Cognitive load in games: What it is and how to think about it

Have you ever heard someone say, "This game is a real brain-burner," "There are a lot of rules to learn to play this game," or "This game seems too simple"? What they are talking about is cognitive load -- how much of your brain you need to use to pay attention to something. 

There is not a one-size fits all amount of cognitive load that is "right" for games. Different games fit into different zones for different people at different times: 

• Sometimes after playing a heavy strategy game (aka the brain-burner) I want to play something lighter, because my capacity to focus and pay attention has been used up. 
• Sometimes I like to play a very complex game with lots of rules, so I can pull my mind off of other preoccupations. 
• Sometimes I like a game I can play in a cafe and still have conversations with the other players.

How much of a person's brain you hope and need to engage depends on the type of game you want to make and where and how you picture it being played.

It is useful to separate cognitive load into three categories:

1) Learning and Memory: how much brain power you need to learn and remember how to play a game. This will vary by type of game. There is no right answer for this category. Each person has different preferences, and each time and place has different parameters. 

2) Navigating user interface (UI) and information design: how much overhead your brain needs to process information and manipulate game elements. You want this to be as minimal as possible, so that the player can put their attention on the other categories. 

A few things to avoid to reduce overhead:

• Centered text
• Low contrast (See more in Mistakes in Card layout)
• Too many symbols
• Mixing symbols into the middle of text
• Extra clicks, and small targets for UI buttons, etc. (In computer interfaces)
• "Incoherence" - things not being similar in design when they could be.  
  
  Information Design in Board Games, another blog post, goes into more detail.

3) Strategic thinking: the fun, interesting, engaging part. It is coming up with strategies for play, figuring out the puzzle of it, thinking about what you would do differently next time. Sometimes a game is so simple it doesn't have much of this at all, and then I feel the cognitive load is too low. You can't get engaged.

More ways to think about it

Sometimes people think a game requires a lot of strategic thinking but the cognitive load they are experiencing comes from learning the rules and struggling with the interface. Go is a classic example of the opposite. The basic rules are so easy, the interface is so easy, and the strategic layer is incredibly deep. 

Designers sometimes over-simplify the design process. They advise "make fewer rules" or "always reduce cognitive load". I prefer "make fewer extraneous rules" "make fewer clunky, inelegant rules", and to ask "does this rule help the game become its best self?" or "does this rule make the game more interesting?". 

You can make a game that is simple to learn and easy to play, yet has no depth and is dull. You can also make a game that is hard to learn and hard to play, and has no depth and is dull. How to create strategic depth and complexity in your game? Sounds like another post to me!

Sometimes your intention is to create a more complex game, and therefore you may need more rules. George Orwell said it well, "Use as simple words as possible. But NO SIMPLER." Sometimes you need a complex word for a complex idea, or complex rules for deep games.   

Three Main Types of Cognitive Load:

• Intrinsic Load: The inherent difficulty of the material or topic being learned.
• Extraneous Load: The unnecessary mental effort caused by how information is presented (e.g., poorly designed materials).
• Germane Load: The productive mental effort devoted to constructing schemas (permanent knowledge structures).

Impact and Management 

• When the total load exceeds capacity, learning is hindered, errors increase, and focus declines.
• To optimize cognitive load, aim to reduce extraneous load, manage intrinsic load, and promote germane load.

 

How to use these ideas when designing games 

1) have an idea of what types of players, and environments you imagine your game being played by and in. 

• Some games are much a harder to play in crowded, noisy environments. Some are not. 
• Are you making a "pub" game? 
• A social game? 
• A day-long strategy game? Adjust the complexity to fit. 
• Are you making a game that people might play between other deep games? 
• A game couples might play in a quiet evening? 
• Is the game meant to be played a lot of times? You better have involved, complex strategic possibilities, or people aren't likely to return. 
• How old are the players who you think might like to play it? Is it a large range, or small? 
• Can the players read? Do complex reasoning? Have good eyesight? 
• How much memory is required. 
• Lots of questions to ask.

2) What is the medium your game is being played in? 

