Category: Game design theory

Theory: Rule-Learning as a Campaign

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Earlier today, Eric Zimmerman posted this:

Learning the rules is a journey, with a destination and trials to be faced along the way. It maps very nicely onto a strategy campaign. Why don’t games do this?

I can think of several reasons:

The game’s rules are too simple to warrant it. Love Letter is a fun game that doesn’t need an elaborate teaching process.

The game isn’t much fun until all the rules are in place. Formula D has an introductory version that actually turned off some folks I played with. It was so easy that it removed the decisions that made the game interesting. Only when the more challenging mechanics were added in did they understand the game’s appeal.

Resource considerations. Making a tutorial campaign that’s fun enough to be worth playing is a lot of work. It’s hard to blame designers for allocating their time and budget elsewhere.

How to teach the rules isn’t often thought about as closely as the core design. If the preceding reasons are understandable choices about how to teach a game, this is the unfortunate counterpart: the failure to recognize a possibility. Sometimes a game would benefit a great deal from what was once called “programmed instruction,” but has to soldier on with a shaky rulebook or poor tutorialization. The designer(s), heavily focused on the game, don’t give enough time to working out how it ought to be introduced to others.

I’ll cheerfully say I’ve never made a campaign out of learning rules. However, it’s a neat idea. We know that a game about figuring out the game can be a lot of fun. Expanding that out to a whole narrative experience is a neat idea that’s worth pursuing.

 

Theory: Make Some Decisions Easy

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As a rule I’m not a fan of Twitter as a platform for argumentation. It’s often hard to express something compellingly in 140 characters. Sometimes it’s not even feasible to break an idea up into 140 character chunks.

Kevin Wilson (designer of, inter alia, Netrunner) was nevertheless able to make a strong case on Twitter today. Since tweets have a way of being lost–like, sadly, so much game design theory–I thought I’d keep them here for future reference.

Theory: Make Your Game Look Different

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It’s hard to stand out in a crowded marketplace. Having a game that looks great is one solution, but there are a lot of titles with striking 3D art and realistic animation. Trying to get ahead by having even more realistic visuals than one’s competitors is a painfully expensive strategy, even if it works.

Better instead, I would submit, to have distinctive visuals. Using good design and a sense of style, you can set your game apart.

ppf
Planet Protection Force. The design intentionally brings Asteroids to mind, while also making the game’s unique two-characters-in-one mechanic immediately readable.
hitman-go
There is no end of violent video games out there. Hitman Go distinguishes itself with its boardgame-y look.

Duelyst has relatively low-res sprite art; the lower resolution allows for lots of animation.

Theory: the Value of Being Explicit

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Magic’s designers have known for a long time that theme helps teach a game. Sometimes the game’s flavor is in the background, helping players get an intuitive understanding of complex mechanics. In the most recent set, though, the Magic design team has chosen an even more direct approach–one that I think is a good move for new players.

Theme has been helping teach Magic since its first set. Fireball, from way back when, is an elaborate card from a rules perspective. Nevertheless, it plays easily because everyone gets how a fantasy fireball works. This is the classic Magic use of theme: tapping into what players expect,so that they follow the rules just by playing cards intuitively.

Now compare that to italicized helper text on this forthcoming card:

sweatworks-brawler

“Your artifacts can help cast this spell” is the key line. Those few words accomplish at least two things:

  1. They create a framework for the text. Even though it includes intimidating, precise timing (“after you’re done activating mana abilities”), the rules are easy to understand because it’s clear that the critical part is “pays for 1.”
  2. They give new players a reason to use the ability. Tapping my own stuff is bad, right? Because I can’t use tapped cards? Oh, but it’s making bigger stuff cheaper–I get it!

It’s hard to emphasize enough how important both of those are. New players often don’t do powerful things because they have a drawback (e.g., painlands) or because one has to have a deep understanding of the game to know why an effect is strong (e.g., Timetwister). Clarifying why new players should use an ability with an apparent drawback and potentially unclear value is huge.

The framework for understanding also must not be underestimated. New players could be forgiven for thinking that Improvise’s timing is central; it appears immediately after the ability’s cost, where one might look for its effect. Thanks to the key line, though, we understand that we haven’t gotten the point of the rule until we find out how it helps pay for things. Complicated timing recedes, appropriately, in importance.

I’m curious to see how the Magic community views this kind of explanatory text. There are tradeoffs; if nothing else, it takes up valuable card real estate. On balance, though, I think it’s great for the game. Here’s hoping others agree, and that we see more of it in sets to come.

Business Considerations: Your Relationship with Business Partners

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I read with great interest Danny Hayes’ design postmortem, in which he is very critical of the publisher he contracted with for his indie video game PONCHO. Then I read the publisher’s response with perhaps more interest still, and Hayes’ reply as well. (Rising Star Games’ response is in the comments of the linked article, the third root comment down; Hayes’ reply is immediately below it.) As an attorney, here are my takeaways:

(As a quick reminder, please see the disclaimer–none of this is legal advice!)

  • Publishers are not “allies,” as Hayes puts it in his reply, nor are they your friends. They are business partners.
  • Your relationship with business partners is defined by the agreement(s) between you. Be very, very careful that you understand and accept the terms of those agreement(s).
  • Get a lawyer to help you understand the terms. Do not assume you know what all the words mean; contracts often include technical language and/or words that have special meanings in the law.
  • If you need something from your business partner, it must be in the agreement. Understand in advance that if you go back to your business partner for something that’s not in the agreement, they may well say no.
  • Don’t rely on your business partner changing the agreement because they’ve invested in you or in the project. Every savvy businessperson understands the sunk cost fallacy. They may, rationally, decide that it’s better to accept a loss than to put more money into what looks like a deal gone sour.

Hayes wrote the following lines in his reply. I think they’re central to his feelings about the situation; they’re also central to my interpretation of events.

Our contract stipulated an “on delivery” milestone system. The day after signing it, I asked our new allies if we could receive a small amount of start up funds. As soon as we mentioned perhaps receiving the first milestone in advance so that we could pay our artist and afford to pay rent, they said no.

Over and over, Hayes points out that Rising Star Games “said no” to things. But nothing else was ever to be expected. Rising Star Games was comfortable with, and agreed to, a system wherein they received X, and then paid out Y. It’s not surprising that they weren’t willing thereafter to reverse course and do the opposite, paying out Y before X arrived.

Hayes seems to have viewed his publisher as a teammate, and he appears as a result to be frustrated and even confused by seemingly unfriendly behavior. Yet, they weren’t teammates. They had a carefully delimited relationship with him, one whose boundaries and expectations he helped define. Having budgeted and planned based on mutually-created terms, no one in the law could be shocked that Rising Star Games wanted them respected. When one understands that Rising Star Games saw the relationship through the lens of a business partner, their actions are predictable.

I’m sorry for Danny Hayes and his team; their experience was obviously harrowing, and I would have wished greater success for them. There’s lessons, though, in what they went through. Recognize that you have a business relationship with your business partners, not a friendship, and that your interactions with them will be driven by the terms of the agreements between you. Read, and understand, those agreements. Make sure they reflect all of your assumptions. Above all, get a professional to help you when you’re in a professional’s sphere.