Jonathan Blow, of Braid fame, recently gave an interesting talk at the FreePlay conference in Australia. (The video is available here.) His main point is that we are not asking ourselves “Why do I want to make this game?” Instead, we are usually asking “How” questions, such as “How do I get into the industry?” or “How do I get publishers to notice my game?” It’s an unusual way of looking at game development, and I bet most developers have never asked themselves this question.
I was asked a similar question a couple months ago by fellow Sporean (Sporite?) Chris Hecker – he asked if my game design had a theme. Was there a specific idea or experience that I was trying to convey to the player? The answer that came to me also answers Jonathan’s question. Namely, I want players of my games to feel that “no one choice is always right.” In other words, the challenge is adaptation, looking at a specific environment and finding a successful path. In Civ4 terms, if you start the game next to marble and stone, you might want to focus on wonders. If you start between Napoleon and Montezuma, you better make sure one of them is your friend. If you’re surrounded by jungle, better prioritize Iron Working; if you’re water-locked from the rest of the world, better get to Astronomy. Of course, in each game of Civ, multiple situations and challenges come at you at once, so it’s a question of prioritizing, deciding which opportunities to take advantage of and which ones to ignore.
So, why do I believe that it is important to understand that being flexible is better than being rigid? Why is it better to build a plan from your environment instead of forcing your strategy onto the world? The answer is my own philosophical background, my world view.
If the twentieth century has a single theme, it is that ideology itself is a dead-end, a failure. The growth of mass media enabled ideas to motivate people in ways never before imagined. Time and time again, these ideas allowed dogmatic leaders to demonize the “opposition,” which usually meant helping the strong to terrorize the weak. From the Nazi death camps to the Soviet gulags to China’s Cultural Revolution to America’s McCarthyism, the twentieth century was full of ideas that gave power to autocratic leaders not afraid to destroy the lives of those who resisted. Much as we hate to admit it, these leaders were supported by the masses of people who believed blindly in the ideas they represented. Before becoming a dictator, Hitler was initially elected to power. (“People will more easily fall victim to a big lie than to a small one.”) For much too long, Stalin had an embarrassing number of communist apologists all around the world. (“One death is a tragedy; a million is a statistic.”) They are now primarily remembered as mass murderers.
I personally despise ideologies because they inevitably lead to a belief that there is one set of solutions to the world’s problems. One set of solutions means all other options are heretical, which means they must be controlled. Ideologues put ideas above people, which is the beginning of terror and oppression. People are more important than ideas; in fact, people are more important than everything because they are, in fact, the only thing.
I don’t imagine that Civ4 tackles these issues as well as it could have, but I do know that my inherent distrust of ideologies does lurk under the surface of the game. Take the civics system, for example. Unlike previous Civ games, which let you could choose between broad labels like Democracy or Communism, Civ4 lets you build your government à la carte. You can mix State Property with Free Speech, or a Police State with a Free Market, or even Slavery with Universal Suffrage. Ideologues love labels because they dehumanize and obscure the opposition; both sides of the Cold War made liberal use of the terms “Communist” and “Capitalist” to differentiate each other, even though the United States government has slowly adopted communist programs piece-meal over the last century. Why exactly was the U.S. – a country with social security, medicare, welfare, a minimum wage, labor laws, and trade unions – fighting to keep Communism out of Vietnam? In fact, if you took a typical Red-fearing, trade-union-busting industrialist from 1907 and sent him 100 years into the future and explained how America now works, he would assume that the Communists won after all! Labels exist to separate and control people, and I wanted the civics system to encourage people to look behind the labels and at the actual choices a society needs to make when governing itself. It was no accident that I attached Mt. Rushmore to Fascism; carving mammoth statues of your country’s greatest leaders into a MOUNTAIN is fascist, even if we do not live under Fascism. Our own self-labeling as Democratic and Capitalist does not protect us from charges that our country is damaging the world when our policies hurt people, real people.
Of course, discouraging rigid thinking is not the only reason I make games, but it is the best answer I can give to Jonathan’s question. If I ever get to release my dream strategy game, this idea will be clearly be at the center of the design. It’s good to have a reason.
I always wondered why Mt. Rushmore was given with that tech but now that I read what you said it makes perfect sense.
The unfortunate reality is that, when it comes to large-scale commercial games, the answer to “why makes games” is “to make money.” Sure, some people also get a tremendous amount of enjoyment from game development, but developer enjoyment doesn’t necessarily translate to player enjoyment. Plus, enjoyment doesn’t pay the bills.
Of course, “to make money” isn’t necessarily a bad thing. It means that a developer has an incentive to create an experience that is compelling to a paying consumer. There’s something to be said for giving the players what they want.
