Simplicity in Design and Play

Humans accomplish complex tasks through series of simple steps. Each of these steps can be easily put into one’s head and manipulated to project the results of decisions. Sometimes this is an entirely unconscious process, as it is when you’re fighting someone with a sword. Sometimes it involves a lot of conscious deliberation, as when a general is decided where to commit his forces for an offensive. Through practice we prod the environment and learn how it works, then we project the results of possible actions and pick those actions that we believe best align with our interests. This doesn’t happen in complex, monstrous steps. It happens one instruction, one alteration, one simple judgment at a time.

The most fun we have while playing games is often when we’re pushing the boundaries of what we understand about the game’s systems—when we try something new that might empower our character significantly, when we combine different mechanics in a novel way, when we’re just exploring to see what’s over the next hill for the first time. Boredom ensues when we’ve fully digested a game’s systems and can accurately predict what will occur in just about any in-game situation.

Never underestimate the amount of perceivable complexity that can arise from the interaction of simple rules. There are only four different genetic bases that, in their repetition throughout strands of DNA, generate the complexity of the entire human body.

When I write about enhancing the simulation in MMORPGs, I’m not talking about making the games more complex for the player in arbitrary ways. The proper simulation hides the complexity within the game systems so that when the player takes an action in the game world, the result will be easily understandable as an analogue to how the action might effect the real world. Instead of the player learning a thousand exceptions to how the real world works, the player can learn several in-game actions that work roughly the same as they’d work in real life. A very smooth and intuitive gameplay experience results as long as the simulation is of consistent depth—everything with equal importance should be simulated with a similar degree of complexity and with similar attention towards accuracy to real-world systems.

Great game design puts the user in command of a situation that she can grok quickly and effect with intention via making interesting decisions and executing those decisions through the game’s interface. Simulation makes sense when the game makes an attempt to present a world vaguely like our own. For abstract games like Tetris, the game is best served by keeping the rules as simple as possible and revealing them directly to the player because the rules are, from the player’s view, arbitrary. MMOs combine the arbitrariness of Tetris, which is best served by simple mechanics and a simple interface, with the simulation-esque aspects of a game world where complexity is required—at least under the hood—to ensure a relatable simulation. I maintain that our best bet is to embrace the simulation and play to the strengths of the world-like metaphor on which MMORPGs rely.

To the player, the simplicity and intuitiveness of a game system is not dictated by the number of rules, but instead by how well the game’s metaphors hold. Simplicity and depth are our goals, but that doesn’t mean arbitrariness and extreme abstraction.

(I expect this post will not be readily understood, primarily because the distinction I’m making is subtle. I seem to contradict myself within the article, but I’m actually being consistent: Complexity in simulation isn’t complexity in play, simplicity in play can derive from a complex simulation—the goal is simplicity in play, depth comes from complexity of simulation.

I anticipate writing more on this topic in the future. There are a number of points here that definitely need more exposition before becoming clear.)

Accountability System for Dynamic World MMOGs

Let’s think about how society holds people accountable for their actions and why. We’re not going to be able to directly model this in a game, but understanding how morality and social structures maintain themselves in real life can provide us with a basis for the mechanical social structure in a game world.

What (most likely) separates human beings from other animals is that we can calculate consciously the affects our actions will have on others. We can conceive of systems to judge actions on a scale beyond our own self-interest. These conceptions are institutionalized through religion and law. Societies dynamically generate and modify moral codes that their members tacitly understand. When there are enough people in the society, institutions arise to enforce moral codes and perpetuate, beyond the scope of the family, certain moral standards.

Accountability and moral agency are tightly bound. If we can be held accountable for our actions, we have the capacity to make moral decisions and be held to moral standards. We want the morality of actions to make a difference in what a player chooses to do when he interacts with others.

Societies in online games take on much of the morality of the real-world society in which the game is played. The effect of morality is deadened significantly in online games, though, leading to plenty of negative, uncooperative behavior that leads to undue pain and suffering.

Active morality promotes social order and cooperation, which, in general, leads to a much better social experience and a more enjoyable gameplay experience. In order for morality to matter in the game world, though, there needs to be accountability. Actions taken against (or with) other players need to have consequences, positive or negative, in order for the morality of those actions to matter to the player. Consequences cannot be enforced by players without knowledge of the precedent action.

Accountability in MMO dynamic worlds is deadened by several factors. Dynamic world games have to mitigate these factors significantly to make accountability work.

