I have no words and I must design

[clawrenc at cup.hp.com]

http://www.crossover.com/~costik/nowords.html

Some of you may already know this document.  Its well worth reading,
both from the viewpoint of game design and the recept RP vs GOP
discussions.  Enjoy and discuss:

--<cut>--

I Have No Words & I Must Design

This article was published in 1994 in Interactive Fantasy #2, a 
British roleplaying journal. Page down to read, or click on the  links
below to jump to a particular section. 

     What Is a Game, Anyhow? 
         It's Not a Puzzle 
         It's Not a Toy 
         It's Not a Story 
         It Demands Participation 
     So What Is a Game? 
         Decision Making 
         Goals 
         Opposition 
         Managing Resources 
         Game Tokens 
         Information 
     Other Things That Strengthen Games 
         Diplomacy 
         Color 
         Simulation 
         Variety of Encounter 
         Position Identification 
         Roleplaying 
         Socializing 
         Narrative Tension 
     They're All Alike Under the Dice. 

There's a lotta different kinds of games out there. A helluva  lot.
Cart-based, computer, CD-ROM, network, arcade, PBM, PBEM,  mass-market
adult, wargames, card games, tabletop RPGs, LARPs,  freeforms. And,
hell, don't forget paintball, virtual reality,  sports, and the
horses. It's all gaming. 

But do these things have anything at all in common? What is a  game?
And how can you tell a good one from a bad one? 

Well, we can all do the latter: "Good game, Joe," you say, as you 
leap the net. Or put away the counters. Or reluctantly hand over  your
Earth Elemental card. Or divvy up the treasure. But that's  no better
than saying, "Good book," as you turn the last page.  It may be true,
but it doesn't help you write a better one. 

As game designers, we need a way to analyze games, to try to 
understand them, and to understand what works and what makes them 
interesting. 

We need a critical language. And since this is basically a new  form,
despite its tremendous growth and staggering diversity, we  need to
invent one. 

What Is a Game, Anyhow?

It's Not a Puzzle.

In The Art of Computer Game Design, Chris Crawford contrasts what  he
call "games" with "puzzles." Puzzles are static; they present  the
"player" with a logic structure to be solved with the  assistance of
clues. "Games," by contrast, are not static, but  change with the
player's actions. 

Some puzzles are obviously so; no one would call a crossword a 
"game." But, according to Crawford, some "games" a really just 
puzzles -- Lebling & Blank's Zork, for instance. The game's sole 
objective is the solution of puzzles: finding objects and using  them
in particular ways to cause desired changes in the  game-state. There
is no opposition, there is no roleplaying, and  there are no resources
to manage; victory is solely a 
consequence of puzzle solving. 

To be sure, Zork is not entirely static; the character moves from 
setting to setting, allowable actions vary by setting, and  inventory
changes with action. We must think of a continuum,  rather than a
dichotomy; if a crossword is 100% puzzle, Zork is  90% puzzle and 10%
game.

Almost every game has some degree of puzzle-solving; even a pure 
military strategy game requires players to, e.g., solve the  puzzle of
making an optimum attack at this point with these  units. To eliminate
puzzle-solving entirely, you need a game  that's almost entirely
exploration: Just Grandma and Me, a  CD-ROM interactive storybook with
game-like elements of 
decision-making and exploration, is a good example. Clicking on 
screen objects causes entertaining sounds and animations, but  there's
nothing to 'solve,' in fact, no strategy whatsoever. 

A puzzle is static. A game is interactive. 

It's Not a Toy.

According to Will Wright, his Sim City is not a game at all, but  a
toy. Wright offers a ball as an illuminating comparison: It  offers
many interesting behaviors, which you may explore. You  can bounce it,
twirl it, throw it, dribble it. And, if you wish,  you may use it in a
game: soccer, or basketball, or whatever.  But the game is not
intrinsic in the toy; it is a set of  player-defined objectives
overlaid on the toy. 

Just so Sim City. Like many computer games, it creates a world  which
the player may manipulate, but unlike a real game, it  provides no
objective. Oh, you may choose one: to see if you can  build a city
without slums, perhaps. But Sim City itself has no  victory
conditions, no goals; it is a software toy. 

A toy is interactive. But a game has goals. 

It's Not a Story.

Again and again, we hear about story. Interactive literature. 
Creating a story through roleplay. The idea that games have  something
to do with stories has such a hold on designers'  imagination that it
probably can't be expunged. It deserves at  least to be challenged. 

Stories are inherently linear. However much characters may  agonize
over the decisions they make, they make them the same  way every time
we reread the story, and the outcome is always  the same. Indeed, this
is a strength; the author chose precisely  those characters, those
events, those decisions, and that  outcome, because it made for the
strongest story. If the  characters did something else, the story
wouldn't be as  interesting. 

