Month: July 2015

Theory: Player Expectations of Video Game Stories As a Resource

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SPOILER WARNING: This post discusses the stories of Mark of the Ninja and Persona 4. If you haven’t played them yet, you might want to stop here. They’re both great games that deserve to be experienced without knowing what’s coming.

In order to use every resource at their disposal, game designers first have to recognize all of the possibilities. Some are easy and obvious: computer memory, playing cards. Others are more esoteric: tablets as addendums to board games, for example. Finally, there are the little-used, usually-unnoticed, difficult to employ resources, the narrow ones that are exceptionally powerful in the right situation. As an example, let’s take a look at player assumptions about how video game stories work.

Most video games have some unrealistic aspects that we accept, expect, and do not even process as out of the ordinary. Invisible walls limit our progress, even though the world appears to extend further. We can’t cross low objects because there’s no jump button, even though in the real world a few books or papers on the floor would pose no barrier. Conversations are limited and short to the point of rudeness. After a while none of these inhibit suspension of disbelief; we grow accustomed to and ignore them.

Mark of the Ninja does something canny with the way we accommodate ourselves to technical limitations on video game stories. Rather than just going along with our expectations, it uses them as a resource to make the story better.

(The SPOILERS start right here!)

In the game players take the role of a ninja who has gained Real Ultimate Power–but the power comes at the cost of gnawing, growing insanity. Players are led through the ensuing adventure by a helpful fellow ninja who provides guidance, commentary, and focus.

The guide routinely appears from nowhere and then disappears off-screen, never to be caught up with no matter how quickly the player-ninja moves. Occasionally the guide even does the impossible, able to “find another way” when there’s only one route.

I suspect that most players write all of that off completely, just as I did. Sure the NPC guide can do unlikely things: NPCs often can. They’re narrators, not subject to the limitations of the reader/player. Having them enter and leave the screen at all is a kindness, a nod to verisimilitude.

The big twist comes at the end of the game, when we learn–

(Seriously, SPOILERS!)

–that the guide was never there at all! She’s a visual representation of a voice in the ninja’s head, created by the ninja’s own mind so that the voice would seem to be coming from somewhere. Far from being an anchor against insanity, she’s a symptom of it!

With that single reveal, the entire game is thrown into question. Up to that point the goal has been clear: first to stop an attack on the ninja’s clan, then to take revenge on the evil megacorporation that attacked the clan, and then to take revenge on the clan’s own leader when it becomes clear that his schemes prompted the attack in the first place. However, all of those goals were presented by the guide–who was never really there, who’s just an expression of the ninja’s insanity. The player has to reevaluate the evidence, based not on the suddenly-unreliable narrator but rather on the player’s own judgment.

At the end of the game the player has to decide whether to strike down the clan leader. It’s a gripping moment because of the way expectations have been turned on their head. Throughout the game the player had a confidence born of the simplicity of most video game storytelling: the NPC tells you what to do and the challenge is in doing it. Now the NPC safety net is gone, and the player feels all the more adrift because it was once there.

By playing with expectations Mark of the Ninja goes beyond telling players that their character is going insane. It makes the player feel confusion and distress, thereby moving some distance toward putting the player in the character’s shoes. Mark of the Ninja uses the player’s assumptions just like it uses art, voice acting, and sound effects: as a resource it can call on to promote immersion.

Persona 4 does something similar, although its implementation of the technique is arguably less impressive. At the end of Persona 4 its characters feel that they have solved a mystery: they’ve discovered the identity of a murderer, learned his motives, and stopped his crime spree. There’s even an end-of-game wrapup of the sort that closes video game stories.

However, attentive players will note that the facts don’t quite add up. Good detectives among them won’t be satisfied, and if they insist on continuing to play rather than letting the credits roll they’ll discover that the game isn’t over yet! The true ending, with its ultimate reveals and conclusive answers, lie a few hours of gameplay beyond.

Unfortunately, it’s not easy for good detectives to signal that they want to keep investigating. It requires an unintuitive command that isn’t even legal at any other point during the game, with the result that checking an FAQ is almost required. That steals a lot of drama from what’s supposed to be the player’s biggest test.

Nevertheless, Persona 4’s handling of the player’s expectations is interesting and worth studying. The game demands that players rise above genre conventions to look hard at the mystery and decide for themselves whether it’s been solved, rather than going along when the game signals that they’re done. In the process Persona 4 captures something of real-world detective work, which is rife with incentives to stop investigating and close the case. A single weakness in Persona 4’s implementation thus takes nothing away from the superb underlying idea of using the player’s own assumptions to make her participate more fully in the mystery.

Video games have developed, as a medium, certain conceits. Good games can rely on those conceits, using them to hide technical limitations. It’s possible to go further, however, using not just the conceits as a resource but the expectations they’ve given rise to as well. Mark of the Ninja and Persona 4 demonstrate that being conscious of player assumptions regarding “how game stories work” allows designers to play off of them, potentially to very powerful effect.

Theory: The Last Step on the Age of Sigmar Road

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I read the Age of Sigmar rules over the weekend with great interest. Even knowing some of what to expect, it was certainly disorienting when I realized that there’s absolutely no limitation on what players are allowed to put on the table. I don’t mind that, though; in fact, I think it’s possible that Games Workshop didn’t go far enough.

