Making Enemies III

Posted on August 8, 2011 by rewardingplay

The final fundamental question that needs to be answered when designing enemies for an action game is:

3. How will the enemy overreact and expose their fatal weakness?

Every enemy needs a flaw, a chink in their armor that can be exploited by the player. A massive enemy with an equally massive health bar that virtually ignores you as you whittle away isn’t very satisfying. Their defeat is too gradual; the moment of their defeat nearly imperceptible. The true glory of victory isn’t the explosion or the death rattle, it’s before that, when the outcome is guaranteed, but not yet realized. That requires a fatal flaw.

A melee charge that travels a bit too far, letting the player get behind them
Running out of ammo at just the wrong time, leaving them defenseless at a crucial moment
Losing their temper and leaving cover, giving up their advantageous position
Realizing a second too late they are standing next to an explosive barrel

The issue for game designers is not the flaw, but calling the player’s attention to it. Shooting at the glowy bits is a common trope. It works precisely because it is a cliche, but it’s about as elegant as putting up a sign that says “Shoot here, dummy.” And not as effective, either. Using Water spells on Fire enemies makes more sense, but is about as exciting as turning a key in a lock. It’s easy to see why so many games have resorted to flashing random button sequences as a facsimile of exploiting a weakness, at least screen-filling UI prompts are hard to miss.

The ultimate warrior

The problem is that there shouldn’t be a problem. Nature’s molded us into natural born killers. We know when an enemy is vulnerable — from injury or inattention or separation from the herd — we can spot the target of opportunity if we see it. But there is so much going on in an action game, so much happening at such a relentless pace, it can be hard to filter out what is important. That’s why the best flaws are revealed when an enemy reacts to the player, or more accurately when they overreact.

The moment of reaction is ideal because the player is paying attention. Their action caused the reaction. Everyone over-emphasizes the results of their own activity and focuses on the effects that they cause. They want to watch the ripples from the stones they are throwing. So they will be watching closely and are more likely to notice their opportunity. Also, since the player is the cause of the reaction, they will naturally experiment with it and understand the connection much faster. We are natural scientists, even children employ the scientific method, so giving the player control over the weakness will make them more likely to discover it.

Making it an overreaction will make it more obvious. It can be exaggerated and call attention to itself by being slightly inappropriate. It will also give the player the satisfaction of having outsmarted an enemy. It’s one thing to exploit a weakness they cannot control, but it’s so much better to capitalize on a mistake they shouldn’t have made. Provoking an enemy into a fatal error is one of the most satisfying experiences a game can provide, and the more cunning an enemy seems, the more delightful it is to fool them.

GDC 2010: Design in Detail XIX

Posted on July 25, 2011 by rewardingplay

And there it is! The big detail!

It’s a large change. It’s very easy to convince yourself that you can feel tiny changes, but you will be fooling yourself. The balance never hinges on a 2% difference in a single value!

It was a smaller change than we tried initially. I think originally we changed it to 0.9, which broke the flow and wrecked the weapon, but did fix the problem, so we knew we were on the right track. In general, you want to overshoot and then come back. You have to make sure your change accomplishes your goal, and then dial it back.

There are lots of ways to verify that a change was successful. In this case, the Sniper Rifle didn’t get any less popular; People still use it whenever they can get it. But Optimizers stopped using it exclusively.

The other reason we could tell it was balanced was because we could compare how the behavior we were seeing in playtests matched the desired role we described in our paper design. It’s not quite an objective test, but it should help. And most importantly, I no longer got nervous when I watched people use the Sniper Rifle. You should verify a change with both your brains and your guts.

Ship it!

At this point during my GDC talk, the audience started clapping, cluing me into the fact that I was completely out of time.
So I just went with the flow and ended it there, which was fine. I had walked people through the balancing process, brought up the important principles, and applied them to the sniper rifle change. But I had also intended to mention a couple of things about the last stages of balancing, which I will get into next week!

Making Enemies II

Posted on July 11, 2011 by rewardingplay

The second fundamental question crucial to designing enemies for an action game is:

2. How will this enemy counter the player’s first-tier tactics?

Action games give the player a hammer. It looks like a broadsword or an assault rifle, but it’s still a hammer. And when you have a hammer, every enemy looks like a nail. A nail doesn’t have to do anything complicated to look smart; all it has to do is avoid getting hammered right away! If an enemy forces the player to reach into their toolbox for a second option, they’ll show that they are clever, and the player will feel clever, too.

Good AI

The obvious way to counter the player’s basic tactics is through simple invulnerability. “That armor is too strong for blasters.” It’s crucial that this invulnerability is communicated clearly, through the look of the enemy, how they respond to the player’s attack, and any supporting effects or dialog. If the player doesn’t realize they are not being effective — or is misled into thinking they have done damage when they haven’t — the enemy will just seem poorly tuned.

