Scope is a tricky thing in game design.
When I design a game, I want it long and deep enough to be interesting, but not so long and deep that it tires players. I want it accessible, but not infantile. I want it to be easy to learn and fun to play on a superficial level and/or by inexperienced players, but have enough complexity and intricacy that mastering it takes effort and feels rewarding. I want enough features to justify making the game in the first place, rather than a tech demo. I want to explore the implications of design choices without making busywork for the players. There is a sweet spot to hit where I have enough in the game to satisfy those admittedly vague goals, and doing too little or too much design detracts from the play experience.
Might I recommend a few references on the subject?
- Moorgard’s recommendation of Lum’s article on MMO scope
- Mr. Juster and Mr. Albor (and guest stars) fired up a podcast on game design and Laborious Longevity
- Chris Hecker’s Nightmare (less about scope, but tangentially relevant as his concerns directly relate to game padding)
- And perhaps most to the point, Mark Rosewater’s pair of articles on The Top Ten Principles for Good Design, especially part two and Mr. Rams’ final point on design:
“Good design is as little design as possible.”
I cannot recommend Mr. Rosewater’s articles enough. His archive is a treasure trove of game design considerations. Yes, he writes about designing a card game, but as he asserts in the Top Ten Principles articles, Good Design is Good Design, and some principles are universal across mediums. I agree, and it’s nice to see someone articulate it as well as Mr. Rosewater does, and as well as Mr. Rams does.
This is why, here at my workplace in a small game dev studio, we occasionally have game nights, where we play board or card games. Understanding why offline games work (with a side order of game theory, explicit or not) is valuable information when we get around to designing our video games. We have to understand the tools of our trade, and how design works.
One of the hardest things to learn is restraint. If I may, since art is the medium I’m most familiar with, a few thoughts on this notion as it’s found in the art world:
Art design ranges from minimalist to overwrought hyperdetail. Brushwork might be exceedingly sparse in some of these lovely Chinese bamboo paintings…
…which contrasts starkly with the laborious process that produced something like this.
…which is itself dwarfed by some of the more elaborate hyperrealist paintings.
(Never mind that once you get to that level, we’re talking about a bizarre devotion to the craft of “doing it because I can” instead of just taking a photograph. It’s sort of like the artist equivalent of a No Sphere Grid Final Fantasy X game, or climbing Mount Everest carrying a grumpy rabid wombat in your pocket.)
Each can work nicely as a piece of Art, but they tend to evoke different responses. Some of that is strongly based in how much of the experience is left to the consumer, something that game designers should be intimately familiar with, seeing as how our medium is interactive by nature. (Which doesn’t invalidate it as an art medium, by the way.)
There comes a point in art where enough really is enough. One more brushstroke, one more visual element, and the composition changes, especially when working in sparse formats like the bamboo paintings. Sometimes that change is for the better, taking the piece in new directions, but many times, going just a wee bit too far makes the piece weaker. Sometimes it can even totally break the mood and aim of the piece. I’ve tossed away many of my sketches that I overworked.
This is part of why I enjoy sketching with ballpoint pens, and why I encourage other artists to do so as well. When you have to account for every move you make, as there is no erasing, you learn to carefully gauge what you do, and either make the right choice the first time, or learn to roll with mistakes and incorporate them into your work. These are valuable tools in an artist’s toolbox.
You could also work digitally, and use the almighty Undo command and History panel, and work with layers, which give you incredible control over your artworks if used properly. Many artists wind up working both digitally and traditionally, since both offer distinct advantages. I often sketch in pen, then scan it into the computer for the coloring with Painter or Photoshop.
…
Back to games, then, I’ve often seen Portal lauded as being a great game, even as it’s noted as being a short game. It’s just long enough to give players the chance to experiment with the implications of Portal mechanics and the various puzzle elements, and it’s not padded out with excessive repetition for the sake of making the game seem somehow meatier via time sinks (which are really just bloated fat, not real gaming meat). It hits a sweet spot of playability and proper exploration of game mechanics. It’s flat out, concentrated fun, even though it’s not a mega-epic sixty hour post-apocalyptic snark opera.
