The Hydra of Opportunity

Chris Wilson, Managing Director of Grinding Gear Games, gave a rather good talk at GDC this year.

His presentation is roughly an hour long and he talks rather fast, but he covers a lot of ground.  In it, he covers missteps and valuable lessons Grinding Gear Games learned from startup until present day.

Particularly brilliant is how Grinding Gear Games (GGG) will reuse assets, but also reuse content in a sane way.  Much more sane than some of the very wasteful ways Blizzard does, particularly in regards to World of Warcraft, in which every new expansion pack of WoW throws out numerous babies in bathwater, simply because it's not new.

Seriously, watch the presentation.  There's a lot of lessons you can learn and parallels you can draw, not just between Diablo-like games, but in almost every genre.

With the latest large update of Path of Exile, GGG's flagship title, there's a hidden problem that I had never realized was possible until I read a post from Reddit that gave me an epiphany.

See, GGG is very good about reusing assets and content, but the content of the last four large updates (leagues) has been very... pace-breaking.  These pace-breaking systems encourage players to stop normal play and to hurry up and go do their content.  Now, when it was released this wasn't so terrible, since the way the game is designed you'll be playing like normal, and every once in a while you'll get 'unlock' an extra area which you feel compelled to do since it's just one thing and the rewards are rather good.

If you wanted to ignore the system completely, you could, but if you wanted to be efficient with your rewards you had to interact with it every time the system wanted you to. Again, not the worst thing in the world since compared to the game as a whole, they're rather very minor things and don't eat up much of your time.

Last league however, as part of content reuse, GGG rolled in three of those pace-breaking systems into the baseline game.  And with the current league, there are four of them.

This causes a problem because it's increasing pressure on the player how they must play.  And that is not the mental state you want to be in as a game developer, to be some sort of tin-pot dictator, since it unnecessarily limits your audience.  Not only that, but having multiple features that compete for your attention is stressful for a player.  Having a few can be fine, even fun, but there's a point where it becomes not worth the hassle.

Thus it becomes a hydra of opportunity.  Accomplishing these systems gives you rewards in game, but when they keep coming back when you don't want them to and seemingly in greater numbers than you want to deal with, it becomes an enemy and not an opportunity.

And you can apply that lesson to other games and genres too.

The Sekiro Question

Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice is a game that came out recently from From Software, recently notorious for the punishing Souls game series, and it has certain people clamoring for an "easy mode".

Various reasons emerge why they want the option for an easier difficulty, such as 'it'll widen the audience', 'it'll increase accessibility', 'there's no reason not to do it!'.

The question is: should I make an easy mode for my game?  And the answer, like many relating to video games is... it depends.  What is your goal for making this game?  How are you making this game?

What is your goal for making this game?  Determining your goals is an important part of making a video game, as making a video game is not a simple matter.  If your goal is to simply make your first video game, full stop, then making an easy mode for your game will just add in development time and be more of a headache than simply finishing your very first video game which has already brought several headaches you never expected.  Adding an easy mode means extra numbers, even if they're smaller, and planning the easy mode numbers that they're actually easier.

If your goal is to simply move copies and make a short term profit, it's hard to argue with adding an easy mode, but blindly chasing accessibility is a trap.  Chasing after immediate sales profit will hamper long term growth, and is akin to eating the seed corn.

How are you making this game?  Rather, are you tailoring your game towards an audience, or are you making your game first and letting the audience come to you?  Both approaches change things drastically.

Either way, it's clear that a lot of the divide in opinions on whether Sekiro should add an easy mode, stems from a difference of opinion of what From Software's goals should be.  Those in favor can't understand why anyone would not want their game so that anyone could enjoy it, and those against can't understand why anyone would want to devalue the prize.

Tactics Versus Strategy

Many people think that strategy is merely tactics on a larger scale. It is immensely frustrating to discuss because no matter how many times you describe the qualitative differences they recognize only quantitative differences. People conflate tactics with large numbers with strategy and ignore the different kinds of thinking at work. It's almost like people think that strategy is the smart word for tactics, similar to people who always use "whom" for "who" because it sounds smarter. Let's agree the world needs both tacticians and strategists, but conflating them is counterproductive.

This is particularly relevant to game design because much of what we call strategy is really tactics. We rarely ask whether a game models a process or the thinking one uses when engaging with a process. Therefore any game involving armies is called strategic even if they are nothing but hit point containers. Let's take this to the most absurd limit. Maybe you've designed a game of immense scale: galaxies fighting galaxies. Each galaxy has a number of civilizations in it, and every time you deal damage to an enemy galaxy it loses a few civilizations, but every few turns (called eons) each galaxy regenerates a few civilizations. Furthermore, within certain constraints you can control how your galaxy expands, contracts, or revolves - how it moves - through the universe, so you have some choice which neighboring galaxies you can attack. Maybe the board on which the combat takes place expands for the first half of the game and contracts for the second half, and whoever controls the last remaining galaxy before the next Big Bang wins. We could even add some push/pull mechanics so attacks affect the expansion / contraction of the universe.