Carries a shield that blocks bullets, but any other kind of attack causes them to drop their shield and expose themselves to fire
Cannot be killed with melee attacks and must be thrown into an environmental hazard
Bullets bounce off the vehicle, but you can snipe the driver out

A more subtle way to foil the player’s main method of attacking is to preemptively take action to prevent it or require another action be taken before the attack to make it a two-step process. These enemies appear intelligent, but they still allow the player to user their (hopefully) satisfying primary attack.

Takes cover behind an object, requiring the player to flank or drive them out of cover
Wears a full-body energy shield that must be taken down before they can be damaged by normal bullets
Blocks every sword swing, but is stunned if their own swing is blocked

It is also possible for an enemy to behave in such a way that it is more difficult for the player to execute on their first-tier attack. This can be difficult to tune for multiple difficulty levels, but if the counter-strategy only works on the their main attack, then players of any skill level should be able to cope by changing their tactical choices instead of having to execute beyond their skill level.

Flees out of melee range faster than the player can pursue, but has no defense against ranged attacks
Keeps up a constant barrage of fire, forcing the player to hide, but unable to get away from a grenade thrown from behind cover

Again, the idea is not to make an enemy that is difficult or frustrating, or even especially sophisticated, but that has a clear counter for the player’s primary attack. This will require the player to stretch, tactically, and figure out their alternatives, but any amount of experimentation should be rewarded by a quick victory.

Making Enemies

Posted on July 5, 2011 by rewardingplay

There are three fundamental questions at the heart of designing enemies for an action game. The first is:

1. How will this enemy force the player to react?

Any enemy can be tuned to be deadly. In fact, overly lethal enemies are often a symptom of a poorly balanced game; nobody enjoys being flattened by an unstoppable steamroller. And any enemy can be crippled until it is merely a target in a shooting gallery. When a designer has run out of ideas for making an enemy fun, the fallback position is usually “bullet sponge”. The key to designing an enjoyable opponent for the player is finding a way to split the difference — forcing the player to react to an enemy without resorting to killing them.

To achieve this, it is important for the enemies to take the initiative and make the first move. Players will tend to repeat the same tactics over and over if they continue to work. By preempting their default strategy the enemy will challenge them to improvise, to think more strategically, or to experiment with new tactics.

Disarm the player, or prevent them from using their primary attack
Invade the player’s space, requiring them to start a fight before they are ready
Use a special non-lethal attack that stuns or knocks the player around, preventing them from fighting back until they can counter it

Another good way to force the player to react beyond taking and dealing damage, especially in shooters, is to force them to move. By making the player aware of their environment — the connectivity of the space and their physical relationship to their surroundings — a well-designed enemy can greatly increase the strategic depth of combat.

Attack from a range that is outside or inside the player’s optimal range
Deny the player use of an area (as with a long-fused grenade) forcing them to move to a different area
Take cover behind an object, requiring the player to switch positions and flank them
Charge to melee range, so the player must retreat or change weapons

Another way the player can be made to react is by changing something significant about the fight so they have to re-prioritize their targets or switch tactics. This change doesn’t have to be immediately dangerous, it just needs to tilt the battlefield in a new direction.

Begin a devastating attack with a long wind-up that can be interrupted
Perform an attack that ends in a temporary vulnerability that the player will want to exploit
Allow the player’s current target to quickly withdraw or become invulnerable, removing themselves from the fight temporarily

Another tool for causing a reaction that is often overlooked is dialog or dramatic behaviors that don’t serve a combat function, but can still influence the player and cause a reaction.

Taunt or mock the player to incite anger
Announce an upcoming action (like reloading) to draw the player’s attention
Threaten or attack one of the player’s allies, giving them a chance to be a hero

Far from being a secondary concern to be considered after an enemy can already fight well, these non-lethal interactions with the player should be designed first and receive the most attention. Once the player is engaging an enemy with their mind — and not just their fingers and their weapons — they will be having fun. At that point it is easy to make them more or less lethal as the balance requires.

Definition: Role

Posted on May 18, 2011 by rewardingplay

Role

The features, mechanics, situation and purpose which define an element’s function in a game

According to Aristotle, we can claim to have knowledge of something only when we have understood its causes. These causes come in four types: the material cause – the matter of which the thing is made, the formal cause – the pattern or idea which that matter takes, the efficient cause – the motivation which formed the matter, and the final cause – the purpose for which it is used. Once we understand all four causes, we know an object fully. In game design terms, once we can explain all four causes, we know an element’s role.