• Is it a board game? All those rules have to be remembered to make the game play smooth. That means you have to streamline more than on the computer. 
• Are you making a computer game? The computer can automate and remember a huge amount, so your complexity targets can be different, but you really have to make sure your interface is smooth. 
• Are you making a game people play with friends, no board, word of mouth rules transmission, like charades?

 

How I got into the Games Industry

The other night, I was talking to someone while we were sitting around after playing a board game. They wondered how I got into the game industry to begin with.

It is an unlikely story. I was homeless, living in a tent in the woods, and this guy I know who was working on a D&D title for SSI - Al Qadim: the Genie's Curse - needed a play-tester. He knew I used to spend lots of time inventing games, so that's a reason he asked me. This was back before cell-phones and email and all that, so I am not even sure how I got in touch with the guy. Maybe a party in Northampton. Something like that. But I said yes, and that began my career in the computer game industry. 

 

I used to get up from my tent, sneak into a gym nearby and shower, take the bus over to Northampton, MA, and show up for my job as a video game play-tester.

Luckily, I got along with everybody, and I had good design and computer skills. As time progressed, they let me do some design work as well, lay out some levels and side quests. It was pretty interesting work. Al-Qadim was an action Adventure game set in the Arabian Nights D&D universe. What do I remember about it at this point, 30 years later? Not much... there was a big genie, some caves to explore, some oceans to cross, and someone snuck out of the village under a sheet or something. Maybe a cyclops hid under a sheet?

It was a strange time for me. I would get checks and not know what to do, since I had been living a scavenging lifestyle for a little bit. I don't think I even had a bank account at that point. I got an electric guitar with my first paycheck and stored it in a friend's room. They even misspelled my name on the first few checks. "Jim Dubious".

 

After The Genie's Curse released, they signed me up for the next game - Entomorph: Plague of the Darkfall, by SSI - as an assistant designer. Along the way of that game's development, they fired the lead designer, and I stepped into the role. 

This was another action RPG, where you are slowly turning into a giant bug, and have to find out the reason why and reverse it. Strangely that is almost all I remember about it. But... I think there were "molemen" that lived in different caves and they were very important to the story. And there was a time traveling spider queen???

It was different coming in part way through a project as lead designer, as opposed to starting off that way, as I did for Majesty the Fantasy Kingdom Sim. I just carried things to completion and made few high level decisions. The interface and engine were already set, the story pretty much determined. Lots of game play tweaks though. That's one of the less glamorous, but vital, sides of game design and development: play it again and again, adjust some numbers, do it again. It is something I have done a lot of over the years. I would say it is central to making games. Especially to making them play well. Here's an example of how I did that with the City of Demons board game.

 

Read more about my history: How I got into Game Design 

Beyond the Ambiguity of "Creating an Experience" in Games

I've heard people talk about "creating an experience," as a way to approach designing games. But it seems like it is so broad of a concept that it could apply to any form of entertainment. 

Experience arises from multiple factors. Some of which are the type of media, and how it is made. Another factor is the context in which the media is seen, which includes location and other beings. Certainly, the experience of watching a movie differs vastly if you are in a theater with enthusiastic fans, or watching it alone on your iPad. And reading a book is different than looking at a painting.

When playing a game, much of the experience a player has is beyond the control of the creator. You can imagine where it might be played, and account for that, but you don't know. You also don't know what the personalities of the players will be like, whether their tastes align with your design tastes, etc.

So "creating an experience" may be a useful reminder to remember that everything will be viewed or played in a context, and that you can influence the overall experience with your choices, but its not very concrete or useful advice about creating games in particular.

 

To contrast the idea of "creating an experience", I ask, "What are the unique elements of a game that sets it apart from other forms of media?" 

It is dynamic, as opposed to static. Multiple times through a game yield different paths. Barring "the experience", that is not true for static media such as books or movies. But somewhat true for improvisational music.

It is controlled by player choices or luck, but not pre-determined.

You can win and lose at games. If you can't it is more like a simulation or a ride or a toy.

It is something you play with as a way of interacting with it. Similar to a toy.