Games are inherently non-linear. They depend on decision making. 
Decisions have to pose real, plausible alternatives, or they  aren't
real decisions. It must be entirely reasonable for a  player to make a
decision one way in one game, and a different  way in the next. To the
degree that you make a game more like a  story -- more linear, fewer
real options -- you make it less  like a game. 

Consider: you buy a book, or see a movie, because it has a great 
story. But how would you react if your gamemaster were to tell  you,
"I don't want you players to do that, because it will ruin  the
story"? He may well be right, but that's beside the point.  Gaming is
NOT about telling stories. 

That said, games often, and fruitfully, borrow elements of  fiction.
Roleplaying games depend on characters; computer  adventures and LARPs
are often drive by plots. The notion of  increasing narrative tension
is a useful one for any game that  comes to a definite conclusion. But
to try to hew too closely to  a storyline is to limit players' freedom
of action and their  ability to make meaningful decisions. 

The hypertext fiction movement is interesting, here. Hypertext is 
inherently non-linear, so that the traditional narrative is  wholly
inappropriate to hypertext work. Writers of hypertext  fiction are
trying to explore the nature of human existence, as  does the
traditional story, but in a way that permits multiple  viewpoints,
temporal leaps, and reader construction of the  experience. Something
-- more than hypertext writers know -- is  shared with game design
here, and something with traditional  narrative; but if hypertext
fiction ever becomes artistically  successful (nothing I've read is),
it will be through the  creation of a new narrative form, something
that we will be  hard-pressed to call "story." 

Stories are linear. Games are not. 

It Demands Participation.

In a traditional artform, the audience is passive. When you look  at a
painting, you may imagine things in it, you may see  something other
than what the artist intended, but your role in  constructing the
experience is slight: The artist painted. You  see. You are passive. 

When you go to the movies, or watch TV, or visit the theater, you  sit
and watch and listen. Again, you do interpret, to a degree;  but you
are the audience. You are passive. The art is created by  others. 

When you read a book, most of it goes on in your head, and not on  the
page; but still. You're receiving the author's words. You're  passive.


It's all too, too autocratic: the mighty artist condescends to  share
his genius with lesser mortals. How can it be that, two  hundred years
after the Revolution, we still have such 
aristocratic forms? Surely we need forms in spirit with the  times;
forms which permit the common man to create his own  artistic
experience. 

Enter the game. Games provide a set of rules; but the players use 
them to create their own consequences. It's something like the  music
of John Cage: he wrote themes about which the musicians  were expected
to improvise. Games are like that; the designer  provides the theme,
the players the music. 

A democratic artform for a democratic age. 

Traditional artforms play to a passive audience. Games require  active
participation. 

So What Is a Game?

A game is a form of art in which participants, termed players,  make
decisions in order to manage resources through game tokens  in the
pursuit of a goal. 

Decision Making

I offer this term in an effort to destroy the inane, and  overhyped,
word "interactive." The future, we are told, will be  interactive. You
might as well say, "The future will be 
fnurglewitz." It would be about as enlightening. 

A light switch is interactive. You flick it up, the light turns  on.
You flick it down, the light turns off. That's interaction.  But it's
not a lot of fun. 

All games are interactive: The game state changes with the  players'
actions. If it didn't, it wouldn't be a game: It would  be a puzzle. 

But interaction has no value in itself. Interaction must have 
purpose. 

Suppose we have a product that's interactive. At some point, you  are
faced with a choice: You may choose to do A, or to do B. 

But what makes A better than B? Or is B better than A at some  times
but not at others? What factors go into the decision? What  resources
are to be managed? What's the eventual goal? 

Aha! Now we're not talking about "interaction." Now we're talking 
about decision making. 

The thing that makes a game a game is the need to make decisions. 
Consider Chess: it has few of the aspects that make games  appealing
-- no simulation elements, no roleplaying, and damn  little color.
What it's got is the need to make decisions. The  rules are tightly
constrained, the objectives clear, and victory  requires you to think
several moves ahead. Excellence in  decision making is what brings
success. 

What does a player do in any game? Some things depend on the  medium.
In some games, he rolls dice. In some games, he chats  with his
friends. In some games, he whacks at a keyboard. But in  every game,
he makes decisions. 

At every point, he considers the game state. That might be what  he
sees on the screen. Or it might be what the gamemaster has  just told
him. Or it might be the arrangement on the pieces on  the board. Then,
he considers his objectives, and the game  tokens and resources
available to him. And he considers his  opposition, the forces he must
struggle against. He tries to  decide on the best course of action. 

And he makes a decision. 

What's key here? Goals. Opposition. Resource management.  Information.
Well talk about them in half a mo. 

What decisions do players make in this game? 

Goals

Sim City has no goals. Is it not a game? 

No, as it's own designer willingly maintains. It is a toy. 

And the only way to stay interested in it for very long is to  turn it
into a game -- by setting goals, by defining objectives  for yourself.
Build the grandest possible megalopolis; maximize  how much your
people love you; build a city that relies solely  on mass transit.
Whatever goal you've chosen, you've turned it  into a game. 