The Material Cause

Video games are not physical objects, so technically they don’t require a material cause. However, they do have underlying components that make their existence in the game possible, like models, textures, effects and sounds. They also require other engine features like physics, particles, etc. Some elements even require completely unique features, and explicitly specifying these features is important to defining the role.

The Formal Cause

This aspect of a game element is what we traditionally think of as “design.” The form of an element is the pattern that it follows and the systems in which it operates – the game mechanics that constrain it. Aristotle is referring to the Platonic idea of an object, but in-game design this is the Paper Design. Just as in Plato’s theory, real life cannot match the perfection of the world of ideas; the in-game experience will never realize the paper design exactly, but it does provide an objective standard. Much like a craftsman making a chair is attempting to create a material version of the ultimate idea of “chairhood”, the designer tunes an experience to get as close as possible to the original game design.

The Efficient Cause

Often called the “moving cause” because it provides the motivating force for an object, the efficient cause is closest to our modern concept of “cause and effect.” In game design, the efficient cause is always the player and their desires. A game element that does not have a corresponding player desire will never be used (at least not without coercion) so it is crucial to identify and meet those needs.

The Final Cause

The most important cause, at least to Aristotle, is the purpose for which an object exists. In a game, this is especially true because games are fundamentally about using tools to solve problems, and game elements are usually classified by the types of problems they solve. This is why it is so important to limit an element’s power so it is only effective for its designated role; if an element is an effective solution for multiple types of problem it becomes difficult to tell what its purpose is intended to be. This is also why a problem should be presented before or at the same time as the solution, or else the player will not have a way to categorize the solving element. This purpose is communicated to the player through affordance and reinforced by rewarding feedback.

Taken together, these four causes define an element’s role. The features that allow it to exist. The mechanics that give it a form and constrain its use. The situation that creates the player’s need for it. The purpose for which the player will use it. Once a designer understands all four causes for an element, they understand an element well enough to implement it successfully.

Balance of Power II

Posted on April 4, 2011 by rewardingplay

Tank Beats Everything

Even in the case where an element cannot be limited by role, it can be limited by availability. Sometimes the Player should feel overpowered, either as a reward for a good player or as a temporary boost for an average player. A game that is nothing but a relentless competence test can become monotonous, especially once a player has reached the limits of their physical ability to get better. Giving them an occassional taste of unmitigated power relieves the pressure to perform and is an excellent palate cleanser. An element that is fun and fulfills a player aspiration but can’t be limited to a single role is an excellent candidate for this experience.

Take that, Rock, Paper and Scissors

A successful transition from “balanced” to “overpowered” usually requires some changes, though. It needs to be exaggerated so the sounds, effects, even the fiction, match the new power level. It should become a featured element on a single level or two, the player should feel special for getting to use it, and the enemy resistance should be ratched up as well to highlight how strong they have become. The element should also be made as modal as possible, so the player knows when the “overpowered” experience begins and it is clear when it is supposed to end and resume normal gameplay.

In a Corner

Let’s say an overpowered element doesn’t fit in any of these categories. It isn’t just a perceived imbalance, the other elements can’t be strengthened to an equivalent power level, the role can’t be limited or enforced, and it isn’t appropriate for an over-the-top set piece. If nothing else can be done, it has to be weakened somehow, right? Let me tell you about The Needler…

The Needler is a weapon from the Halo series. It fires a stream of neon pink projectiles that actively track enemy targets. On impact, each needle embeds itself into armor or flesh, remaining there for a few seconds before detonating and causing further damage. If a character ever has more than 5-6 needles attached at any given time, they all explode in a particularly lethal chain-reaction known as the “Pink Mist”. It first appeared in Halo 1 and was the bane of my existence for 10+ years because it was incredibly fun to use, but equally impossible to balance.

I feel a headache coming on

It would start out too powerful, so we would weaken it. Which would make it useless, so we would change the mechanics. Which would make it effective in too many situations, so we would limit its placement. We ended up drastically weakening it right before we shipped to prevent it from wrecking the game. Three times! The amount of effort, thought, debate, programming and art resources, playtesting surveys, data analysis and sleepless nights that were poured into the Needler far outpace any four other weapons combined.

So, even if an element cannot be balanced in any other way, the answer is still not to weaken it, but to cut it completely. It is too difficult to weaken an element without destroying what made it fun in the first place, and the end results won’t be worth the hassle. It’s best to just save it for another game where it will fit without compromise.