Great, but is anyone going to argue that this 4th edition D&D miniatures game (but I repeat myself) is strategic? You laugh, but if I included a little more detail (each civilization contains a number of societies, and a civilization is destroyed when its society points reach zero!) people would claim this is a strategy game. Maybe more detail, like a rock-paper-scissors game? When a galaxy fights, it uses tech, culture, or politics. Politics beats tech, tech beats culture, and culture beats politics. Wow, so deep, so complex, so strategic! - and yet all we've done is mask the underlying mechanics of a basic tactics game.

On the other hand, maybe in real life you have a basic policy of being honest, and not pretending to be someone you're not. Because you have a few quirks, you rub some people the wrong way, but over time you surround yourself with honest people who appreciate you. In any given situation you're not too concerned if someone likes you, so much as being yourself. You're certainly not calibrating your persona to match the environment like some kind of calculating, social chameleon. You've seen that backfire more times than you can count.

Can we call this strategic thinking? (Could it be that nerds are worse at strategy than cheerleaders?) You're not concerned with maximizing each individual encounter. You looked at a situation and picked a basic course of action with a tendency to move you in the right direction.

Scale alone isn't the key factor. You can have a tactical galaxy game and a strategic interpersonal situation.

So here's my attempt at working out the difference. I doubt my definition is complete. I hope the comment section improves it - so long as people don't conflate the Galaxy Game, tactics with big numbers, with strategy.

Tactical thinking is calculating odds, risk, reward, and taking measures that maximize gain / loss. Strategic thinking sidesteps the issue of odds entirely and develops outcome independent systems of analysis / action. Those systems are designed to produce situations mappable within themselves and (ideally) not mappable within your opponent's, sort of like a conceptual OODA loop. Tactical thinking is here's how my guy beats up your guy. Strategic thinking is let's focus on controlling the camera. (When my guy wins he's strong and your guy deserved it. When my guy loses, he's the underdog and your guy is a bully.)

I think it's the outcome independent aspect that defines strategy. The mappable part is simply saying you've thought far enough ahead that every situation is a win-win, as opposed to pushing circumstances into an area you're not prepared to analyze or take action in. Mappable also means, all things being equal, you prefer action that gives you more information about your environment / opponent, again, so you can engineer win-win situations. For instance, if you're a freelancer, you learn more about the market if you charge too high than too low. Or, you set boundaries with people to reduce conflict.

How does this help game design? It will help you ask better questions. With accurate definitions you can see if your game offers competing strategies, or if the fundamental level offers only one proper way to play.

What do you think?

Personally I'm not completely sold on the definition. I'll need time to mull it over. There are some things to look for, however. A proper distinction between strategy and tactics needs to take into account:

• You can lose on a lower level and win on a higher level
• Strategy is such that although you create the conditions for victory, you rarely predict exact circumstances
• Tactics has more to do with discreet cause and effect
• At the strategic level cause-and-effect is harder to sort out; a situation can't be understood without taking action; consequently, certain types of action preclude certain types of knowledge; alternatively, there is less of a distinction between observation and action
• Tactics tend to shift from situation to situation, as circumstances arise
• Often a strategy will recommend one basic action, often one that creates its own luck

Mark Kern on Business Patterns

Mark had a great thread on business patterns today. I'll leave it to his own words.














Speaking of innovation, our upcoming post on the Creveld Engine is sure to draw some interest.

The Lore of Warcraft

Teleros helpfully summarizes it from the very beginning:

