Musing: Chris Taylor's Call to Action

A lot of people have thoughts and ideas about game design. For example, there's Chris Taylor, famous for the RTS Supreme Commander (and it's spiritual previous game, Total Annihilation. Famous mainly for being an also-ran to StarCraft ;) ).

He wrote an article about games. The crux of his article is that games are two hard. Games punish players and they should not do so.

In essence, he's putting forth a notion of design: that games should avoid punishments. That a game is "better" if it does not punish the player, if the player is easily allowed to progress through the game and see more stuff.

The fundamental flaw with his notion is this: it's not objective. It's subjective. It doesn't work as a credible theory of design because of this. His argument isn't that games that use strong Risks in the Challenge dimension are broken; it is merely that some people won't play them.

So?

A proper Theory of Game Design is not intended to say what the most people will play. Ultimately that is a subjective notion, one that changes over time based on what the population wants. An objective Theory of Game Design's purpose is to aid a game designer in being able to tell if a game is functional, as well as describe how functional it is.

My section on pathologies does not detail subjective problems. Something is pathological if it is objectively broken. There is some subjectivity to it, as the Situation Model does model a degree of subjectivity in its representation of the player's attributes. The Situation Model only goes so far as to allow the game designer to assign a generic value to a player's attributes in an area. A kind of, "You must have this much reason to pass this section."

Given that, is it possible to have a game who's Risk dimension is too great? For a particular player, and generalized over a number of players of similar mindset, yes.

As an example, the Risk for being on one's last life in World 8-4 of Super Mario Bros is enormous. Fail, and it's back to the beginning for you, where at best, you'll have to trek through 7 levels before getting back. As children, this risk was somewhat acceptable; children tend to have more time and tenacity on their hands. Plus, children get games when their parents are good and ready to give them to them.

Even so, Risk can be mitigated by another factor: how much fun it is to play. Super Mario Bros. game mechanics are rather enjoyable. While the early levels do get boring after a while, even a seasoned expert gets a thrill from some of the World 8 levels. If a game is fun enough, Risk can be averted.

However, there is one problem. While Chris summarized his position as wanting less Risk (using different terms, of course), that's not what his article actually described. The description of why he doesn't complete games did not deal with Risk; instead, it dealt with Challenge as a whole.

He says,

For one reason and another, I was never able to complete them because at some point while playing, I would hit a "blocker." (A blocker is a term that game designers use to call a part of the game that stops the player's forward progression because of a complex puzzle, or arbitrary twist in the game.) When I hit a blocker, I give it a couple of tries, decide that this seems like a great place to take a break for the night, and lo and behold, the game begins to collect dust and I never play it again. That's the story for most games on my shelf.

That is not an aversion to Risk; that is an indictment of the entire domain of Challenge.

Do videogames need Challenge in order to be videogames? No. The definition of videogames, as I present it, does not explicitly or implicitly require Challenge. It only requires interactivity and the intent to provide enjoyment.

However, do games, whether in videogame form or otherwise, need Challenge? Absolutely; Challenge is at the core of games.

Look at the difference between Chess and Tic-Tac-Toe. Why is Chess played at high skill levels, while Tic-Tac-Toe is considered a child's game? Because Chess provides a much greater degree of Challenge. Chess played against a tough opponent requires a great deal of Knowledge, Reason, and Comprehension in order to be successful. By contrast, Tic-Tac-Toe against the smartest player of the game in the world will always result in a tie.

In terms of non-videogame games, Challenge is ultimately all there is. Enjoyment is gained from little else; the base interactivity of non-videogame games tends to be moving pieces around a board. Table-top RPGs and high-end miniatures games with grand backstories can buck this trend, but for the most part, non-videogame games derive their enjoyment entirely from the Challenge that their mechanics generate.

In terms of gaming videogames, Challenge is still a very strong aspect. The Situation Model demands it. Though it models interactivity, because most of the dimensions of Challenge are based on factors in the Situation Model, Challenge is an important component of gaming videogames.

After all, what good is gaining Knowledge if the game does not confront you with a Situation in which that Knowledge is required? What good is Experience if the game does not test it? And the only way to test such things is by creating a Situation with Challenge in the appropriate dimensions.