Balance of Power

Posted on April 1, 2011 by rewardingplay

“Iron sharpens iron, and one man sharpens another”

-Proverbs 27:17 [ESV]

“The whats-it is too powerful.” It could be a weapon, an RTS unit, a character in a fighting game, a multiplayer class… it doesn’t matter because all chronic balance problems follow the same general pattern. The game starts to revolve around a single dominant element, which is inherently overpowered and reduces the game’s strategic complexity, ultimately limiting its longevity. Nobody notices when a single element is too weak, because they just avoid it. And nobody complains when a dominant element increases strategic complexity, because that makes the game better and more fun. And a simple problem, like a damage value that is just set too high, usually has a simple solution that is quickly applied. But for chronic, fundamental balance problems, the designer is repeatedly faced with the same decision. Should the dominant element be weakened for the sake of balance? (Hint: The correct answer is always “NO!”)

Perception is Reality

First, it is important to recognize that the only “balance” that matters is the balance that players perceive. The goal of balance is longevity, and if players continue to play because they believe the game is fair, it doesn’t matter if it is objectively balanced in some measurable sense. In fact, if a large enough community perceives the game to be balanced, but your metrics claim it isn’t, then the metrics are wrong.

Sometimes power is deceptive

So often the problem isn’t that an element is too powerful, but that it feels too powerful. Maybe its a gun with a really great firing sound. Or a new unit that players haven’t figured out how to counter yet. Or perhaps it appeals more to skilled players or everyone is using it because it is new and novel. These problems usually fix themselves if they are left alone. I changed the perception of an “overpowered” weapon during Halo’s development just by announcing that I had fixed it (even though I hadn’t actually changed anything.)

The Tooth Fairy is Overpowered

In almost every case, there is no such thing as an “overpowered” element; there are well-tuned elements in a crowd of underpowered, ill-tuned alternatives. The Sniper class is implemented and all of the sudden you can’t take three steps without being headshot from across the map. The problem is not that the Sniper is strong, but that the Medic and the Engineer are weak. It’s easier to make a potent Sniper, so it immediately outclasses the rest. Instead of spending time figuring out how to cripple the Sniper, focus on making the other classes equally awesome. Or better yet, ditch the ones that will never feel as powerful as the Sniper and choose different classes that have their own natural strengths.

His only weakness is his terrible agent

Too Powerful, or All-Powerful?

In the paper design balance pass, every element should have been given a role to fill. Sometimes an element breaks the balance by breaking its designated role. An anti-vehicle missile that can be used against a crowd of infantry. A “glass cannon” that can hold his own in a melee fight. A long-distance weapon that is just as effective at point-blank range. The solution in this case is not to weaken the element, but to restrict it so that its strength cannot be applied in as many situations.

Often it takes ingenuity to limit a weapon without weakening it, but it isn’t as difficult as it might seem initially. A global weakness will affect the player in every situation, so a heavy-handed global weakness will be a constant irritation. But a specific limitation will only be felt when an element is being used outside its role, which a player can learn to avoid, eliminating the annoyance entirely. Nobody complains that their fancy sports car doesn’t work underwater, they just stay on the bridge.

[Continued in Balance of Power II]

GDC 2010: Design in Detail IV

Posted on February 23, 2011 by rewardingplay

How do you develop your sense of balance for paper designs? It can be done, you can look at a paper design and have an intuition about how it will work. You are looking for the role, and for a couple key factors that are the results of the role.

The first thing you are looking for is to make sure the paper design is neither too simple, nor too complex. If your paper design is one sentence long, it is probably too simple. People are going to reach the limitations quickly and stop playing. (Remember, balance is longevity)

If it is more than a page long, it is likely too complex. People will never reach their comfort level, they will stop playing because they can’t understand what is happening. Balance is a barely manageable number of choices. (I bet I end up writing a post on this slide at some point.)

This is where roles come in because they provide depth without increasing complexity.

The Sniper Rifle is the best weapon in some situations. The Sniper Rifle has a clear role, times and situations where it is the best. The payoff for using the Sniper Rifle is different depending on what situation you are in. This is good, because game theory tells us that if all the possible strategies have the same payoff, players will pick randomly. As game designers we want to avoid choices that don’t ultimately matter.

Roles are also good because they cause asymmetry, which demand movement. There are incentives to move from one strategy to another depending on the situation.

One of the tropes of the design community… Rock, Paper, Scissors. But it’s a terrible game!!! Every choice has the same payoffs, so you pick randomly. There is no player agency if their choice is meaningless.

