Warning: Game Design Philosphy Screed Imminent!

I'm getting close to finishing my Quake mod (the alpha version, anyway), and I'm really excited about returning to formal C++ game development. I've been spending a lot of time thinking about what my first new game is going to be, and about what statements I want to make about game design in general through my games. Well, since I'm not here to talk about what my next game is going to be that means I must be about to unload some heavy game design philosophy crap on you. I apologize in advance.

To understand what I have to say about the state of game design, first I have to walk you through a hypothetical game experiment.

Let's say that you have a game. It is a 2D Metroidvania sidescroller: You attack baddies along the way, do some platforming, and when you reach the right hand side of the screen you go on to the next level. Next, let's say that at the very beginning of each level there is a switch on the wall that you have to hit by pressing the 'up' button. There is no obstacle to the switch, and it is in the same spot in every level just two steps forward from where you spawn, but you can't beat a level without first having activated the switch. Thus, at the start of every level the first thing you have to do is ALWAYS to take two steps forward and press 'up' to flick the switch.

Ah hah! I hear you all cry out that this is bad game design! And it is! Why? Well, the switch doesn't add anything to the game, it is just something you do at the start of every single level. You could cut it right out of the game without losing anything. The lesson here is clear: Any time a game has you doing something robotically just for the sake of doing it, it is bad game design. It is essentially putting a non-game obstacle in your way that you have to get past in order to actually play the game portion of the game.

Now let's take a look at a popular playing guide to the critically and commercially uber-successful Blizzard game Starcraft 2 (this is from a Terran build order):

(1)Start out with 9 SCVs, then build a (2)Supply Depot. (3)Make two more SCVs and (4) another Supply Depot when the resources become available. After the second Supply Depot is done, have the (5)SCV start building a Barracks. (6)Build the Barracks in such a way that it helps block the entrance ramp into your base. Once another (7) SCV gets built, have them build another (8) Supply Depot to further block your ramp. After your 14th SCV (9) you should start work on your (10)Refinery and save to upgrade your base to an Orbital Command Center (11).

*(Thanks to http://www.articlesbase.com/computer-games-articles/starcraft-2-terran-build-order-the-best-terran-build-orders-to-dominate-your-enemies-with-ease-3071016.html for the build order example)*


As you can see, without even counting every single SCV build you have at least 11 different things to do. You do these things at the very start of every single level you play, without variation, and that is only in the first third or so of the guide! In terms of our hypothetical sidescroller, that is 11 different switches you have to turn on before you can start playing the game. So why is it so obviously bad in our nonexistant sidescroller situation, but totally accepted when Blizzard does it in their AAA rts?

Partly because of shitty game reviewers who are too blinded by hype trains to even begin to think objectively about the games they are critiquing, sure, but I think there is more to it. I think that something that happens far too often in modern game design is a misunderstanding of what makes a game genre.

16 years ago Warcraft: Orcs & Humans came out and defined the rts genre. Sure, it was mostly a ripoff of Dune, but Warcraft really refined the core mechanics of Dune and made a hugely successful game out of them. From then on if any game designer thought rts, he was really thinking Warcraft. Nearly every rts after Warcraft took Warcraft as a base and went from there.

The base was something like "Base building > Peasant resource management > Army Building", and a new game would come and do something like "Base building > Peasant resource management > Army Building > Hero units", or "Base building > Peasant resource management > Army Building > Rock Paper Scissors combat system". Everybody just takes it for granted that rts means "Base building > Peasant resource management > Army Building". But I demonstrated earlier that this design structure breeds build orders, which is awful game design.

Furthermore, this design de-emphasizes the combat, because there is an inherent focus on the rapid continual building of your base/pumping out of units. You almost never watch a fight in these games because you are too busy jamming the hotkeys on your keyboard to keep base expansion and unit production going. Instead you just grab a mess of your units and lob them at your enemy's general direction. This is a staple of the rts genre because of Warcraft, but why?

Think about it: The reason the rts genre seemed appealing to us in the first place was because we wanted to be generals leading big armies to crushing, violent victories on our screen. We don't play because we want to facilitate a bunch of peasants and organize the most efficient building plans while our troops do something cool and fun off screen.

Now, I don't want to make an rts game, that isn't my point. The genre is largely dead to me now, and it doesn't excite any passion or imagination in me at all. I just bring up that example because what I want to do is to really examine genres in my games. I want to boil genres down to their TRUE essential attributes and then build from there. Only when a genre is deconstructed to its primal ingredients can the genre then be moved forward in a meaningful way.

That is why I want to take a sort of minimalist approach to my games. I want to take the games back to the late 1980's, the golden age of PC gaming, and then go from there.

DISCLAIMER: This doesn't mean that every single one of my games is going to be a minimalist and completely original idea. As a matter of fact, my next SDL game is likely going to be extremely conventional. Besides, boiling games down to their essentials is tough work! Still, this is what I want to do, and it definitely will be a theme of mine going into the future when I get more comfortable taking on somewhat ambitious projects.

Here is a *link* to the article that really got me fired up enough to write this today. Once again it is Ultima that gets me feeling motivated about game design.