Unfortunately there are also drawbacks. For one thing, it’s lower-risk to give consumers what you *know* they want instead of what you think they *might* want. Taken to the extreme, you end up with a lot of derivative designs and re-used game mechanics.
Even this wouldn’t be so bad, except that developers sometimes duplicate the bad as well as the good, because change comes with uncertainty. If you’re lucky, you get The Sims. In you aren’t, you get The Sims Online.
Very nice entry, Soren, Civ does convey much of that idea. Although truth must be said, I haven’t played the 4th edition often enough to fully explore it. The sheer number of choices are somewhat daunting for a simple girl like me.
The challenge is to nudge players to use the “out-of-the-box”-iness that hopefully is, at least latent, present in everyone. Once they use it you can reward, but how to make them use it? Something like the red button with the sign “do not press” works good in real life, but in a game you’d need to come up with something else… 😀
And I think you’re right, the world will be a better place without ideologies to separate people into “us” and “them”. My fear is that we, as a species, will always find new ways to do this.
May I do a big comment on your post?
I just feel that it corresponds my own thoughts a much.
\\His main point is that we are not asking ourselves “Why \\do I want to make this game?”
Rather simple to answer but not easy to explain.
I want to make this game because it overfill me.
\\Instead, we are usually asking “How” questions, such as \\“How do I get into the industry?”
Very actual question for me still… 🙁
\\Was there a specific idea or experience that I was trying \\to convey to the player?
Not a separate idea but part of my philosophy.
\\Namely, I want players of my games to feel that “no one \\choice is always right.”
No absolute truth… right.
\\So, why do I believe that it is important to understand \\that being flexible is better than being rigid? The \\answer is my own philosophical background, my world view.
My word for that is “lability”.
\\Time and time again, these ideas allowed dogmatic leaders \\to demonize the “opposition,” which usually meant helping \\the strong to terrorize the weak.
I don’t think its invention of the twentieth century.
Just usual rule at all times of mankind.
“an eye for an eye” its very ancient idea.
\\From the Nazi death camps to the Soviet gulags to China’s \\Cultural Revolution to America’s McCarthyism…
I don’t think that all this can be comparable with equal measures.
\\Much as we hate to admit it, these leaders were supported \\by the masses of people who believed blindly in the ideas \\they represented.
Not blindly but with faith that this is all right, it is correct.
I leave in country where many people still believe… that what was in times of communism was right.
\\They are now primarily remembered as mass murderers.
Not in all places.
\\People are more important than ideas; in fact, people are \\more important than everything because they are, in fact, \\the only thing.
Its only one more ideology. :(((
\\You can mix State Property with Free Speech, or a Police \\State with a Free Market, or even Slavery with Universal \\Suffrage.
Still, I believe that there is more deep and more important laws in the deep sense of this general words. And all could be different but still according to this laws.
\\even though the United States government has slowly \\adopted communist programs piece-meal over the last \\century.
I think there you just not very good understand what was the real communist program.
\\It was no accident that I attached Mt. Rushmore to \\Fascism; carving mammoth statues of your country’s \\greatest leaders into a MOUNTAIN is fascist, even if we \\do not live under Fascism.
Or Communism…
Or just am entertainment for wealthy and blase society, not a fetish itself.
I think, the Statue of Freedom is more meaningfull…
\\If I ever get to release my dream strategy game, this \\idea will be clearly be at the center of the design.
Yes… I also think about game which have inside many other games, and each one will find there something on his own taste.
It’s \\good to have a reason.
I’ve come back to say, now that I’ve watched the video, I can imagine that it inspired. It’s something that is valid in more fields, I feel. A sense of purpose that would be good in all activities. 🙂
Here’s a link to another talk by Jonathan Blow (held during the Independent Games Summit).
“The challenge is to nudge players to use the “out-of-the-box”-iness that hopefully is, at least latent, present in everyone.” – SpaceOddity
I disagree with that somewhat. I think it is the task of the developers to somewhat trick the player out of the box, in the sense that the player never actually knows.
To me when someone knows they are out of the box the only rational thought is to get back in, almost instinctually. I think that’s why revolutionary games fail a lot of the time. They try to do SO much, that the player can expect such a different experience. They may enjoy, but they have not grown to it. (I was going to place an example, but I can’t come up with one on the top of my head. Great argument backing, eh? :D)
So I think developers have to get players outside the box all the while maintaining the illusion that everything is as it should. Eventually, that box will expand and our horizons – gaming and otherwise, will be that much broader.
Anyways, that’s 30% IMO, and 70% BS.
If Soren reads these comments, I was wondering if he at any point during the design phase of Civilization had an inkling as to what the game would play like real-time?
(I liked your take on console RTS’, and I’ll definitely be stopping by to read any recent articles – and probably back track a lot too. Thanks for writing about games!)
