University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses

Liquidators: immersion through permanence

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Liquidators: immersion through permanence

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Content LIQUIDATORS:
IMMERSION THROUGH PERM ANENCE
By
Ahmad Mir Mohammad Sadeghi
A Thesis Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE USC SCHOOL OF CINEMATIC ARTS
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree
MASTER OF FINE ARTS
INTERACTIVE MEDIA & GAMES DIVISION
May 2020
Copyright 2020 Ahmad Mir Mohammad Sadeghi

ii

Dedicated to

All the Liquidators, First Responders, and Support Units of the Chernobyl Nuclear Disaster

Special Thanks to

Mohammad Alavi, Marianne Krawczyk, Kiki Benzon, Danny Bilson, and Richard Lemarchand

Project Not Possible Without
(in no order)
Kyle Tang (Sheng-Kai), Oliver Wu (Song nan), Adam Kunsberg, Aidan Takami, Sy Sou, Furkan
Kılıçaslan, Vanessa Rosuello, Adrian Lopez, Graham Southern, Ali Cedroni, Anika Nyman,
Sheehan Ahmed, Alan Karbachinsky, Shaghayegh Assar

iii

TABLE OF CONTENTS
Dedication------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ ii
Abstract-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- iii
Chapter 1: Save Scumming---------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1
Chapter 2: Immersion Through Permanence-------------------------------------------------------------- 2
Chapter 3: Failure Spectrum--------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 4
Conclusion----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 6
Works Cited--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 7

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Abstract

Three nuclear plant workers go on a daring mission to prevent a radioactive fallout that
would affect half of Europe. Every moment is permanent, and all is at stake.
Based on actual events, LIQUIDATORS is a survival horror video game about the three
nuclear plant workers that embark on a daring mission to prevent a nuclear fallout that would
affect half of Europe during the Chernobyl Nuclear Disaster. The player will take the roles of
Alexei Ananenko, Valeri Bezpalov, and Boris Baranov, in order to find the correct drainage
valves in a destroyed reactor that is extremely deadly and hazardous, to prevent one of the worst
disasters foreseen in history.
Permanent consequences in an unpredictable environment demands the full attention and
involvement of the participant in an interactive experience, creating an unparalleled level of
immersion in contrast to safe and forgiving systems that offer no punishment or permanence for
careless behavior. The experience goal was to highlight the mission’s stakes through tension,
dread, and immersion, created by a system of permanent consequences.
The reason that I am doing such story/subject is because from a cultural and religious
background, those who go on dangerous missions to save others achieve the highest status and
respect. Most of the liquidators have crippling complications from the incident and are not
acceptably compensated. My hope is to create more awareness with this experience, preferably
with a charity, aside from it being a piece of tribute and appreciation.

1

Chapter 1: Save Scumming

Mark Brown, the Author of Game Maker’s Toolkit, explains in his essay titled Playing
Past Your Mistakes that:
In the manual for Elder Scrolls 2: Dagger fall, Bethesda left a message
encouraging players to avoid the “replay the saved game” strategy. They said,
“most computer gamers use the save game to maximize their playing ability.
Anytime something goes wrong, they return to a saved game and replay it until
they get it right. The final history of their game looks like an endless streak of
lucky breaks and perfect choices. But role-playing is not about playing the perfect
game. It is about building a character and creating a story. In fact, you will never
see some of the most interesting aspects of the game unless you play through your
mistakes. If your character dies, by all means return to your last saved game and
replay it. However, if your character is caught pickpocketing, if a quest goes
wrong, or some other mundane mishap occurs, let it play out. You may be
surprised by what happens next.” This is a noble stand against “save scumming”,
which is the art of returning to an old save the second the player reaches a failure.
And so, it’s a lovely sentiment, but ultimately, there’s no point putting this sort of
thing in the manual. If you got an intention for how players should experience the
game, you’ve got to build it into the game itself. (0:01-1:50)

My intention for the players’ experience with Liquidators was to acquire their full
attention and commitment through a permanent but fair save system in order to maximize
immersion.

2

Chapter 2: Immersion Through Permanence

Throughout all my years with mainstream interactive media, also known as video games,
my favorite and most memorable moments were with games that had high stakes and
permanence. The reason is because it demanded my complete attentiveness in order to survive
and progress through the challenge. In comparison, a traditional game where you can safely reset
a checkpoint with no negative consequences allows for a repetitively careless and reckless
behavior that does not demand the player’s full dedication or attention.
Demon’s Souls is an action-adventure RPG game where the game autosaves the player’s
progress every three seconds. That means every action and decision is permanent for that
playthrough, and combined with the unpredictability of the enemies, bosses, and even NPCs, it
creates an experience that requires the player’s full dedication and attention in order to survive
and progress through its bleak and unforgiving world.
Another example would be in XCOM: Enemy Unknown, a turned based strategy game
where it includes a mode that autosaves the game every three seconds like Demon’s Souls. That
means any bad tactical decision can permanently kill an essential team member for the rest of the
playthrough. Such a system is also present in indie game Darkest Dungeon, where every moment
is autosaved permanently, as designer Tyler Sigman explains in his 2016 GDC talk:
Permanent consequences were what we were after. We want you to, at all
moments, be like, ‘should I go a little further and get a little more treasure?’. ‘Do
I think I can make to the end of his quest even though these two characters are
afflicted and this one is almost dead?’ And to do that we needed this terrible save
system that is just really mean. (32:00)

