Week 6 Reading

The Rise of the Systemic Game – The Game Maker’s Toolkit (2019)

A systemic game means there is a a link between all the systems in the game, developed and designs so that they influence each other. There has been a rise in these types of games both from big studios and small indie games. For example in Far Cry, you can fight enemies and animals, but the enemy system can also interact and fight with the wildlife system without player input.

This works thanks to awareness and rules. Every entity has inputs and outputs; if the input and output match, connections are made and a rule is followed. Eg; if fire touches wood, it sets on fire if it rains on a campfire, it sizzles out. A complex game system has many interacting entities, which makes the game more interesting because it allows for indirect planning and consequences – you can exploit these relationships and strategise, creating more engagement. It also makes moments of drama and surprise. An unscripted interaction between entities can force the player to react in new ways, and the element of the unexpected promotes involvement. These moments will be unique to the player; something to remember.

Emergent gameplay happens when players are allowed to strategise plans that lead to surprising anecdotes. Things that weren’t intentionally designed, but emerge thanks to the overlap between systems. In order to create enjoyable emergent gameplay, you need a lot of interacting systems, and a consistant ruleset. Instead of finding a single solution, you can exploit the game systems to overcome problems, which is more creative and fun.

But even if you make interactive systems, you still need to encourage players to find innovative solutions to create emergent play. For example, if there is one tried and true method to overcoming obstacles then players are discouraged from being imaginative under the mindset “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”. For example, in Metal Gear Solid 5, many missions can be completed by just abusing the silent tranquilizer gun because it is the easiest and most risk-free option. This is why games employ strategies to avoid this – in Hitman, Agent 47 is weak in a fire fight, encouraging players to come up with an emergent solution. Another way is to give players many different tools for a handful of solutions that they can choose from, as well as creating non-linear tasks – so often scripted sequences.

Systemic design is not new. Sim games have used systems for decades. From this evolved the immersive sim, where the they took the simulation design and put it into a first person game where you control a single character. Now system designs are in many games, and with gaming having evolved so much, can interact and connect in so many new and unexpected ways!

A Guide to Systems-Based Game Development – Trent Pollack (2017)

When a game has good systems, it has deep mechanics and a good simulation. Treating the game like an ecosystem allows the player to use the mechanics at their disposal to interact and explore, and in turn have the game react back, creating a chain of events.

“Systems designer” is a common role in games, and although every studio has different ideas on what that is, the overview of the job is ensuring the mechanics and systems are balanced and fun. “Systems design” on the other hand will span most of the lenth of the project, an approach to how the entire game is designed and developed. Videogames are now at a level of complexity where systems now need to be re-examined with how their core mechanics and systems work, so that both players benefit from a layered, dynamic, and varied game, and developers benefit through less rigid interpretations of their games.

The impact of systems-based design affects how the programmers implement features, how the designers lay out levels and tune systems, how the expensive cutscenes are handled – so the experience that the developers are trying to make is decided early on in the project. Never underestimate the effect of a handful of good mechanics over hundreds of large and complex systems, because players can be very creative with limited access when given incentive.

Brute forcing a system and treating game mechanics as a combinational exercise in making as many things as possible react to as many other things as possible usually doesn’t create very emergent play, because it is exceedingly difficult to code (resulting in a buggy game), and makes inconsistant inputs and outputs. You need to decide what experience you want first, and design clear and consistant systems that allow for that experience to be made. The best approach is to make every system/mechanic able to operate within its own space, and when the design and implementation is solid, you can then figure out where to open it up for flexibility and act upon external inputs/events.

Design Pillars – The Core of Your Game – Max Pears (2017)

Design pillars are 3-5 aspects of your game that are core to its experience and function that keeps the game coherant and helps the fellow game developers understand the game. If a mechanic, plot, world, or character does not fit in to one of these pillars, then it is safe to say that it can be removed. Additionally, these pillars should be entwined, and reinforce each other in the game.

Game Pillars in The Last of Us:

• Crafting
  • Ammo is scarce, so players must rely on using other items that populate the world to damage enemies. This couple’s with the game’s environmental storytelling that there is not many resources left in the world
• Story
  • The game has a heavy linear narrative, so everything must tie in to the story.
• AI Partners
  • The game centres the player’s relationship with the game characters, who in turn drive the story.
• Stealth
  • Combat is an option but running and gunning is extremely difficult, so players are encouraged to play stealthily.

Game Pillars in The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild

• Exploration
  • Players are allowed to go wherever they want in the world, and are encouraged to explore by hiding secrets and side-missions scattered over the map.
• Scavenging
  • Searching for items is important because players need food to recover health, weapons to defeat enemies, and transport to navigate the land. This encourages players to find these resources by scavenging, and also ties back into world exploration.
• Options
  • The game enlists an entire chemistry system, and to encourage the player to experiment there are dozens of ways to complete tasks and defeat enemies using this system.
• Combat
  • How the player interacts with most of the in-game creatures, entwining with the other pillars by creating a need to scavenge and giving them a lot of combat options.

ROOT

I played ROOT with Parker, Josh, and Camilla. It is a game about different societies doing battle in order to control a wood. There are 4 players which have 4 different goals, 4 different playstyles and internal rules, and 4 different ways of “conquering” the board.

• The lone bandit raccoon (Parker)
• The noble warrior birds (Me, Indiana)
• The revolutionary frogs (Josh)
• The townfolk cats (Camilla)

Playing this game was probably one of the most painful experiences of my entire life. I have little patience and don’t like games that take a while to understand, and it took us three hours – three hours! – just to go through the rules and set up each individual player. Each round came with questions such as “can I do that” or “what am I meant to do again?” It was difficult to strategise without knowing the rules, which takes most of the fun out of a game. Eventually my strategy just became to lose as quickly and non-suspiciously as possible, so I could do literally anything else. The game almost became fun then, because I didn’t have to memorise a bunch of rulesets. It took six hours total and what started as a nice way to spend an afternoon became an absolute chore.

Reflection

This week was all about systems, rules, and mechanics – particularly the way they play into each other. It made me think a lot about how I want my game rules to interact. I want PARANOIA to be primarily a stealth-puzzle game, that promotes the feeling of paranoia by forcing players to come close to cameras (a threat) in trying to complete these puzzles. Playing ROOT gave me some perspective of what I didn’t want to occur: complicated rules, long gameplay. I want simple rules that allow for a variety of playstyles. As for a system, so far there is really only one – the reaction between the player character and the cameras – so I need to make this as engaging as possible.

To see ideation about this, please view on the ideation tab, or click below:

• Game Pillars + Game Loop