Game Design: Do Not Want!
Back when I was in college, I established a medievalist group in Provo, Utah. We were in the park every Tuesday and Thursday night, wielding padded swords and using a rule system based on that of Dagorhir - a group I'd been involved in as a teenager.

It was a lot of fun, and great exercise.

At first, it was only a few friends getting together on those evenings to smack each other with padded swords and daggers (which only resembled their real-world counterparts if you squinted really hard - in the dark). We used those weapons because - well - it was all we had made. We were starving college students, after all - spending $10 or $20 on materials to make a new weapon was pricey. I was making some chain mail by hand - usually while watching TV, but that took months to put together.

Slowly, other players began to join us. They heard about the activity in the park, and wanted to participate. We helped them make their own padded weapons, as well as making a few extra to pass around to first-timers who showed up. Soon we had groups of 20, 30, or even 40 people playing in the park twice a week. We got the cops called on us monthly - but soon they knew who we were, knew that those were the two nights they did NOT have to worry about gangs or drug dealers in the park. They'd respond to the call, note that it was us, and would sometimes hang out for ten or twenty minutes to watch us.

One week, several of us decided to make shields. Shields - like the weapons - were heavy padded things, for safety. But - they could be used to block weapons. When we brought them, a big cry came up from the group about how unfair they were. In fact, the first night, we faced something of a mutiny. Most players wanted shields OUTLAWED, forever, right then and there. They were unfair, they claimed.

Having played Dagorhir in my youth, where roughly half the fighters used shields - I knew better. I knew that they were not as easy to use as they seemed. I knew all kinds of ways to defeat people with shields. I couldn't believe that these kids were screaming at me to outlaw what I considered an integral part of the game. I refused. A bunch of people threatened to quit over it, but I don't remember if anybody did.

A few weeks later, there were lots of shields. Nobody complained about them anymore. It was part of the game.

Shortly after the shield incident, I'd finished my chain mail. Well, "finished" is a loose term - it was still evolving. I don't know that I ever finished it - it just went from being a chain mail vest to a chain mail short-sleeved shirt to a slightly longer short-sleeved shirt. And once again, the cries went up. Unfair, ruining the game, all armor should be outlawed, etc. etc. etc. Once again, I had considered armor to be an integral part of the game, having played similar rules systems back east. I ignored their cries, and also patiently explained to people that they couldn't just wrap aluminum foil over some cardboard and call it armor. It had to be the real thing. They hated that.

The armor took longer for others to adopt, but within a few months there were lots of folks running around in various types of armor, and it was an accepted part of the game - in spite of the previous cries that it should be made illegal.

By far the biggest cry of outrage came when we introduced bows and arrows to the game. The bows were restricted to no more than a 35 pound pull, and the arrows had very specific rules for construction lifted directly from Dagorhir. They had big padded heads on them which basically made them "Nerf Arrows." They were not the first missile weapons in the game, but they had better range and speed than the javelins, and they made the battlefield far more interesting. They made the shields even more important. They made mobility more important. They made the lives of archers very, very short. I knew from past experience that archers often spent more of their time fleeing than fighting. But they made the game more fun.

But no - the players demanded - multiple times - that archery be made illegal in the game. It was horrible and no fun and ruined the game. My ideas were a failure. Even though I told them they weren't my ideas, and I'd played with archers in the game for years, they refused to accept that. Either archery was going to go, or they were going to go. Period.

A few weeks later, not only had these players not left, but some of them were using bows on the battlefield. We had a lot of great times playing. And though I haven't played in years, I have heard that this little group has grown and is still thriving down there in Provo. They at one point joined an offshoot group of Dagorhir, and even have had battles with players from other states. And they are still playing in that same park, over a decade later. They don't know why they are playing in that park (it's because my old apartment was right across the street), and I doubt any of them have a clue who I am, or why I made the decisions I did.

And none of them, I think, know that most of what they play would have been outlawed if their predecessors had had their way.

I guess the moral of the story is twofold. First off, gamers often think they want things that they won't really enjoy. For example, I always think I want nothing more than to win all the time when I play games, yet that makes the games easy and boring. Then there one game we were working on where the players kept complaining that there wasn't enough ACTION. We cranked up the action of the level, only to have players complain that it was now way too hard - yet they still thought it was too slow without enough action. Then we moved things back to their previous level, and changed the music to something more energetic. Suddenly, the testers loved it, thought it was exactly right, and said things, "I don't know what it is you changed, but you nailed it! The action is much more frantic now, but not so difficult."

Sometimes it's trying to dig through what the players are saying to find out what they really want. Or - sometimes - it's just a reaction to fear and uncertainty, particularly when you are modifying a "live" game with participants who care about it. The MMO designers should know all about this particular issue.

Secondly - it doesn't take very much effort at all to draw the parallel to politics. As we entering the final inning of the presidential election year madness here in the U.S.A. With people suffering from an economy going into its irregularly-scheduled downward cycle with some pretty major repercussions in long-standing bastions of the financial institutions, to a lingering conflict in the middle east, to silly and trivial things like videogame violence, we have politicians outdoing themselves to outlaw this, regulate that, and to socialize this other thing. Because there's always that slim chance that this time, government intervention might not make a bad thing far worse.

Try not to be influenced by knee-jerk reactions, and try to dig past the surface to discover the real issues.

Labels: Game Design, Politics

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 12:03 AM (Permalink)