1. There’s no way to teach the morals of the game’s society to newbies without them experiencing it. Newbies are given a character that should have a solid understanding of the moral framework, but it’s impossible for the newbie to have that level of understanding.
2. There’s no ultimate punishment in the game world because death has little meaning. This has far-reaching consequences and cannot be overlooked.
3. The cost of abandoning a character and creating a new one isn’t prohibitive. Griefers only lose time when they are forced to make a new character, and those griefers usually have more free time than those who are being griefed.
4. Players don’t play every waking hour, so decisions that may need to be made have to work around when a player is online. The player’s perceptions and actions are limited by how long they spend online—there’s no analog for this in real life.
5. Survival is not a motivator for belonging to social groups. I-game groups are much more ephemeral and the bonds between players are much looser because there aren’t many pressing needs, and no need is as pressing as survival.
6. Membership churns in social organizations. As a result of weaker bonds between players in social groups, a player can jump from group to group at little penalty.

An accountability framework for a dynamic world needs to have several parts:

1. Event capturing and fact collection. The game engine can provide plenty of information about what characters have done. This information can be factually perfect—which is actually better than the general imperfection of information in real life. Collecting data can be difficult in games that have a lot of ambiguous actions available to players, but if players’ actions are relatively well defined, event capturing can lead to a significant increase in accountability.
2. Player aggregation and contextualization of information. Trusted players should be able to take the bare-bones fact sheets generated by the game engine and write histories around them that can be read by other players within the game.
3. Limited information availability. People don’t immediately know all of one anothers’ deeds and misdeeds. A game shouldn’t model this directly, but some gradual information spread depending on player contact and faction contact is necessary.
4. Account-wide activity memory. Because we cannot assume any degree of roleplaying, the moral actor should not be considered the character, but the player. All characters played on the same account should be connected. Activity histories should appear the same for all characters on one account (though there should be some reorganization of the view to allow the activity of the current character to be at the top or highlighted).
5. Give in-game social groups facilities for communicating at all times within the game. This means much more than guild chat. Social groups should have message boards accessible from within the game. There should be something like a wiki that the group can put up to hold important data about itself that its members need to know for the social order to be maintained. Organizational tools are crucial for the promotion of moral and cooperative behavior.
6. Allow social group membership to have a dramatic effect on how a player plays the game. More than simply giving the player a tag beneath their name and a chat channel, guilds should open up a whole new world of coordinated and uncoordinated group activity. When a player joins a new group, she should notice a difference in the way she plays the game every single time she logs on. In this way, group membership can have significance and membership churn can be reduced. Survival can be replaced with raw utility as a motivator for social behavior.

MMOs should make playing with others as smooth and rewarding as possible. In a game world where players can have significant effects on each others’ gameplay, it’s critical that social groups have the tools to invent and maintain morality frameworks to ease cooperation and promote social stability. Without tools to aid tracking and managing accountability, dynamic worlds will continue to breed a disproportionate number of psychopathic characters—such games will always be alluring but, ultimately, socially unstable, exploitable, and brutish.

Dragon Age: Heresy

I’m sorry that I’m hopping on the bandwagon to post about Dragon Age. This post will not be like others, though. Other bloggers have slobbered all over themselves as they’ve pointed out all the great features of DA:O. This post is heresy.

Everyone is in love with Dragon Age. I’m not.

It’s a good RPG, though it certainly doesn’t move the genre forward in any sense. I get a feeling of déjà-vu with much of what I see in Dragon Age. Everything feels familiar. It’s all good, but it feels too much like a trip back in time.

At first I was stunlocked by the very strong execution of traditional RPG elements. Then the game DPSed me to death with conversational weirdness overkill and combat that went from exciting to blah.

This review of Dragon Age’s downsides will be presented in the form of three suggested titles that were unfortunately rejected by Bioware during their brainstorming sessions.

Talk for an Age: Unyielding

Evizaer: “Oh, my lady, I see you’re not a refugee like the others. Allow me to tell you a little something about myself. In West Philadelphia born and raised in the playground is where I spent most of my days…”

Choose your response:

- “Don’t you ever shut up?”

- “I hate elves.”

- “Chillin’ out back and relaxin’ off, coolin’ off, shootin’ some B-ball outside of the school.”

- “I’m going to reference a moral framework that only came into vogue within the past two hundred years of a planet vaguely similar to our own, even though that framework didn’t exist in the time similar to ours.”

- “I’m afraid of strangers.”

- “I’d best be going.”

Dragon Valley: Uncanny

The graphics are good enough.

There’s plenty of detail in character models, but they still manage to be just barely off enough that I feel like I’m taking a tram through the uncanny valley. I see facial expressions that don’t match up with what’s being said. I see a lot of minor details that throw me off.

Bioware have gone very far towards getting their mannerisms and expressions perfect, but have fallen just short. I notice it in almost every conversation.