It’s a cool shirt, though (www.noisebot.com)

This was easily the most controversial slide in this talk. Several people took issue with the fact that RPS is a bad game because many journalists and designers improperly use it to describe a situation where one unit strictly dominates another, like in a good RTS. But imagine a RTS game where you could only pick one unit, you had to pick it before the game started, and if you picked wrong you couldn’t possibly win, It’d be a bad game!
The reason a RTS game works is because it isn’t RPS:
– You can play mixed strategies (choose more than one kind of unit)
– Strategies have different costs to play (tanks cost more than barbarians)
– You can change strategies mid-game
– Strategies rarely have an all-or-nothing payoff (10 Air units can usually kill 1 Anti-air unit)

So I am not using RPS in the casual sense of “a game with counter-strategies” but as defined in game theory; Hopefully that clears things up a bit.

I also got a lot of people saying, “RPS is the foundation of Street Fighter!” This is true, somewhat, more than the RTS case, anyway. but imagine a turn-based game of SF where the first hit wins the match. Again, a bad game.

The reason SF works is that it is also not really RPS:
-SF is a series of RPS interactions, so things like reputation and anticipation come in.
-It is played very quickly, so low level decision making and muscle memory determine your strategy more than choices, so it isn’t truly random.
-And even with that, most non-expert players tend to “button-mash” which is a great example of “random strategy”

Believe me, I am not trying to insult RTS games or SF (or even Ro Sham Bo Tournament Champions) but to encourage designers to see how roles lead to non-equal payoffs, and therefore avoid random strategies.

“Rock, Paper, Scissors, Lizard, Spock” is even worse game design. (This game is from the show “The Big-Bang Theory”) It looks more interesting, but it isn’t; it is just more complicated. It will still reduce to equal payoffs and random play.

This doesn’t even make sense! (Interesting note: Halo 1 was this close to shipping without a Shotgun, which makes even less sense…)

Avoid strict dominance…Wait, what is strict dominance?

Who picked the Health Potion? The single-use health replenisher you can buy for 30 rupees?
Who picked the Piece of Heart? The totally unique health-extender you can never buy?

Right, everyone picks the Piece of Heart. (If you didn’t, it’s ok, you were probably eight.)

Iterative deletion means you remove all the dominated strategies, then you remove all the strategies that were only good against those strategies. If you cut the Tank, cut the Anti-Tank Mine. Often when you are making cuts in the final stages of production, it seems like a good idea to cut a little bit from a lot of places, but it is uaully better to cut an entire game mechanic and all of the game elements that use it. Otherwise you end up with several systems that feel like they have missing pieces, rather than a single system that is entirely absent.

After GDC I got challenged to come with an example like Rock, Paper, Scissors that is good game design, so I invented Pirates, Ninjas, Sharks. Each has their own strengths. Ninjas are better at night, but Sharks always win in the water, while Pirates come in crews, etc. A good game is one that you can argue about forever.

[Continued]

GDC 2010: Design in Detail III

Posted on February 21, 2011 by rewardingplay

The first step in Halo 3 was the paper design.

This is one of about 4 slides for Producers.

The Paper Design should happen in Pre-production. You need to do paper designs first so you don’t have 40 artists sitting around while you do it. On the other hand, if you leave it too early, you are going to waste lots of time later. So as producers, you need to find creative ways to give us room in this stage.

Every gameplay object should get a Paper Design. Don’t let Designers hand wave, because we are great at it! If we can’t write it down it means we haven’t figured it out. Lack of design discipline is a huge threat to your project. On the other hand, if you have a designer that has proven his discipline, then trust his paper design. Take off your design hat before you mess up the game!

Nobody has ever seen this outside of Bungie. It’s the original paper design for the Halo 1 Sniper Rifle. It is embarrassingly simple, but it is better to be simple than overly complicated.

Here’s the important things to note:
Some specifics are wrong. That’s because at some point the paper design is abandoned in favor of the existing object in the game.
Some mechanics are unclear. That’s because it is often difficult to capture an entire system inside a single paper design.
Many details are missing. A paper design should only include crucial or unique information, not every trivial detail.
It’s very flawed as a spec, but one thing comes through, the Role of the weapon.

So now let’s look at Halo 3’s paper design. It’s a lot more detailed. But it is still pretty abstract and the role is even more clear. (It ought to be, it was the third iteration!)
It might seem like a waste of time to do a revised paper design since it was essentially the same weapon as the first two games. But it is still important to capture and communicate the vision, because not everyone will have the same understanding of what was important in the previous versions.

“Role: Long-range instant-kill sniper rifle, but reloading makes it difficult to use”
The Role is even more clearly called out. Someone pointed out that Halo has two sniper rifles, which seems to violate the “one weapon per role” rule. Truthfully, they are right, but the missions required enemy snipers using an alien weapon. But, even in that case it is a good idea to give them unique gameplay; that’s why this paper design refers to the fact that the human sniper rifle reloads, instead of overheating.

I felt like this slide failed to capture what is really important about writing a paper design, so I wrote a much more detailed post on the topic.

