Journey, created by that game company, has often been cited as a game that can create a powerful social bond among two strangers. Chen relayed an anecdote about a player who had such a profound experience that he continued the play the game repeatedly just so he could give newbies the same kind of experience he had experienced when he first started playing Journey. Sky: Children of the Light was Chen's opportunity to expand upon the design of creating emotional bonds between players by thinking about what was needed for this to occur in a multiplayer setting.
According to Chen, designing an environment conducive to positive connections is of utmost importance to creating a congenial community. Very often, toxic communities arise from competitive games that are about one-upping and overpowering other players. In Journey, players were made to feel small by making the environment majestic. They had a feeling of awe.
In Sky, Chen wanted to simulate social consequences.Too often, players do not have social consequences in a virtual world. If they act badly, they can hide behind a handle or make a new account. In Sky, players are known by what others know about them, which means players needs to consider how they treat others. In addition, players cannot disguise themselves. Anything a player writes in the Sky community is visible to the player's closest friends.
Players in Sky need to "level up" a relationship, just like people in real life slowly get to know other people and "level up" into friendships. Through "leveling up" a relationship and creating trust, players earn the ability to converse to those players.
Chen says that toxicity is avoidable and that "game designers are totally capable of changing how people interact in their virtual realms" and can create a positive environment without much change to the system. Once the social consequences are in place, people will behave more like they do in real life.
Sande Chen is a writer and game designer with over 20 years of experience in the industry. Her writing credits include Independent Games Festival winner Terminus and the PC RPG of the Year, The Witcher, for which she was nominated for a Writers Guild Award in Videogame Writing. She is the co-author of Serious Games: Games That Educate, Train, and Inform, a founding member of the IGDA Game Design SIG, and an expert in the field of educational game design.
In this podcast, game writer Sande Chen discusses her career in games and covers various topics such as narrative design, system design, and work-life balance.
In 2014, Carl Killian was interviewing game writers for a podcast series for the IGDA Game Writing SIG. This initiative was stalled (but still going on slowly) and my interview was not posted. However, I recently was able to obtain the raw, unedited recording.
So, if you don't mind static and lack of polish, what follows is a very frank, hour-long discussion about my career and how others can pursue game writing as a career. I talk about working on The Witcher and Terminus as well as give advice on how to break in and become a writer in the game industry.
Sande Chen is a writer and game designer whose work has spanned 10
years in the industry. Her credits include 1999 IGF winner Terminus,
2007 PC RPG of the Year The Witcher, and Wizard 101. She is one of the
founding members of the IGDA Game Design SIG.
In this article, aspiring game designer Barret Gaylor argues that game critics often miss the point behind certain systems and condemn them due to personal tastes.
I am kind of amazed how much some game commentators don't understand that people have different taste. It should be an obvious concept, but it seem like the people who say that they understand this are the people who don't follow through. Obviously, I don't think that they are doing it on purpose; I think there is just a flaw in the way a lot of people criticize game design techniques that cause people to fall into this trap. Many critics get into the habit of saying a game design technique is bad, as opposed to understanding that they might not be a fan of the technique.
To be honest with you all, I began thinking about writing this after I watched a YouTube video about the recent Thief remake called Thief vs. AAA Gaming.
I apologize to the person who made this video, but I just could not
watch this video in its entirety. The creator of the video argues that
the navigation in the original Thief game is better than the navigation
systems in all modern triple A games today. He even says the phrase
"Waypoints are the laziest kind of design" as if he was trying to make
his opinion more myopic than it already is. In my opinion, it falls into
all of the traps that I am talking about. My biggest problem is that
the creator does not seen to even understand why the navigation system
in the original Thief worked. The navigation system in Thief is meant to
be a puzzle. The game gives the player a basic layout of the
environment without even telling them where they are in that environment
and ask them to find landmarks and figure out how to get from one place
to another. This type of immersive navigation puzzle is really cool,
but not all gamers want their navigation system to be a puzzle. This is
where we start to understand how different taste can cause the Thief
system to be bad for some gamers because the system is meant to create
an element of challenge for the player, but not all gamers want to be
challenged by their navigation systems. Some gamers just want their
navigation system to be a functional tool, which is why a waypoint
system is sometimes the best solution to the problem. In games like
Skyrim and Fallout where the world map is huge, a player might just see a
place on the map and want to go there, and they might want to do it is
the least challenging way possible. Some might ask why someone would
want their game to be less challenging, but I would ask them why they
thought exploration had to be challenging? I mean, shouldn't exploration
be engaging in of itself, without the need for challenge? The
engagement that someone gets from exploration is the feeling one gets
when they discover something new. Now, I am not saying that the new Thief game is good or bad, I am saying that dismissing waypoint system
entirely just because you don't like them might be a little
shortsighted.