It is primarily rules based. "Conceptual" as opposed to being "sensual" (primarily senses based). Similar to reading, as opposed to watching a movie or listening to music. A player is re-creating an experience that a designer had. It is sort of similar to playing music yourself off of sheet music. This applies way less to computer based games where there are simulated, sensual rich worlds you play within, and much more to Role-playing games.

It is procedural, as opposed to end result-oriented. Other media have a procedure which produces a result, and that result is the point, ie the book, the painting, and so forth. Except for improvisational music, which is also procedural. With a game, you follow procedures to re-create the thing, instead of being given or shown a copy of the thing, or the thing itself that was the result of a previous procedure.

 

As usual, when I get down to defining what a game is, I find it shares qualities with other types of media, and that definition itself can only go so far before everything seems difficult to define clearly. But this is a good way to help distinguish games from other media. A good starting point for defining "Game" as a medium.

Creating a Sense of Place in a Board Game

What makes a board game have a good or poor sense of place? 

There are two areas which contribute to the sense of place: In-game utility, and graphic presentation. 

First, let's cover the factors involved in in-game utility.

Location density:

• A map spreads out possible actions, and contributes to the pacing of the game.
  
  
• On a map there will be a mix of places where stuff happens and places you move along to get to other places. Sometimes the function of a place will be mixed, or vary depending on the game state and the player goals.
  
  
• If things are too close together, it can feel rushed and cartoony, not as much of a real space.
  
  
• If things are too far apart, it can feel tedious -- empty space is not memorable or defining.
   
• I like a mix, a lot of evenly spaced out locations and one further away that people can try to journey to sometimes.
  

Abstraction level:

• The more abstract your map is, the less it seems like a place.
  
  
• So a map with three places to go seems more like action selection than being in a world.
  
  
• I might break those three places down into twenty and increase the player movement allowance so that the time to reach each place is about the same, yet the feel of movement and place is increased.
  

Location uniqueness:

• If you have to go to specific places to do specific things, it feels more unique. If you can do everything everywhere, why even have a map? (Outer Rim market)
  
  
• If things to do in different places are only slightly different it is also too generic to help create a real sense of place.
  

Relevance (aka no dead areas):

• All the spots on your map or place should have reasons and possible actions which make players consider going there sometimes. This makes it feel relevant.
  
  
• When something is relevant, people pay more attention to it, and can recognize and navigate by it.
  
  
• Having spots that you could go to but never do is a badly designed place, and takes away from the sense of place by seeming "irrelevant". 

And a few other stragglers:

• Having dynamic reasons to go places makes it more like a real place. Like a quest goal that moves around the map or something similar.
  
  
• The sense of exploration and discovery helps a place seem more real. So if the map is big enough that you go looking for a place and are rewarded with finding it, it helps.
  
  
• Also, hidden tiles which get revealed help with this feeling. 
  

 

Now let's cover factors related to the presentation and graphic UI. 

• Bad ones are circles and lines overlaid on a nice drawing. (Defenders of the Realm, Clank, Tyrants of the Underdark) 
• If it looks more like chart than a place, then it doesn't help. (Clank) 
• Are you in a place, or on it, aka sitting on the drawing on a board? 
• Grids of squares feel much more like charts than a place.

The ability to navigate by landmarks is a hallmark of human real-world movement. To recreate that in a game, there needs to be enough uniqueness in the utility and look of a place to do it. 

How I Got Into Game Design

 I was out at breakfast with a friend the other day, talking about my current board game projects, and he asked me how I got into game design in the first place. Here's the story:

I played the boxed set of D&D and then AD&D, starting around age 7 - way back in 1977. Soon I started making dungeons, and like everyone else, pored over the various books and manuals for the game. One part I really appreciated was the note from Gary Gygax at the beginning where he said that the book was a guide and that you were free to use or not use whatever section or bits you like, or even invent your own. What a great thing to hear as a young person! This was a game that included your creativity and imagination. I took it to heart, and when playing any game, I always wondered what I might do differently if I made the game. So that was a good perspective to start from. 