It's like rats in a maze, really. It was discovered that rats running through a maze actually learned how to get around simply by being there. When they started putting food in various locations, the rats were able to find the food much faster than rats who were new to the maze. But nothing indicated to the researchers that the rats learned the maze until they started placing goals in it.

Only when something is Challenged are you certain that it is really there.

However, unlike most non-videogame games, videogame games can create enjoyment from non-Challenging features. The act of interaction, for example, can be enjoyable, as can the videogame's setting or other non-game factors. Even so, much enjoyment can be had by having the player surmount a Challenge.

The difficult, of course, is Pacing. That is, providing the right Challenge at the right place at the right time. As mentioned, some people like sharper pacing curves than others. Despite the fact that Myst sold many units, very few of those buyers actually liked the game. It had a very sharp pacing curve, one that was too sharp for many.

So, what Chris is asking game developers to do is lower the pacing curve. This begs a question though: is there a right pacing curve for a game? A single correct solution for a specific videogame?

No. Ultimately, everyone likes their pacing in a certain way. Some players get bored with games that are too easy. Other players get frustrated with games that get too hard too fast.

What Chris ultimately wants is for game developers to cater to the low-pacing crowd. That's his call, but it need not affect your decisions as a game developer. Higher-paced games are still valid and viable games, from an objective standpoint.

On a personal level, I can't really bring myself to care for the low-pacing crowd. It simply isn't that interesting of a task to design games for them. Their enjoyment tends to stem from the base interaction or other facets of the videogame's construction than from anything involving the game rules themselves.

This musing went kind of wide of its initial purpose, but maybe it's an interesting read none-the-less.

Musing: On PC Games vs. Console Games

In one of my very first posts, I spent some time dealing with the question of videogame genres. Mainly, I said they were useless tools for the purpose of proffering a theory of design. And they are.

But, in a more formal way, what is a genre?

Well, a genre is really a framework. It lays the foundation, providing a number of basic rules for game mechanics.

Board games, in the traditional gaming sense, are a genre. The concept of them is that each player has one or more pieces that represent an entity's location in the game world (the board). And, via some mechanism, players move pieces around or add more or whatever. The framework in this case is player ownership of pieces and that locations on the board have some meaning.

Go and Chess are both board games, yet they are worlds apart. Even their game mechanics are very distinct, yet they both use the same underlying foundation of pieces on a board where the position of these pieces have some meaning.

Contrast Chess and Go with, say, Magic: The Gathering. These have virtually nothing in common besides the fact that they're all games. The genre of M:tG is predicated on cards that create rules, having a hand with cards that are inactive until "played", drawing more cards from a deck, and having cards in a discard pile of some form. This is the trading card game's genre.

So, genre's provide a framework for build game mechanics. Some game mechanics don't work, and others do. What makes a functioning genre is a set of strong mechanics that can be used for multiple disparate kinds of games. Being able to have game experiences as distinct as Go is from Chess.

Super Mario Bros. and Sonic the Hedgehog are both platformers. And yet they are as different from one another as Chess is to Go. Yes, they both involve getting past an obstacle course populated by difficult terrain and simple AI creatures that serve as dangerous obstacles. But they both go about it in entirely different ways.

That being said, above all, there are basically only 2 true genres, which I will call metagenres. These are Mechanics Heavy and Implementation Heavy.

For neither metagenre is the "light" portion of game design unimportant. However, the emphasis, the linchpin upon which the game will or will not work is the one that is "heavy".

The "classic" example of a Mechanics Heavy game is, well, NeverWinter Nights. It is literally built out of game mechanics from something that isn't a videogame: the 3rd edition of the Dungeons&Dragons table-top RPG.

NWN is Mechanics Heavy. It relies upon its game mechanics to create fun. If the D20 system were not interesting, if it did not create interesting choices for the player, then the game itself would not work no matter what else BioWare did to it.

Using a videogame classified as an RPG as a counter-example, we have, well, any Final Fantasy game. This game is very focused on Implementation. How much experience the player gets at a particular time. Which monsters the player faces, assuming the player has X abilities at that time. What matters in a FF game, what determines how good its gameplay is, depends greatly on exactly how the battles are put together. Which monsters are encountered when.

These issues matter in NWN, but not to nearly as great an extent. Likewise, the combat system of a FF game matters, but never to the degree that it does in NWN, if for no other reason than the fact that the system permeates every aspect of the game. Options open up for you if you have certain skills, or items or whatever.