You might think that this is a mistake that is only done be lesser known
critics like the one above, but you see it everywhere, even by very
well known critics. If you have ever watched Zero Punctuation by Ben
"Yahtzee" Croshaw, then you might have also read his article on regenerating health.
Yahtzee uses the length of the article to explain why he thinks that
regenerating health in shooters is fundamentally flawed. Again, this is
an example of another critic not recognizing the upsides of a technique.
Regenerating Health can be a useful tool in a game designers tool kit
and it can do a lot of things for a shooter. For example, regenerating
health can allow a designer to tune an encounter more tightly since they
will always know how much health a player will have when they enter the
encounter space, which is something you don't all ways have in a game
without regenerating health. Regenerating health can also give the
player better feedback to whether or not they are playing the game
well. Whenever you die, the game basically tells you that you were in a
situation where you were being shot too many times in too short a point
of time. Regenerating health can really help get rid of a lot of
variables that can cause a game to become too frustrating, but you will
never understand this if you have already decided that the technique is
bad.
I don't think people who make these kinds of argument understand how
pretentious they can sound by doing this. When a critic says that a
technique is bad, they are basically saying that everyone who likes the
technique is somehow wrong, but this in in of itself is wrong. There is
no such thing as someone's personal taste being wrong, and I think the
reason this happens is because the way the gaming community goes about
game criticism might actually be the thing that is flawed. Game
criticism seems to always be about trying to convince your audience how
you think games should be made as opposed to just telling your audience
how a game made you feel as an individual. On animenewsnetwork.com, during one of their ANNCast podcast about criticism,
Zac Bertschy, Executive Editor on the site, expressed that, to him,
criticism is an expression of how a piece of art made you feel as a
person. I agree with this statement a lot and I feel like critics would
be doing the gaming community of favor if they started writing with this
mentality in mind. Criticism should be about empathizing with another
persons experience and using your understanding of their taste to figure
out whether or not you will like a game or using their experience to
start and interesting discussion.
If you have already decided that a technique is incorrect, then you have
destroyed the ability for an interesting discussion to take place
because you have already decided that all the points that the other side
might have must obviously be incorrect. If critics and gamers continue
to talk about games along these lines, we will continue to have problems
understanding the different tastes and viewpoints that we should all
know exist in our community.
[This article was originally posted on Barret Gaylor's personal blog, Barret Game Design.]
Barret Gaylor is an aspiring game designer who recently received a degree in game design from the University of Advancing Technology. He is working on several game-related projects.
In Part I,
game designer Bud Leiser explains how to use the Fibonacci series in
system design. In Part II,
he shows the grind gap and how the amount of
grind can quickly accelerate when using the Fibonacci series. In Part III, he discusses how to evaluate the curve based on design goals. In Part IV, he suggests how to progress from the general guideline to cover all other elements in the game.
Actually…I could see implementing this curve into a real RPG if: for
the player to survive we would probably have to give lots of item drops
and a low cost way of healing outside of combat. (Final Fantasy health
potions anyone?). We can also try to figure out what strategy the
player will use to overcome this curve: What might happen is
players grind longer at a given level to buy his armor and boots.
