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.

More Exciting Items, More Complex Strategy

There's the standard value/event/boost in your game. Let's say it is +3. So you have a sword that gives you +3 to attacks. Maybe ok for one item, but how do you make your items less boring as an overall set? And add strategy to the game as well? Here's some ideas:

The Trade Off

+6 but you have to take 3 damage to use it. It makes you ask questions: "Can I get healed easily?" "Will this damage put me too close to the edge?" and so forth. Adding interest. Would you rather just have the +3 basic sword? Sometimes you would. Sometimes is a good answer. It means you have to evaluate some states of the game to be effective. And make choices.

The Boost

+3 and +1 for each energy you spend. See what I did? It also gives you the same numerical value, but it adds in a question, which is "Is this a good/efficient use of my energy right now?" Therefore, more strategically complex.

The Permanent Boost

+3, but if you are level 3, +6. It transitions into a better item as other things progress. Similar to above, but there is more of a "one time cost" or "long term payment".

The Situational Boost

+3, but +6 in swamps. If swamps are super rare, maybe its +12 in swamps! This is one of my favorite types of changes to make, since it encourages people to change their play patterns if they have an item or power like this. They have to play to it. They have to set it up. There are a ton of ways to implement this, depending on your game. +6 vs Dragons, +5 on cloudy days, and so forth.

The Situational Combo Penalty

This is an inverse boost. +5, but subtract 2 against Goblins. Make it a combo: +3 attack, +3 more against Dragons, -2 against Goblins!

Restricted uses

Once per round, once per turn, once per game. You get the idea. I realized the other day that "once per game" is pretty much the same as "discard to use". So: "Discard for +9 in an attack." Powerful, but you have to decide when is best to use it, which makes your decision making more interesting.

More...

The more complex your game, the more complex these can be. If there are different things to accumulate, like Gold, Experience and Energy, you can make different items boost by paying different costs.

And you can make up many others if you have in mind a general idea of relative worth of different things. How much gold is one point of attack value worth? How many XP equals 3 Gold? This is a generally good idea to figure out anyway because it helps you avoid underpowering and overpowering game elements.