[HN Gopher] Game design is simple
___________________________________________________________________
Game design is simple
Author : vrnvu
Score : 498 points
Date : 2025-11-06 22:24 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.raphkoster.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.raphkoster.com)
| henning wrote:
| Nothing asserted here is simple. And after reading all that it's
| still hard to design and build a game that will cut through the
| noise of all the other games coming out on Steam.
|
| It's not a matter of "simple vs. easy". If you have to write many
| words to list your ideas and you state each idea is deep and
| connected to all the other ideas, the thing you are talking about
| is not simple.
| TillE wrote:
| This is an extremely interesting article about game design and
| it's a bit silly to fixate on the title.
| madsushi wrote:
| I think it's tongue-in-cheek.
| alstonite wrote:
| This feels like a classic example of the concept that simple [?]
| easy
| godelski wrote:
| In that sense most things are simple. Though it's also simple
| to over simplify. Since often simplicity arises out of the
| accumulation of expert analysis rather than being obvious from
| the get go. Which I think is just as important as what you say:
| Simple != easy Simple != obvious Simple !=
| intuitive Simple != easy to understand
|
| I think if people remembered these things then things would be
| more simple. I'll add one more relationship
| Elegant == Simple Simple != elegant
| philipov wrote:
| Simple means not complex, means not composed of even simpler
| parts. A twelve step plan is literally a list of simpler
| parts, making it not simple. Most things _are_ complex, since
| there are so many ways to combine simples. It is an ironic
| title.
| throwaway8xak92 wrote:
| > Simple means not complex, means not composed of even
| simpler parts.
|
| Is that formally defined and widely accepted? If not, I
| don't think your argument holds because almost nothing is
| simple based on what you said.
| nkrisc wrote:
| > Simple means not complex, means not composed of even
| simpler parts.
|
| "Simple" is obviously subjective and context-dependent, but
| I don't agree with that.
|
| Getting a bowl of cereal is simple, yet still composed of
| several simple steps.
| godelski wrote:
| > Simple means not complex
|
| I disagree. Most things are complex, yet most things are
| also simple.
|
| Don't forget that words are overloaded so they only mean
| things in context. Words are both simple and complex
| because of this.
|
| As an example: the rules to the game of life are simple.
| The outcomes are complex. The rules cannot even be
| decomposed further, making them first principles of that
| universe. > means not composed of even
| simpler parts
|
| These would really be "first principles". Which is a form
| of simplicity. Being the simplest something can be, yet
| that sentence itself conveys that "simple" relies on
| context and in a continuum.
|
| This relationship of "simple yet complex" is quite common.
| We could say the same thing about chaotic functions like
| the double pendulum. It is both simple and complex.
| IshKebab wrote:
| Yeah kind of feels like "writing a hit novel is simple - you
| just need a plot that is engaging, well written prose, and a
| satisfying story arc".
|
| I mean... yeah kind of obvs. Very "rest of the owl".
| christophilus wrote:
| Well, that wouldn't give you a "hit" novel. That would give
| you a good novel. Hit != Good
| PostOnce wrote:
| For reference Raph Koster wrote "the book" on game design, and
| was the lead designer for Ultima Online (among other things)
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raph_Koster
| animex wrote:
| Raph was the lead game designer on SWTOR a game that was way
| ahead of it's time and one of the most enjoyable sandbox
| mmorpg's I've ever played. I'm working on a new game that will
| take inspiration from lessons learned there.
| starkparker wrote:
| I remember when Raph was working on Metaplace[1], which was a
| kid-targeting, programmable (Lua dialect), virtual world/user
| generated content factory that was contemporary to the launch
| of Roblox ca. 2006-2007. I wonder quite often what things
| might be like if Metaplace had gotten to the scale and scope
| that Roblox wound up achieving.
|
| 1: https://www.raphkoster.com/2007/09/18/metaplace/, or this
| demo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tZiB_JcRH_s, or
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metaplace
| vkou wrote:
| What was interesting/worked about it's design (and why did
| the players care?[1])
|
| Was it resilient to the, uh, many, many well-documented
| problems that the genre pushes players/itself into?
|
| ---
|
| [1] There's a lot of ideas in this space that sound
| interesting on paper to nerds bikeshedding, but often fall
| flat in actual implementation. I'm curious as to what were
| the ones that worked.
| tekbruh9000 wrote:
| Game was SWG, not SWTOR. Launched in 2003 and was sunset in
| 2011 when SWTOR launched.
|
| SWG set out to be something like Dwarf Fortress in terms of
| depth to the worlds physics; for example, gunsmiths could
| tinker on all parts of a gun and maybe get a lucky roll to
| unlock +N more damage or -N recoil. Same with land vehicles
| and bioengineered animals, droids. Parameters to noodle all
| the way down. Some under user control, others random to
| foster sense of a chaotic physical world.
|
| As the in game object economy was entirely propped up by
| crafters this fostered economic PVP.
|
| Lucasarts of 2000-2003, when the game was developed, did
| not understand MMO, and 3D games take much longer than 2D
| adventure games and shoved it out the door 2 years too
| early.
|
| It also suffered from 90s OOP heavy software development
| patterns. Devs had difficulty managing it and updating over
| the years.
|
| Ultimately it failed at being a Star Wars game. PVE was
| just "kill a nest of bugs" and failed to leverage
| storylines and characters. Players with nothing else to do
| ended up ruling the economy or whatever. Could have made
| them compete against Star Wars power brokers, IMO. Jabba
| sabotaged your factory, or something. Once a player was
| kitted out they had nothing to do.
|
| Some have spent the last 10+ years implementing a server
| emulator, various tools and mods. An emulator built around
| the original release is here: https://github.com/swgemu
|
| I tinker on a modded private server now and then. Initially
| added in random world events, to generate things to go do
| and replacing odd design decisions like mission terminals
| with NPC models to talk to in that seedy back alley, to
| foster more in world RP vibe.
|
| When WOW launched SWG was redesigned to play more like
| that. Typical MBA "copy paste what they are doing" project
| management.
| ehnto wrote:
| Oh wow it was SWG?
|
| It truly was ahead of its time, I don't think any one
| game has come close to implementing such a rewarding
| group of systems and economy in an MMORPG, except maybe
| EVE but that is a very different game and admittedly I
| did not find EVE fun.
|
| The most exciting systems to me had very little to do
| with combat, but especially as it pertains to this
| article, also couldn't be as rewarding without it. It was
| all the player run economies, homsteads, towns and
| cities, player shops, craftsman and markets. The fact
| that materials mined had quality which impacted item
| stats, on and on.
|
| To get good gear, you had to know a guy who made it, they
| had to know a guy who'd mined good quality minerals, and
| that person may have found the minerals through another
| player who had prospected it.
|
| It made sense to be part of a player city, so you could
| put your house in a known market area for people to
| visit.
|
| It all mattered because people needed the equipment to go
| do the quests, and so it was a really symbiotic set of
| systems that made crafting and economy matter.
| codebje wrote:
| The skill tree system was so nice compared to the rigid
| class systems of other MMORPGs, too.
|
| The fact that player towns just emerged was really cool.
|
| It was such a shame the space expansion was so ... flat.
| Neither space nor ground had a storyline to follow, but
| space wasn't an open world, and had no real element of
| choice in skill paths.