Even so, the software doesn't support your goal. It wasn't  designed
with your goal in mind. And trying to do something with  a piece of
software that it wasn't intended to do can be awfully  frustrating. 

Since there's no goal, Sim City soon palls. By contrast, Sid  Meier
and Bruce Shelley's Civilization, an obviously derivative  product,
has explicit goals -- and is far more involving and  addictive. 

"But what about roleplaying games?" you may say. "They have no 
victory conditions." 

No victory conditions, true. But certainly they have goals; lots  of
them, you get to pick. Rack up the old experience points. Or  fulfill
the quest your friendly GM has just inflicted on you. Or  rebuild the
Imperium and stave off civilization's final  collapse. Or strive
toward spiritual perfection. Whatever. 

If, for some reason, your player characters don't have a goal, 
they'll find one right quick. Otherwise, they'll have nothing  better
to do but sit around the tavern and grouse about how  boring the game
is. Until you get pissed off and have a bunch of  orcs show up and try
to beat their heads in. 

Hey, now they've got a goal. Personal survival is a good goal.  One of
the best. 

If you have no goal, your decisions are meaningless. Choice A is  as
good as Choice B; pick a card, any card. Who cares? What does  it
matter? 

For it to matter, for the game to be meaningful, you need  something
to strive toward. You need goals. 

What are the players' goals? Can the game support a variety of 
different goals? What facilities exist to allow players to strive 
toward their various goals? 

Opposition

Oh, say the politically correct. Those bad, icky games. They're  so
competitive. Why can't we have cooperative games? 

"Cooperative games" generally seem to be variants of "let's all  throw
a ball around." Oh golly, how fascinating, I'll stop  playing Mortal
Kombat for that, you betcha. 

But are we really talking about competition? 

Yes and no; many players do get a kick out of beating others with 
their naked minds alone, which is at least better than naked  fists.
Chess players are particularly obnoxious in this regard.  But the real
interest is in struggling toward a goal. 

The most important word in that sentence is: struggling. 

Here's a game. It's called Plucky Little England, and it  simulates
the situation faced by the United Kingdom after the  fall of France in
World War II. Your goal: preserve liberty and  democracy and defeat
the forces of darkness and oppression. You  have a choice: A.
Surrender. B. Spit in Hitler's eye! Rule  Britannia! England never
never never shall be slaves! 

You chose B? Congratulations! You won! 

Now, wasn't that satisfying? Ah, the thrill of victory. 

There is no thrill of victory, of course; it was all too easy,  wasn't
it? There wasn't any struggle. 

In a two-player, head-to-head game, your opponent is the  opposition,
your struggle against him; the game is direct  competition. And this
is a first-rate way of providing  opposition. Nothing is as sneaky and
as hard to overcome as a  determined human opponent. But direct
competition isn't the only  way to do it. 

Think of fiction. The ur-story, the Standard Model Narrative,  works
like this: character A has a goal. He faces obstacles B,  C, D, and E.
He struggles with each, in turn, growing as a  person as he does.
Ultimately, he overcomes the last and  greatest obstacle. 

Do these obstacles all need to be The Villain, The Bad Guy, The 
Opponent, The Foe? No, though a good villain makes for a first  rate
obstacle. The forces of nature, cantankerous 
mothers-in-law, crashing hard-drives, and the hero's own  feelings of
inadequacy can make for good obstacles, too. 

Just so in games. 

In most RPGs, the "opposition" consists of non-player characters,  and
you are expected to cooperate with your fellow players. In  many
computer games, the "opposition" consists of puzzles you  must solve.
In LARPs, the "opposition" is often the sheer  difficulty of finding
the player who has the clue or the widget  or the special power you
need. In most solitaire games, your  "opposition" is really a random
element, or a set of semi-random  algorithms you are pitted against. 

Whatever goals you set your players, you must make the players  work
to achieve their goals. Setting them against each other is  one way to
do that, but not the only one. And even when a player  has an
opponent, putting other obstacles in the game can  increase its
richness and emotional appeal. 

The desire for "cooperative games" is the desire for an end to 
strife. But there can be none. Life is the struggle for survival  and
growth. There is no end to strife, not this side of the  grave. A game
without struggle is a game that's dead. 

What provides opposition? What makes the game a struggle? 

Managing Resources

Trivial decisions aren't any fun. Remember Plucky Little England? 

There wasn't any real decision, was there? 

Or consider Robert Harris's Talisman. Each turn, you roll the  die.
The result is the number of spaces you can move. You may  move to the
left, or to the right, around the track. 

Well, this is a little better than a traditional track game; I've  got
a choice. But 99 times out of a 100, either there's no  difference
between the two spaces, or one is obviously better  than the other.
The choice is bogus. 

