Little Blue Roads

A different kind of post today: a friend of mine is starting a podcast and interviewed me about game design. We talk about a lot of the things I've already covered in previous posts, but we also talk about why playing games is important, and where the future of gaming might take us. I had a great time talking to him, and I hope you enjoy listening to it!

Little Blue Roads, Episode 2: Charles Wei, Tabletop Game Designer

Dialing It Up

The power levels in your game are important for multiple reasons. Last time, we talked about balance. Today, we’re gonna talk about the way power levels change throughout the course of the game.

Just a quick aside for those who might not know what I’m talking about, power levels refer to how strong a player’s abilities are, or how strong certain game elements, like characters or cards, can be. Power level is not a good thing or a bad thing, it’s simply something that needs to be taken into consideration when designing a game.

Another term you may have come across that’s related to power levels is power creep. This is the tendency for game elements to get stronger and stronger over time. You generally hear this term in reference to trading card games. As new cards are designed and released each year, the general trend is for the cards to become stronger. This can also sometimes happen in video game series. While power creep is a necessary part of a healthy game, kind of like how a little bit of inflation is expected in a healthy economy, power creep left unchecked can ruin everything.

The way power scales is also important aspect in board games and cards games. Depending on the game, power levels can rise throughout the game, fall throughout the game, or remain flat throughout the game. In some instances, it can continuously go up and down as circumstances change for the players. In my experience, the most dynamic games are the ones where power levels rise until the final dramatic conclusion.

In a lot of games, players start with relatively few resources, and with limited abilities and options. As the game progresses, they accumulate more resources, and their abilities and options increase as a result. There are two benefits to having a game structure like this: players have time to learn about different parts of the game as they play, rather than having to try to learn everything at once, and having powers levels rise like this creates excitement within the game.

Imagine the opposite scenario, where players start with a lot, and finish the game with a little. They have to learn everything up front, and as they lose resources and abilities, their options decrease until the game basically fizzles out. In my opinion, this is the opposite of what you want your game to do. True, there may be game designs out there that operate on this very principle, but if you design a game like this, make sure it is intentional, and not just an oversight on your part.

Having a game fizzle out like this is sometimes a problem in games where the winner is the last person standing. As players attack each other, whittling down each other’s resources, more and more players leave the game until there is only one person left. Depending on how the game is designed, this could end up with the last few players left with very few resources, staring at each other across the board until one of them can eventually gain the upper hand and end the game. This would be a very anticlimactic end to an afternoon of gaming.

The power level in a game should steadily increase until the players reach the dramatic end. The action and the choices and the tension should keep building until a player finally triumphs, and if this is done well, then hopefully even those who did not win the game will have felt the excitement of it all and will have had a good time. I’m going to use my cooperative dragon game as an example again. The above dragon is the two-headed dragon from the game, and it was this dragon’s job to eliminate the players’ towers and workshops, which is their main way of accessing resources. The dragons would win once all of the players’ towers were destroyed. The problem with this is that once the players’ towers and workshops were gone, collecting enough resources to do anything was close to impossible, and the game would grind to a halt as the dragons mowed the players down with impunity.

After a lot of play testing, I came to realize that I needed to make the players’ workshops much more difficult for the dragons to get rid of. This still left open the dragons’ avenue of winning the game, which is to destroy all of the players’ towers, while still leaving the players access to resources through their workshops. In this way, players are still able to increase in power throughout the game, which not only keeps the game fun, but also keeps the two sides balanced, which as we talked about last time, is an important part of game design.

That’s all for now; may the power be with you! Good luck and good gaming!

Finding Balance

It’s important in life to find balance with all of the things that you do. You need to balance work with play, activity with rest, junk food with vegetables and exercise, etc. The same is true for games. A lot of times, if something isn’t quite working right with your game, the issue is balancing.

Generally, when we talking about balance in a game, we’re talking about power levels. In order for a game to be interesting, players have to be more or less on equal footing. Most of the time, this just means that no one player has a distinct advantage over the other players. In some games, players start out with different abilities. In other games, players might acquire abilities or gain certain advantages as the game goes on. All of these game mechanics have to be at similar power levels in order to make the game fair. If players feel like the game is biased against them, this can lead to them thinking that the game is broken, or worse, not fun.