[Continued]

Writing a Paper Design II

Posted on February 7, 2011 by rewardingplay

Here is the paper design I wrote for for the Halo 3 Sniper Rifle:

Sniper Rifle

Role: Long-range instant-kill sniper rifle, but reloading makes it hard to use

Two zoom levels (2x – 7x)

Reloading unzooms

Magazine of four quick shots, with slow reload

Does headshots, even through shields

kills any biped in one shot (even Players)

[anim] special death animation for headshots

kill shot accelerates units

Does massive damage

kills a Player in two body shots

kills small bipeds in one shot

Over-penetrates flesh, glass and soft materials

~0.5s delay before un-zooming to reload after the last shot of a magazine, so you can see the result of your shot

By the third iteration, the Sniper Rifle’s role and gameplay was well-established, so writing the paper design was straightforward. However, this example shows how a good paper design can be useful, even if an element is already well-understood.

Components of a Paper Design

The Role. The most important part of a paper design is a concise, clear description of the role the element will fill in the game. Often this means how the player will use an element, as it is in the Sniper Rifle example. For an element like enemy character or environmental effect, it may describe how a designer will use it. For some elements, the role will be very narrow, but common game items may be used in a broad variety of situations. In any case, the role should be able to summarize the main purpose of an element in one or two sentences, or the element is probably too complex and should be broken into sub-elements.

The role is so crucial it is a good idea to determine the role of every element before moving on to the other parts of the paper design. Maybe not for everything in the entire game, but at least for the other elements of the same type. For instance, the role of the Sniper Rifle includes a reference to reloading because there is another weapon, the Beam Rifle, that has the same range and damage traits, but overheats instead of reloading. Understanding how the roles of different elements overlap or interact makes it easier to organize the rest of the paper design.

Strength Mechanics. Once a role is firmly established, the paper design should explain how the element will accomplish that purpose. What features and abilities does an element need? How do they fit together to accomplish the goal? What is the player’s responsibility and what is handled automatically by the game? The strength mechanics answer all these questions with positive statements of what the element is capable of or what it is allowed to do.

This is where writing a paper design takes discipline and careful thought, because it is easy to cheat and take shortcuts. Anyone can create a set of mechanics that might produce the desired result; a designer must go further and predict where the mechanics will break down, eliminate uncertainty and refine them until they always achieve their intended purpose. This requires a particular sort of practical insight, and a willingness to test ideals against unyielding reality. A good designer does not flinch from critical analysis and pessimistic feedback because they know that ultimately the player doesn’t care how good something was “in theory” if it never materializes.

This can be a source of conflict between designers and the rest of the development team. Either the designer sabotages their obviously awesome suggestions by holding them to arbitrarily high standards, or the designer fails to hold themselves to those high standards and the game mechanics don’t actually work in the end. It is best to take these suggestions as if they were prefaced by “Assuming you can figure out some way this would actually work, wouldn’t it be cool if…” Then you can agree that something would be cool, but take responsibility for figuring out the game mechanics yourself.

Designers are jerks

Limiting Mechanics. There is a medical platitude that says “Anything strong enough to help is strong enough to hurt.” Similarly, any element strong enough to fill a role can probably be abused and used to break the game. The limiting mechanics are usually negative statements about what an element is not capable of or not allowed to do. It may also list situations in which an element is not even allowed to exist, as when certain weapons are not used in multiplayer, or certain enemy types do not appear in specific environments.

Limiting mechanics keep an element from being used outside of its role; they should not limit the utility of the role itself! An element literally cannot be too good at doing what it was made for. This may be the most common and destructive mistake a game designer can make in a paper design! Don’t anticipate imbalances that haven’t actually happened yet and start hedging too early. It leads to infuriating decisions like sniper rifles that are too inaccurate to use at long-range, or mages that don’t have enough Mana to use their most powerful spells, or vehicles that move at walking speed. If a role seems like it needs to be capped, then the role should be redefined or reduced, not crippled by a limiting mechanic. Or better yet, make all of the other elements stronger and better at their roles so there is no longer an imbalance.

Giants are cool! Make the little guy bigger!

Critical Assets. One purpose of the paper design is to assist Production in scheduling and understanding the scope of the project. If there is an asset or features that is absolutely required for an element to function properly, but is unique to a given element, it is a good idea to call it out explicitly. This will ensure that it is scheduled, and will also alert everyone to the fact that the element will not function until this particular asset is finished.