The way to make choices meaningful is to give players resources  to
manage. "Resources" can be anything: Panzer divisions. Supply  points.
Cards. Experience points. Knowledge of spells. Ownership  of fiefs.
The love of a good woman. Favors from the boss. The  good will of an
NPC. Money. Food. Sex. Fame. Information. 

If the game has more than one 'resource,' decisions suddenly  become
more complex. If I do this, I get money and experience,  but will Lisa
still love me? If I steal the food, I get to eat,  but I might get
caught and have my hand cut off. If I declare  against the Valois,
Edward Plantagenet will grant me the Duchy  of Gascony, but the Pope
may excommunicate me, imperilling my  immortal soul. 

These are not just complex decisions; these are interesting ones. 
Interesting decisions make for interesting games. 

The resources in question have to have a game role; if 'your  immortal
soul' has no meaning, neither does excommunication.  (Unless it
reduces the loyalty of your peasants, or makes it  difficult to
recruit armies, or... but these are game roles,  n'est-ce pas?)
Ultimately, 'managing resources' means managing  game elements in
pursuit of your goal. A 'resource' that has no  game role has nothing
to contribute to success or failure, and  is ultimately void. 

What resources does the player manage? Is there enough diversity  in
them to require tradeoffs in making decisions? Do they make  those
decisions interesting? 

Game Tokens

You effect actions in the game through your game tokens. A game  token
is any entity you may manipulate directly. 

In a boardgame, it is your pieces. In a cardgame, it is your  cards.
In a roleplaying game, it is your character. In a sports  game, it is
you yourself. 

What is the difference between "resources" and "tokens?"  Resources
are things you must manage efficiently to achieve your  goals; tokens
are your means of managing them. In a board  wargame, combat strength
is a resource; your counters are  tokens. In a roleplaying game, money
is a resource; you use it  through your character. 

Why is this important? Because if you don't have game tokens, you 
wind up with a system that operates without much player input.  Will
Wright and Fred Haslam's Sim Earth is a good example. In  Sim Earth,
you set some parameters, and sit back to watch the  game play out
itself. You've got very little to do, no tokens to  manipulate, no
resources to manage. Just a few parameters to  twiddle with. This is
mildly interesting, but not very. 

To give a player a sense that he controls his destiny, that he is 
playing a game, you need game tokens. The fewer the tokens, the  more
detailed they must be; it is no cooincidence that 
roleplaying games, which give the player a single token, also  have
exceptionally detailed rules for what that token can do. 

What are the players' tokens? What are these tokens' abilities?  What
resources do they use? What makes them interesting? 

Information

I've had more than one conversation with a computer game designer  in
which he tells me about all the fascinating things his game  simulates
-- while I sit there saying, "Really? What do you  know. I didn't
realize that." 

Say you've got a computer wargame in which weather affects  movement
and defense. If you don't tell the player that weather  has an effect,
what good is it? It won't affect the player's  behavior; it won't
affect his decisions. 

Or maybe you tell him weather has an effect, but the player has  no
way of telling whether it's raining or snowing or what at any  given
time. Again, what good is that? 

Or maybe he can tell, and he does know, but he has no idea what 
effect weather has -- maybe it cuts everyone's movement in half,  or
maybe it slows movement across fields to a crawl but does  nothing to
units moving along roads. This is better, but not a  whole lot. 

The interface must provide the player with relevant information.  And
he must have enough information to be able to make a sensible 
decision. 

That isn't to say a player must know everything; hiding 
information can be very useful. It's quite reasonable to say,  "you
don't know just how strong your units are until they enter  combat,"
but in this case, the player must have some idea of the  range of
possibilities. It's reasonable to say, "you don't know  what card
you'll get if you draw to an inside straight," but  only if the player
has some idea what the odds are. If I might  draw the Queen of Hearts
and might draw Death and might draw the  Battleship Potemkin, I have
absoutely no basis on which to make  a decision. 

More than that, the interface must not provide too much 
information, especially in a time-dependent game. If weather,  supply
state, the mood of my commanders, the fatigue of the  troops, and what
Tokyo Rose said on the radio last night can all  affect the outcome of
my next decision, and I have to decide  some time in the next five
seconds, and it would take me five  minutes to find all the relevant
information by pulling down  menus and looking at screens, the
information is still  irrelevant. I may have access to it, but I can't
reasonably act  on it. 

Or let's talk about computer adventures; they often display 
information failure. "Oh, to get through the Gate of Thanatos,  you
need a hatpin to pick the lock. You can find the hatpin on  the floor
of the Library. It's about three pixels by two pixels,  and you can
see it, if your vision is good, between the twelfth  and thirteenth
floorboards, about three inches from the top of  the screen. What, you
missed it?" 

Yeah, I missed it. In an adventure, it shouldn't be ridiculously 
difficult to find what you need, nor should victory be impossible 
just because you made a wrong decision three hours and  thirty-eight
decision points ago. Nor should the solutions to  puzzles be arbitrary
or absurd. 

