Betting Against the Bank

A dizzying array of factors fed into the current global financial meltdown.  Sub-prime mortgages, anti-market regulation, credit default swaps, a real estate bubble, global conspiracy, global warming, alien sabotage… the list is endless.  But when it comes to the collapse of specific commercial institutions like Bear Sterns, it is pretty clear that short-selling accelerated or even guaranteed their failure.

A short sale (or shorting for… uh… short) is when an investor sells stock borrowed from a third-party with the intention of re-purchasing the stock and returning it at a later date.  If the stock goes down during that time, the investor gets to keep the difference as profit.  On the other hand, if the stock goes up they have to buy back the stock at the higher price and risk losing a great deal of money.  In March 2008, Bear Sterns (a global investment bank) became strapped for cash because it had over-invested in mortgage-backed securities and the bottom fell out of the housing market.  They might have been able to borrow the money to cover themselves, or at least gotten a bailout, but so many investors were short-selling Bear Sterns stock that it looked like collapse was inevitable.  This self-fulfilling prophecy ended with the company being sold to JP Morgan Chase a few weeks later.

Winning the race to the bottom

Shorting the Fun

Designers do the same thing, only instead of bringing down financial institutions, they bet against their mechanics and doom their game to mediocrity.

Take a Sniper Rifle, for instance.  Long and sleek, capable of putting a bullet through the head of a distant enemy faster than they can hear the sound of it being fired.  It has everything going for it.  Lethality to make it feel potent.  Precision to give it a high skill-ceiling.  A steady cadence with plenty of anticipation; each shot counts, but a miss isn’t a disaster.  Usable beyond the range of any counter-attack, even the hanging contrail it leaves behind is a testament to the thrill of each shot.  A designer couldn’t ask for a more perfect example of flow.

Then why do the Sniper Rifles in so many games suck out loud?  It just isn’t that hard to make a satisfying Sniper Rifle, so how do so many designers mess it up?  The surprising answer is that most Sniper Rifles probably started out fun, but at some point in development a designer got nervous about game balance and began to hedge their bets.  They made it less accurate, or decreased the damage, or added some weakness like an unstable crosshair or a really long reload time.  They were so afraid that they wouldn’t be able to make the Sniper Rifle work with the rest of the game, they shorted it and ended up losing a great deal of potential fun.

Not to be confused with "fun shorts"

That’s how you get a Sniper Rifle that takes three shots to kill someone.  Or a tank that drives two miles an hour.  Or a spell that costs so much mana your mage can never use it in a fight.  Or any awesome and fun element with a crippling weakness that makes it all but useless.  Designers sabotaging their own games because they lost sight of what made something worth including in the first place!

• Adding a Weakness – It may seem like the best way to balance an element that is too strong is to give it an equally large weakness, but it just doesn’t work out that way.  Either the weakness will not be enough, in which case you will have an element that is still too powerful and no longer fun to use.  Or it will be more than enough, in which case you will have designed an element that has a weakness as its defining feature instead of the original aspiration.  I would play as the invincible ninja character, but he has taken a vow of pacifism and doesn’t have any punches or kicks.
• Creating a Counter – Another common way to address an overpowered element is to design a second element whose sole role is to counter the first.  Not only is this second element probably not fun on its own merits, but everyone will be saddled with choosing an option that they secretly hope they don’t have to employ, just to prevent everyone else from choosing the fun option they desperately want.  I will choose the unenjoyable anti-tank mine so that nobody else can have fun using a tank.
• The Old Switch and Bait – Many games, especially those looking for a sense of progression, will initially introduce the player to a hobbled version of an element, and then unlock the truly fun version as a reward.  Of course, this ignores the fact that players usually won’t invest in a game that isn’t fun, and even if they do eventually earn the right to have fun, a vast majority of their experience will have been struggling through a crippled, unenjoyable game.  If I kill 300 more rats with this blunted shovel maybe I’ll get to use a real sword!… in this game that is ostensibly about swords.
• Death of a Thousand Tweaks – Perhaps the most outwardly reasonable (and therefore the most nefarious) way of shorting fun is to make an endless series of minor changes, each one leaving the element a little less fun than it was.  Slightly less accurate, a touch less damage, a little longer reload, a smidge more recoil, a fraction less range, etc.  In this parody of the tuning process, the element gets gradually less fun until it is “unfun enough” to be included.  The problem is that tuning is more delicate than balance, so the element will lose the qualities that made it fun long before it becomes fair.  It will also leave players frustrated; if only this gun had been tuned better it would be really fun!

So, ignore the analysts and the pundits!  If an element or mechanic has the tiniest spark of fun, a designer’s job is to protect and nurture it, not smother it because it might out-shine the rest of the game.  No matter how tempting, there are always better options, so don’t short the fun!

So what are the alternatives to shorting the fun?