The other thing that helped was that my father got a Commodore PET, a (now) ancient computer that had a cassette tape for reading in programs. We got some cassette tapes with many programs on them, mainly games. Everything was in basic, and you could see the code. And even better, modify it! So my brother and I, even before we knew programming, learned how to delete a line or two. We would delete different lines of code and then run the program and see what happened. In one game, Dungeon - a simple kill the monsters and gather treasure dungeon crawler, we found the perfect line to delete in order to change the shape of the dungeon. Instead of rooms and corridors, it made a random huge room with pillars! How fun!
 

 

After that I learned to program BASIC, and was always trying to make adventure games like Colossal Cave. Find the rust remover in a random field and use it on the stuck lever so you can deactivate the electric fence and go somewhere. That was in a game I made when I was 10 years old or so. 

 
From there is was making and playing a lot of games. I am a huge fan of iteration for learning how to do something, and how to refine your designs. 

 

Read more about my history: How I got into the Games Industry 

Accelerating Costs Create Homogeneity in Video Games - and That's Bad.

We've all seen it in those mobile games: the first level of a skill costs 1 point, and the next one costs 10 points, and the next level costs 50 points, and so on, in some way or another.

I'm here to tell you why that sucks for long term play, and why everyone does it.

The second part is the easiest. Why does everyone do it? It arbitrarily prolongs the playing time of the game, so you will be tempted to spend more time, see more ads, buy more gems, etc. It takes less design work to make since you don't have to assess different strategies against one another.

 
Why it sucks is fairly straightforward, but takes longer to explain: If all the level 1 skills cost 1, and there are 5 of them, and all the level 2 of those skills costs 10, then you will most likely get all the level one skills first, then all the level 2 skills, and so forth. Specializing doesn't happen, just general heroing. You have 1 path really. Next game, same thing. The same grindy path.

If on the other hand, level 1 and level 2 skills and indeed all level of skills cost 1 point to get to, then once you have bought a level 1 skill, and you get another point for upgrading, you have an actual meaningful choice still: do you specialize in that skill and boost its level, or do you get another skill. There are so many more types of paths for your skills during the game, therefore more interest, more replay-ability in the future, and more strategies for play.

Forgotten Lore

I ran into a friend from college who I hadn't seen in 30 years. Over dinner he told me that he always remembered how I explained to him that all games could be placed on a matrix. One axis goes from Abstract to Concrete, and the other goes from Chance to Strategy.

I said, "What? Is that really true?" I guess back then it was easy to be over confident, because now, I'm not sure I agree. But I think it is still an interesting way to categorize and think about games.

 

Thanks for the weird graph, AI!

Let's place a few games on the chart to see how it works. 

Poker - Very abstract, a mix of luck and strategy.
Chess - A mix of abstract and concrete, and pure strategy.
Runebound Second Edition - A mix of abstract and concrete, but a bit more concrete than chess. A mix of luck and strategy.
Firefly the Board Game - Similar to Runebound Second Edition
Yahtzee - The most abstract game on the list. More luck than strategy, but not without strategy entirely.
Snakes and Ladders - Total luck! Pretty abstract.
Would a sport be a purely concrete game? Maybe crokinole?

Thanks public domain!

How useful is it to be able to do this, anyway? Maybe its "true" because it is an abstract enough way of classifying games that anything fits into it. Maybe it could help players understand whether a game will be more or less to their liking. Those are the thoughts I have nowadays. 

It can help create a structure for talking about different designs and systems. But I would ask additional questions too, like, "What is the benefit/function of abstraction/luck/strategy in a game?", "Or in this specific game I am making?" Because those type of questions give more useful answers. 

Thanks for the "random" die, AI!

For anyone who thinks luck serves no purpose in a game:

Luck or randomness is a way of introducing uncertainty into a game. A game needs uncertainty, because if you are certain that the outcome will be a specific thing, the game is essentially over. You know who wins. Luck is not the only way to introduce uncertainty, but it has its place, and its players. And you can add it in varying degrees, or use mechanisms to compensate for it, which is important, so you can customize it to the game experience you are trying to make.