Or consider freeforms. In a freeform, a player is often given a  goal,
and achieving it requires him to find out several things  -- call them
Facts A, B, and C. The freeform's designer had  better make damn sure
that A, B, and C are out there somewhere  -- known to other
characters, or on a card that's circulating in  the game -- whatever,
they have to be there. Otherwise, the  player has no chance of
achieving his goal, and that's no fun. 

Given the decisions players are required to make, what 
information do they need? Does the game provide the information  as
and when needed? Will reasonable players be able to figure  out what
information they need, and how to find it? 

Other Things That Strengthen Games

Diplomacy

Achieving a goal is meaningless if it comes without work, if  there is
no opposition; but that doesn't mean all decisions must  be zero-sum.
Whenever multiple players are involved, games are  strengthened if
they permit, and encourage, diplomacy. 

Games permit diplomacy if players can assist each other -- 
perhaps directly, perhaps by combining against a mutual foe. Not 
all multiplayer games do this; in Charles B. Darrow sMonopoly, 
for instance, there's no effective way either to help or hinder 
anyone else. There's no point in saying, "Let's all get Joe," or 
"Here, you're a novice, I'll help you out, you can scratch my 
back later," because there's no way to do it. 

Some games permit diplomacy, but not much. In Lawrence Harris's 
Axis & Allies, players can help each other to a limited degree, 
but everyone is permanently Axis or permanently Allied, so 
diplomacy is never a key element to the game. 

One way to encourage diplomacy is by providing non-exclusive 
goals. If you're looking for the Ark of the Covenant, and I want 
to kill Nazis, and the Nazis have got the Ark, we can work 
something out. Maybe our alliance will end when the French 
Resistance gets the Ark, and we wind up on opposite sides, but 
actually, such twists are what make games fun. 

But games can encourage diplomacy even when players are directly 
opposed. The diplomatic game par excellence is, of course, 
Calhammer's Diplomacy, in which victory more often goes to the 
best diplomat than to the best strategist. The key to the game is 
the Support order, which allows one player's armies to assist 
another in an attack, encouraging alliance. 

Alliances never last, to be sure; Russia and Austria may ally to 
wipe out Turkey, but only one of them can win. Eventually, one 
will stab the other in the back. 

Fine. It's the need to find allies, retain them, and persuade 
your enemies to change their stripes that makes sure you'll keep 
on talking. If alliances get set in stone, diplomacy comes to an 
end. 

Computer games are almost inherently solitaire, and to the degree 
they permit diplomacy with NPC computer opponents, they 
generally don't make it interesting. Network games are, or ought 
to be, inherently diplomatic; and as network games become more 
prevalent, we can expect most developers from the computer 
design community to miss this point entirely. As an example, 
when the planners of interactive TV networks talk about games, 
they almost exclusively talk about the possibility of 
downloading cart-based (Nintendo, Sega) games over cable. They're 
doing so for a business reason: billions are spent annually on 
cart-based games, and they'd like a piece of the action. They 
don't seem to realize that networks permit a wholly different 
kind of gaming, which has the potential to make billions in its 
own right -- and that this is the real business opportunity. 

How can players help or hinder each other? What incentives do 
they have to do so? What resources can they trade? 

Color

Monopoly is a game about real estate development. Right? 

Well, no, obviously not. A real estate developer would laugh at 
the notion. A game about real estate development needs rules for 
construction loans and real estate syndication and union work 
rules and the bribery of municipal inspectors. Monopoly has 
nothing to do with real estate development. You could take the 
same rules and change the board and pieces and cards and make it 
into a game about space exploration, say. Except that your game 
would have as much to do with space exploration as Monopoly has 
to do with real estate development. 

Monopoly isn't really about anything. But it has the color of a 
real estate game: named properties, little plastic houses and 
hotels, play money. And that's a big part of its appeal. 

Color counts for a lot: as a simulation of World War II, Lawrence 
Harris's Axis & Allies is a pathetic effort. Ah, but the color! 
Millions of little plastic airplanes and battleships and tanks! 
Thundering dice! The world at war! The game works almost solely 
because of its color. 

Or consider Chadwick's Space 1899. The rules do nothing to evoke 
the Burroughsian wonders, the pulp action thrills, the 
Kiplingesque Victorian charms to be gained from the game's 
setting. Despite a clean system and a detailed world, it is 
curiously colorless, and suffers for it. 

Pageantry and detail and sense of place can greatly add to a 
game's emotional appeal. 

This has almost nothing to do with the game qua game; the 
original Nova edition of Axis & Allies was virtually identical 
to the Milton Bradley edition. Except that it had a godawful 
garish paper map, some of the ugliest counters I've ever seen, 
and a truly amateurish box. I looked at it once, put it away, 
and never looked at it again. 