On the other hand, we have Final Fantasy XIII, known for its somewhat extensive tutorial. To be fair, they are different games with different ends, but the time spent differs by an order of magnitude. A significant difference like that needs to be something done by design and for a good reason, not just to pad out playtime. Whether FFXIII succeeds in that regard is arguable, but the argument is more vociferous than a similar argument about Portal’s scope and focus.
Portal tends to leave players itching for more, while FFXIII has some players crying to just get on with the game! MMOs can be even worse.
Oh, and scope might be one reason why we don’t have a Magic the Gathering MMO, while we’re talking MTG, MMOs and game design. The game is intricately and beautifully designed as it is, and trying to shoehorn that into an MMO makes for uncomfortable compromises. It’s possible to bend the MTG themes, lore and other assorted IP into an MMO, perhaps, and such crossgenre game design is possible… but doing so would mean effectively building a totally different game from the ground up, just with an existing IP. That doesn’t always work out. It means a different scope, a different focus, and ultimately, a different feel because it really is a different game. That can alienate fans of the existing lore, even as the existing lore already limits the audience if there are strong feelings about it among gamers or nongamers the product is trying to entice.
It might also be worth noting that stories are easier to tell when the storytelling format is a bit more focused than a series of grinds with cutscenes in between. At least, if story is important. It’s also worth noting that stories can have a fair amount of cruft and bloat in them as well, and one of the hardest parts of learning to write well is learning when to shut up, similar to how the best skill conversationalists learn is how to listen.
It’s a lesson I’m still learning, obviously, in writing and game design… but it’s one worth learning.
Tish Tosh Tesh 
The thing with “Dieter Rams’s Ten Principles for Good Design” is that Mark Rosewater had to explain them in detail. It’s not easy to understand, and probably very hard to design this way.
To really live to the design standards seems to be a huge problem – Rams himself stated, only Apple/Ive are somewhat following his basic tenets. But they are extremely successful…
Food for thought: Someone just designed a beautiful new kind of MMO. The virtual world a lot of MMO fans are waiting for.
But now players and expectations come into play. Can very good design overcome Bartle’s http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/2157/soapbox_why_virtual_worlds_are_.php ?
I am playing Star Trek Online at the moment. Right now there is a strong tendency among the fans to turn the game “classes” into an even more pronounced classic trinity. This drives me nuts. The game already suffers from blindly copying concepts that work so-so for other MMOs, but in STO they are about as necessary or rather silly as corners on a soccer ball.
Blizzard announced they canned two major features (Path of the Titans alternate advancement and Guild related specials) for WoW Cataclysm. In that light, maybe it was the most creative and best design decision they ever made? *chuckles*
The problem, as it is with a lot of art, is that there’s no definite boundary for when something is done. Using painting, one more stroke might be meaningful for the sparse bamboo painting, but it would hardly be noticed in the hyperrealist paintings. Conversely, how many brush strokes could you take away from that hyperrealist paining before you start losing the nearly photographic quality?
The problem with games is that they have problems on both sides. “Fun” is a simple concept with no absolute definition, which makes games that entertain like the simple bamboo paintings. On the other hand, most games (especially modern computer games) have a lot of complexity to them, making them more like the hyperrealist style. A few pieces out of place can make an otherwise great game horribly flawed. Trying to simplify might take away part of what makes the game so wonderful.
So, while I agree that a good designer knows when enough is enough, I don’t think it’s clear at all where that line is. Different designers are going to have different feelings, opinions, and metrics for how to determine that point. Unfortunately, there’s not really any one right answer for a specific situation. Of course, that’s what makes game design so much fun (and fun to argue about with others!)
Longasc, I’m a trained artist and amateur designer, and *to me*, Rams’ design principles are restating the obvious. I found no trouble whatsoever understanding what he was getting at, even without Rosewater’s explanations. That’s why I agree that they are pretty universally applicable to design.
That said, yes, as Brian notes, design is in its way an art form. That makes it all but impossible to strictly pigeonhole into a recipe of proper procedure. Still, like Rhythm, Composition and Balance are keys to the craft of good art, Rams’ design tenets are key to good design. They aren’t a recipe for any particular bit of design, just rules of thumb for design as a craft.
Oh, and Brian, I’ve seen far too many hyperdetailed works of art that don’t get the basics down. Way too many novice artists make super detailed eyes, for example, but they are misplaced on the head. You must nail down the proportions and pose first before drawing in details in figure drawing, for example. Details layered on top of a solid foundation are icing on the cake… but a cake made of offal isn’t saved by any amount of icing.
