Game Design the Wrong Way

If a game is a series of decisions, then we need to ask what makes a good decision.

A decision that’s obvious isn’t a good decision (unless it takes skill, or you don’t have much time to make it).
A decision with no consequences isn’t even a decision.

I could do this for a while, but instead I’m just going to assert: What makes a decision interesting is it being a hard decision.

So, what makes a decision hard?

• Time constraints
• Number of choices
• Number of factors to consider
• Severity of consequences
• Duration of consequences
• Skill required

That’s at least a good start. With that, we can say that the difficulty of a decision is something like:

D = n-choices * n-factors * severity * duration * skill required / time allowed

What’s interesting here is that most of these things can vary based on the player.  Skill certainly can.  The number of choices may not seem to, but experienced players can immediately reject a number of choices for many situations, so that they are only focused on a smaller subset.  The factors to consider can similarly be reduced by a player that knows what is, and is not, important for a given situation.

Severity of consequences, length of consequences, and time required may not seem to vary, but I think even those can.  A good player may know how to mitigate the effects of a poor decision, reducing both the severity of duration of consequences.  Even time factors can arguably be mitigated, as a better player may have seen the decision coming in advance, and can have already been considering the appropriate action to take.

So, what value is any of this?

It gives us a way to analyze a decision, or a series of decisions, and describe how or why they are interesting or uninteresting.  If a section of a game is too hard, we can use these rough metrics to try to define *why* it is too hard.  Is it because the player isn’t given enough time?  Because there’s too many possible choices?  Or maybe too many things he has to keep in his mind at once.  Maybe the consequences are too harsh, or are too long-lasting.

Conversely, if a section of a game is too easy, and too uninteresting, it gives us a number of ways to analyze why.  Is it because while there are a number of choices, only one is really valid?  Maybe there needs to be more time pressure.

Another thing that it lets us look at is tension.  I’m going to define tension as “difficulty over time.”  Tension increases as a player has to make difficult decisions, and increases more if the decisions are more difficult.  Tension decreases over time.

If the tension of a game gets too high, the game can become frustrating.  If tension is too low, the game is boring.

And if tension is based on difficulty, and difficulty is based on the player, then it’s a tough job to balance the game to keep people happy.

And that’s, really, what this blog is about.