They might even skip weapon levels, instead of buying each one
progressively they might save up money to buy 2 levels ahead, and then
use that powerful sword in combat, if he has enough health to survive 1
combat he could use cheap healing outside of combat. In other words
relying on that high level sword to get him through 1 combat and not
worrying about keep up with armor until absolutely necessary. If we
wanted to encourage this type of play we could set the monster damage
levels at rates unlikely to kill a player in a single combat. Drop
potions frequently and even give the player armor pieces as common
rewards. Assuming he has free time out of combat to heal up to full
without being attacked, this would be a completely valid RPG style.
-Or-
You could create these cost progressions using “suits” (Armor,
gauntlet, belt, boots, helmet, weapon). Then assign % of that to each
piece. For example:
Suits
Total Cost
Weapons
Sword Cost
Armor
Armor Cost
Helmet
Helmet Cost
A
50
20%
10
25%
13
10%
5
B
100
20%
20
25%
25
10%
10
C
150
20%
30
25%
38
10%
15
D
250
20%
50
25%
63
10%
25
E
400
20%
80
25%
100
10%
40
F
650
20%
130
25%
163
10%
65
G
1050
20%
210
25%
263
10%
105
H
1700
20%
340
25%
425
10%
170
I
2750
20%
550
25%
688
10%
275
J
4450
20%
890
25%
1113
10%
445
K
7200
20%
1440
25%
1800
10%
720
L
11650
20%
2330
25%
2913
10%
1165
M
18850
20%
3770
25%
4713
10%
1885
N
30500
20%
6100
25%
7625
10%
3050
O
49350
20%
9870
25%
12338
10%
4935
P
79850
20%
15970
25%
19963
10%
7985
With this we have a general idea of how much the player is making and how much things should cost.
The most important thing is we didn’t have to spend hours making these prices individually.
We have at the very least a general guideline. And we once we have a
guideline that works, that we understand, and that curves the way we
want to (meaning the player progresses at a rate that we want them to,
and slow down where we want them to). We can now add elements wherever
we want. And feel free to Fudge the numbers, give the player a cool Fire
Sword and increase the value 10%, or 5% or 500gp.
Bud Leiser beat Nintendo’s original Zelda when he was just 3 years old. Then went on to win money and prizes playing: D&D Miniatures, Dreamblade, Magic the Gathering and The Spoils.
He’s just returned from Vietnam where he helped manage Wulven Studios
as their Lead Game Designer. He was responsible for creating internal
projects, game design documents and communicating with clients to help
them succeed in the post-freemium app market.
In Part I,
game designer Bud Leiser explains how to use the Fibonacci series in
system design. In Part II, he shows the grind gap and how the amount of
grind can quickly accelerate when using the Fibonacci series. In Part III, he discusses how to evaluate the curve based on design goals.
OK so clear up some assumptions that we didn’t discuss earlier. We
didn’t talk about it but we assumed: Monsters get harder at each new
level, thus requiring the bigger swords to kill safely. We assumed that
we were killing 1 monster per combat and that each combat took the same
amount of time. (This is inherently assumed in our simplified
progression rate because we just said “monsters” killed. What it could
really mean is “units of monsters” if the game pits you against 3-4 weak
monsters in 1 combat. If you don’t understand what I just explained here then just ignore it, it’s complicated stuff and not really
necessary unless you are already a designer and thought I was doing
something wrong.)
28 (almost 300%)
34
42
51
Now I haven’t even assigned a time value to any of this yet, but
already I can tell just by looking at this formula that the player is
going to have a very good early curve up until about level weapon 8.
After that however getting weapons is going to be very time consuming.
So what do you do now? Well, you need to make some important design
decisions. Is this the right time for a player level to plateau? If you
built your game for players to explore most of the world, and get their
abilities, and really enjoy the game at levels 7-12 this is probably a
great curve. Because the player can reach levels 5+ relatively quickly
and then the game will begin to slow down and by the time he reaches
level 8 the progression really slows down giving him plenty of time to
enjoy the upper levels.
-or-
If however you want players to “power through” the first 20 levels;
than either this curve is way too harsh or you will need to throw in
lots of additional help. Such as quests that give big rewards, or lots
of item drops.
-or-
You could use this curve for the first 8 levels. And then create a completely new curve.