Another problem a designer might run into where one character or class in the game is stronger than the others is that all of the players will want to play the same thing. You sometimes see this in fighting video games. It makes the game play a lot less interesting if everyone is doing the same thing all the time. This ties in to what we talked about last week with player choice. If there is really only one correct choice, then there really isn’t any choice at all.

The issue of balancing becomes even trickier when trying to design a cooperative game. Not only do the players have to be on an equal power level with each other, the group of players have to be at the same power level as the game itself, or the game board, which they will be playing against. And then, you have to figure out if the game works with different numbers of players, and if there are different characters to choose from, how the game changes depending on the number and which specific characters are being played. Again, and I know I say this a lot, but there is only one way to find this stuff out, and that is to play test. You have to see which characters or classes player gravitate towards, and which specific actions they use. Are there any unintentional combinations of abilities that break your game? Are the abilities worded in such a way that players can understand them without someone having to explain it to them? Do the abilities do what you intended them to do?

I’ve been working on a cooperative game for about five years now that’s an expansion for one of my board games. It pits a group of wizards, the players, against a group of dragons, the board. For the longest time, my favorite character was the fortune teller, because I designed a deck of cards reminiscent of tarot cards for her to use, and she was just a lot of fun. Unfortunately, this deck of cards coupled with her ability to see what the dragons were going to do next made her far too powerful, and I’ve spent much of design process trying to bring her down to an acceptable power level. But, with six different wizards, and six different dragons, and a multitude of other moving parts, balancing this game has been quite the challenge.

Players would complain that the dragons were too strong, so I had to weaken them and/or make the wizards stronger. But then, the dragons would be too weak, and the wizards would always win. While this might seem fun at first, if the players always win, there’s no actual challenge, and in my opinion, that wouldn’t be a very fun game to play. So, I had to balance it again, and the power level has been swinging back and forth between the wizards and the dragons ever since, as I hopefully approach that point of balance. In between all of this was play test after play test, and even though it’s been fun, it has certainly been difficult. I think the game is pretty close to balanced now, but every time I feel like I’m done designing, another problem inevitably arises. But, we keep designing, because we can always see that light at the end of the tunnel, even if we can’t tell how far away it is.

Anyway, that’s it for now! I hope that you are able to find the balance that you need. Good luck, and good gaming!             

Give Me a Choice

Whether it’s the decision of going to college or not going to college at the beginning of the Game of Life board game, or all of the decisions you make when playing Dungeons and Dragons, games are about choice. For some games, you have to choose which character you’re going to play, with each character having different attributes and abilities. In some games, you choose a specific play style. Are you going to play aggressively or defensively? Are you going to make allies, or be the lone wolf? Most games force you to make decisions throughout the entire game, decisions that are hopefully fun in some way. All of these decisions are what makes a game a game.

Beyond the simple existence of choice, it’s important that these choices be meaningful. If faced with a decision that will lead to the same outcome, regardless of what a player does, then there really isn’t a choice at all. Players have to feel like their choices matter, like they have some kind of impact on the game, whether that means advancing the storyline or helping them to win in some way. Otherwise, what’s the point of making those choices? What’s the point of playing the game? If your choices don’t matter, if the game just kind of happens to you, why not just watch a movie, instead?

People play games for lots of reasons. For a lot of people, it’s the challenge of pitting your knowledge and skills against those of another player, or sometimes against the game itself, if it’s a cooperative game. Others like the social aspect of gaming, or the fun of experiencing new game mechanics and themes. Of course, none of these are mutually exclusive, I personally like all three. And, there are lots of other reasons besides these to play games. But, I wouldn’t play games if I didn’t have some kind of agency while playing them. I want to feel like I’m influencing the outcome. It’s our job as game designers to make sure that our games offer players situations in which the choices they make feel like they matter, and to make sure that those choices actually mean something.

I used The Game of Life as an example of how you make choices in games, and I suppose you could say that, by definition, The Game of Life is in fact a game. But, it isn’t much of one. After a very few number of basic choices at the beginning of the game, there are then a bunch of random factors that determine what your experience in the game is like and who the winner is. That’s not much of a game at all, but at least it’s an entry point to gaming for young children. In Candyland, the only choice you ever make is what color you’re going to be, and that has no impact on the game at all. A person doesn’t really play Candyland so much as they watch it happen. And, although it would be hard to think of a scenario in which a person would accidentally make a game in which the player has no actual choices, there are some pitfalls to consider.