Yet the Milton Bradley edition, with all the little plastic 
pieces, still gets pulled out now and again... Same game. Far 
better color. 

How does the game evoke the ethos and atmosphere and pageantry of 
its setting? What can you do to make it more colorful? 

Simulation

Many games simulate nothing. The oriental folk-game Go, say; 
little stones on a grid. It's abstract to perfection. Or John 
Horton Conway's Life; despite the evocative name, it's merely an 
exploration of a mathematical space. 

Nothing wrong with that. But. 

But color adds to a game's appeal. And simulation is a way of 
providing color. 

Suppose I think, for some reason, that a game on Waterloo would 
have great commercial appeal. I could, if I wanted, take 
Monopoly, change "Park Place" to "Quatre Bras" and the hotels to 
plastic soldiers, and call it Waterloo. It would work. 

But wouldn't it be better to simulate the battle? To have little 
battalions maneuvering over the field? To hear the thunder of 
guns? 

Or take Star Wars: The Roleplaying Game, which I designed. I 
could have taken Gygax & Arneson's Dungeons & Dragons and changed 
it around, calling swords blasters and the like. But instead, I 
set out to simulate the movies, to encourage the players to 
attempt far-fetched cinematic stunts, to use the system itself 
to reflect something about the atmosphere and ethos of the 
films. 

Simulation has other value, too. For one, it improves character 
identification. A Waterloo based on Monopoly would do nothing to 
make players think like Wellington and Napoleon; Kevin Zucker's 
Napoleon's Last Battles does much better, forcing players to 
think about the strategic problems those men faced. 

And it can allow insight into a situation that mere narrative 
cannot. It allows players to explore different outcomes -- in 
the fashion of a software toy -- and thereby come to a gut 
understanding of the simulation's subject. Having played at 
least a dozen different games on Waterloo, I understand the 
battle, and why things happened the way they did, and the nature 
of Napoleonic warfare, far better than if I had merely read a 
dozen books on the subject. 

Simulating something almost always is more complicated that 
simply exploiting a theme for color. And it is not, therefore, 
for every game. But when the technique is used, it can be quite 
powerful. 

How can elements of simulation strengthen the game? 

Variety of Encounter

"You just got lucky." 

Words of contempt; you won through the vagaries of chance. A game 
that permits this is obviously inferior to ones where victory 
goes to the skilled and smart and strong. Right? 

Not necessarily. 

"Random elements" in a game are never wholly random. They are 
random within a range of possibilities. When, in a board 
wargame, I make an attack, I can look at the Combat Results 
Table. I know what outcomes are possible, and my chances of 
achieving what I want to achieve. I take a calculated risk. And 
over the whole game, I make dozens or hundreds of die-rolls; 
given so much reliance on randomness, the "random element" 
regresses to a mean. Except in rare cases, my victory or defeat 
will be based on my excellence as a strategist, not on my luck 
with the dice. 

Randomness can be useful. It's one way of providing variety of 
encounter. 

And what does that mean? 

It means that the same old thing all over again is fucking 
boring. It means that players like to encounter the unexpected. 
It means that the game has to allow lots of different things to 
happen, so there's always something a little different for the 
players to encounter. 

In a game like Chess, that "something different" is the 
ever-changing implications of the positions of the pieces. In a 
game like Richard Garfield's Magic: The Gathering, it's the 
sheer variety of cards, and the random order in which they 
appear, and the interesting ways in which they can be combined. 
In Arneson & Gygax's Dungeons & Dragons, it's the staggering 
variety of monsters, spells, etc., etc., coupled with the 
gamemaster's ingenuity in throwing new situations at his 
players. 

If a game has inadequate variety, it rapidly palls. That's why no 
one plays graphic adventures more than once; there's enough 
variety for a single game, but it's the same thing all over 
again the next time you play. That's why Patience, the solitaire 
cardgame, becomes dull pretty fast; you're doing the same things 
over and over, and reshuffling the cards isn't enough to 
rekindle your interest, after a time. 

What things do the players encounter in this game? Are there 
enough things for them to explore and discover? What provides 
variety? How can we increase the variety of encounter? 

Position Identification

"Character identification" is a common theme of fiction. Writers 
want readers to like their protagonists, to identify with them, 
to care what happens to them. Character identification lends 
emotional power to a story. 

The same is true in games. To the degree you encourage playes to 
care about "the side," to identify with their position in the 
game, you increase the game's emotional impact. 

The extreme case is sports; in sports, your "position" is you. 
You're out there on the baseball diamond, and winning or losing 
matters, and you feel it deeply when you strike out, or smash 
the ball out of the park. It's important to you. 

So important that fistfights and bitter words are not uncommon, 
in every sport. So important that we've invented a whole cultural 
tradition of "sportsmanship" to try to prevent these unpleasant 
feelings from coming to the fore. 