| tekbruh9000 wrote:
| PVE was indeed awful. Especially given the back drop; it
| should have been full of adventure across the galaxy,
| established characters messing with players, but was
| merely "run here and kill 6 kobolds". NPC AI sucked.
|
| Would love to strip from my private server, NPC
| generation as-is as implementation is static and does not
| allow dynamic responses. Replace it with modern agents to
| connect like players and train them to build out the
| world like players can.
|
| Also started a project to make a new client using video
| and segmentation, gen AI to recreate initial game engine
| entities as Godot scenes to have full control.
|
| Too little time for either, initial code has sat
| untouched for years.
| ehnto wrote:
| > Also started a project to make a new client using video
| and segmentation, gen AI to recreate initial game engine
| entities as Godot scenes to have full control.
|
| That sounds fascinating, I've been working in godot for a
| few projects now. I'd be interested to know how you would
| integrate the Godot scenes into the current engine, or if
| it would be an entirely new client.
| tekbruh9000 wrote:
| My plan was/is entirely new client, mapped client state
| to SWG emulator server.
|
| Godot is a pain given my workflow is pretty cli heavy
| though. Since I last touched that project I looked into
| switching to Wicked Engine. Just include C/C++ headers
| rather than Godot.
|
| But job got interesting (am an EE in hardware development
| land) and I have to spend free time diving into AI model
| architecture to keep up. Both SWG projects have sat idle
| for 10-12 months now. _shrug_
| ehnto wrote:
| I enjoyed the new aspect ships brought to crafting, and
| there's something special about walking around your own
| ship while it's in transit. But otherwise totally agree,
| it was kind of just space combat arenas and not much
| more.
| codebje wrote:
| I had a collector's edition 3-man transport ship, but
| IIRC the novelty of standing on the ship while in transit
| wore off before the beta ended. Cool, but too shallow on
| its own.
|
| I can't figure out if the open world game was fun enough
| just on its own that an open space game would've been
| chef's kiss, or if it did need some kind of story telling
| too. It's too long ago to remember well enough, for me.
| zf00002 wrote:
| To me I really liked the fact that when you made your
| character in SWG (1 per server too), you are just a
| civilian. There's no light/dark side or
| rebellion/imperial choice to make, you're just a regular
| person in the galaxy. You are NOT the hero.
| bavell wrote:
| Loved the economy in SWG! Best part for sure. Played a
| little SWG emu as well at some point
| ArlenBales wrote:
| > Raph was the lead game designer on SWTOR a game that was
| way ahead of it's time
|
| I think you meant Star Wars Galaxies, which was definitely
| ahead of its time and few MMORPGS have replicated its sandbox
| MMORPG since.
| esafak wrote:
| Someone should convince Richard Garriott and Sid Meier to write
| too.
| teamonkey wrote:
| Tim Cain (Fallout) has an excellent Youtube channel.
| a13o wrote:
| I wouldn't say A Theory of Fun is "the book." It's more a
| coffee table read. "The book" is Jesse Schell's The Art of Game
| Design
| sph wrote:
| I've come across this kind of comment elsewhere, and the
| recommendation was that "the book" is Designing Games by
| Tynan Sylvester (the author of Rimworld)
|
| https://tynansylvester.com/book/
|
| Haven't read it yet myself.
| meheleventyone wrote:
| I'd say there's no such thing as 'the book' for game design
| and which you will jive with largely depends on your
| preferences and values around games.
| deaddodo wrote:
| Also your style. Game design is influenced by the mind of
| the designer. Some take a systematic, methodical approach
| to it. While others treat it like a painting, designing
| as they go from a core of an idea. And others go full ad
| hoc, with multiple prototypical designs until they find
| something that hits.
|
| This is oversimplifying, most designers fall into a
| bucket of mixed styles; but the point is, no "book" will
| be perfect for all. Same as with software engineering,
| graphic design, etc.
| runevault wrote:
| Tynan's book is popular, but in my limited experience the
| first book most people recommend for anyone looking into
| design is Book of Lenses. Mind you I think both are worth
| reading. Lenses is just a more systemic and deeper dive.
| bavell wrote:
| I can definitely recommend it!
| rstupek wrote:
| What about old school Chris Crawford's book "The Art of
| Computer Game Design"?
| cloud_watching wrote:
| The title is ironic. Game design is very simple indeed.
|
| This is an amazing article. I work on game design and I think
| this could work as a map of the terrain.
| b00ty4breakfast wrote:
| the complexity of a given domain is not necessarily an indication
| of it's difficulty. I suspect that a guy of Koster's experience
| and reputation knows that and is making a spicy title for the
| clicks.
| andrewflnr wrote:
| He's pretty clear about it towards the bottom. Roughly "any
| paragraph in this essay could be a book".
| MattRix wrote:
| For the people taking the title literally without apparently
| reading the article:
|
| > Put another way -- every single paragraph in this essay could
| be a book.
| Animats wrote:
| It's more like someone ran a PowerPoint presentation through a
| converter that makes a web site. There's good stuff in there,
| but the presentation is clearly a slide deck.
| zwaps wrote:
| This reads like the handbook for people making grind-based games.
| Sure enough, the author exclusively works in the mmorpg space.
|
| If you are a game designer, please take this with a grain of
| salt.
|
| Fun does not equal repeated challenges. And let me also reject
| the implicit notion that stories are entertainment but not,
| academically speaking, fun.
| gafferongames wrote:
| Have you made any games?
| gafferongames wrote:
| I ask this because Ralph is a luminary in the field and you
| just likened his contribution to the industry to that of
| somebody who designs predatory engagement loops and this is
| _utterly ridiculous_.
| pxc wrote:
| I thought your comment was too dismissive at first, but
| then I read the whole article, and I fully agree with it.
|
| The article gives useful theoretical tools for
| understanding and critiquing such shallow games, actually.
| Its examples are drawn from many genres, and it's
| thoughtful and insightful about many kinds and aspects of
| games.
|
| The comment you call out with your question is indeed a
| low-effort and low-quality dismissal. I struggle to
| describe it without being more insulting than that.
| meheleventyone wrote:
| The important thing to note is that Raph's ideas are in
| the formalist camp and there other competing theories
| about game design. The criticism made in the parent of
| the thread has been a common one since Theory of Fun was
| first published. With artistic disciplines like game
| design you often have multiple ways of looking at similar
| things that are more about the values of the author than
| any one view being more inherently correct.
| spacechild1 wrote:
| Just wanted to say that I _really_ appreciated your articles
| about game networking and game physics
| (https://gafferongames.com/)!
| gafferongames wrote:
| Thank you!
| jay_kyburz wrote:
| I've played about 20 hours of Arc Raiders and I'm already a
| little bored of fishing stuff out of draws and lockers. These
| days I mostly just hunt Arc, or other players that shoot at me
| first.
|
| It's kind of hard to stay equipped without salvaging though.
| EdwardDiego wrote:
| > And let me also reject the implicit notion that stories are
| entertainment but not, academically speaking, fun.
|
| Stories are obviously fun, otherwise no-one would read books,
| but a story that you interact with meaningfully, that you can
| change significantly, really hard to do well.
|
| Like every game where you can do good thing or bad thing, and
| the game punishes you for doing bad thing. It's really hard to
| write a compelling story where a nasty piece of shit still
| somehow saves the Fantasy Kingdom from the Prophesised Doom and
| becomes the hero.