That probably sounds insane—there’s nothing about balance, how could they go further than nothing—but hear me out. Over the weekend a friend likened Age of Sigmar to Magic: the Gathering’s Commander format. Commander is a casual approach to Magic that only works when the players sit down in advance and discuss what kind of game they want to play: super-competitive, slow and casual, etc. So long as the players do that, though, it’s great.

Age of Sigmar seems to be built on the same principle as Commander: the game allows players to make what they will of it, and trusts them to figure out as a group what that’s going to be. Does everyone want to play a story-driven narrative game, with scenarios based on an overarching plot and armies that grow and shrink with their nations’ fortunes? That’s fine. Would the players prefer instead instead to play regimented armies marching in formation? That’s supported. Just want to play a bunch of dragons that breathe fire on everything because it’ll be SO METAL? Awesome, you can absolutely do that.

For all of that to work, however, the players have to be on the same page—and the Age of Sigmar rules never actually suggest that the players should talk. Every new-player article about Commander makes it clear up-front that groups picking up the format need to decide on their own ground rules, and that people coming into a group must find out what the group’s rules are. The Age of Sigmar rule sheet lacks that guidance, and given how outside the norm that kind of discussion is in miniatures circles I think it’s going to be sorely missed.

I’m excited to give Age of Sigmar a try. As I read over the rules, though, I can’t help but wish that Games Workshop had taken a page from recent paper RPGs by stating not just what the rules are, but why they are that way. I want Games Workshop to take the final step on Age of Sigmar’s road: having built a game that puts players very much in the role of scenario designers, be open in telling them so.

VarianceHammer

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Thinking about Age of Sigmar (which only looks more promising the more I hear about it being freeform and consciously rules-light) reminded me that there’s another Warhammer-related item that’s had my interest: the superb site VarianceHammer. A blog about Warhammer 40K written by a computational scientist, VarianceHammer is an ongoing effort to do dice math right. It sets aside the assumptions behind most analyses of dice to figure out what will actually happen on the tabletop.

Not being a mathematician myself, I’ve found the site’s discussion both technically enlightening and subjectively fascinating. The author of VarianceHammer can apply mathematical concepts that I’ve never even heard of to determine how dice will impact the player experience much more precisely than I’m able to. Seeing how it’s done is as nifty as getting the results.

Every time I read one of the heavy-math posts on VarianceHammer I’m reminded of the breadth of game design as a field, of how many approaches there are to thinking about it and how many tools one can use in applying it. It’s humbling and inspiring, all at the same time. For that reason if no other, I would encourage you to give the site a look.

The Best Game of 40K Ever

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More than twenty years ago I played the Best Game of Warhammer 40K Ever™. This was in 2nd Edition, using the Dark Millennium expansion and its strategy cards. Before turn 1 my opponent played the “Virus Outbreak” card, and my Imperial Guard army was wiped out. I went from a horde of troopers to having three models on the table: two characters who were immune to the virus and the one single soldier who was lucky enough not to catch the disease. My entire army was destroyed during deployment!

Here’s the thing about that game: it was so much fun. No single match of any minis game I’ve played before or since—and there have been many—has given rise to such a great story. Sure, the Best Game of Warhammer 40K Ever™ wasn’t balanced or reasonable. I didn’t care then, and I don’t care now! The tale of the three plucky survivors trying to play without the army they were meant to be a part of is worth more than ten fair games.

I haven’t bought new Games Workshop product in decades. The forthcoming Age of Sigmar edition of Warhammer Fantasy looks to change that, however, because it appears (we haven’t seen the full item just yet) to be all set to create great stories. Where most miniatures games strive for tournament balance, Age of Sigmar has the courage to say “this is a game, it’s meant to be fun, do remarkable stuff and don’t worry about it.”

You see, most minis games are designed around the central principle that any given match should be even. The players have different armies with asymmetric capabilities, but the overall power level is to be the same at the outset. Usually this is accomplished through a “points” system: each model/group of models is worth a certain number of points, and players spend their budget of points to build their armies.

There are two problems with this. First, as a practical matter, points systems are very hard to get right. Jake Thornton, an expert of long standing at point-driven games, has even described points systems as “invariably doomed to failure” because there are innumerable contextual factors they cannot realistically incorporate. He explains that we use points systems because “they are . . . the best tool we currently have for picking reasonably even forces from variable lists,” but “they do not account for everything and . . . the more seriously you take the requirement for balance, the poorer job they do.”

The second issue is that fair is not always synonymous with fun. In focusing on equality of power points systems tend to ignore the question of whether an army is joyless to play with or against. Any minis gamer of even brief experience can cite examples of armies that are moderately effective but highly aggravating.

Age of Sigmar seems, at least based on the information available so far, to be directing its attention away from fairness to emphasize fun and the social nature of miniatures games. Balance will be maintained at least in part through social contracts, or just disregarded entirely in the name of awesome. There is much concern that this will make the game unplayable in a tournament setting, to which I say–

So be it. I have many miniatures games that promise fairness, and achieve it to a greater or lesser extent.

I want to add a game that promises fun to my library. One that promises, and delivers, great stories. If Age of Sigmar is that game, sign me up.