Monday, April 21, 2014

The old eight-chapter structure

I was wondering, why do so many games that adopt a chapter structure have exactly eight chapters (barring prologues and epilogues)? It's rarely ever 6, 7, 9, 10 or any other number, most of the time it's eight. I'm not complaining, I just find it bizarre how something like this has become sort of conventional in games. Any ideas why?

10 comments:

  1. I noticed that too. I have a feeling it has something to do with the Final Fantasy formula that the JRPG genre is mostly derived from, as well as the world-based gameplay of the Super Mario Bros. games. Final Fantasy games LOVE their 4 Macguffins or Crystals approach, and it makes it convenient to have a number of chapters that is a multiple of four. For other genres of games, we can't deny the immense influence Mario has had on the game industry as a whole, and Mario games have been doing 8 worlds since the very beginning. I think, over many iterations, 8 has just become an industry-standard number, the safe option that everybody is comfortable with. It's low enough to be reasonable from a development perspective, and high enough that it's a meaningful amount of content to consumers in most cases.

    Was this sparked by Bravely Default, by any chance? It's the most recent game I can think of with the 8-chapter structure, even though they kind of botch it by making chapters 5-8 basically filler content. I'm currently in the middle of chapter 5 because I took a long break when I realized where the game was heading. Still a great game, but damn.

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    1. Not just Bravely Default, but also the Shadow of Destiny wrongpurae.

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  2. I think in terms of video games, it comes from Super Mario Bros. having 8 worlds...

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  3. Doesn't Half-Life have like 17 chapters?

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  4. It looks like the best theory is that Super Mario had 8 worlds, and other games followed the leader after they realized that 8 is a good, reasonable number of chunks to have in the story. I know that 8 is a very lucky number in Chinese culture, symbolizing wealth. Maybe Japanese audiences have a feeling that 8 is just a nice number also. According to Wikipedia, there is an old cultural significance of the number 8:

    "Eight (八 hachi, ya) is also considered a lucky number in Japanese culture, but the reason is different from that in Chinese culture. Eight gives an idea of growing prosperous, because the letter (八) broadens gradually. The Japanese thought eight (や ya) as a holy number in the ancient times. The reason is less well understood, but it is thought that it is related to the fact they used eight to express large numbers vaguely such as manyfold (やえはたえ Yae Hatae) (literally, eightfold and twentyfold), many clouds (やくも Yakumo) (literally, eight clouds), millions and millions of Gods (やおよろずのかみ Yaoyorozu no Kami) (literally, eight millions of Gods), etc. It is also guessed that the ancient Japanese gave importance to pairs, so some researchers guess twice as four (よ yo), which is also guessed to be a holy number in those times because it indicates the world (north, south, east, and west) might be considered a very holy number."

    So basically, eight seems to be cultural shorthand for a really big number. Eight is a conspicuous number in Buddhism as well. It could also be that the NES was an 8-bit console, so that number may have simply been associated with video games at the time.

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  5. It's because we need exactly 8 gym leaders and 8 EarthBound melodies. That's why.

    But what about that second mario bros. game that only had 7 worlds? Oh, the doki doki and zelda II stigma gave it a bad rep. If only it had an 8th world, it would automatically be a masterpiece.

    Anyway, the numbers 8 and 16 are common multipliers in programming. 16 is used as a base in hexadecimal, and 8 is half of that. It's also 1000 in binary. If you look at any game with editor tools with icnredulous scrutiny, you'll find the numbers 8 and 16 are disturbingly omnipresent. Tiles will commonly be in units of 16x16 pixels. Many random chance modifiers and formula mechanics will involve multiples of 8 as a staple (the 1/128 king's sword in EarthBound is one famous one. Guess what 128 divided by 16 equals.)

    Your mind will go crazy being bombarded with so many eights and when you're past the point of being driven to madness, you'll eventually realize this is the way the world is supposed to be. You'll be measuring your reps at the gym in multiples of 8 at the gym. Using multiples of 5 and 8 for currency will feel insane to you. We should be using $4, $8, and $16 dollar bills instead! The whole world should be coerced to abandon arabic numerals and conform to hexadecimal units! We'll all have RPGs to thank for pushing us one step further in human evolution.

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  6. All I know is that Mother 3 had 8 chapters and I consider that game to have the finest story out of all RPGs to date. It is pretty weird how the number 8 dominates video games though.

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    1. Whether chapter 6 is worth counting as a chapter is up to interpretation, really.

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    2. I suppose. Even though its only gameplay is to hold left, it still can evoke emotion from a lot of people that play it, regardless of its short length, and that makes it a chapter to me. I think one thing can be agreed on though, and that is that it's probably not anyone's favorite chapter from the game. Mine is 7, since that one features Mr. Saturn.

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    3. Chapter 7 is gigantic compared to the others, though. I think that makes up for Chapter 6.

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