|
| I honestly cant't think of any good examples where game
| mechanics and stories interacted in a way that gave you
| significant agency while still being fun. I'd love to be given
| contra-examples though.
|
| I think of the Mass Effect games and their attempts at this,
| "Oh you were only 92% Paragon, so now we're at the end, _this_
| crew-member has to die for some reason, if only you'd known
| that 30 hours of gameplay ago when you punched that grifter in
| the Citadel!"
|
| Or one I still bear a massive, MASSIVE grudge against, Fable
| III, where if you didn't massively grind for resources before
| the bit you thought was the end-game - where you fought and
| defeated the evil oppressive king, you found yourself making
| ridiculously stupid binary decisions like "Should this multi-
| storey building be used as an orphanage? Or as a whore-house?"
| That's literally one of the decisions you had to make. Oh, and
| the game made sure to tell you "Btw, because you didn't grind
| enough, if you choose the way that earns less money, EVERY ONE
| DIES BECAUSE YOU WANTED TO HELP THE ORPHANS."
|
| It was an interesting attempt, to be sure, a brave experiment
| but I resented the game so much for the heel turn it pulled -
| "Actually, the evil oppressive money grubbing king you
| overthrew was RIGHT! Now you have to do what he was doing!
| Mwahahaha! Irony!"
|
| Worst of all, it never let me make nuanced choices - why can't
| it be orphans downstairs, sex workers upstairs, and during the
| daytime, I pay the sex-workers to look after the orphans? Nope,
| it was either "look after the innocent children" or "four
| floors of whores". Complete with animations of crying children
| if you chose sex-workers. Or crying sex-workers if you chose
| the children. Once again, not kidding.
|
| Once you knew the heel-turn twist, you could game it massively
| beforehand, one of the best strategies was to buy properties,
| become an incredibly oppressive landlord by demanding
| extortionate rents, so when it came time for the
| "orphans/whores" decisions, you had so much money you could
| could choose the good path and everyone declared you a saint.
|
| But I felt so disrespected by the game that I didn't even
| bother.
|
| That's the problem - good stories need direction towards a
| satisfying end, and it's really hard to give a player agency in
| a good narrative, and so I felt railroaded into comically
| absurd black/white choices.
|
| Honestly, I think the only games that have ever done the
| good/evil choices in a story well were the Knights of The Old
| Republic series, but once again, it stopped being so much fun
| when I had to keep on being evil because I'd chosen evil stuff
| prior.
|
| Can't I just be evil today, and maybe a bit nice tomorrow?
| After all, the best villains are the mercurial ones.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| It's definitely hard to do and since I haven't played those
| games much I can't really answer accurately, but does Larian
| (Baldur's Gate 3) do a better job?
|
| I think the main problem with Fable or Mass Effect was that
| the game wants to converge to one of a few endings, but
| definitely for ME there's a bajillion decisions you can make
| until you get there.
|
| I don't know if you can get rid of this "definite" ending
| thing per se; some games say they have X amount of endings,
| but again, I can't really name any. It's probably more
| gratifying to have more self-contained sub-stories where the
| decisions made e.g. an hour ago have an effect on the
| progression and outcome, but not too much longer than that.
| You should have the choice as a player to switch from e.g.
| "good" to "evil" partway through your playthrough. References
| back to previous quests and their outcomes are nice but
| shouldn't be as heavy as "your one choice made 30 hours ago
| affect the ending of the game in a significant and
| irreversible way"
| rnoorda wrote:
| I enjoy the way Baldur's Gate 3 implements this- choices
| tend to align more along character axes than good/evil.
| There are indications for many small dialogue choices that
| say "Karlach approves" or "Astarion disapproves" to give
| you a sense of each character's values and personality, and
| they each have their own motivations. Some are more
| traditionally good or evil, but they all have reasons for
| doing what they do.
|
| Choices occasionally feel fairly binary good/evil, but more
| often all choices have their pros & cons, and it's more
| about story and narrative in making my decisions.
| Lichtso wrote:
| > I honestly cant't think of any good examples where game
| mechanics and stories interacted in a way that gave you
| significant agency while still being fun. I'd love to be
| given contra-examples though.
|
| Rimworld and The Sims. Both are procedural story writers.
|
| > I felt railroaded into comically absurd black/white choices
|
| I agree: All these AAA titles essentially are movies where
| you get tons of "agency" in choices which are irrelevant to
| the story, but the main plot is hard scripted into a few
| predetermined paths.
|
| Until we have full generative AI as game engine the only
| alternative remains the procedural approach mentioned in the
| beginning.
| crabmusket wrote:
| I remember being quite impressed at the way Alpha Protocol
| handles player agency, but it has been a long time so I
| couldn't give you specifics.
| cwillu wrote:
| ""I asked Professor Quirrell why he'd laughed," the boy said
| evenly, "after he awarded Hermione those hundred points. And
| Professor Quirrell said, these aren't his exact words, but
| it's pretty much what he said, that he'd found it
| tremendously amusing that the great and good Albus Dumbledore
| had been sitting there doing nothing as this poor innocent
| girl begged for help, while he had been the one to defend
| her. And he told me then that by the time good and moral
| people were done tying themselves up in knots, what they
| usually did was nothing; or, if they did act, you could
| hardly tell them apart from the people called bad. Whereas he
| could help innocent girls any time he felt like it, because
| he wasn't a good person. And that I ought to remember that,
| any time I considered growing up to be good."" --hpmor
| onraglanroad wrote:
| I'm not quite sure what point quoting that was supposed to
| make.
|
| Perhaps that Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality
| (that's what the hpmor at the end means) is such an
| appallingly written piece of... I hesitate to use the word
| literature... that you wanted to demonstrate how not to
| write?
| Tade0 wrote:
| Personally what I find off-putting is throwing around the term
| "dopamine". Yeah, there's a link and all, but why include this
| bit?
|
| > Dopamine can release for 'richly interpretable' situations
|
| Ok, and? I mean, Oh, right. The dopamine. The dopamine for
| gamers, the dopamine chosen especially to entertain gamers,
| gamers' dopamine. That dopamine?
| tgv wrote:
| It's a gripe of mine too. There's a tenuous link at best, and
| it may not mean what is commonly assumed. If you want to say
| "it can give pleasure or joy," just say so. Don't invoke a
| rather indirect, pseudo-scientific, bullshit argument.
| avandekleut wrote:
| not to mention that dopamine is generally associated with
| anticipation and searching + reinforcing behaviours, whereas
| pleasure and satisfaction is associated with the opiate
| system
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| If you look at most games, they're all repeated challenges, but
| some are so good that you don't see or experience them as such.
|
| Others are very obvious though; MMORPGs are the obvious answer
| and they often don't even have an interesting story or reward
| to go with the grind, because the reward is a gamble. Ubisoft
| games are another example, ever since the first Assassin's
| Creed their games have generally been the same formula of an
| overworld with a lot of repeated but sameish "quests". The
| Division series combines the two with randomized, chance based
| loot. (...coincidentally I'm playing that one right now).
|
| But yeah, the "repeated challenges" thing is best left to that
| particular class of games. Some people realy enjoy it though.
| the_af wrote:
| Some pushback to this: I understand MMORPGS are addictive,
| but for some reason I was never hooked, so their "repetitive"
| aspect is a negative to me.
|
| For Assassin's Creed, it was so repetitive even within the
| same game (the first one) I couldn't even finish it once I
| noticed the grind. It drove me nuts.