– Matt
I think the main thing that drives my interest in game design these days is the same reason I think the real world is so flawed. (Of course, I don’t retreat to the world of MMOs, but embrace participation in politics. But that’s a whole other discussion.)
In real life, people are born with richer, smarter, or more stable parents, in richer, smarter, or more stable communities and countries. Fortunately I live in a country where a ghetto kid with an alcoholic dad at least has a shot at making something of himself, but he doesn’t have the same chance as the son of a President. Aside from stealing kids away from their parents, it’s hard to imagine a real meritocracy.
But in the World of Warcraft, it’s so perfect. Everyone starts as a level one character. The more skill you have, the better you do. (And, in a more interesting sense, most RPGs will reward hard work more than actual skill. An average but patient man will get a level 70 ass-kicker. A much smarter guy with a level 1 character has no choice but to work hard to compete.) May the best player win.
Which is why games are so frustrating when they DON’T reward a player for their merit. There might not be a rich dad in the World of Warcraft, but there’s a rich dad in real life who can buy his son a level 70 paladin. Nothing more infuriating than a guy 30 levels higher than you asking you what the “cast spell” button is.
While I’ve never personally played a MMO, unfairness in other games can still piss me off. It bugs me when I can lose a strategy game not because I was outsmarted, but because I was cursed with a bad starting location. I hate it when I lose a FPS-FFA simply because five guys have an offline relationship where they can gang up on me. And it bores me when I realize that there’s one best attack or spell in an RPG that will let me tear through the game mindlessly.
Which goes to Soren’s point about no single choice always being right. For a game to create a true meritocracy, you need to go beyond balancing the character classes and starting locations. You need to offer the player a real choice — not just a multiple choice test of the one right answer. Multiple choice tests can be memorized, copied, and repeated. There’s not enough merit, IMO, in memorization. A robot could do that.
Truly testing someone’s merit is a matter of testing their ability to be flexible, under unpredictable but fair conditions. Games, for me, strike right to my core sense of fairness, and my ideas about merit.
“It bugs me when I can lose a strategy game not because I was outsmarted, but because I was cursed with a bad starting location” – Dan
Equality is an utopy, I would be bored if the location would be always the same for both players, you automatically would know about the other’s, that’s exactly the reason why you change the difficulty when you’ve mastered a level. And it’s all Chance’s fault. You didn’t even wish to be born, for God’s sake! But once you’re there, it’s your turn, and when Chance will interfere again, it will be the beginning of a new turn, but you will have had an opportunity, a time (long or short, that’s Chnace messing around again!) to learn how the world works. There’s the equality, maybe not in the start, but hey, if it’s pretty clear that a richer person has more chances than a poorer, who can say liking vanilla ice-cream or having a cat does not help? It would seem it doesn’t matter, but who knows… Evolution and selection (natural or not, that’s another story) has always fascinate me. No wonder I can’t wait to play Spore 🙂
There’s choice, and there’s the illusion of choice. Illusion is a powerful tool that allows presentation values to outpace the underlying technology, but it falls apart once players recognize the smoke and mirrors and subverts them to gain an advantage.
Taking the example of starting conditions, I stopped enjoying some multiplayer strategy games once they devolved into tightly scripted build orders and opening strategies. In some sense, it’s a long drawn-out version of rock-paper-scissors; guess correctly at the beginning and victory is virtually assured.
I can sympathize with the “crappy starting position” problem. That said, what ever happened to “handicaps” in multiplayer games?
The great thing about games is, unlike real life, the goals are well defined (conquer the world), and the goal is entirely achievable with the tools you are given. (In real life, you make up the goal, and you often don’t know if that goal is even attainable.) For that key difference between games and real life, you know that ice cream and cats won’t help you in Civ 🙂 You do know what variables give you an advantage, and that’s why it can be frustrating when someone else seems to get every advantage and you don’t.
As much as I hate giving people random advantages and disadvantages, I might just hate predictability more.
It IS possible to reign in the biggest dice rolls, leaving small amount of randomness to provide variety and keep players on their toes. Not to mention that you can balance the variables — the starting conditions, the traits, the disasters — so they’re all relatively equal, but all different. Equality does not mean sameness.
Which brings me back to the reason I like games and game design. Unlike real life, you CAN find manageable ways to take out the elements of luck and bias. And still be unpredictable. I’m with Soren that a fun game — and a good test of merit — is to see how players solve problems in an unpredictable environment.
Awesome post.
Your points on ideologies reminded my Peter Norvigs talk at the Singularity Summit. If you’ve got an iPod you might want to stick this on there for a rainy day:
http://www.singinst.org/summit2007/audio/ss07-peternorvig.mp3
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