Perhaps it’s that bedrock phase that needs to be careful with overdesign, since without the core design of a product, all the bling in the world can’t save it. Once the core design is good, layering on details that don’t significantly alter it can make the whole presentation appealing. And yes, I do think that leaning to simplicity in that basic phase is a smart idea. Complexity in an effort to obfuscate or compensate for bad core design doesn’t help anyone.
Edited to add: I don’t think that complexity in itself is a bad thing, no, far from it. I love a well crafted complex game. It’s just that complexity has to serve the core game design rather than compete with it.
Hrm. The problem with ‘Good design is as little design as possible’ is not the statement itself, but what happens when it (and other statements like it) are taken to extremes. They aren’t gospel… they’re guidelines.
Gustav Klimt’s paintings, for example, are incredibly lush and texture rich. Ornamentation is packed into every possible bit of his work…and is a key part of what makes it so beautiful.
Egon Schiele’s work is extremely spare. Very much ‘as little as possible’… and it’s as beautiful as Klimt’s. (To this nugget anyway!)
It’s arguable that in both cases, they’re following that guideline – As little as possible. The problem is, the ‘little as possible’ varies in every single instance where it’s applied.
That being said… controlling my urge to undo ad infinitum has rewarded me with much bolder, livelier work since I managed to prod myself into weekly sketches. =)
Maybe ‘as little as possible’ applies to Undos too? O.o
Another problem is it’s very difficult to pinpoint the exact point at which ‘just enough’ becomes ‘way too much’. Sometimes my ‘finished’ pieces, while all polished and shiny and rendered, seem to have lost that indefinable ‘something’ that made the sketches come alive. Which sort of reminds me of the combat in Guild Wars. You’re chugging along and everything’s fine and then suddenly you’re losing and you don’t know when it happened. Just that you’re losing. XD
Right. Ze Spammy Nugget lost Ze Nugget Point at some point here (oh the irony!) and will now waddle off. *hangs head in shame*
*chuckle*
No, I think you’re on topic in both cases. Art is fuzzy, and not only in the eye of the artist but also the beholder. Rams’ rules really can’t be law written in stone any more than the principles of art can be. Composition alone is a vastly variable thing.
As for Guild Wars, you shifted gears, but the notion of an inflection point where the battle changes from “winning” to “losing” is very similar. It’s not unlike StarCraft where a protracted battle can shift on those inflection points several times in a match. In either case, sometimes it’s hard to pinpoint that inflection point, especially when it hinges on several variables and there isn’t feedback that says “you are now losing”. The change from “enough” to “too much” also hinges on a lot of variables, and indeed, may be different for each creator and each consumer.
It’s not so much that I’m suggesting that there is always a hard cutoff beyond which a design is indelibly broken. It’s almost like there’s a fuzzy band of states between good and broken (broken here being too little or too much design), and the trick is hitting the sweet spot somewhere in that good zone, leaving enough wiggle room for individual interpretation where possible. (One more argument for a generally higher level of complexity, perhaps? A wider margin for error in the fuzzy band? Maybe that’s how MMOs function in the mass market, by having a huge fuzzy band where many different players can all find value…)
With a nod to Brian’s questions, I’ll note that the fuzzy band is definitely narrower in a minimalist design, such that one errant stroke might push the whole out of the band, so perhaps the granularity of a minimalist design creates harder cutoffs… but overall, the art of design is learning where those fuzzy areas are and playing within them, maybe even fudging the band itself.
This is definitely a grey area, and it’s one that designers in general tend to struggle with. I see this all the time in my own job as a designer of surgical devices; engineers (our designers) always tend to want to add just one more feature, just one more improvement… but at some point you have to say, “Enough!” and move on. The difficulty of course is that design doesn’t have a clear stopping point; there’s no magical stage at which a design is Complete. In theory, pretty much any project can have indefinitely ongoing engineering/design – we can just keep adding more and more and more and more ad infinitum. Instead, we just have points at which we agree to stop work on a project and just use what we have. And deciding what those points should be – when enough is indeed enough – is difficult at best.
good thought to think upon. Its really about knowing when it;’s time to move on to something new. Sometimes deadlines decide it, but its better if its your sense of doneness that decides it instead.
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