|
| A lot of games then followed that pattern (e.g. Shadow of
| Mordor, Mad Max, and I'm sure countless others -- I just
| mention the ones I tried). I find some of their mechanics
| interesting but once the grind kicks in (which is fairly
| soon, since these sandbox games are all grind-based) I
| despair and abandon them.
|
| They feel like repetitive work rather than entertaining to
| me.
|
| But hear this: Papers, Please, a game that is _literally_ a
| bureaucracy simulator, engages me in a way Assassin 's Creed
| never could. I wonder why! (Random guess: I think it's
| because PP, for all its repetitiveness, feels like a small
| game, while Assassin's Creed and its like feel like endless
| games you could spend your life within... and I have better
| things to do with my life).
| teamonkey wrote:
| Variety is very important.
|
| In the case of the first Assassin's Creed, I'd argue that
| the "toy" (running around, climbing buildings, challenging
| yourself to seamless parkour runs, stabbing guards etc.) is
| a lot of fun, but to progress the game forces you to do
| those fun things in a series of very rigid, repetitive,
| arbitrary challenges that can be difficult without adding
| anything new, and which block the story progression behind
| a checklist.
|
| Papers Please has simple mechanics, but makes the player
| balance a lot of different factors while offering a steady
| stream of surprises and new situations to consider.
|
| There's an element of personal preference too, of course.
| mawadev wrote:
| For me... Assassins creed gives me fomo. I move 100m and I
| probably missed something... very unpleasant. I can't
| describe it. That world and activity doesnt fit in my head.
| Razengan wrote:
| Yeah, imagine playing the same level in a single player game
| 100 times just to get 1 piece of loot..unless it's a roguelike
| :')
| astrobe_ wrote:
| That "Fun" is a _de gustibus_ sort of thing is the important
| point. I wonder if there is something like relationships
| between the various flavors of fun, or if one can infer good
| "collateral fun" activities from the main genre.
|
| For instance, I think that puzzles are ok in Mass Effect, but
| the many mini-games in Final Fantasy 7 are borderline annoying.
| neogodless wrote:
| Perhaps you didn't read the article, or you did and failed to
| grasp the key points about the "game spiral" or unpredictable
| things becoming predictable?
|
| But let's simplify this. What are your favorite games, and in
| what way do they sidestep having any repeated challenges? Do
| they have one single challenge, after which the game is over?
| Is that fun?
|
| Sure, RPGs tend to have "repeated" battles or harvesting.
| Racing has repeated laps. FPS have repeatedly finding someone
| else to shoot. Coding simulators like _Factorio_ have you
| repeatedly add automation, and repeatedly replace them with
| better automation. Platformers have you repeatedly move through
| platforms.
|
| This is all illustrated and explained in the article, though.
| devin wrote:
| Raph has written about avoiding grinding in games very
| explicitly. This was one of the big takeaways from Ultima
| Online.
| zoeysmithe wrote:
| When I started writing fiction I found myself naturally
| gravitating towards inserting puzzles and mysteries and twists
| and unknowns. I think some people just love that. There's this
| dopamine aspect of solving the problem or knowing the unknown and
| the anticipation towards it can be very intriguing! Games do this
| in a more obvious way, but the 'rule of fun' is everywhere.
|
| Look how exciting mystery is and how boring well known things
| are, but ironically there's a lot more to, say, the theory of
| gravity that if contextualized differently would be exciting and
| deeply interesting that 'unknowns' like the mystery of some cult
| or whatever can't even come close to, but in the end, there's
| something inside of us that wants to read about that cult. I make
| sure to self-aware of this and do deep dives into the boring
| 'known' world and push back on the sensationalism and such I'm so
| drawn to.
| ehnto wrote:
| To your last paragraph I think contextualising the mystery is a
| good amount of the fun and I guess all of the storytelling.
|
| There's a lot of things about our real world, that if told by
| an alien race, would make us sound like ethereal wizards.
|
| "They convinced the sand itself to think for them, guided the
| power of Sol to move them, and spoke to eachother through the
| very fabric of energy that moves invisibly through us all"
|
| Similar to that, there's a bunch of magic/fantasy storytelling
| that can kind of pull me out of disbelief, because I can't help
| but think "yeah we have that, it's electricity" or "witches are
| just pharamacists without good research"
| dejobaan wrote:
| Raph is, at once, incredibly accomplished, thoughtful about
| design, and humble about it. I once caught him coming off an
| international flight, and he was excitedly showing off a game
| he'd coded on the plane. He genuinely loves working on the stuff
| and thinking about it.
|
| His writing is often SO full of ideas that I can't absorb an
| entire piece in one sitting. It's like a 12 course tasting menu.
| The neat thing with his writing is that, despite what he says
| here about all 12 pieces being important together, you can often
| just pick an isolated bit and chew on it for a while, and still
| learn something.
|
| (Presumably return to the other 11 courses later; they'll still
| be fresh.)
| ninkendo wrote:
| My question: is there a concise theory of game design that
| properly explains why cutscenes are _fucking stupid_?
|
| There are a lot of AAA games out there that very clearly seem
| like the developers wish they were directing a movie instead.
| Sure, there's loads of cutscenes to show off some cool visuals.
| But then they seem to think "ok well we need to actually let the
| player play now", but it's still _basically_ a cutscene, but with
| extra steps: cyberpunk 2077 had this part where you press a
| button repeatedly to make your character crawl along the floor
| and the take their pills. It's just a cutscene, but where you
| essentially advance frames by pressing the X button.
|
| Then there's quick time events, which are essentially "we have a
| cutscene we want you to watch, but you can die if you don't press
| a random button at a random time", and they call it a game.
|
| If it's not that, it's breaks in play where they take control
| away from you to _show you some cool thing_ , utterly taking you
| out of the experience for something that is purely visual. I
| usually shout "can I play now? Is it my turn?" at the screen when
| this happens.
|
| But I digress... I essentially hate games nowadays because this
| or similar experience seems to dominate the very definition of
| AAA games at this point. None of them respect your time, and they
| seem to think "this is just like a movie" is a form of praise,
| when it's exactly the opposite of why I play games.
| throwaway314155 wrote:
| I have never disagreed more with a comment on this site.
| weird-eye-issue wrote:
| I know exactly what you mean. Lots of video games really do
| feel more like movies these days. Cyberpunk drove me absolutely
| crazy with all the cut scenes
| nkrisc wrote:
| Half-Life got it right. The cutscene plays but you can still
| run around and do whatever you want (including not listening).
| 542458 wrote:
| I think different people value different things in
| entertainment. For you, the "cinematic" aspects of the media
| are worthless - but for others, the whole "interactive
| cinematic spectacle" is worth it even if it comes at the
| expense of intractability or the ability to execute skills.
| Take the COD campaigns for example - notoriously, some of the
| turret-vehicle-chase-sequences don't actually require any user
| input to succeed at, but a certain class of player still enjoys
| them because they're in it for different things than you.
| toast0 wrote:
| Sounds like you're still bitter over Dragon's Lair and other
| LaserDisc games.
|
| But like AAA has never been an adjective that meant good or
| fun. Just that the budget is big.