Dragon PAUSE

My primary gripe is with the combat system. I thought they’d come out with a system more interesting than the D&D systems they co-opted for past games. Nope. They made a system significantly more boring. Thankfully, you’re only exposed to the smorgasbord of uninteresting character growth options once every few hours. You’ll spend the rest of the time navigating dialog trees and pausing the game repeatedly as you stunlock and DPS your way through tactically dull battles.

If the game wants to be hard, it should provide the player with precise control.

You can only give one precise command to each party member at a time. No command queuing? Seriously? I find myself stuck between a rock and a hard place: I can either give commands one-at-a-time to my party members manually, or I have to use a really wonky and insufficient scripting system passed off as “combat tactics”.

“Tactics” allow you to be the AI programmer and configure the heuristics for how your characters behave in battle. It seems like it should be a good idea, but the game is too difficult for it to be particularly useful. And when you try to give manual commands while its active, some annoying things can happen.

The combat isn’t helped by the enemies being as uninteresting as the terrain. The vast majority of the battles are not particularly tactically interesting, but are difficult. I found myself repeating the same tw o or three steps each battle, and I had to micromanage my characters to pull off my strategy. It was effective, but boring. And I didn’t see a more fun alternative.

The terrain boredom is exacerbated by the fact that the game’s pathing is not good enough. Beautiful environments path poorly. The game is hard, so find myself trying to position my party precisely where they need to be in order for my AoE attack to hit the right enemies. Sometimes characters will cut through enemies, sometimes they’ll walk around in a nice, gentle arc. Either way, I always feel like I’m surprised with how characters move in combat. That’s very bad.

Dragon Age has some of the elements of a tactically stimulating game, but it’s far from as good as it should be.

So What?

• It’s a good game despite the flaws I’ve mentioned.
• Buy it if you like RPGs.
• No need to wear your rubber pants, though.
• Don’t be a fanboy.

Administrative Annoyances

Now that we’ve reached one hundred posts, it’s time to start moving forward with this blog as a website. I feel like TATI is past the point where being tagged a blogspot blog doesn’t matter. TATI has quadrupled in average traffic over the past month-and-a-half. I feel like we’re on the verge of something special here. Now that this site has risen above complete triviality, I’m very interested in giving you all the best possible experience. I don’t think blogspot is capable of doing that any more.

I’ve been receiving reports that comments on this blog are quite flaky. This is a big problem. This place is about discussion more than it is about my pontifiactions. Without comments being surefire, I’m not satisfied.

I’d also like to do more with TATI than just posting blog entries. I want to put together some longer-form game design essays that don’t make sense as blog posts. I also would like to put information on games I’m working on in a central and more permanent place.  Additionally, I write creatively and would like a good place to put up those writings. Rest assured: they would not mingle at all with the stuff you guys have come here to read.

At the moment we have a domain, but it forwards here. I’m not particularly happy seeing blogspot in the address bar. I feel like it cheapens the site.

We’re also not particularly happy with the analytics we get. I’ve been using both statcounter and quantcast and I feel like neither of them does enough for us. I don’t think this site is at a point where paying for analytics makes sense, but it’s important that I know what our audience is doing so I can get the blog better exposure.

I’m going to move this blog to either wordpress (custom installed on a shared hosting plan) or squarespace within the week. Squarespace seems to be the best option at this point.

If you don’t see any posts from me for the next 7 days, don’t worry. I haven’t given up on the site, I’m just moving it over to a better place. Once the move is complete, I’ll make a post here. You will be able to reach the new site through the domain we own, thatsaterribleidea.com. But you will have to switch over your blogroll links and your RSS feed, unfortunately.

The Character-Player Gap

In tabletop games, it’s important to maintain the gap between the player and the player’s character. These games hinge on the players roleplaying—the conflict resolution mechanisms are a big aid in the process. The quality of a game of D&D often depends largely on if the players can maintain a separation between themselves and their characters. When the players roleplay their characters effectively and don’t metagame too heavily, suspension of disbelief can take hold and lead to intense immersion. If the gap closes between the player and character, the game becomes a poor simulation with little soul.

MMO design, though it finds its roots in tabletop RPGs, cannot work off the assumption that there is a gap between the player and character. Social competition and cooperation force the gap shut.

How the Gap Closed

In order to compete most effectively against other players (i.e. take the path of least resistance at every possible point and maximize gain) the character is discarded. Roleplaying is significantly less efficient than playing as yourself, so a player motivated by competition will not bother doing it.

