[MUD-Dev] I have no words and I must design

[Adam Wiggins]

> 
> 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. 
> 
> --<cut>--
> 
> -- 
> J C Lawrence                           Internet: claw at null.net
> (Contractor)                           Internet: coder at ibm.net
> ---------------(*)               Internet: clawrenc at cup.hp.com
> ...Honorary Member Clan McFUD -- Teamer's Avenging Monolith...
> 
> 
>