|
| Cut scenese are an opportunity for a change of pace and to tell
| the story in a different way. Or as a way to emphasize a game
| action. When you get a touchdown in Tecmo Bowl, you have a
| little cut scene which is nice (but gets repetitive). The cut
| scenes in a Katamari game give you some sort of connection to
| the world, but you can always skip them.
|
| I think I've managed to skip most big budget games for most of
| my gaming life. That's fine, lots of other customers for those,
| I'll stick to the games I like.
| spacechild1 wrote:
| Cut scenes can also be a valuable tool for giving information
| to the player:
|
| - a camera flight go give an overview of the map
|
| - show the location of the final boss
|
| - hint at future missions
|
| - provide a clue for solving the puzzle
|
| - etc.
| throwaway106382 wrote:
| You should play more indie games. Not only are they more
| gameplay focused, there is an over abundance of great games at
| bargain prices.
|
| I just picked up Prodeus, if you like games like old Doom and
| Quake you'll probably love it.
|
| Also, From Software games (Dark Souls, Elden Ring, Sekiro,
| Armored Core) are basically all gameplay. Cutscenes are kept to
| a minimum and gameplay is is tight AF
| Johanx64 wrote:
| All the AAA games will be inherently _fucking stupid_ almost by
| design. And this is unavoidable - massive hundreds of millions
| if not billions in budget - > even if you alientate the bottom
| 10%, you lose 10% of sales. Bottom 20%, 20% of sales. Not gonna
| happen.
|
| So you have Legend of Zelda games where pretty much all puzzles
| are so simple you can instantly tell what the solution is the
| very moment you see them, ie. downright retarded with few rare
| exceptions. This also applies to difficulty, etc.
|
| As a result, AAA games can only be appretiated or enjoyed for
| not much else but production values. The soundtrack, the
| setpieces, the massive worlds and how much money must have gone
| into it, etc.
| cubefox wrote:
| Or God of War. The puzzles almost solve themselves.
|
| Interestingly, Elden Ring (2022) is AAA but very difficult,
| though not because of the puzzles. Perhaps puzzles test more
| for IQ (which can't be changed) than for gaming skill.
| DonHopkins wrote:
| Don't be like Kid Rock.
| jayd16 wrote:
| Bad take IMO. Cutscenes are fine. Many are beloved, even.
|
| Taking agency away from the player is usually a bad thing, so
| its not something you want to do when the player has other
| goals to work on. They are a fine tool to break up the action
| and games are also about the story and world building so
| expositional sections are a natural thing.
|
| Its important to not mess with the game pacing, though.
|
| After a heavy boss fight where the player doesn't even know
| what their next goal is anyway? Perfectly fine time for some
| exposition.
|
| Running past an NPC on the way to do something? That's a
| horrible time to whip around the camera and tell the player
| something.
|
| AAAs have huge momentum so you'll often see plot points and
| exposition that needs to be shoehorned in to fix some writing
| issue or what have you. Of course, you also just have game
| directors making bad decisions.
| bigstrat2003 wrote:
| Agreed. Cutscenes are perfectly fine things to have in a
| game. Ninkendo is writing like a personal preference (not
| liking cutscenes) is a universal law of game design, but that
| is not at all the case.
| _aavaa_ wrote:
| I think you summed it up yourself, because cutscenes are trying
| to turn this medium into that of movies.
| cubefox wrote:
| > But I digress... I essentially hate games nowadays
|
| This is not exactly a new phenomenon. The final cutscene in
| Metal Gear Solid 4 (2008) is 71 minutes long (Guinness world
| record). The total cutscenes add up to around 9 hours according
| to a Reddit user. Maybe more games are doing this now compared
| to 15 years ago, but I wouldn't bet on it.
| gryn wrote:
| my theory is a there are two camps of "games" (really more of a
| spectrum from the projection of 2 axes "play" and "art"):
|
| - proper games ("play"): if you remove all the lore,
| cinematics, dialogs, etc the gameplay can stand on its own and
| the user find it fun. (ex: Elden ring, Pokemon. you can play a
| cut-scenes ripped version in a language you don't understand
| and still enjoy both, chess and other abstract games are the
| extreme end of this category)
|
| - interactive DVD menus ("media arts"): it's a movie but
| sometimes you get to interact with it. in this category you
| have also have visual novels with branching trees/DAGs. they
| are more than a movie but still ultimately the most important
| test: they can't stand alone without the story/lore.
|
| I enjoy both, but I wish games and steam pages were more front
| and center about which camp they are in the beginning before I
| even buy them.
|
| my ultimate sin is games that think they are in category 1 who
| give you unskippable cut scenes.
| AdieuToLogic wrote:
| > My question: is there a concise theory of game design that
| properly explains why cutscenes are fucking stupid?
|
| Two things to consider regarding cut scenes. First, sometimes
| they are mandated by the game story writers and backed up by
| artists wanting to show off. Second, and more importantly from
| a game developer's perspective, they are a useful tool for
| hiding scene loading I/O such that the customer experience does
| not notice a nontrivial delay.
| netcoyote wrote:
| > is there a concise theory of game design that properly
| explains why cutscenes are fucking stupid?
|
| Yes. In general it's because they're made by a different team,
| with different incentives, working to a different schedule.
|
| They're often made using an earlier version of the game lore
| and story. Due to the massive effort required to make changes
| and render frames, they often don't match up with late-breaking
| changes made by the game team.
|
| But sometimes you get lucky and the cinematics team excels. I
| worked with Blizzard's cinematics team in the '90s, and those
| spectacular folks produced an amazing body of work.
| stevenwoo wrote:
| I worked on an AAA game and the cinematic group had a team that
| worked in a different location from the main development team,
| we met a few times very early during preproduction, cue about
| three years of work, we got the completed videos pretty deep
| into development (nothing major was going to change in either
| the cinematics or the gameplay) and after viewing them were
| wondering what the cinematics had to do with the game with we
| made, to be fair the cinematics looked very good for the time,
| but I just plugged them into the game's framework to play at
| the appropriate point as one of my milestones, but all these
| videos were skippable after one viewing and I only viewed them
| completely just to QA the rest of the game when I was ahead of
| schedule.
|
| I don't think it's a modern thing, I tried playing the original
| Kingdom Hearts on my PS/2 but gave up because there are so many
| mandatory videos that are unskippable _during_ combat. Not
| going back as far, Bayonetta series has a ton of quicktime
| sequences, that I hate, have to beat an enemy, die to due slow
| reflexes and unexpected quicktime event, repeat and hopefully
| get the timing right on button press which is sharp contrast to
| the otherwise fluid combat in Bayonetta.
|
| There was also at one point in ancient history a very big deal
| to have cinematics integrate seamlessly into gameplay, using
| the same engine for both, instead of prerecorded video
| sequences. So then games did that just as a point of pride, and
| having the cinematics in game engine it possible for non
| specialists to add (or storyboard and leaving final result to
| specialists) cinematics into a game's flow.
| EdwardDiego wrote:
| Back in the day, I loved the cutscenes Privateer II (starring a
| very young Clive Owen from Children of Men (I believe) as
| aforementioned privateer, bless) included, not the ones with
| any people acting very badly in them, but the rendered
| cutscenes that played the first time you arrived at a new
| planet or spaceport, that showed you, hey, this place is a
| different place.
|
| I played that in my teens, and 30 years later, I can still
| remember the name of the peaceful agricultural planet that had
| blimps as their main form of transportation - Bex.