Roleplaying games are one step abstracted; your character isn't 
you, but you invest a lot of time and energy in it. It's your 
sole token and the sum total of your position in the game. 
Bitter words, and even fistfights, are not unknown among 
roleplayers, though rather rarer than in sports. 

Getting players to identify with their game position is 
straightforward when a player has a single token; it's harder 
when he controls many. Few people feel much sadness at the loss 
of a knight in Chess or an infantry division in a wargame. But 
even here, a game's emotional power is improved if the player 
can be made to feel identification with "the side." 

One way to do that is to make clear the player's point of view. 
Point of view confusion is a common failing of boardgame 
designers. For instance, Richard Berg's Campaigns for North 
Africa claims to be an extraordinary realistic simulation of the 
Axis campaign in Africa. Yet you, as player, spend a great deal 
of time worrying about the locations of individual pilots and 
how much water is available to individual batallions. Rommel's 
staff might worry about such things, but Rommel assuredly did 
not. Who are you supposed to be? The accuracy of the simulation 
is, in a sense, undermined, not supported, by the level of 
detail. 

What can you do to make the player care about his position? Is 
there a single game token that's more important than others to 
the player, and what can be done to strengthen identification 
with it? If not, what is the overall emotional appeal of the 
position, and what can be done to strengthen that appeal? Who 
"is" the player in the game? What is his point of view? 

Roleplaying

HeroQuest has been termed a "roleplaying boardgame." And, as in a 
roleplaying game, each player controls a single character which, 
in HeroQuest's case, is a single plastic figure on the board. If 
you are a single character, are you not "playing a role?" And is 
the characterization of this game as a "roleplaying" game 
therefore justified? 

No, to both questions. 

The questions belie confusion between "position identification" 
and "roleplaying." I may identify closely with a game token 
without feeling that I am playing a role. 

Roleplaying occurs when, in some sense, you take on the persona 
of your position. Different players, and different games, may do 
this in different ways: perhaps you try to speak in the language 
and rhythm of your character. Perhaps you talk as if you are 
feeling the emotions your character talks. Perhaps you talk as 
you normally do, but you give serious consideration to "what my 
character would do in this case" as opposed to "what I want to 
do next." 

Roleplaying is most common in, naturally, roleplaying games. But 
it can occur in other environments, as well; I, for one, can't 
get through a game of Vincent Tsao's Junta without talking in a 
phony Spanish accent somewhere along the line. The game makes me 
think enough like a big man in a corrupt banana republic that I 
start to play the role. 

Roleplaying is a powerful technique for a whole slew of reasons. 
It improves position identification; if you think like your 
character, you're identifying with him closely. It improves the 
game's color, because the players become partly responsible for 
maintaining the willing suspense of disbelief, the feeling that 
the game world is alive and colorful and consistent. And it is 
an excellent method of socialization. 

Indeed, the connection with socialization is key: roleplaying is 
a form of performance. In a roleplaying game, roleplayers 
perform for the amusement of their friends. If there aren't any 
friends, there's no point to it. 

Which is why "computer roleplaying games", so-called, are nothing 
of the kind. They have no more connection with roleplaying than 
does HeroQuest. That is, they have the trappings of roleplaying: 
characters, equipment, stories. But there is no mechanism for 
players to ham it up, to characterize themselves by their 
actions, to roleplay in any meaningful sense. 

This is intrinsic in the technology. Computer games are 
solitaire; solitaire gamers have, by definition, no audience. 
Therefore, computer games cannot involve roleplaying. 

Add a network, and you can have a roleplaying game. Hence the 
popularity of MUDs. 

How can players be induced to roleplay? What sorts of roles does 
the system permit or encourage? 

Socializing

Historically, games have mainly been used as a way to socialize. 
For players of Bridge, Poker, and Charades, the game is 
secondary to the socialization that goes on over the table. 

One oddity of the present is that the most commercially 
successful games are all solitary in nature: cart games, 
disk-based computer games, CD- ROM games. Once upon a time, our 
image of gamers was some people sitting around a table and 
playing cards; now, it's a solitary adolescent, twitching a 
joystick before a flickering screen. 

Yet, at the same time, we see the development of roleplaying, in 
both tabletop and live-action form, which depend utterly on 
socialization. And we see that the most successful mass-market 
boardgames, like Trivial Pursuit and Pictionary are played 
almost exclusively in social settings. 

I have to believe that the solitary nature of most computer games 
is a temporary aberration, a consequence of the technology, and 
that as networks spread and their bandwidth increases, the 
historical norm will reassert itself. 

When designing any game, it is worthwhile to think about the 
game's social uses, and how the system encourages or discourages 
socialization. For instance, almost every network has online 
versions of classic games like poker and bridge. And in almost 
every case, those games have failed to attract much useage. 

The exception: America Online, which permits real-time chat 
between players. Their version of network bridge allows for 
table talk. And it has been quite popular. 