Let’s say you make a game with a character, let’s say a fire wizard, who has 2 abilities. The first ability to throw a fireball that does 10 damage and uses 1 point of magical energy. The wizard’s second ability is to throw a fireball that does 5 damage and also uses 1 point of magical energy. Now, the player has the choice to use either ability at any time, but why would a player ever choose the smaller fireball? This of course is an extreme example, but there will be times when your design might come out looking something like this. Sometimes, it’s hard to see. If your game mechanic forces a player to do the same thing over and over again, then you might need to consider if you’ve somehow inadvertently taken choice out of the equation.

Choices are what set games apart from other forms of entertainment. You don’t get to choose what the heroine does in a movie. You don’t usually get to pick where a character goes in a book. Games are fun because they engage us. We are the ones who choose, and we win or lose by those decisions. If the game is done right, if a player’s choices actually matter, then even if a player loses, they’ll still have a good time. And that way, everyone wins.

Good luck, and good gaming!

Play test, play test, play test...

Ultimately, there are two things you want to accomplish with your game: you want it to work, and you want it to be fun. And, there’s really only one way to find out if your game accomplishes these two things.

You have to play test.

I don’t mean just playing it a couple of times with your friends and calling it good. You have to play test it a lot, over and over again, with different kinds of people, and in different ways.

Play testing is really just the first step in the game refining process. After a play test, you need to evaluate what you saw. Who won the game? How did they win? How long did the game take? How was this play test different from other play tests? There are literally hundreds of questions you can ask about how a play test went, and it is your job as the game designer to figure out which of those questions are important for your game, and how the outcome of the play test should influence any changes you might need to make.

There are a lot of factors to consider when play testing. Some games play very differently depending on the number of players there are. Many games heavily favor players who are familiar with the game. You might be far enough along in your design process that you might want to find a group of people who have no experience with your game to do a blind play test, where they have to figure out how to play the game on their own without any guidance from you or anyone else who knows the game.

Now, a pitfall to watch out for: we spend so much time figuring out the rules and mechanics of our games, we sometimes overlook the single most important question: Is the game fun? It doesn’t matter how well the rules work, if the game isn’t fun, no one is going to want to play it. So, remember to check in with yourself, and try to get an honest read on how people are experiencing your game. Are you having fun? Are the play testers enjoying themselves? Sometimes, the most important thing you have to change is just to make the game more fun. I know doing that isn’t as easy as saying, and we’ll have to talk about this more at another time, but there are lots of ways to make a game more fun. It can be through the artwork, player interaction, theming, difficulty level, player choice, etc. Just remember, games are supposed to be fun, and play testing should be fun, too.

During the play testing process, people are going to have opinions about your game.  They are also going to have ideas about ways they think your game could be better, sometimes even before they’ve played it! They mean well, but remember to take these opinion and ideas with a grain of salt. These comments about your game are important; you want them. When you look at your play testers, you’re probably looking a the target audience for your game. Some of the comments will be really good, and you’ll definitely want to try them out, but at the end of the day, you know your game better than anyone else, and you simply can’t make every change and addition that someone suggests to you. This is one of the fastest ways to ruin your game. Ultimately, you are the one who decides what your game will be like. You understand the goals you have for your game, and whether or not it is reaching those goals.

After collecting all of this data, which includes your observations of the play test, as well as the opinions and ideas from your play testers, you’ll need to figure out if anything in your game needs to be changed. Once you’ve made those changes, or not made changes as the case may sometimes be, it’s time to play test again. I’ve found this repeated play testing to be a challenge, as I worry I am burning my friends out with my games, but do not be discouraged. If you have a halfway decent design, and if your play testers have any interest at all in gaming, being involved in helping a designer like this is actually quite fun. I’ve found that the people I ask are more than happy to give me a hand with play testing, and after a while, once your game is far enough along, they may start looking forward to playing the great game you’ve designed!

Here’s an example, from Rabbit Ranch again, about the importance of play testing.