|
| Why? Because the cutscene played and I was like "Wow, look at
| this place, this is nothing like New Detroit".
|
| And it didn't make you (IIRC) watch the cutscenes. Every. Damn.
| Time you landed thereafter.
| teamonkey wrote:
| As a game designer I've struggled with the topic of cutscenes
| and have landed on the side that they are not inherently bad
| design. Advancement of a story is a form of progression (THE
| form of progression in a narrative game) and the release of new
| story beats, or any new content in general, can be used to
| reward the player. That's not to say that they can't be done
| badly - many are.
|
| The thing about cutscenes, as with most aspects of AAA games,
| is that they test well in their target market. Cutscenes aren't
| exactly cheap to make, especially if acted. They wouldn't do
| them if they weren't popular.
|
| But it's perfectly fine that you, like many (and me), don't
| like cutscenes. Embrace that and accept that perhaps those
| games aren't for you, because there is so much choice out there
| that that you will certainly be able to find things more to
| your tastes.
| metabagel wrote:
| Cutscenes add to the sense of immersion playing the game. I
| like them, but I also like to skip them if I've already played
| the game before.
| engeljohnb wrote:
| This isn't the first time I've seen this opinion, and while I
| share the disdain for quicktime events, and I agree many
| cutscenes in the most popular games don't work, I don't
| understand being against the whole concept of cutscenes.
|
| What exactly is the right way to tell a good story though a
| game? The only other ways I've seen are:
|
| 1) Text boxes or Bethesda-style dialogue trees
|
| 2) Dark-souls style slow-drip storytelling.
|
| Although they can both work, I don't think I prefer either one
| over cutscenes. (1) especially is more like something I'll
| forgive rather than like because I know cutscenes are difficult
| for smaller teams and limiting for games that emphasize player
| choice.
|
| It's one of the reasons I liked Baldurs Gate 3 so much --
| suddenly the cinematic cutscenes don't feel like a tradeoff for
| sacrificing choice.
| CompoundEyes wrote:
| > crazy juicy, so that players are captivated by spectacle, well
| beyond the needs of feedback from a UX perspective
|
| What a great phrase to describe an aspect of game design to
| strive for.
|
| https://www.raphkoster.com/2015/06/29/game-design-ux-design/
| gregsadetsky wrote:
| "juice" (in terms of game making) will always remind me of this
| amazing, classic talk -
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fy0aCDmgnxg
| chrisweekly wrote:
| Interesting, I came across "juice" in this same sense of
| relatively subtle UX polish in this article:
| https://garden.bradwoods.io/notes/design/juice.
| CompoundEyes wrote:
| Fantastic watch thanks for sharing. I realize now how a
| favorite game of mine, Wario's Woods on SNES, juices up a
| twist on match 3 puzzle and how dry early versions of Tetris
| were (succeeding despite that).
| PhearTheCeal wrote:
| Reminds me of this interactive demo (created by the lead of
| Dead Cells) where you can adjust the juice amount in the
| menu: https://deepnight.net/games/game-feel/
| HelloUsername wrote:
| Oh I thought you were gonna post that one of Vlambeer
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AJdEqssNZ-U
| Melonai wrote:
| Same, Vlambeer were extremely good at "juicing" their
| games. Just look at Nuclear Throne and Luftrausers, games
| that would only be half as fun without all the action and
| chaos going on after every shot.
|
| This one talk is the reason why all of my small game
| projects feature copious amounts of screenshake. :)
| grumbel wrote:
| I feel modern game design as the exact opposite problem: It's
| all show and no substance. It looks spectacular on video, but
| it doesn't feel spectacular when you play it, since it's non-
| interactive script driven gameplay, barely more interactive
| than a cutscene.
|
| A bit of juice is fine and necessary, but the moment your juice
| starts to look like interactive gameplay, but isn't, it went
| way to far and just becomes noise. I rather have some less
| spectacular debris I can interact with, then just a particle
| system filling the screen with non-interactive nonsense.
|
| TotalBiscuit was ranting about it ages ago[1]. 2kliksphilip
| also has numerous videos[2] on the lack of interactive physics
| in modern games.
|
| [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JOHyD49DaeA
|
| [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nxQW2GL64U0
| neogodless wrote:
| I think you might be better served seeking out
| counterexamples. There are _presumably_ more game makers and
| games now than there were yesterday. (Even if AAA studios
| consolidate.) So surely some are bad, some are too focused on
| visuals and not nearly enough on "the gameplay loop."
|
| But games come out that break the mold of AAA style over
| substance, and sometimes they are great. Games like _Stardew
| Valley_ or _Valheim_ or _Factorio_ had very small teams, and
| rudimentary graphics, and yet offered up countless hours of
| addictive gameplay.
|
| What are some other examples of breakout hits?
| jessetemp wrote:
| I hadn't heard of the author before this. I'll definitely read
| more of their stuff, but I thought the bottom line for part three
| was a little incomplete.
|
| > Bottom line: the more uncertainty, indeterminacy, ambiguity in
| your game, the more depth it will have.
|
| Sure, starting from 0%, adding uncertainty adds depth. But the
| player needs to maintain some influence over that uncertainty. If
| you crank the uncertainty up too 100% then its pure random which
| isn't deep or fun.
|
| I've noticed a similar more-is-better trend in a few sequels I've
| played, where the first game had say 5 mechanics which were fun.
| Then the sequel has 10 mechanics, and because 10 is more than 5
| it therefore must be more fun. But it ends up being too much shit
| to juggle and less fun as a result.
|
| More isn't always better
| Agentlien wrote:
| There's been quite a few games in recent years where I notice
| some system and think "ugh, do I really need to bother with
| this, too?". Especially crafting or skill point systems which
| feel slapped on. Some games make them a fun and integral part
| of the gameplay, some seem to include them because it's trendy
| and it just adds friction and mental load with little payoff.
|
| I don't mind complexity, some of my favorite games are
| ridiculously complex (Dwarf Fortress), but the complexity needs
| to pay for itself.
| ceigey wrote:
| I've had similar thoughts too: the older I get, the less
| "extra features" translate to value if I'm expected to
| stretch my concentration across all of them to have fun.
|
| I'm not as sophisticated as the average Dwarf Fortress
| player, but an emergent quality of that game that I've
| admired from afar has been how you can ignore various
| mechanics and you're rewarded with an interesting ride.
|
| It's dynamic enough that by pulling various gameplay "levers"
| you can get wildly different outcomes (and thus value through
| replayability), but things will sort of run themselves (for
| better or worse) if you forget about them. So you're half
| writing your own story, half discovering it as it writes
| itself.
| moduspol wrote:
| My cynical take is that crafting systems are probably the
| most attractive on the ratio of "amount of dev effort
| required to implement" relative to "amount of play time
| added." They're also trivially tunable. You can add (or
| subtract) hours of play time just by changing the numbers
| required to craft things.
|
| Unless they're an integral feature of the game (like in
| Minecraft), they always feel slapped on to me.
| spencerflem wrote:
| In some sense though, 100% randomness is meta-predictable:
| something happens that I can't predict. There's a lot less
| tension. Idk where in the middle is the best spot, I guess
| that's where the artistry is
| Llamamoe wrote:
| It's like an image, you want neither a single solid colour
| nor perfect noise, but something in-between with identifiable
| features, highs and lows. When it changes unexpectedly it
| should change into something new and exciting, not more
| noise.