Such a risk-taking system particularly demands constant decision making and weighing
options. When playing these games, I vividly remember being fully invested and immersed in the

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experiences, losing complete awareness of my surroundings because my decisions and actions
mattered and were irreversible, requiring heavy analysis and precise calculations in order to
succeed.
There are some caveats to such system though. A negative effect caused by such system
of permanence is the player’s frustration to continue the playthrough, especially after a bad
decision removes a favorite character or prevents a preferred plan and playstyle. Fire Emblem is
another game that has a permanent death mechanic, and it’s one of the primary complaints
among my friends and is a hot topic in online forums. One side effect is that players will
constantly start from beginning after an unfortunate event or get so frustrated that they will stop
the game completely. As for another point, such a system makes for an increased overall
difficulty than the traditional video game. However, if it is crafted to be fair, it has been proven
to be extremely popular with the mainstream, as the Souls series have proven with smash hit
sales every year.
For my thesis project, my goal was to craft a system that allows for the immersion of
permanence, but fair enough to encourage the players with enough hope to continue playing and
turn things around.

4

Chapter 3: Failure Spectrum

As Mark Brown continues in his essay Playing Past Your Mistakes:
The Strategy is to make sure that setbacks are tolerable – and not so
critically damaging that you’re better off just returning to a previous save point.
One way to do this is to give the game a really wide “failure Spectrum”, a term
dreamt up by Tom Francis – creator of Gunpoint and Heat Signature – and it
describes the range of states between perfect success and total failure. (2:05-2:30)

In order to have a wide failure spectrum while constantly offering tense and immersive
gameplay, we have a save system that constantly saves every three seconds, but with a failure
system that allows for your character becomes unconscious instead of outright dying if you
accumulate enough radiation. As you take control of your second character out of a total of three,
you can go back to save your unconscious comrade. There is complete failure only if you don’t
save any of your characters and lose everyone recklessly. Our intention was to create a wide
failure spectrum that is still very much risky, keeping tensions high but also give enough hope
for the players to continue playing past their failures. This is in tune with our experience goal of
creating feeling of dread and tension given the high stakes of the subject matter. Of course, this
wide failure spectrum is complimented by our level design and hazard design. The player can
take multiple routes, but the early areas are more forgiving than the later more challenging areas
that need to be conquered. The challenges that the players will go through have multiple ways of
completion and they require precise movement rather than pure knowledge, and luck or RNG are
not part of the experience. For example, in one area, the player’s flashlight cannot handle the
high dosage of radiation and breaks as a result. The player must then navigate in the dark with
the help of sound instead of visuals. Such design discourages players from constantly restarting,
because there are no visual layouts to memorize so they can have a perfect run.

5

Conclusion

The primary purpose of designing such system for LIQUIDATORS was to achieve the
experience goals of high tension, dread, and immersion to emphasize the importance of the
mission. I personally believe that it is in fact the only system that can do the subject justice and
truly encapsulate an interactive experience of such subject. Other mediums such as books or film
or TV can’t capture the high tension or dread of the subject, because none of those mediums
require the audience’s active presence and decision making in a permanent walkthrough that is
based on the actual event. However, even within the interactive medium, certain designs have
superiority over others, especially when you consider the experience goals and subject in mind.

6

WORKS CITED
Brown, Mark. Playing Past Your Mistakes. Youtube.com, Game Maker's Toolkit, 11 Sept. 2018,
www.youtube.com/watch?v=Go0BQugwGgM&t=19s.
Sigman, Tyler. Darkest Dungeon: A Design Postmortem. GDC, 8 July 2017,
www.youtube.com/watch?v=0IUaGQhlPwo.

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Asset Metadata

Creator Mir Mohammad Sadeghi, Ahmad (author)

Core Title Liquidators: immersion through permanence

School School of Cinematic Arts

Degree Master of Fine Arts

Degree Program Interactive Media

Publication Date 05/04/2020

Defense Date 05/04/2020

Publisher University of Southern California (original), University of Southern California. Libraries (digital)

Tag Chernobyl Nuclear Disaster,horror,immersion,interactivity,liquidators,OAI-PMH Harvest,permanence,tension

Language English

Contributor Electronically uploaded by the author (provenance)

Advisor Alavi, Mohammad (committee member), Benzon, Kiki (committee member), Krawczyk, Marianne (committee member)

Creator Email ahmadmmsadeghi@gmail.com

Permanent Link (DOI) https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-c89-298407

Unique identifier UC11666079

Identifier etd-MirMohamma-8421.pdf (filename),usctheses-c89-298407 (legacy record id)

Legacy Identifier etd-MirMohamma-8421.pdf

Dmrecord 298407

Document Type Thesis

Rights Mir Mohammad Sadeghi, Ahmad

Type texts

Source University of Southern California (contributing entity), University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses (collection)

Access Conditions The author retains rights to his/her dissertation, thesis or other graduate work according to U.S. copyright law. Electronic access is being provided by the USC Libraries in agreement with the a...

Repository Name University of Southern California Digital Library

Repository Location USC Digital Library, University of Southern California, University Park Campus MC 2810, 3434 South Grand Avenue, 2nd Floor, Los Angeles, California 90089-2810, USA