Quicksay: Deep Input (Patreon)

Masahiro Sakurai put out a video recently titled Broad Input, Broad Output. In it, he says that in order to improve his own work, he exposes himself to as many games as he can. According to him, this type of broad input is especially important for directors which should come as welcome news to me since I’ve been devouring as many different types of games as I can for a long time. Unfortunately, I can’t help but feel some skepticism. Before I continue, let me caveat this by saying if I can eventually achieve even a fraction of what Sakurai has achieved, I’d be a lucky (and diligent) man. I’m also not dismissing the value of broad input entirely since I’ve extolled its virtues myself and even said that experience with other mediums is essential too. It doesn’t get much broader than that.

Nevertheless, when I think about my own influences, the broad input isn’t the most important, rather the deep input is what sticks. The more nuances you learn, the more details you notice, the more skills you master for any particular game, the deeper your input. When I reach for examples in my mind, usually I reach for the deep input examples first and when I think about my hopes for the medium or what I want to achieve personally, I’m usually thinking about my deep inputs.

When I started doing analysis full-time, the first game I tackled was Devil May Cry. Now I’m not going to pretend that I replayed DMC constantly or that it was always at the forefront of my thoughts but it made a big impression on me when it launched and it was something I had revisited several times. Even so, fifteen years after its initial release, I learned new things about it when I worked on that commentary. More importantly, I developed even more appreciation for various aspects of its design. In other words, I extracted more input from a game I had already played many times which I don’t think could be classified as broad input. However you want to phrase it, some games can be a wellspring of such input just waiting to be tapped.

Recently I bought a Steam Deck and started using it to combat my backlog. As such, I’m currently playing a few games at the same time. Whenever I’m juggling multiple titles like this, I try to keep them in separate genres. If you asked me a week ago why I do this, I’d just say that playing too many games of the same type can burn you out. That’s true but it’s not the root of the problem. The real problem is that burnout jeopardizes the opportunity for deep input. If I played ten different platformers to completion, then started up Pizza Tower, I might just want it over with already. I’d be at risk of losing patience, finishing Pizza Tower, and crossing it off my mental checklist without discovering some of its positive qualities.

I really am playing Pizza Tower right now by the way and it really is a good example to use. So far, my first pass through each level hasn’t been particularly enjoyable. I imagine this impression is fairly typical because the movement speed is so fast it’s difficult to smoothly traverse threats or obstacles unless you know about them beforehand. Each stage tends to have a new gimmick to master and the route can also be a little complex to learn. For those reasons, I haven’t just been playing through each stage one after the other. Instead, I’ve been revisiting earlier stages to improve my ranks and I always have a much better experience with subsequent attempts. When you know what path to take, the movement gets its chance to shine which can be tremendously fun. If I only valued broad input, I would never see the game at its best.

Of course, a relentless focus on either type of input can be detrimental. Playing one mediocre game for thousands of hours could provide plenty of depth but the diminishing returns mean it would be better to just play another game past a certain point. Both kinds of input cost time but they’re both valuable.

I trust that Sakurai would have the good sense to know he hasn’t seen all a game like Pizza Tower has to offer until he’s engaged in score-chasing at least a little bit. The same could be said of Kid Icarus: Uprising afterall. Often it can be obvious when a game has more to offer, even if you decide to move on for whatever reason. As the director of the Smash Bros series, broad input might be very important for Sakurai and I suspect it might also be the more important type for critics but I’m not convinced it’s of vital importance for game creators in general. Although I’m not privy to their personal lives, from what they’ve said over the years it seems as though a lot of big names in the field only have interest in a few genres or don’t even play many games at all. At the very least not all success can be explained by broad input so other approaches must also be valid.

It’s tempting to think that crossing games off the backlog is the best way to make progress in your exploration of the medium but I don’t know if that’s always true. Some games really are better as sporadic playthroughs when the experience can feel fresh again but some are best replayed right away or over a long period of time. Once I’m done with my current blitz I hope to revisit some of the games I played recently and I think the chances are good I’ll find some more things to like or dislike about them.