| Llamamoe wrote:
| It also matters a lot what type of uncertainty a game has, and
| what the curve of learning to manage it is.
|
| E.g. slight variations in inputs should produce a slight but
| ideally meaningful variation in output, so the outcome of
| pressing keys is both reliable as well as an open space for
| further mastery.
|
| It's also important that you can trace and understand what
| happened in retrospect. Just missing because of a 5% chance
| isn't fun. Missing because you didn't consider wind direction
| and the movement of an object between you and the target on the
| other hand is perfectly grokkable.
| mcv wrote:
| Yeah, you need to strike a balance. Maybe ambiguity is a better
| way to look at it than uncertainty or randomness; chess is fun,
| but the only random factor are the whims of your opponent.
| There's no randomness, but there is ambiguity about what their
| strategy is, and whether they're seeing something that you're
| missing.
|
| An extreme example of more-is-better are games like EU4, where
| just understanding how trade works, is more complicated than
| most entire games, and that's just a single subsystem. You can
| ignore it, but mastering it can be satisfying. Or frustrating.
| 1313ed01 wrote:
| In a game design context, he is definitely using "uncertainty"
| in a wider sense, as popularized by Greg Costikyan's
| _Uncertainty in Games_ book.
|
| In that sense of the word, it's not only about random things,
| but also things like "will I click at just the right time to
| head-shot that enemy?" or "I will checkmate the next turn
| unless my opponent thinks of some clever move that I don't?").
| And the theory is that once you run out of uncertain things
| there is no more a game, as the player know how it will end and
| there is nothing more that can fail or anything unexpected that
| can happen. Basically like reading the end of a book you have
| already read before, so you know exactly what will happen.
|
| And depth from a game design pov is also not necessarily
| strictly positive. Make the game too deep and there is, as you
| say, pure random. You could keep adding rules to chess to make
| it 100% impossible for any human to remotely guess what kind of
| move to make, and that's when you added so much uncertainty
| that it became too deep.
| ostwilkens wrote:
| > Bottom line: fun is basically about making progress on
| prediction.
|
| I'm having some trouble parsing this sentence. Does he mean that
| "player has fun if their predictions lead to progress"?
| meheleventyone wrote:
| Progress on predictions means both getting better at prediction
| (learning) and applying that.
| jebarker wrote:
| Also a decent definition of intelligence
| meheleventyone wrote:
| I think for both contexts its far too simplistic to be more
| than a generalization and certainly for fun its a very
| local definition to serve Raph's ideas about what
| constitutes a game rather than encompassing enough to
| define it fully.
|
| For intelligence for example you could have a PID
| controller where there is automatic tuning which would fit
| the definition of learning and application. But I don't
| think we'd call it intelligent outside of marketing copy.
| jebarker wrote:
| A PID doesn't get better at learning and applying
| predictions. I'd argue that to do that essentially
| indefinitely requires intelligence.
| meheleventyone wrote:
| Hence mentioning a PID controller that has autotuning.
| Drop it in a new environment and it'll adjust. Drop it in
| another and it'll reconfigure itself.
| jebarker wrote:
| That is not getting better at learning. That's repeatedly
| re-learning in the same way.
| meheleventyone wrote:
| Ahh, sorry we're talking past one another then because I
| hadn't twigged you were talking about getting better at
| learning because that's not what I meant with my initial
| post! Although I can see why you took that from it.
|
| I do like that meta observation though that not only do
| people get better at prediction through learning they can
| also get better at the rate at which they improve their
| predictions.
| jebarker wrote:
| It's careless of me to say it's a definition of
| intelligence, but I do think that property of being able
| to improve how you learn and how quickly you learn
| (especially in response to adversaries doing the same
| thing) is a clear indicator of intelligence and there's a
| good argument that that's why we developed intelligence.
| These aren't my ideas either, I'm just parroting what I
| recently read in the book "What is Intelligence" by
| Blaise Aguera y Arcas.
| stefs wrote:
| I can get better by getting more experienced without
| getting more intelligent.
| sph wrote:
| True, but one definition of intelligence is the ability
| to deal with a novel situation. You can't get more
| experienced if you're "too stupid" to learn and adapt to
| the challenge.
| jebarker wrote:
| Why do you think that accumulating experience and
| applying it to be better isn't a mark of intelligence?
| sph wrote:
| In simple, reductive terms:
|
| Fun, among other things = remaining in the tight channel of
| _flow_ , where your skills get challenged without ever reaching
| a point of frustration. Too little challenge = boredom.
|
| Skills improve as they get challenged, i.e. when our prediction
| and pattern matching system receive enough feedback to improve
| upon our previous actions to get a more optimal outcome.
|
| So, fun is (among other things) getting better at doing
| something, and as we get better, what was once a challenge
| turns easier, so a fun game needs to have a well-tuned
| difficulty progression to keep in pace with your improving
| skills.
| wartywhoa23 wrote:
| > Bottom line: the more uncertainty, indeterminacy, ambiguity in
| your game, the more depth it will have.
|
| Well, welcome to planet Earth then, the ultimate game
| environment.
| runevault wrote:
| I need to sit down and give this a proper read, but anyone who
| wants more of Raph giving insights into game design should check
| out this old GDC talk he did about Practical Creativity:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zyVTxGpEO30
| foota wrote:
| Jokingly, something about the idea of taking NP problems and
| making them into games seems cruel to the optimizer in me.
| blablablerg wrote:
| It is an interesting article but I find the slides inserted
| without much context to be confusing.. or is that part of the
| game?
| svantana wrote:
| Indeed, the galaxy brain move here would be to make a game
| about game design, that itself follows its own principles.
| class4behavior wrote:
| Tell me why all MMOs are crap or just fail and as a result turned
| into a gambling institution.
| teamonkey wrote:
| Because MMOs are expensive to make and run and the people who
| can afford to fund that expect a strong return on investment or
| they will shut it down.
| stefs wrote:
| That's just like, your opinion man. In my opinion neither of
| those two claims are universially true.
| wsc981 wrote:
| I loved World of Warcraft for many years, but kind of stopped
| playing during Cataclysm.
|
| And it's kind of weird, but I preferred the old-style questing
| (many repeated quests and perhaps less streamlined experience)
| compared to what came afterwards.
|
| In Cataclysm they tried to improve the quest experience, add
| more variety, but somehow the game lost a bit of its magic - at
| least from my point of view.
| lubujackson wrote:
| I thought this was obvious? These are social games where
| everyone is in the same funnel and the players with the most
| time dominate others... but also need new objectives. At the
| beginning you quest with people your level, but they always,
| always devolve into bigger, more tedious tasks (raids) that
| have less and less differentiated rewards (1% chance of a drop
| that boosts you 2%) because otherwise you have players at level
| 283 and there is no way to balance team dynamics as some people
| scale infinitely.
| random9749832 wrote:
| I watched a lot of Sakurai's (Smash Bro's director and creator of
| Kirby) videos on game design and development and not once did he
| bring up "dopamine" or any other neurochemical. I think once you
| start thinking about game design from this perspective you are
| essentially looking for ways to exploit human psychology which
| explains how a lot of games have now turned into casinos. Some of
| the best games out there defy a lot of prior design knowledge or
| things most people don't like but still have a cult following
| (look at Death Stranding) (Dark Souls made difficulty cool again
| when everyone else was trying to be "accessible"). The best games
| are also probably by people who were just passionate about
| bringing a certain idea into life because they themselves want
| that thing (Pokemon got a lot of its inspiration from the
| creators childhood exploring outside) not because people will get
| addicted to it. I understand treating game design as a science to
| some degree but it rubs me the wrong way.