To cooperate most effectively in games, players use tools like voice chat that will erode the sense of talking to the character. The player’s interaction with the game world is no longer tightly bottlnecked through the game, it spreads out onto forums, vent channels, IRC, and IM clients. It becomes significantly more difficult to maintain a character-player gap under this diversity of contact—and most of this contact is necessary to cooperate most effectively.

If there is a not a social contract based around roleplaying, people will not roleplay. One or two people failing to roleplaying consistently leads to exponential numbers of players thinking it’s OK not to roleplay. So games cannot expect roleplay where there are a significant number of new players who are not familiar with the concept.

What Does It Mean?

Design games that don’t rely on their being any separation between player and character. Don’t limit the player’s ability to talk to other players because they are not on a certain character. At its most superficial level, persist guilds and friends lists across an entire account (perhaps on a server-per-server basis).

We can only safely assume that a player is roleplaying when he’s interacting with NPCs. MMOs should have a wider variety of NPC interaction choices. NPCs need to have lives that mean something to players—this alone will lead to a significant change in the meaningfulness of an MMO’s world.

The closing of the character-player gap doesn’t necessitate gutting systems of all immersion and stripping them down to their most addictive mechanics. The player character primarily needs more means of effecting the world that are affected by the character and not the player. We simply cannot rely on the player to roleplay in any form. We must fashion gameplay around this fact, not, as WoW and its descendants have done, in spite of it.

(When I present the design for the MMO I’d like to make, you’ll see more clearly how I intend to do what I say here.)

The Abstraction of Character

Perhaps my post about the abstraction of character progress was a bit premature. I defined the progress of characters without defining characters. This post will fill that gap. I aim to present vocabulary and set of patterns of defining and analyzing character abstractions as they exist in RPGs. (This may also be applicable to other genres, as well.)

A pragmatic view of a character in a game world would consist of two facets:

• State: A physical manifestation of the character in the game world, this implies a description of the character.
• Behaviors: A set of abilities that the character uses to interact with the game world.

More simply stated: a character’s meaning consists of what it is and what it can do. Characters allow interesting gameplay because their state affects what they can do and what they can do can affect their state.

State

What is the character?

Typically we describe a character (in terms of game mechanics) using a set of attributes. Attributes are the “ability scores” that are ubiquitous in modern RPGs: strength, dexterity, agility, constitution, intelligence, leadership, wisdom, charsima, etc.. Attributes only exist because they effect the abilities of a character; they represent the capacities of the physical being of the character.

Attributes are either intrinsic or derived. Intrinsic attributes belong to the character’s very being—you can’t break down their capacities further than intrinsic attributes. Intrinsic attributes are the individual variables in the various equations that dictate the effectiveness of abilities. Derived attributes are constructed through the mathematical combination of intrinsic attributes.

Although it doesn’t matter in most MMORPGs, attributes can be used in either their base or modified form. The base form is simply the attribute’s value when no novel effects apply to the character. The modified form arises when some effect happens to the character that changes the attribute. Permanent attribute damage or permanent attribute growth, as happens when a character levels can alter the base attribute value.

Behaviors and Effects

What can the character do?

Usually characters are quite limited in their actions. They can move about the world at varying speeds, but can only touch the world through killing creatures or combining ingredients to make items. On a smaller scale, characters are limited to a certain set of relevant abilities in each kind of activity they can undertake. In crafting, this is usually restricted to each type of item they can craft—an ability is to execute a recipe. In combat, a character has a number of abilities that center on changing the attributes of itself or other characters involved in the combat. The effectiveness of all of these abilities is dictated by individual abilities’ mechanics and the attributes of the character executing the ability.

A Schematic for Describing RPG Character Systems

Here’s my attempt to define a generic way to describe any RPG system. This is not set in stone: it may be incomplete, so please let me know if you can think of systems that this does not cover or anything else I’ve omitted. I will edit this schematic based on input from comments.

Define a set of attributes. Each attribute has

• A name.
• If the attribute has mutually exclusive values (like eye color).
• If the attribute can have multiple values simultaneously (like heritage).
• If the attribute is to be represented as a number:
• Its resolution. (The smallest increment possible that the attribute will recognize or allow.)
• (Optional) Its range. (The smallest and highest numbers possible.)

