As I’ve mentioned before, we often play Burnout Revenge after lunch at work. Not always—we play board games once a week, we recently got a nice Rock Band setup, and several people have started playing ping pong—but Burnout Revenge continues to be our go-to game.
A month or two ago, we unlocked a Formula 1-style car; it’s faster than any other car we’ve unlocked, it accelerates much faster than the others, and controls surprisingly well given those qualities. So we’ve all switched over to using it: at first, we crashed enough more while driving it that other cars would frequently beat it, but once we put in the time to get used to its handling, it was clearly the way to go.
Its behavior on straightaways (or shallow bends) didn’t require much adjustment. You have to be on your toes a little more, and your ability to avoid cross traffic is reduced, but in general you pick your path and follow it. On curves, though, the car felt rather different: I almost always went wide while turning in the new car, and on right turns in particular I’d end up in dangerous situations.
Slowing down would, of course, be an option, but it’s rarely the recommended option in Burnout: instead, skidding is the best way to deal with high-speed turns. So I decided to work on my skidding skills.
It’s a little odd working on a new technical skill in a game for a few minutes at a time over the course of months. It takes a while for the skill to become ingrained: in fact, I still have to consciously think when approaching curves about how I want to approach them. Otherwise, I would forget to skid at all, going wide instead; and when I started skidding, I would often hold down the skid button too long, with the result that I would turn too far, typically crashing into the near wall.
But when I’m alert, I have an approach that works pretty well. I start skidding, but release the skid button quicker than my instincts would have me do. I’m out of control at this point, so I keep on turning; eventually, though, I regain the ability to steer, and after a bit of fishtailing, I’ll generally end up pointed up where I want to go, maintaining my speed in the process.
I’m not used to intentionally losing control in a video game like this. I’m used to games where I don’t know what good strategy or good tactics is; and I’m used to games where I can’t parse the action quickly enough to respond well. This is different, though: I’m happy with my strategy, and if I’m alert then my ability to parse oncoming traffic is generally acceptable. I’m just consciously making a choice that involves stepping back from detailed control for a bit in the belief that, once I regain control, the range of likely outcomes is one that I’ll be happy with.
And it’s a tactic that cries out for analogization. Take software development, for example. Normally, when developing software, I try to maintain rather tight control of how it’s going: test driven development can be thought of as reifying my constant feeling of control over my software. (And letting me know as soon as possible when that feeling is ill-founded, so I can re-establish my control!) And, of course, when playing Burnout, I normally try to maintain control: if I’m going mostly straight, then I try to plot my course as tightly as possible, I don’t just remove my hands from the controls and let the car meander as it will.
But, in software development as in racing games, there are times when you want to make a sharp turn. And I suspect that, in software development as in racing games, if you try to maintain tight control while doing so, you’ll end up not turning enough, instead going wide and (at best) slowing yourself down or (at worst) being obliterated by oncoming traffic.
Which doesn’t mean that I should relinquish control willy-nilly, even when I’m at a turn. In Burnout, it’s not a good strategy to stay skidding, hoping that you’ll end up in the right place. Instead, I get the best outcomes if I start skidding and then release the skid button as soon as I’ve lost control. If I do that, I’ll start drifting across a range of possible angles to take the turn at; the early angles are too shallow, but my tires wouldn’t stick if I tried to accelerate then anyways. So I sit and watch my car turn more and more; by the time it ends up pointed in a useful direction, it’s willing to respond again (after a bit of fishtailing!) if I try to reassert control.
And the same happens with experiments in software development. If you need to make a sharp turn, then throw yourself into it, and accept that you’ll lose control while doing so. But that doesn’t mean that you have to give up control for a long period of time: instead, make a short, focused experiment, and get ready to zoom off in the correct direction (also with a bit of fishtailing!) once you’ve turned enough to be able to see something promising.
Software development has its straightaways, and it has its curves. Know when you’re in the one, know when you’re in the other, switch your strategy to acknowledge those two situations. But, in either case, leave yourself able to respond to feedback as quickly as possible.
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I can’t speak to software development, obviously, but this post still resonates with me, probably because I approach my driving in a somewhat similar way.
I’m not sure if you read the first part of my Evaluating My Driving Style series or not, but in it I explained that I’m quite the aggressive driver in the sense that I always try to push the limits no matter what — even when I arguably shouldn’t. You mention in here that sometimes it’s good to throw yourself into the corner (or, in other words, certain situations) and lose control because the result, once you regain control, may be better than if you tried to keep control the whole time — I have this attitude with wheel-spin, running wide and yes, even crashes. I’m a late braker and if the car wants to step out, I will let it because I find it easier to deal with that than to try and ensure that I nail every single aspect of a lap, so there’s a lot of situations where I have gone in too deep into a corner, or dipped a wheel off in the grass and I suddenly find myself having to react to that loss of control. Experience ensures that I know how to, for example, use gear shifting to help slow the car, but whatever the situation requires it’s definitely better for me to react to that (by reflex or instinct) than to not go in so deep or to not go so close to the edge of a circuit. I wouldn’t be as quick as I am if I didn’t throw myself (figuratively) around a track, so while the end result could be negative and I could lose a race, crash or whatever, it is also the only way I can wring the absolute peak out of my car, the circuit and, indeed, my skills, so it’s worth doing.
On a side note, I’m still glad that you’re writing about this game. Out of all the Burnout games, Revenge is definitely the most overlooked. That and the original, unfortunately.
7/6/2011 @ 4:16 am
Huh, interesting. I’d kind of wondered how much my feeling out of control is an artifact of where I am in learning this particular technique: I would imagine that, as I get better at it, I’ll feel more in control during the skids, or at least less surprised at the outcome. But your experience suggests that being out of control is a theme in driving games, at least in ones with deep control possibilities: there’s always a limit that you’re going to be pushing yourself against, with uncertain consequences.
7/6/2011 @ 9:21 pm
While not really relevant to Burnout, it’s also the quickest way to understand the characteristics of a car, too. How it behaves during oversteer or understeer, how grip changes when you brake hard, stuff like that. If you drive carefully to ensure accuracy or whatever, you’re just not getting the most out of the car’s capabilities, so while losing control every now and then may sound absurd, it’s actually the best way to gain even more control. In a roundabout way.
7/7/2011 @ 4:32 am