CGD Podcast Episode 20: Options in Games

I’m familiar with those. I think those are what players have to do when a game isn’t that deep and also doesn’t have automatic difficulty adjustment. Playing with those “conducts” are kind of like toy-play. It’s “I wonder what will happen if I”-type of playing-with the system rather than just trying to win. Alternatively, you could look at it as each conduct is the player trying to design a new game for themselves to play.

On the “1000+ hours in the game” thing, I’d say that that’s because there’s not a lot of great alternatives (most everything else is even worse) and because it’s a decent toy/game-creation-tool.

In terms of prescribing criteria for ideal game design, though, I don’t think players should be left having to do that kind of work to continue to enjoy a game.

Great stuff in here. I appreciate the format as is, it’s closer to how someone would think about something which is valuable in itself. Great examples with starcraft, I used to play it a bunch and would always crank up the speed too and play custom matches. At that point though people aren’t really playing startcraft any more, it’s some over variant that they’re just having some fun with. Restricting customization options in the game you make and intend players to experience vs a sort of unlimited sandbox approach for the custom maps / use map settings games seems like a reasonable approach. Especially when it ends up creating new genres. Great stuff, thanks Keith.

Good episode. Did you notice that Minecraft actually do allow you to pick any version (default “latest”)? And of coure any open source game allows that, and to some extent all drm-free game and any non-digital game.

More importantly, I think all options you discuss are ok as long as all combinations of options are treated as their own games (designed, tested). In fact many games are very similar to other games and could easily be just the other game with some option. Deciding what game to play is like toggling that option. Moving the choice into the game (two games in one) is fine IF all options are as well-developed as if they were sold as separate games. This works for maps as well. Of course with n options the number of games you develop is n^2, so having many orthogonal options is still a bad idea. But a single option with many choices like maps is no worse than publishing that many different games using the same engine and allowing players to choose which one to play.

Do you consider Civilization (any of them) a bad game? You can select very freely how to play: Map type, difficulty level, opposing civilizations, your own civilization among multiple other options. Just wondering, since you mentioned in another episode that you at least used to play Civ 4 or 5. To me all iterations of Civ are tons of fun, and not ruined by the number of options at all.

On a related thought, would you consider Civ more of a toy than a game? Its single player might actually for some players have a lot of toy-like qualities, but its multiplayer is very good and competetive and does work as a counter-argument.

Thanks, I appreciate you doing the podcast.

I’ve been listening to some of your podcasts recently and while some of the
game design theory was counter-intuitive, I’m consistently surprised by how
well your philosophy translates into practice especially in Auro and my own
works-in-progress. However, what exactly do you mean by “best possible
version” particularly in regards to artwork? Isn’t aesthetics at least
partially subjective and consequently, wouldn’t the concept of “best
art” vary from person to person? While there are certainly amazing art directors
who can integrate the artists’ individual quirks with universal appeal such as
the art direction in “Faeria” or in any of Vlaada Chvatl’s games
published by Czech Games Edition, there are plenty of games which have
polarizing, generic, bland, or even downright dull aesthetics because some dude
at the top believed that having 90% of the steampunk mecha look like the
hunchback of Notre Dame was a brilliant idea (I hope you get the reference!).

Speaking of aesthetics, I hope this doesn’t come off as condescending or
unnecessarily critical because I truly believe Auro is a fantastic game which
transcends the mechanical mire of grinding and unfair randomness of other
roguelikes, although I find the artwork in Auro “meh” so I’m not
surprised if some of the playtesters wanted a simplified yet relatively
functional version of the art. I hate to admit it, but the request for
alternate artwork is almost never asked for in games with excellent art
direction (I define “excellent art” to mean artwork in which the very first
thing a person recognizes is technique). When I looked at Auro’s failed
Kickstarter, I immediately hypothesized that the “good-but-not-great” artwork
might have been a contributing factor to the lack of interest in the game. For
more evidence, I read some reviews of Auro and many of them praised its
brilliant gameplay but not even a whisper was mentioned about its art style.

Of course, you are the final boss of the game (no pun intended) so it’s
ultimately up to you as to whether or not you would like to revamp Auro’s
aesthetics. However, Czech Games Edition did an art overhaul for both “Through
the Ages” and “Tash-Kalar” and the renovations were a major success. Even in
the case of “Tash-Kalar”, in which I didn’t think a face-lift was necessary
because the initial graphic design and artwork was solid, when I played it
again with the upgrade pack, the old edition felt like a print-and-play
designed by an amateur. Nonetheless, I’m glad you decided to make the universe
of Auro at least different from the predictable Tolkien crap that saturates
fantasy across most media.

P.S. Having alternate artwork may be a good idea
for players with color-blindness. In any case, you did mention in one of the
lore notes of Auro that Dinofarm Games is happy to receive player feedback so I
decided to do that in addition to commenting on your podcast!