Flavor Details. Sometimes little quirks or clever details have as much impact on the player’s experience as the game mechanics or even the role. For instance, delaying the unzoom after firing the last shot in a clip seems like a trivial detail, but it is one of the reasons the Halo Sniper Rifle feels so much mores satisfying than those found in some other games. This is more important for staples that are found in competing games, or for elements that are so unusual they need more explanation, but stretching to include one or two in every paper design leads to more interesting game elements.

Writing a Paper Design

Posted on February 2, 2011 by rewardingplay

We touched on how paper designs are required for the first balance pass, but what exactly is a paper design, and how are they written? A solid paper design streamlines the design process, focuses the team’s effort, and results in a tightly integrated game. A poor one, however, can send the design team into a tailspin as they repeatedly polish something that nobody, not even the rest of the development team, will ever read!

Timing. The first (and possibly most important) key to a good paper design is to write it during Pre-production. At the dawn of the video game industry, Pre-production consisted of a ten minute meeting where the head of the company and the one developer working on a project would get together and decide if the stack of player-controlled pixels were a tank, a spaceship or a wide receiver.

Football or Battles of the Revolutionary War?

The Cleaveland Browns vs the Miami Space Invaders

Now, with budgets exceeding tens of millions of dollars and schedules spanning several years, the planning stage needs to be a little longer. A disciplined designer will have a firm idea of how the game will play and what the elements will be before asking a team of artists and programmers to start working.

However, the goal of Pre-production is not to come up with a perfect plan ready to be implemented. Game design is an iterative process; progress is made by generating ideas and solutions, prototyping and testing those ideas, and then using the results to generate more ideas. Since there is no way to test a paper design, any iteration will be based on the designer’s imagination, and be very speculative. A disciplined designer will exit Pre-production as soon as they have a firm idea, so the artists and programmers will have enough time to iterate.

Time is money. Wasted time is wasted money.

Audience. The first rule of writing is to know your audience. In the case of this site, I am writing for experienced game designers interested in imporving their craft. In the case of a paper design, the audience is the members of the development team that will be implementing a particular game element.

Every designer generates ideas in different ways, brainstorming, writing stories, creating exhaustive lists or graphs, finding inspiration in other games, and if it works, use it! But most of these methods are not appropriate for communicating those ideas to the rest of the team. The artist responsible for modeling a weapon does not need to know about the 30 bad ideas you rejected. The AI programmer doesn’t have time to read your 30 page backstory about how the enemy monster evolved on a planet with no liquid water. A tool that is useful for generating an idea is rarely useful for communicating it efficiently.

Instead, try to anticipate what an artist or programmer might need to know. What important features will need to be coded? How should the player react to a game element? How is it similar to other elements? How is it different? In what environment or situation is it likely to be encountered? How will it be used in the game?

Length. A paper design should be between 200-300 words, or about half a page of text. A complex game element like an enemy character might stretch to three-quarters of a page, but no longer. Why such an exact limit? Because that is the amount of text that can be read in an average email client without scrolling. Remember, the paper design does not need to exhaustively include every detail; it is intended to communicate the essentials of the design to the people working on it. In order to understand a paper design, they have to actually read it, and most people will not read more than one screen of text. Even if they do read a longer design, they won’t retain it or be able to express it.

Keeping a paper design extremely short will also prevent it from including information that should be recorded somewhere else. For example, if the paper design for a weapon is too long because it explains which button is used for reloading, or how the player can upgrade weapons at the weapon shop, it addressing too many topics that ought to be written elsewhere. A paper design should only include mechanics that are unique to that element, which allows it to be more concise.

Not only that, if your design cannot be expressed succinctly, it will be too complicated for players to understand, as well. If there are too many unique mechanics for an element, players will be overwhelmed by the complexity. A well-written paper design should read like a description in a game manual. A good way to get started is to ask “If I wanted to explain this element to someone as they were playing the game, what would I say?” In short, a paper design should be about as long as this explanation of how long a paper design should be.

Language. A paper design should avoid emotional or vivid language in favor of specificity and clarity. It is easy to conceal fuzzy or flawed ideas beneath beguiling prose. If a paper design is written to be read analytically, it will be held to a higher standard.

Using simple language without rich connotations also helps avoid two common communication problems. First, it leaves programmers less room for interpretation. A paper design that describes a weapon as “powerful” could be implemented in many ways, but one that says “does enough damage to kill a player in one shot” only allows for one. Simple language also allows artists more room for interpretation. A paper design that calls for “a spider with human hands” will probably end up with a pretty silly looking model, but one that describes “a multi-legged creature capable of carrying an infantry weapon” will give the artist more freedom to make something aesthetically interesting.

Now that have a general idea of how to write one, next time we’ll go over what specific information a paper design should contain.