And the reality is all of these solutions *can* work. You just have
to decide what your goals are. How do you want the game to feel? How
soon do you want to give players a sense of power over the world? Where
(in time and power level) do you want the player to really slow down?
Where will players have the world really open up to them and let them
explore.
Now remember, we did this with just a Sword cost. (Which really could stand for EXP levels, or rifles or anything super useful to the player)
We didn’t even cover things like ranged weapons, axes, armor, boots,
capes, helmets, potions and special items. So it’s completely broken
right? Sorta….but not really. We'll discuss this next.
Bud Leiser beat Nintendo’s original Zelda when he was just 3 years old. Then went on to win money and prizes playing: D&D Miniatures, Dreamblade, Magic the Gathering and The Spoils.
He’s just returned from Vietnam where he helped manage Wulven Studios
as their Lead Game Designer. He was responsible for creating internal
projects, game design documents and communicating with clients to help
them succeed in the post-freemium app market.
In Part I, game designer Bud Leiser explains how to use the Fibonacci series in system design. In Part II, he shows the grind gap and how the amount of grind can quickly accelerate when using the Fibonacci series.
So what I’ve done now is shown you the flat progression on the left,
so you compare it to the 20% degrade on the right. It makes a huge
difference right? But now we need to compare it to sword costs to know
what kind of effect it will have on our player grind.
Monster
Reward A
*10
Reward B
*10
Difference
Grind Gap
A
5
50
5
50
0
B
10
100
8
80
-20
-2.5
C
15
150
10
104
-46
-4.42308
D
25
250
15
147.2
-102.8
-6.9837
E
40
400
20
200.96
-199.04
-9.90446
F
65
650
28
278.528
-371.472
-13.337
G
105
1050
38
383.5904
-666.41
-17.3729
H
170
1700
53
529.6947
-1170.31
-22.094
I
275
2750
73
730.6281
-2019.37
-27.6388
J
445
4450
101
1008.258
-3441.74
-34.1355
K
720
7200
139
1391.109
-5808.89
-41.7573
L
1165
11650
192
1919.494
-9730.51
-50.6931
M
1885
18850
265
2648.482
-16201.5
-61.1728
N
3050
30500
365
3654.381
-26845.6
-73.4615
O
4935
49350
504
5042.291
-44307.7
-87.8722
Ok so let me explain how I did this so it’s not too confusing for
some of our readers. On the left we had our flat progression if you
remember, so I took that and mulitplied it by 10 to get our weapon cost.
In column 5 I did the same thing to our degraded reward system to see
how much they would make after killing 10 monsters. Then I found the
difference between those numbers to determine the monetary gap. We can
see that the player is definitely falling behind monetarily each step
and will have to grind more and more for each new level of sword. And
finally in the last column I take the amount of money they make from
killing monsters to determine how many more monsters they will need to
kill at each step to earn the next weapon (in addition to the first 10).
So let’s zoom in on that.
Grind Gap
0
-3
-4
-7
-10
-13
-17
-22
-28
-34
-42
-51
-61
-73
-88
Here we can see at that level 1, no problem kill 10 monsters get a
new sword. YAY! Feels pretty fast for the player, which is good they
just started a game we don’t want them to get bored so let’s give them
some quick rewards. Now how about level 2? Oh just 3 more monsters
that’s not bad right? Then just +4 more, then +7, then +10.
Now let’s pause there for a moment; because I feel it’s important.
Remember we started with 10 kills for Sword A. Then we added +3 (13),
then +4 (17), then +7 (24). So by the 4th step we now have to kill 24
monsters to get our next sword this is the point where our beginning
rate doubles (or another way to think about this is progression rate is
50% of our starting rate). The next step however adds +10 (37) so in a
single level we again add 100% compared to our first step! WOW! This is a
really really important thing to understand.
Let’s make sure every reader full grasps this curve that we created.
In the beginning we leveled our sword up very quickly, just 10 kills.
Then it took us 4 steps to double that progression rate. But then in the
5th step it doubles (the base not the current) instantly! This means
that each step after this is going to add a huge amount of grind
(compared to our first level).