Define a set of abilities such that each ability has

• A name.
• A list of effects, such that each effect has
• (Optional) a name.
• A magnitude, either as a flat number or as an equation in n-dimensions that may refer to any set of attributes or external conditions. (The amount of damage dealt, hp healed, strength regained, etc. may rely on character level, strength, the color of the character’s hair, the phase of the moon, etc.)
• Either:
• An attribute effected.
• Something created that has its own unique state, which may consist of a different attribute system entirely and different abilities that should be defined on their own terms.
• A duration. (Instantaneous, permanent, or expressed in some unit of time.)
• A set of targeting rules. What will this effect affect?
• A set of triggering conditions. The effect could happen immediately or be reliant on some other condition, such as a certain amount of an attribute, the character’s knowledge of non-euclidian geometry, etc..
• A set of keywords that describe the effect. (A fireball would have the “fire” and “area of effect” keywords, for instance. These exist to allow effects to be modified by one another.
• A list of costs, such that each cost has:
• A duration. (If an effect needs to be sustained and the cost isn’t paid up front or if, for instance, the character debuffs itself in exchange for some other benefit.)
• A magnitude, either as a flat number or as an equation in n-dimensions that may refer to any set of attributes or external conditions.
• An attribute or object in which the cost is paid.
• A list of triggers that could cause the cost to be paid, modified, or diminished.

Taste and Appreciation

Music is important to me. I’ve been playing drums for twelve years, though I only developed a significant interest in music 8 years ago (during my high school years).

It’s easy to settle into a groove and only listen to a certain kind of music that you find comfortable. Most people have their taste set in stone from when they were children. They listen to the music that they are comfortable with. Often this means listening to the music that they’ve heard the most—whether it be through the radio or through their parents—and occasionally adjusting to whatever music happens to be popular (i.e. what music is currently being listened to the most).

In gaming, it’s even easier to settle into the comfortable at the expense of everything else. Games are more expensive, less available, and take longer for developers to make. A $12 album can be made in 6 months. A great game takes upwards of a year and will cost $50 to $65. In this climate, it’s more beneficial for game industry participants to be risk averse and simply produce games that are slight incremental improvements over the last popular game—or even games that are direct clones of whatever is popular. When a player learns how to play a game and finds he likes it, he’ll certainly be interested in playing more of the same. It’s comfortable, just like the pop music from when you were a child. Reliving it makes you feel nostalgic. It’s easy for people to fall into a pattern here and accept what is given and look no further.

The first step towards developing taste is being able to discern one thing from another. This involves paying attention. The majority of those who play games or listen to music do not pay attention to it. The game or song plays its role or fills a gap and for that, the player or listener is grateful. Almost any song or game can come to fill this gap, though. Discerning means that you are sensitive to how different games or songs fill that gap. When you discern, you can pick out things that you like more or less and identify why that is, even if it’s only because you understand that you like certain facets of the experience and dislike others.

Once you learn to discern, you gain interest. You have a vague notion of what you like, so you try to seek out more things that you’ll like. Through this process, you expand your knowledge of the area in question. Someone who likes strategy games might expand backwards in time and play classics like the original Command & Conquer and Total Annihilation. Through indulging your interests, you can further discern. Here your taste takes shape.

Eventually you have learned enough that no longer are your discernments of a “I feel X” nature, they become intellectualized. You gain an understanding of why a song is arranged a certain way. You start picking up on what makes a good level in a shooter. Now you don’t just know what you like by matching up an arbitrary list of preferences against some object you’re listening to or playing, you can make meaningful objective statements about what most people are think are subjective topics. You have gained an understanding of the topic, and through this understanding you’re capable of finding just the right kind of game or song for this point in your life.

At this evolved stage, you can see your own preferences changing and you may even be able to put your finger on why. You arrive at some fundamental ideas about why you love music or gaming. You dig deep and find games and songs that you absolutely love. Your life is enriched by the experience, and you wish everyone could enjoy the object of your evolved taste just as well as you can.

Music has taught me how to expand and develop my tastes. I’ve learned much about how to find new material and give it an honest chance. I’ve learned how to find what should be appreciated, and then how to appreciate and enjoy it. One band in particular that widened my musical horizons through hard listening and close attention is Venetian Snares. VS makes some very intense drill & bass music. It’s hard to listen to at times, it can border on complete chaos. The patterns are complex and the sounds used are unorthodox. It took me many listens to grasp what was going on in this music and gain an appreciation for it. Through learning how to listen to VS I felt I had developed my ability to learn how to enjoy new things by coming at them from different angles.

Through stepping beyond what is comfortable and becoming immersed in the strange and different, we can start small-scale personal transformations that can lead to a significant increase in the amount of enjoyment we derive from life. Developing taste is one of the most important processes a human being can go through. I hope you have experienced what I discuss here. If you haven’t, please go out into the world and find new material that interests you, be it in poetry, music, prose, gaming, horseback riding, or breeding dogs. Don’t just be a consumer, develop an acute taste and gain a deep understanding of a topic—it’ll enrich your life more than I can describe to you even given another ten thousand words.