It Has to Be That Way

Sometimes, in a game design, there's a rule or system that's clunky, complex, un-thematic, laborious, or otherwise detracts from the game. However, this rule is necessary, in order for the game to function.

A story

Recently, I played another designer's game. Like so many other games, it was a simple puzzle, buried under a mountain of complexity, components, and work. I told the designer this. He wasn't happy about it. He asked me what I'd do, to fix things, if I didn't like them. I thought about it, but there wasn't anything that could be easily lopped off this game. Every system was adding a little bit of gameplay, but a lot of components, rules, and work. The system couldn't be whittled back to the core, because the core was too simple on its own, with the other 90% of the game removed. The game would simply fall apart.

I couldn't think of any way to fix these problems. The game designer was right. Those things probably couldn't be fixed. They'd need to be left as they were.

Maybe your game contains things that have to be the way they are. It's unfortunate, but you just have to live with them. Right?

Wrong!

Players and publishers don't care why there's some flaw or kludge in your game. There may be a perfectly good reason why it's there. The publisher is still not going to accept your game. They can just publish a great game that doesn't have such problems.

You're the game designer. Your job is to fix your game's problems. If you can't fix them, you can start working on another game. See, your problem can be solved.

I've abandoned most of the games I've ever made, because they had problems I couldn't fix. With the rest of my games, I've found ways to fix the problems. Until the problems are fixed, a game is not finished.

Human nature

If people keep doing something the wrong way, or understand a rule the wrong way, change the rule, so that it's the right way.

The alternative is to change human nature, which is impossible.

People expect to draw a card at start of turn. If they move, they expect to do that at the start of the turn. If they use a space, they expect to use the one they move to, not the one they left.

I'm not big on procedures, but if your game contains a procedure that players often forget, it must be changed or removed.

People are people, and they're the ones playing your game. It doesn't matter how incompetent or ignorant they may or may not be, if they don't have fun, your game has failed.

The same goes for things that just don't feel right. Players' feelings are never wrong. If more than a few players feel a certain way, there's a problem.

As a player, I don't care why things are jarringly different to what I expect. I don't want to play a game that feels weird. It's your job as a designer to make your game work, and also not feel weird.

Some games are based around a weird kind of behaviour. It's a big downside, and it takes a while to get the hang of.

In Hanabi, you can see everyone else's hand of cards, but not your own. The game is based around this weird rule, so it's unavoidable. It's a good game, but everyone accidentally looks at their own hand many times, when they're starting out.

Ask your playtesters how they would expect something to work, and go with that.

"I just want"

Let me tell you how to fix your horrible compromises. I call it an "I just want". This is where you declare all the things you want, and just ignore (at first) the fact that this causes other problems.

My farm game is worker placement. On your turn, you put your piece on an action space, and you do that action. This also means that the action is taken, and no one else can use it for the rest of the round. However, I was adding more and more action spaces to the board, and this meant that players were rarely vying for the same action spaces. It lost its tension, and players could largely ignore each other. I tried leaving the pieces from the previous round on the board, to keep the spaces blocked for two rounds, and keep twice as many pieces on the board, blocking spaces. This put the tension back in, but it stopped people investing in their strategy, because they could only take that space once every two rounds. Also, things just felt randomly blocked, because someone inadvertently took them the previous round.

So I did an "I just want".

• "I want all the tokens coming off each round, so that things are available again."
• "I still want lots of choices."
• "I want the board to be tight, so it's competitive.

First, I tried actions that come and go, thus keeping the number of actions small. Only the key actions that people would want at that stage of the game, would be available. Some resources would disappear early, and when big actions appeared, the small ones would go. This worked, but it was cumbersome, so I abolished it.

Later, I simply grouped the actions together. When you take an action, you block that whole class of actions for the round. If I strip mine, you can't shaft mine. 

By starting at the end state, with an "I just want", you can skip to the end of your problem. Sometimes, you'll have to make other changes, to accommodate this. This compresses your problems down to one really hard problem, with a perfect outcome.

You will often need to change other parts of your game, to make the "I just want" work. An "I just want" does not compromise.

Get out tokens and bits of paper, and play around with them. Go for a walk. Whatever you need to do.

If you can't solve these really hard problems, you're probably not going to succeed as a game designer, because other people can.