So our progression curve still feels pretty good at this point, it
should feel fine and will probably feel fine for a few more levels…. but
it could get out of hand quickly. Let’s see what happens next
+13
+17
+22
This however is an important step, this last step now adds 200% more grind time, compared to our very 1st level. And then it gets steep as hell.
Bud Leiser beat Nintendo’s original Zelda when he was just 3 years old. Then went on to win money and prizes playing: D&D Miniatures, Dreamblade, Magic the Gathering and The Spoils.
He’s just returned from Vietnam where he helped manage Wulven Studios
as their Lead Game Designer. He was responsible for creating internal
projects, game design documents and communicating with clients to help
them succeed in the post-freemium app market.
In Part I of this article, game designer Bud Leiser explains how to use the Fibonacci series in system design.
In my last article, You are a Game Designer, I dropped a piece of information saying people should learn about the Fibonacci series,
but I didn’t reveal it or why it mattered. The idea of course is that
people who didn’t know it already would go look it up on their own, that
is, if they were serious about game design.
So for those not familiar with it the series is basically:
0 1 1 2 3 5 8 13 21 and so on.
Or more importantly (to us) the next integer is the sum of the previous 2 integers.
But why is this important to game designers? Because it’s such a useful and simple way to create a progressive cost system.
Let's Create Game System Together
For example let’s say you wanted to make an RPG and what you really
want is a cost curve so the player can’t buy his weapons too quickly.
You could price each weapon individually, one a time, and finish your
game sometime never. Or you could create a formula that prices each
weapon for you. Fibonacci is great because it scales up very quickly,
creating nice beautiful gaps between costs. So let’s not start with 1 1
2, because…well that’s silly and unnecessary. So let’s start with 50 and
100.
Sword
A
50
Sword
B
100
Sword
C
150
Sword
D
250
Sword
E
400
Sword
F
650
Sword
G
1050
Sword
H
1700
Sword
I
2750
Sword
J
4450
Sword
K
7200
Sword
L
11650
Sword
M
18850
Sword
N
30500
Sword
O
49350
Sword
P
79850
By the way this formula is really simple to setup in Excel
=sum(C1+C2) then extend downwards will automatically populate C2+C3,
C3+C4 and so on.
Notice how quickly the price begins to ramp up? This is really cool
because were talking about 1 type of weapon, the sword. So we probably
don’t want 2 swords to be of similar cost, we want them to have large
power gaps and therefore we want large price gaps. What this doesn’t
tell us at all is how quickly the player will buy them. For that we can
create a new formula based on fighting monsters at his weapon level. So
for example say the player Starts with no sword and kills 10 monsters
before he can buy Sword A. Now he has Sword A and can kill Monster A for
10 gold a piece. This means we have a flat progression system. Every time you kill 10 of a similar level monster you should be able to
afford the next sword, which leads to the next monster which leads to a
new monster that rewards you with 0.10 cost of the next sword.
Whew a lot of words to explain something so lame and boring right? So
let’s say we don’t want that flat progression, what we really want is
for the player to grind a little more each time. So what happens if we
try Fibonacci code *0.8, this means that as each reward value grows it
also decreases by a substantial amount. Let’s see what that looks like
shall we?
Bud Leiser beat Nintendo’s original Zelda when he was just 3 years old. Then went on to win money and prizes playing: D&D Miniatures, Dreamblade, Magic the Gathering and The Spoils.
He’s just returned from Vietnam where he helped manage Wulven Studios
as their Lead Game Designer. He was responsible for creating internal
projects, game design documents and communicating with clients to help
them succeed in the post-freemium app market.
How does a game designer create systems? What are the nuts and bolts of balancing such a system?
Ian Schreiber alluded to the challenges of creating balanced systems in his articles on Pacing and Bud Leiser mentioned in his article, You Are A Game Designer, that the "mysterious" job of game design may include wrangling with Excel spreadsheets. For would-be designers, system design may be one of those big mysteries.
I welcome articles on the topic. As always, submission guidelines along with submission procedure can be found on the right hand side of the blog. Topic suggestions and articles are appreciated!
Some questions:
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