Or as another example, many tabletop roleplaying games spend far 
too much effort worrying about "realism" and far too little 
about the game's use by players. Of what use is a combat system 
that is extraordinarily realistic, if playing out a single 
combat round takes fifteen minutes, and a whole battle takes 
four hours? They're not spending their time socializing and 
talking and hamming it up; they're spending time rolling dice 
and looking things up on charts. What's the point in that? 

How can the game better encourage socialization? 

Narrative Tension

Nebula-award winning author Pat Murphy says that the key element 
of plot is "rising tension." That is, a story should become more 
gripping as it proceeds, until its ultimate climactic 
resolution. 

Suppose you're a Yankees fan. Of course, you want to see the 
Yankees win. But if you go to a game at the ballpark, do you 
really want to see them develop a 7 point lead in the first 
inning and wind up winning 21 to 2? Yes, you want them to win, 
but this doesn't make for a very interesting game. What would 
make you rise from your seat in excitement and joy is to see 
them pull out from behind in the last few seconds of the game 
with a smash homerun with bases loaded. Tension makes for fun 
games. 

Ideally, a game should be tense all the way through, but 
especially so at the end. The toughest problems, the greatest 
obstacles, should be saved for last. You can't always ensure 
this, especially in directly-competitive games: a chess game 
between a grandmaster and a rank beginner is not going to 
involve much tension. But, especially in solitaire computer 
games, it should be possible to ensure that every stage of the 
game involves a set of challenges, and that the player's job is 
done only at the end. 

In fact, one of the most common game failures is anticlimax. The 
period of maximum tension is not the resolution, but somewhere 
mid-way through the game. After a while, the opposition is on the 
run, or the player's position is unassailable. In most cases, 
this is because the designer never considered the need for 
narrative tension. 

What can be done to make the game tense? 

They're All Alike Under the Dice. Or Phosphors. Or What Have You.

We're now equipped to answer the questions I posed at the 
beginning of this article. 

Do all the myriad forms of gaming have anything in common? Most 
assuredly. All involve decision making, managing resources in 
pursuit of a goal; that's true whether we're talking about Chess 
or Seventh Guest, Mario Brothers or Vampire, Roulette or Magic: 
The Gathering. It's a universal; it's what defines a game. 

How can you tell a good game from a bad one? The test is still in 
the playing; but we now have some terms to use to analyze a 
game's appeal. Chess involves complex and difficult decisions; 
Magic has enormous variety of encounter; Roulette has an 
extremely compelling goal (money--the real stuff). More detailed 
analysis is possible, to be sure, and is left as an exercise for 
the reader. 

Is the analytical theory presented here hermetic and complete? 
Assuredly not; there are games that defy many, though not all, of 
its conclusions (e.g., Candyland, which inolves no decision 
making whatsoever). And no doubt there are aspects to the appeal 
of games it overlooks. 

It is to be considered a work in progress: a first stab at 
codifying the intellectual analysis of the art of game design. 
Others are welcome, even encouraged, to build on its structure 
-- or to propound alternative theories in its defiance. 

If we are to produce works worthy to be termed "art," we must 
start to think about what it takes to do so, to set ourselves 
goals beyond the merely commercial. For we are embarked on a 
voyage of revolutionary import: the democrative transformation 
of the arts. Properly addressed, the voyage will lend granduer 
to our civilization; improperly, it will create merely another 
mediocrity of the TV age, another form wholly devoid of 
intellectual merit. 


The author wishes to acknowledge the contributions of Chris 
Crawford, Will Wright, Eric Goldberg, Ken Rolston, Doug Kaufman, 
Jim Dunnigan, Tappan King, Sandy Peterson, and Walt Freitag, 
whose ideas he has liberally stolen. 


Orthographical Note: In normal practice, the names of traditional 
games, e.g., chess, go, poker, are uncapitalized, as is usual 
with common nouns. The names of proprietary games are written 
with Initial Caps. This usage is inconsistent with the thesis 
that games are an artform, and that each game, regardless of its 
origins, must be viewed as an ouevre. I capitalize all game 
names, throughout the article. 

We capitalize Beowulf, though it is the product of folk tradition 
rather than a definite author, just as we capitalize One Hundred 
Years of Solitude. In the same fashion, I capitalize Chess, 
though it is the product of folk tradition rather than a 
definite designer, just as I capitalize Dungeons & Dragons. It 
may seem odd, at first, to see Chess treated as a title, but I 
have done so for particular reasons. 

I have also, whenever possible, attempted to mention a game's 
designer upon its first mention. When I have omitted a name, it 
is because I do not know it. 


Copyright 1994 by Greg Costikyan. All Rights Reserved. Comments 
may be directed to costik at crossover.com . For more information 
about Interactive Fantasy, contact journal at aslan.demon.co.uk or 
write Hogshead Publishing Ltd., 29a Abbeville Rd, London, SW4 
9LA. 

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