Game Design in Gungnir and Elsewhere
Sep. 3rd, 2012 05:29 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
queenluaSo I started playing Gungnir, at amielleon and intaglionyx's urging, and it got me thinking about game design in general—in particular, it reminded me of this column by the head designer of Magic: the Gathering.
I think the column's reasonably comprehensible even for those without a M:tG background, but the main points I want to talk about here are the different types of game complexity he describes:
The columnist's assertion is, in general, you want to maximize strategic complexity, but you don't want too much comprehension or board complexity. So how does Gungnir hold up?
Well, at first impression, it stumbles hard on comprehension complexity. I powered through a good deal of missions with only the vaguest idea of what was going on, or why the enemy units could pull off such ridiculous beats from long distances, or what alternative strategies I could be using. But it's not because the mechanics themselves are incomprehensibly complicated, as it turns out—they're not bad if someone else is explains them to you (hi, Ammie!). But the in-game tutorial is delivered in rapid-fire wall-of-text form, which is a pretty poor method of delivering information in a game. Even a few graphic design tweaks would've helped me out enormously—essential information like potential damage dealt, % chance of missing, and so on should be big and draw the viewer's attention, not put in itty-bitty font and squeezed into a corner.
At this point, Gungnir was giving me uncomfortable flashbacks to a board game that was popular in my friends circle for a while, Race for the Galaxy. It's a similar game, in that it's got a pretty complex set of rules and a steep learning curve—it probably took me about three games before I really felt like I knew what was going on (and RftG games are pretty long to begin with). Once I "got" it, though, my friend insisted I would like it—
—but I didn't like it. It wasn't that I didn't understand the rules, and it's not that I was too stupid to come up with winning strategies and the like—I did quite well, and I certainly ended up playing the game a lot. But my brain felt cluttered, trying to keep up with a bunch of strange variables, and winning a game didn't feel as satisfying as it should have.
(For another example: I've certainly played unfun games of Magic: the Gathering where, for one reason or another, the board complexity spiraled out of control—I mean, there's been games where I had to write up a pseudo-spreadsheet while playing just to keep track of what was going on. Usually, during these games, you and your opponent are giving each other desperate, apologetic looks; both of you are developing headaches. Sure, the most strategic player still wins, but only after sloughing through a bunch of overly-complex, repetitive calculations.)
Fortunately, with respect to Gungnir, once I had some mechanics explained to me and spent some more time with the game, that uncomfortable feeling faded, for the most part. Once I "got" it, the rules relating to tactics points, beats, wait times, scramble, etc all felt clever, intuitive, and fun.
I still have a niggling sense that some of the less-central mechanics are a bit clunky (in particular, it's vaguely irksome that I have to go to GameFAQs to figure out the range/area of effect for various weapons and their specialities, when this seems like data that should be readily available in-game before I go to the trouble of mastering a weapon... maybe there could be a more elegant way to do these?)—but they don't detract significantly from the overall experience.
As an aside: having played with Gungnir's beat/team attack system, I'm now quite excited to see what FE13's team attack system will be like—when I first saw it, my knee-jerk reaction was "that looks gimmicky and silly," but the way Gungnir's implemented it is really quite fun, and I'm hoping FE13 can accomplish something similar.
As another aside, that columnist has written a lot about game design, and though most of it's focused on M:tG, he'll occasionally talk about design issues in the general case, and they're well worth reading—I could probably dig up some specific columns as recommended reading, if you happen to be interested.
amielleon and intaglionyx's urging, and it got me thinking about game design in general—in particular, it reminded me of this column by the head designer of Magic: the Gathering.I think the column's reasonably comprehensible even for those without a M:tG background, but the main points I want to talk about here are the different types of game complexity he describes:
- comprehension complexity: how hard is it for me to understand what a particular card's function is? or, in a broader sense, when I see something new, how easily can I grasp its function in the context of the game?
- board complexity: how hard it is to make a reasonable assessment of any given board state? (Note, "reasonable" does not necessarily equate to "correct"—for example, a beginning chess player may assume that whoever is capturing the most pieces is "winning," while a more experienced chess player knows to look more closely at the positions the pieces are occupying. In each case, it's relatively easy to make a reasonable assumption about what the board state is, based on the player's experience level. What would be much harder is if, say, chess were played with 100 pieces on each side and you moved ten pieces each turn. In that case, there's so many little pieces in play that it's hard for a beginning player to understand what's going on, and it's hard for an experienced player to keep track of all those tiny little variables.)
- strategic complexity: how "deep" the game is, how many viable strategic approaches are available, the extent to which skill and strategy prevails over luck and chance, and so on
The columnist's assertion is, in general, you want to maximize strategic complexity, but you don't want too much comprehension or board complexity. So how does Gungnir hold up?
Well, at first impression, it stumbles hard on comprehension complexity. I powered through a good deal of missions with only the vaguest idea of what was going on, or why the enemy units could pull off such ridiculous beats from long distances, or what alternative strategies I could be using. But it's not because the mechanics themselves are incomprehensibly complicated, as it turns out—they're not bad if someone else is explains them to you (hi, Ammie!). But the in-game tutorial is delivered in rapid-fire wall-of-text form, which is a pretty poor method of delivering information in a game. Even a few graphic design tweaks would've helped me out enormously—essential information like potential damage dealt, % chance of missing, and so on should be big and draw the viewer's attention, not put in itty-bitty font and squeezed into a corner.
At this point, Gungnir was giving me uncomfortable flashbacks to a board game that was popular in my friends circle for a while, Race for the Galaxy. It's a similar game, in that it's got a pretty complex set of rules and a steep learning curve—it probably took me about three games before I really felt like I knew what was going on (and RftG games are pretty long to begin with). Once I "got" it, though, my friend insisted I would like it—
—but I didn't like it. It wasn't that I didn't understand the rules, and it's not that I was too stupid to come up with winning strategies and the like—I did quite well, and I certainly ended up playing the game a lot. But my brain felt cluttered, trying to keep up with a bunch of strange variables, and winning a game didn't feel as satisfying as it should have.
(For another example: I've certainly played unfun games of Magic: the Gathering where, for one reason or another, the board complexity spiraled out of control—I mean, there's been games where I had to write up a pseudo-spreadsheet while playing just to keep track of what was going on. Usually, during these games, you and your opponent are giving each other desperate, apologetic looks; both of you are developing headaches. Sure, the most strategic player still wins, but only after sloughing through a bunch of overly-complex, repetitive calculations.)
Fortunately, with respect to Gungnir, once I had some mechanics explained to me and spent some more time with the game, that uncomfortable feeling faded, for the most part. Once I "got" it, the rules relating to tactics points, beats, wait times, scramble, etc all felt clever, intuitive, and fun.
I still have a niggling sense that some of the less-central mechanics are a bit clunky (in particular, it's vaguely irksome that I have to go to GameFAQs to figure out the range/area of effect for various weapons and their specialities, when this seems like data that should be readily available in-game before I go to the trouble of mastering a weapon... maybe there could be a more elegant way to do these?)—but they don't detract significantly from the overall experience.
As an aside: having played with Gungnir's beat/team attack system, I'm now quite excited to see what FE13's team attack system will be like—when I first saw it, my knee-jerk reaction was "that looks gimmicky and silly," but the way Gungnir's implemented it is really quite fun, and I'm hoping FE13 can accomplish something similar.
As another aside, that columnist has written a lot about game design, and though most of it's focused on M:tG, he'll occasionally talk about design issues in the general case, and they're well worth reading—I could probably dig up some specific columns as recommended reading, if you happen to be interested.