It's funny. For reasons I haven't quite figured out, PC games tend to be Mechanics Heavy, while console games tend to be Implementation Heavy.

Just think about the great PC games. For the most part, they're Mechanics Heavy. The Sims, StarCraft, StarControl 2, Rome: Total War, pretty much every PC RPG, Civilization. Indeed, PCs have entire genres that are Mechanics Heavy: RTSs, Civ-style games, RPGs, etc.

Noticably absent from this list: FPS games. While mechanics do matter, particularly for their multiplayer aspects, the quality of the single player experience is derived from the implementation more than the mechanics. Why are they focused on PCs then? Controls. That's it. With dual-analog becoming more acceptable, you're seeing these games take the leap onto consoles.

Which is where they belong. Right alongside action/adventures, platformers, 3rd-person shooters, and the other host of console gaming genres of note.

How did this happen?

Well, part of it is somewhat historical. Consoles have been limited in what mechanics they could provide. First by the basic hardware resources (CPU power and memory), and later by what could be expressed by their controls. This forced console developers to focus their energies where they could: implementations. Mechanics had to be fairly simple, so it was the implementation, level design and so forth, that had to take to the fore.

By contrast, PCs have memory and performance available to them. What they had preventing them from exploring implementation was not hardware.

Another part of it is cultural. The PC gaming market has been ruled by, well, geeks. People who absolutely love minutiae and obsess over it. They are intrigued by interesting mechanics, and they do not like being told by some implementation (level design or whatever) that they cannot try something. Broad mechanics with fairly light implementations cater to these people. Not to mention, the first PC games were made by geeks for geeks.

By contrast, console gaming has lived a different life. Since the demise of Atari, console gaming has been focused largely in Asia, Japan in particular. There is a cultural emphasis on what would be considered focused experiences without the minutiae of clever game mechanics. You can see it with their non-gaming entertainment like anime and manga (particularly in the willingness to break with established canon if it serves the story), and the culture spills over into their gameplay. The mechanics are seen as a means to an end; a way to create the possibility of compelling gameplay.

So, there it is: the fundamental difference in PC games and Console games. One favors game mechanics, while the other favors game implementation.

Musing: Idolatry

This is a new series of articles. These will not be about the basic theory of design that this blog is attempting to develop. Rather, instead these articles will be looking at how design is practiced in the real world. Or, in this case, mispracticed.

Idolatry. This word is bound to theological religious constructs, but it has applications in modern game design when properly understood. In order to coopt it, we must first understand it in context.

According to Christian Theology, Idolatry is a sin. It's even one of the Ten Commandments. Why is that? What is so bad about Idolatry?

In order to understand this, we have to understand a distinction between true Idolatry and merely having an idol that represents a religious icon. After all, if religious objects were truly outlawed in Christianity, virtually no denomination thereof would be Godly.

Idolatry is more than merely kneeling before an image of a religious figure. Idolatry is a misunderstanding of the use of said image. Idolatry happens when you worship the idol because it is an idol, not because of what the idol represents. That is, you worship the idol as God, rather than as a representation of God.

If a idol of Christ, for example, is destroyed, the non-Idolater may be upset at the loss of property, but there is little religious significance associated with the destruction of the idol. For the non-Idolater, the idol was simply a tool to help achieve a greater understanding of his faith and his God. A new tool may be needed or not, depending on how he feels about his faith.

For the Idolater, it literally means the death of God. The breaking of the idol leaves the Idolater in a metaphysical quandary: God has been killed.

So, Idolatry isn't merely about worshiping before an idol; it means that, in the mind of the practitioner, the idol takes on the physical body of that religion. In short, the Idolater has forgotten the purpose of the idol, and indeed, the religion itself. The Idolater has uses the idol thoughtlessly.

The Idolater has committed the synecdoche. The Idolater is mistaking the idol, the part, for the whole of his faith.

So, what does this have to do with videogames and game design?

Idolatry abounds in modern game design.

A game design element (from small things like health bars to larger constructs like levels, etc) exists for a specific purpose. In bad games, elements do not reinforce one another. In good games they do.

Idolatry in terms of game design means that the designer is using a game element because it is there rather than because it is the right element to fulfill that specific purpose. More often than not, Idolatry is committed by designers because previous games in the genre have used that element, therefore this one must.