Balance Pass: Role

Posted on January 28, 2011 by rewardingplay

One of the most important reasons to balance in passes is a practical one. The earlier an element is cut from the game, the more resources are available to the remaining elements. A good designer will always have many more ideas than they could implement, and it is tempting to push all of the ideas forward until the schedule demands cuts, but it is almost always better to trim early and avoid wasted effort. That is the primary goal of the Role balance pass.

Please pass the roles

Timing

Post Pre-Production. This is the first balance pass, and it happens immediately after pre-production. During pre-production, design should focus entirely on generating ideas and prototyping systems that are not fully understood. Prematurely worrying about schedule or scope can strain the creative process, preventing the design team from cycling through the bad ideas that eventually lead to good ones. There are many schedule pressures to keep this brainstorming stage short, but the costs of entering production without completing this process are often much greater. Changes made in pre-production are much cheaper than the ones that happen after resources have been committed to a bad idea.

A Paper Design for Every Element. The designer’s primary responsibility in pre-production is to make sure that every single game element has a paper design. It is far too easy for a designer to be vague and only fuzzily understand how a given element will work. Taking the time to think through and write out a paper design takes discipline, but will allow the designer and the rest of the team to proceed with more confidence, and minimize expensive surprises.

Defining a Role. The most important part the paper design is a description of the role that the element will play in the game. Without a clear idea of what an element is for, no amount of detail will be sufficient to describe it. On the other hand, sometimes a role so completely defines an element, that no more information is needed. Roles can be simple: “A long-range instant-kill sniper rifle.” Or more nuanced: “An enemy character that serves as the backbone of an encounter, uses every available weapon and vehicle, and provides a foil for the player to overcome.” But they should always be singular and establish a bar for what is required for the final in-game asset.

Methods

Even though they do not exist in the game, and cannot be played yet, once each game element has a paper design and a role they can begin to be balanced.

Remove Overlap. The most useful way to balance game elements at this stage is to make sure they are not filling the same roles. Two elements that have the same role are a waste of resources. Either they will be identical except for cosmetic differences, in which case they will confuse players by offering a choice with no meaningful difference. Or one will strictly dominate the other and be better in every situation, making the weaker one redundant. Or you will be forced to spend valuable time differentiating and balancing them, without actually increasing the player’s options.

Often, when elements have the same role, they can be merged into a single, stronger idea. Other times elements may appear to have the same role, but further exploration will show that they are indeed different, which provides a deeper understanding of how they will function in the game. Regardless, by the end of this balancing pass, every element should have a unique role.

Don’t Overlook Roles. Often the brainstorming process is very chaotic and undirected. We never know when a good idea will occur to us! It is easy to overlook common roles or miss very niche ones. This balance pass is a good opportunity to take stock of all of the game elements and look for any holes. For example, if the player will be fighting against snipers, but has no long-range weapon in his arsenal, he will feel like he is unfairly limited, that part of the game is missing.

The importance of filling every necessary role is precisely why the weapon selection for most shooters ends up virtually identical. Most shooters require an accurate long-range weapon, a powerful short-range weapon, a weapon that is good against multiple opponents, etc. So most shooters end up with a sniper rifle, a shotgun, an smg, etc. Players may complain about the lack of originality, but not as much as they would complain about the lack of a shotgun!

Limit the Number of Roles. The final step to this balance pass is to get a feel for the scope of the game and the overall number of elements that will be required. Determine what the absolute minimum number of elements are absolutely necessary to make a functional game. (Note: Never tell Production this number!) If the total is more than 20-30% over the minimum amount, there are probably too many elements. It is a good idea to have a buffer, in case certain elements don’t work or are harder than anticipated. But the fewer elements that make it through this pass, the more polished the remaining elements will be, the easier it will be for players to understand and use them all, and the tighter the gameplay will be.

Balance the Rolls?

Results

Confidence. As a result of this balance pass, the entire team will feel more confident in the scope of the game and the quality of the design. A disciplined design is less likely to have to be changed, wasting the time and effort of the artists and programmers. It will also make the rest of the team less resistant to changes that do need to be made, because they will know the designers took every precaution to avoid them.

Depth. Balancing the roles requires a sophisticated understanding of what each game element is for and how they will interact in the final game. By reaching that understanding early, every subsequent decision will be able to support that role, deepening it and creating complex connections between elements. The art, sound, effects and other aspects can reenforce this role, making it crystal clear to the player.

Manageability and Flexibility. When overlapping or unimportant roles are removed, the following balancing passes become much easier. Not only will there be fewer elements to balance, but they will not come into conflict as often because they will have distinct uses. Also, a disciplined balance pass will leave some room in the schedule for the great ideas that inevitably come up later in the project.

Rewarding Play

by Jaime Griesemer

Tag Archives: paper design