 

The picture on the left is a hand of the old version of the cards. On the right is the new version. Notice the difference? In the old version, the card symbols are on the right side, so when you fan out the cards in your hand the way that most people do, you can’t see them. I had done dozens and dozens of play tests, and no one ever said anything about this. I think a lot of people just decided to hold the cards differently, or just spent more time looking through them and remembering what they had, but this was a simple design fix that someone finally mentioned during a play test, and I have to say the game design is much better for it.

Sometimes it seems like you will never finish play testing, and in a way you never will. Like many things in life, it is possible to continuously refine your game more and more and more, and still feel like it’s not perfect. It may never be perfect. But, you will eventually have to reach a point where you decide that it’s time to stop play testing, and it’s now time to introduce your game to the world. How you do this is a topic for another time, but only you will know when your game is ready to take that next step.

Well, that’s about it for now. Good luck, and good gaming!

First Steps

Those first few moments when you start thinking about creating a new game are filled with wondrous possibilities. What is your game going to be about? How are the players are going to interact with each other? What kinds of amazing new mechanics are you going to introduce to the gaming world? The sky’s the limit! It can be a little overwhelming, all these ideas swirling around in your head. Where do you even start?

What you have to do is to just start writing it down. It doesn’t even matter what you write. It could be all of the cool concepts you have, ideas for the art, the different kinds of cards or tokens you’ll need, anything, as long you just start writing it down.

Whatever you write will lead to something else, and that will lead to another thing, and so on and so forth until you have 10 pages of rules for a game that doesn’t exist, and don’t make sense to anyone in the world except for you.

And, that’s OK!

Because that’s how everyone starts, and you need to start somewhere.

But, now that you have this glorious mess, you’ll need to turn it into something that people can actually use. The tendency when designing a new game, especially for people who are doing it for the first time, is to throw every idea, plus the kitchen sink, into their game. While an idea dump is helpful for getting started, it does not actually make for a great end product. Complexity is not your friend here. I’m gonna talk more about this in another post, but essentially, you want to find the cleanest, most streamlined, and easy to understand version of your game that’s hidden underneath of all of the stuff that might be holding it back from being truly great.

But, we’re getting ahead of ourselves.

Just because something sounds good on paper, doesn’t mean it will translate into something that works in real life. The only way to find out if it works if to play test, and in order to do that, you need to make something that people can hold on to. We’re not talk anything fancy here, just some really basic cards that you print out on your home computer, and if necessary, a simple board for people to play on that you made with cardboard and a black marker. 

Of course, the actual items you make will depend entirely on the game you’re trying to make; you might not need cards or a board. The point is, you need to figure out what the bare essentials are for the game you want to make, create those items, and just start playing. This is the only way to find out if those rules you wrote actually make sense, and if they work together.

I wish I had taken pictures, but when I was first starting out, I created cards using actual Magic: The Gathering cards in cheap plastic sleeves, the kind where you get 100 for $1.00, and a piece of paper cut out to the size of the card. I put the text for my game on the paper, and cut out a window, so you could see the picture on the Magic card behind it. It was a pain in the ass, took a long time, and didn’t look all that great, but it gave me and my friends something to work with so I could figure out if this idea that I had was going anywhere.

Don’t stress out too much about making these initial play testing materials look nice, because it’s pretty much a guarantee that you’ll need to change things and you’ll end up throwing it all away after you make a new batch of stuff with your updates. Printer ink is one of the most expensive liquids on the planet. Don’t waste it!

A slightly fancier board than cardboard and black marker. I did end up throwing this board away, BTW.

However, there is something to say about the functionality of what you make for the purposes of play testing. It is much easier to shuffle cards of uniform size made of sturdier material, than it is to shuffle un-sleeved flimsy pieces of unevenly cut paper. And if your play pieces are constantly falling down and you have to stop play to fix everything all the time, this will not only be annoying, but will hinder your ability to find out if your game actually works. Play testing should be fun, not a chore.

Going into this, you have to realize that your initial idea is just that: an idea. More than likely, it won’t have that much resemblance to the final product. You have to start with an idea, play test it, figure out what’s working and what’s not, make adjustments, and play test again. It’s kind of like refining ore to get precious metals. You need to extract the gold from that unassuming piece of rock.

Hopefully, that’s enough to get you started. Good luck, and good gaming! See you nest time.