The problem with idolatry in game design isn't always that the element doesn't fit. More often than not, it is simple laziness.

There are any number of game design elements out there. Solutions to game design problems can be made in innumerable ways. However, we keep reusing the same ones simply because it is easier than coming up with new ones. So idolatry creates this sense that the player has played the game before. The modern sense that games aren't changing or improving is likely due to the constant idolatry of modern game design.

Player expectations also play a role in idolatry. Game designers, under huge pressure from publishers to produce selling games, simply choose to regurgitate game design rather than come up with something that players may consider new simply because the player might not like it.

Idolatry can be genre-dependent. Modern RPGs are laden with idolatry. In virtually every RPG, armor and weapon upgrades are common. Why? Because every other RPG does it. Yes, the element serves a purpose (in theory. In practice, most RPGs make upgrading brain-dead simple instead of providing meaningful choices), but if the developer were thoughtful, another element could be used to serve that purpose (see Wild Arms: Alter Code F as an example). Why the incidental combat? Because every other RPG has it, and therefore it is necessary.

One very important note. When attempting to avoid idolatry in game design, it is very important to not forget basic design principles. Idolatry is not merely using elements from another game, or not using standard elements (health bars, etc). Idolatry is thoughtlessly using them. To not use them simply because they are common is simply idolatry but coming from the other direction. That's the problem with Ico: it attempts to avoid game conventions, but it does so at the expense of playability; they forgot what those conventions represent and did not provide a way to similarly convey that information in other ways.

To avoid idolatry, simply be thoughtful in your decisions. If a common element can help you achieve what you wish to achieve, use it knowing that you made that determination thoughtfully.

Why Genreless?

In my introduction, I said that I would be discussing a genreless theory of design. Why genreless? Why is genre so bad?

Genre is a fine thing. In fact, genre, more than anything, informs game design. Each genre carries with it certain specific game design ideals that define that genre, and members of a genre are free to implement game design within this specific context.

There are two problems with genre. From an analyst perspective, genre is useless information. If you're analysing a game design, the dictates of its genre must be part of that analysis in order for it to be considered complete.

The other problem is that genre is fundamentally limitting to game designer freedom. Let's look at arcade game design pre-Donkey Kong.

You had a number of genres. Shooters (Defender, Galaga, etc), Pong-a-likes, and a few others.

Then, some nutball came up with the idea of a platformer, Donkey Kong, a game that looks very different from anything else in the time period. Your main character is a human (cartoon-ish though it may be). It involves maneuvering the character through a hazardous environment, often with few abilities to actually kill anything. That was heresy in those days, for the most part.

When it comes right down to it, if your first idea with a game is based on known genres, you have less of a chance to make a game that is unique.

Now, it is not a bad thing at all to follow the beaten path. Not only is it less likely to turn people off from playing it, it is more likely to actually work, because you actually know how the genre works. Also, you can make a genre entry stand out from the crowd by adding new gameplay, where it meshes well with the genre. Or you can correct flaws in other entries in the genre.

From an economic perspective (and there is nothing I hate more when dealing with game design than dealing with how well the game might sell), one needs to understand an unpleasant reality about the genre lifecycle. There's an article* on Lost Garden on the subject that gives it a decent treatment.

Even so, the basic fact is that the most innovative games tend to be seen as those of completely new genres. And it's hard to dispute that: Donkey Kong, the great grandfather of platformers, was a watershed moment in the evolution of videogames.

If you're going to profer a valid theory of design, like good scientific theories, they should actually predict something. They can't just tell you what works now; they have to tell you what will work tomorrow, and why a game to be invented 100 years from now will work.


* I don't like this article's inference that the lifecycle of a genre ends at niche/death status. I don't think there's nearly enough evidence to say this, with only ~30 years of history for videogaming. Especially since most of that history has driven the adoption of new genres by technology; it's hard to go back and play, let alone make, older-tech games, particularly when you have to compete against more advanced games. I think there's great potential for "genre mining"; that is, going back to some of those older genres, giving them an appropriate coat of paint, and making games using modern game design ideals with them. I believe that a genre can be reinvigorated after an appropriate length of time has past, much like the modern movie epic genre was reinvigorated by Braveheart.