1. Warcraft 1 sees the orcs ruin their homeworld through being blind to demonic interference, so they have to flee. Only by "flee" I mean "invade and conquer an innocent nation".
2. Warcraft 2 sees the orcs, now lead by someone who has an inkling of the demonic interference, try and murder their way across the other innocent nations, who are forced to band together as the Alliance to survive. The orcs meanwhile recruit money-grubbing (((goblin))) mercenaries and cannibal trolls who are pissed the Alliance races destroyed their empire & drove them out years before. The Alliance narrowly wins & proceeds to cut off the orc homeworld to stop reinforcements + demonic magic, and very emphatically do not genocide the orcs, instead putting them in camps at heavy (ie, unrest-causing) taxpayer expense.
3. Warcraft 3 sees the orcs try to flee to a new homeland. Under human-trained Thrall, they keep their violence to a minimum vs the Alliance, and ally together to defeat the demons. When an Alliance nation decides to try and solo the new orc homeland, the Alliance as a whole lets the Horde destroy their invasion force & kill their king in order to keep the fragile peace.
4. WoW basically starts with a cold war in place, with minor groups from both sides squabbling over bits and pieces (see: Battlegrounds), kind of like USA/Soviet proxy wars. Whilst Sylvanas prepares for genocide.
5. More cold war in The Burning Crusade.
6. War breaks out in Wrath of the Lich King when rogue Forsaken gas the combined Alliance/Horde army. Alliance capture Undercity, but Jaina tries for peace so teleports them out. A Horde army ambushes an Alliance army fighting the undead, resulting in an undead victory.
7. The Cataclysm happens. The war heats up. Alliance forces leave an opening for Tauren civilians to escape a besieged town, whilst Garrosh prefers killing civilians. Sylvanas gases more civilians and invades a neutral nation for ~reasons~.
8. Pandas. Alliance put neutral civilians to work to establish a base, Horde prefer to capture their children and such. Garrosh continues acting like Hitler, but is defeated and put on trial by both sides for war crimes. A treaty is made which should put an end to most of the territorial disputes.
9. Warlords of Draenor, in which we learn that the orcs were never a peaceful race before the demons came but in fact the Mongols on 'roids, and easily persuaded to go invade Azeroth for the lulz.
10. Legion, in which the 2nd nice Horde leader dies and Sylvanas takes over. Alliance forces disobey orders to attack her, but all they really do is foil her plan to enslave the valkyries.
11. Battle for Azeroth, in which Sylvanas decides on pre-emptive war to control the world's supply of plutonium - I mean Azerite - and starts this by firebombing Teldrassil without even the pretence of asking for a surrender. Later irradiates / gases her own troops to deny the Alliance control over her undead capital.

Devstream: two types of simulation

From the transcript of the Devstream:

I'm actually in the middle of developing a design for a mobile football game and so I've had to deal
with some of these issues. I'm dealing with them right now and it's a difficult question, because on the one hand, simulation for process tends to allow a more open solution. What simulation for process is, you set up a series of rules to simulate the events, so in the case of a sports game you set up the various rules for how the players are gonna play, you set up the various rules for what the different variables are going to be and how they're going to interact with each other, and then you just step back and you let it run.

Believe it or not, this is actually in some ways an easier approach, because you know you're not responsible, you know you're not trying to dictate any one result. Yeah, you just put in the ingredients, you mix them up and what happens happens. Now that's the way that you would have seen the old statistics in the Madden football games, for example. You know when you do that, when you use simulation for process, you almost always have a situation where the results are not going to be realistic. The process is complicated and it is intrinsically inaccurate. It doesn't matter whether you're talking about an AI attempt to replicate human intelligence, whether you're talking about an attempt to replicate an infantry firefight, or whether you're dealing with something like a football or soccer game, in all of those cases you're dealing with multiple layers of abstraction, and every abstraction, every assigned variable is going to be different than the real world

Even if you build a very complicated model using very accurate statistics, the small errors, the small
differences, are going to multiply so that by the time that you get to the end result, you're not going to end up with very realistic numbers.

Q&A: r/K and design

RM wonders if games are becoming more targeted to the r/selected:

Would it be correct to say videogames from the last 10+ years are generally targeted at an r-selected audience?

The first time I noticed a change in videogame mechanic and map design was when I went from playing the multiplayer mode for Modern Warfare 1 (released in 2007) to playing the multiplayer mode for Modern Warfare 2 (released in 2009).

In Modern Warfare 1, the generally larger maps meant more open spaces and sections of the map off the beaten path. The maps were large enough to sneak past the enemy team or attempt flanking maneuvers, even with two teams of 24 players. This map design discouraged running around like a headless chicken, because the snipers on the other team would take you out in seconds if you played that way, and it wasn't fun to spend all your game time doing the same 30 second run from your team's spawn. The game encouraged more investment in each life and a longer time preference. The maps in Modern Warfare 1 encouraged cooperation and thoughtfulness.

In Modern Warfare 2, the generally smaller maps had fewer open spaces and sections of the map off the beaten path. Most maps were crowded with two teams of 9 players, and the maps had pretty direct routes that funneled the teams toward each other. This map design encouraged running around like a headless chicken, because most of the battles were fought inside the 10-yard range. If you used your explosives and took a spray-and-pray approach, you'd probably take somebody out before you died yourself. When you did die, you'd respawn with a full loadout, usually close to the action. Modern Warfare 2's maps discouraged cooperation and thoughtfulness.

I'm interested to know if you think r/K selection applies to videogame design and the games' intended players.

Yes, this is almost certainly true in the broader sense. It is probably not a conscious design decision made by someone conversant with selection theory, it's probably just an attempt to make things more "accessible" and "appealing to the casual player" that reflects the larger cultural shift towards the r/selected population. But the essential effect is the same; one could even build a mathematical model demonstrating this by comparing the average number of player-lives lost in a similar time period in one game versus the other.

In the game that appeals to the r/selected, the number of lives would be higher, the average in-game lifespan would be shorter, and there would be less benefit to being patient and exhibiting longer time preferences.