Game Design the Wrong Way

Okay, time to back off of game-theory land for a bit.

One thing to look for in game design is feedback loops, both positive and negative.  By feedback, I don’t mean people praising or insulting you on your board, I mean feedback within your game.

Positive Feedback

Positive feedback occurs when the act of succeeding makes it more likely that you will succeed.  The impact of this is that an early lead becomes difficult, if not insurmountable, to overcome.

In Quake 2, an early lead generally meant that your opponent was respawning with bad weapons, while you would generally have some armor left and decent health (even if not full).  Recovering to full health was generally not a big issue, but the lack of weapon availability was.  Because of this, many Quake 2 matches started out very tight, but quickly became one-sided after the first kill or two.  Even in professional/tournament play, it was normal to see the scores of individual games (1 on 1 or team) be extremely lopsided, even when the teams themselves were rather close.

Similarly, in more realistic racing games, an early lead can become insurmountable.  The lead car not only has a lead that can be protected, but doesn’t have to deal with other cars forcing him out of the optimal line.

Negative Feedback

While positive feedback has the effect of protecting a lead, negative feedback does the opposite.  Negative feedback either constrains the player in the lead, or gives an advantage to the player or players trailing.

An excellent example of negative feedback in a non-video-game scenario is 8-ball pool.  An early lead in 8-ball simply means you have more of your balls off of the table.  This produces a state where there is a greater chance of your opponent’s balls blocking your shots, making it harder for you to increase your lead.

Another good example is drafting in racing games.  By drafting, a player that does not have the lead can increase their speed, an option that the lead player does not have.  This can counter the effect of the positive feedback inherent in racing games, but only if the lead is sufficiently narrow.

The Civilization games are filled with negative feedback.  Tech leads must pour resources into research, while those behind can often pick up the same technology for a song.  Larger empires create higher overhead, and so become harder to expand.  Even though tech and buildings can be created to overcome this, those buildings carry their own price, both initial and ongoing.

Natural and Artificial Feedback

Natural feedback is feedback that is a “natural” consequence of the game rules overall.  For instance, in a hypothetical racing game with only front-firing weapons, there is a negative feedback to being in the front - more people can shoot at you, and you can’t shoot at anyone.

Artifical feedback is feedback that is put in the game arbitrarily, without a core mechanic backing it up.  For instance, the “rubber-banding” seen in many arcade-style racing games is a good example.

While negative feedback can help games remain more competitive, it’s important to realize that many players will act negatively to artificial feedback, especially if it causes them to lose.  On the other hand, making use of natural feedback is often simply “good strategy.”  In a realistic racing game, if one player drafts behind another one and uses that speed to pass the leader in the last second, this is “good strategy.”  However, in a less-realistic game, if the rubber-banding effect causes the same result (a last second loss) this can be considered to be a “cheap loss because of stupid rubber-banding.”

This doesn’t mean that artificial feedback is universally bad, but that you should be aware of the psychological impact that it may have, especially on more competitive players.

Feedback in Single Player

While this article has mostly focused on multiplayer games, single player games are also filled with feedback loops.  These commonly involve either powerups gained for strong play (positive feedback) or depletion of stores if you play poorly (positive feedback).

This can pose a problem in two ways.  If a given stage/area is balanced at a certain difficulty, and the assumption is that a player will enter the stage with certain resources, then it is likely that a player that just “squeaked through” the previous area will find himself under-equipped (to the assumed resource set) in an area harder than the one that he barely made it through.  This can quickly make the game nearly unplayable.

On the other hand, if a player was able to waltz through a previous area, and now has additional resources beyond what is assumed, it is likely that the next area will become even easier than intended.

The real trap in this case is thinking that the game is too easy because the testers or developers (who are all experts at the game) always have all of the bonus items, and so assume the bonus items when balancing the levels.