| teamonkey wrote:
| Gaming has always been about exploiting human psychology. It's
| about making people have fun, fun is a psychological state and
| dopamine release is intrinsicly linked to that.
|
| That doesn't mean that it has to be bad or destructive! Fun is
| a positive thing, and most game designers I've met from across
| the industry are in it because they just want to make people
| have fun.
|
| Dopamine release is a bit of a curio, really. You don't make
| design decisions based on optimising dopamine release; there's
| no way of doing that. But it's interesting to know the
| physiological reasons _why_ people think that things are fun,
| and it 's useful evidence when building a framework such as
| Raph's.
| random9749832 wrote:
| >Gaming has always been about exploiting human psychology.
|
| If you think about it from this perspective than it certainly
| makes sense to add elements of randomness with intermittent
| reinforcement (e.g. slot machine) to any game or quick
| rewards and exponential progression (e.g. Cookie Clicker).
| Meanwhile you have games like Shenzhen.io which have a PDF
| that you need to go through to solve programming puzzles and
| no hints. What part of human psychology is being exploited
| here outside of progression from solving the puzzle which you
| would naturally always have?
|
| Or even look at Shenmue. While every game at the time was a
| platformer where you collected things, Shenmue made you take
| on a partime job doing fork lifting, yet it is a cult
| classic. Did they use a framework to make that decision?
| Doesn't seem like it when it defied all game design at the
| time.
| teamonkey wrote:
| > What part of human psychology is being exploited here
| outside of progression from solving the puzzle which you
| would naturally always have?
|
| This and the other scenarios you mention are deliberately
| created to make the player have fun. They are all
| engineered to manipulate the player's emotions, the
| intention is to trigger dopamine and other neurological
| reactions. As I said, that doesn't have to be a bad thing!
|
| You don't have to think about it in terms of chemical
| reactions, but artificially creating fun is the goal, if
| you boil it down.
|
| You _do_ get that dopamine hit when you achieve a goal in
| Shenzen.io, or even a self-directed goal in Shenmue,
| whether the designers thought that way or not.
|
| As Raph Koster says, fun is linked to progression and
| learning.
|
| Progression applies to self directed goals too (you're
| setting yourself a series of minor goals when driving the
| forklift in Shenmue).
|
| Ironically, motivation theory tells us that the intrinsic
| fun of doing undirected chores in Shenmue or mastering
| facts about the systems in Shenzen.io is stronger than the
| onslaught of mostly extrinsic rewards generated by Cookie
| Clicker. You had less fun playing that game, that's one of
| many reasons why.
| random9749832 wrote:
| The difference I am highlighting isn't that it is wrong
| to think about how to make your game "fun" but the
| perspective you are thinking about it from. You can try
| to treat creating fun using a scientific or neurological
| framework or you can think about it from a more artistic
| standpoint. When Shenmue chose to make you start doing
| forklifting (and while I can't prove it) I am sure this
| was more of a artistic decision and they weren't thinking
| about it in terms of extrinsic or intrinsic rewards. At
| least to me it is obvious when something is designed more
| by an artist and less by someone trying exploit human
| psychology.
|
| That isn't to say there isn't any logic to the design of
| great games but also something much more intuitive to
| their design decisions that doesn't follow known
| principals or science.
| teamonkey wrote:
| Being a classically-trained musician and understanding
| music theory - or even the physics of how sound waves are
| received by the ear and brain - doesn't prevent you from
| composing works of art.
|
| A framework like this does, however, help you make better
| artistic choices. It helps to identify why something
| _isn't_ having the impact you thought it should and gives
| you some insight on how to fix it. It also helps you to
| deconstruct other works and understand why they do or do
| not work.
| threetwoonezero wrote:
| I'm not experienced game designer, but I definitely view games a
| bit differently from the author. I don't like complexity much
| tbh, and I'm sure there are people like me who enjoy some clicker
| like experience without game forcing me to solve problems
| tgv wrote:
| Candy Crush was immensely popular. It's not exactly chess.
| Razengan wrote:
| One thing that gets me is how there hasn't really been a language
| made solely for _gameplay_ logic..
|
| Almost every other domain has its specialized language: SQL,
| Julia, even HTML/CSS/JS.. but game developers still have to
| trundle on with general purpose languages invented 500 years ago
| by people who had nothing to do with games.
| krapp wrote:
| Game _development_ and game _design_ are completely separate
| domains.
|
| Game development can be generalized to algorithms and languages
| targeted to specific processors and architectures because it's
| a subset of programming and computer science. You can't have a
| DSL for design because the domain is the human mind. The
| _design_ of a game like Undertale has absolutely nothing to do
| with the language used to develop it.
|
| Unless you're talking about things like modelling and UV
| unwrapping and the like, but even then I don't see what benefit
| a separate language would provide.
| Razengan wrote:
| I mean coding gameplay logic. The game _engine_ can remain in
| C /++ or whatever.
|
| Gameplay and game mechanics are fairly different from making
| other types of programs. Things like stats, buffs/debuffs,
| conditions, and their dependencies on each other.
|
| It's all sort of a vague middle ground between typed vs
| untyped, static vs dynamic, inheritance vs composition,
| sequential vs asynchronous, and other oddities that make it
| distinct from other domains.
|
| > _You can 't have a DSL for design because the domain is the
| human mind. The design of a game like Undertale has
| absolutely nothing to do with the language used to develop
| it._
|
| But what if _coding_ could correspond almost 1:1 to the
| _design_?
|
| I've been attempting some of it here:
| https://github.com/InvadingOctopus/comedot
|
| with stuff like abstracting the idea of "Actions" that could
| be anything from a verb like "Look at" in a text-based
| adventure, to clicking on spells/weapons buttons in a turn-
| based strategy game, or a Dash move in a platformer etc.
|
| Fantasizing about elevating those concepts to being core
| keywords in a hypothetical language is my equivalent of
| counting sheep to fall asleep :)
| zehaeva wrote:
| Isn't this basically what Jonathan Blow is trying to do
| with his "new" programming language, Jai?
| Razengan wrote:
| Isn't Jai still mostly a C-like, with manual memory
| management and other archaic rituals?
|
| See, SQL for example don't care about the hardware or the
| internals of the database it runs on, why couldn't we
| have something like that for gameplay?
| Luc wrote:
| Are you aware of https://machinations.io/ ?
| zovirl wrote:
| I agree there aren't very many. I can think of PuzzleScript,
| Unreal Blueprints, and Machinations (mentioned elsewhere in
| this thread). Perhaps this dearth is why Blueprints got so
| popular?
|
| Honorable mentions might go to PICO-8's flavor of Lua (C-like
| but clearly designed to create a specific type of game and have
| a specific developer experience) and Excel (used for developing
| & balancing game mechanics, but usually replaced in the final
| product).
| random9749832 wrote:
| I can program and play chess to a proficient level but I also
| know I can't design a good game whatsoever because the mindset
| required to design a truly good game seems to me to be something
| beyond logic and reasoning. Same thing with any other art. I
| don't think any framework could ever truly explain it.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2025-11-07 23:01 UTC)