natural game design: how to birth games without cloning
TRANSCRIPT
As Markets Mature, They Become More Conservative
Financial Risk…. Design Risk….
But Cloning is a Mug's Game
• Market Leader Has Great Data• They've Tuned Their Game Carefully• They Have a High LTV• You are Competing for the Same Players• Your Customer Acquisition Costs: Sky-High
Genre
• “Genre is the name we give to one hit game and its imitators.”• – Dan Scherlis
New Play Patterns Create Hits
Innovative Design
High (Potential) RewardHigh Risk….
Our Usual Methods Don't Innovate
• As designers we:• Tweak numbers in spreadsheets• Document stuff• Iteratively Refine.• ...none of this will get us there.
Methodologies...
• ...for blue-ocean innovation.
1. Agile Design
• We pretend to be agile, but…• Set budgets.• Set time frame.• Develop to spec.
• Actually, it's waterfall, with a bit of agile frosting.
Stage 1: Find a Novel Core Mechanic
Dream up aCore Mechanic
Prototype andtest
Is it fun yet?On to Stage 2! Does it havepotential?Yes No
YesNo
Stage 2: Is the Possibility Space Big Enough?
Build more stuff
Test(with users!)
Are we convinced?On to Stage 3! Does it have
potential?Yes No
Yes
No
Start Over
Stage 3: Scale Up
Staff Up Planning &Preproduction
Build thisGame!
Basic Rules
• Tiny team at start.• Stages 1 & 2 take as long as they take.• Don't be afraid to throw away work.• Gear up only when you've found the fun.
This Seems to be How These Guys Work:
Pros & Cons
• Likely to work best for mechanically simple games.• Casual, ahem.
• No guarantee of success.• But then… nothing guarantees success
2. Recombinant Game Design Patterns
• “...patterns are simply conventions for describing and documenting recurring design decisions within a given context, be it game design or software engineering.”
• – Bernd Kreimeier
Game Design Patterns?
• Essentially, mechanics orcollections of mechanics/UI/visual expression. Staffan Björk & Jussi• Holopainen
Jussi was my boss at Nokia.
Games in a Genre
• Vary in theme and detail, of course, but• ALL adopt the same game play patterns.
• With almost never any deviation.
Real-Time Strategy Patterns
• Fog of war• Resource gathering• Building & unit construction• Two or more races/civs/whatever with
asymmetric capabilities and differing dominant strategies
• Early game build up/end game battle• Speed & interface mastery key to victory
Innovate by….
• Taking play patterns that haven't been used together before and…
• Figuring out how to put them together in a way that feels fun.
Spelunky
• Platformer• Levels always fixed.
• Rogue-like• Levels always algorithmically
• generated• Platformer with
algorithmically• generated levels
• Infinite replayability!
Mario Bros. + Rogue =
Portal
Quake + weird physics + puzzles =
• It's an FPS• Where you don't kill things.
• Instead it's all nav puzzles...• With bizarro-word physics
• FPS, physics, puzzles:• All well-understood play
• patterns.• Never seen together before.
Minecraft
• Sandbox world-construction• Typically single player
• Survival horror elements• Crafting
• A new genre: survival crafting.
Second Life + Legos =
Pros & Cons
• You're starting with proven mechanics.• We know they work in some context
• But not everything works with everything else.• Less whole-cloth innovation than agile design• … but maybe better suited to more complex
• games (ahem, midcore).
My current game is a mid-core build & battle game that replacestimers with a different mechanic.
3. Trope Inversion
• Take one aspect of a genre that everyone knows is core and essential to the form.
• Do exactly the opposite.• Defy the common wisdom.
“Player cooperation is essential in tabletop roleplaying.”
Paranoia: A light-hearted game of terror,death, bureaucracies, mad scientists,mutants, dangerous weapons, and insanerobots, which encourages players to lieto, chat, and backstab each other atevery turn.
– 2nd
edition backcover copy
Maybe not.
“Permadeath in an MMO is Always Bad.”
Die? Start over from level 1,• buster.• The game ends. MMOs • never do that! And then –• it resets.
Guess not.
Pros & Cons
• It's so simple!• And you're leaving everything else
unchanged, pretty much, and you know this play pattern works.
• But…. Conventional wisdom exists for a reason.• You may utterly fail.
Get Out of Your Rut
• Yes, making games is hard (even without innovation)
• Yes, being innovative is hard.• But it's not THAT hard• And there are proven ways to do it.• No more excuses, please. Just do it.
That's Three Ways to Innovate
• I'm sure there are more.
“There are four and twenty ways Of writing tribal lays• And every single one of them is right.”• – Rudyard Kipling
Sadly, you may never get the chance..
Financial Risk…. Design Risk….
Game designers and suits are class enemies, I fear.