every line of code you hammer into the system.

There's no answer.

Ultimately, everything can be wikified. Even the above hostile game can be wikified, it'll just take longer and be harder. Anything made of information can be catalogued.

Humans are naturally often quite contrarian too; if you make it harder, you can encourage them further. They'll want to beat you by wikifying your game.

Bonus Cruelty

Penalise the player for pressing ALT+TAB, defocusing the game window or pressing PrtScn. Make it harder for people to start the process.

Answer 7

I see a good example of this with the game Shattered Pixel Dungeon. It has many items with whose abilities change with different effects. You can easily see a description of these items, and how its effects alter usage, quickly and easily. This description also shows before you use each item. In playing, I have never needed to check the wiki because everything I need to know about an action is there before I do it.

As for a wikiless progression, SPD is completely linear so the manner of progression is discovered after the first level is completed. To apply that to a more open world game, you could have repeating patterns that the player can identify (unlike Terraria where progression happens from unconsistent, sometimes unrelated, actions).

In short, don't hide valuable information and have progressional patterns the player can lock on to.

Answer 8

Straight answer:

Create everything procedurally. Even items and enemies. Therefore, there will be nothing to catalogue.

However:

My gut feeling is that players creating a wiki is very often a good thing, rather than a necessary evil, as you seem to believe.

From your (dev's) POV:

Wikis encourage community building. You need a community. Secondly, a well-made and popular wiki is itself a great advertisement for your game and a way for inquiring players to see what your game is like before they buy it.

I don't have a hard proof, but I'd wager nuggets vs nuts that many Fandom wikis are actually written by the developing or publishing company employees, rather than players - highlighting how a well-made wiki is important for marketing purposes, as well as establishing what is canon and what is not.

From players' POV:

Most games can be played without wikis. However, it does not necessarily make sense to do so, depending on player's perspective. A game can easily be deep and complex enough to be prohibitive for a single player to 'complete' or 'solve'.

• You can explore all story paths, but that would require an exhaustive search of all dialogue options and whatnot. There are often exponentially many such paths. Thus, in practice, finding all details in the story is a community-sourced effort. This is already obvious in games as simple as short visual novels, not to mention enormous RPGs.
• Do you publish the game's mechanics? If you do, does your game actually conform to what is documented? In very many cases the answer to at least one of these questions is no. Some players like min-maxing, but to min-max you must know actual mechanics (like damage formulas etc), and that is often only possible with some reverse-engineering, which is a skill only few players possess. This is already obvious with games as simple as tower defense.
• Though wikis are notoriously bad for this, what if your game is successful enough to develop a meta? It has to be published and discussed somewhere.

From your (dev's) POV again:

All of the points above will typically only be considered and valued by your most dedicated fans. And you need dedicated fans. These will form the core of your community.

Answer 9

Personally I use a wiki to look up missing information. I would like tooltips that tell me everything.

I hate it when there are hidden unexplained mechanics. Mechanics that are not supposed to be found out. For example diminishing returns on crit or something. I can feel that something is not quite right/ rigged and then I will look it up.

Or simply damage calculations. Does this bonus work with that other one? Is this only applied to the base damage? When the tooltips says „more“ what the fuck does this mean? 1 percent? 50 percent?

The simplest way for me not to sie a wiki would be a combat log. I love combat logs. Another options is at least clear damage numbers. That’s the bare minimum for me.