When one sets out to create something, a lot of ideas will be challenged.
In fact, you’re going to run into obstacles that nobody in your life has ever experienced. It will be up to you to compartmentalize the stress, the decision-making and the consequences of those choices.
That lesson applies to everything in your life. Perhaps we’ll touch on that in another post. But today I’m going to talk about some principles of design in gameplay.
Let’s break down that word, ‘principle.’
Principles are nothing more than frameworks on how to think about stuff.
Alright, esoteric words be gone! Let’s talk practical and real.
Designing Lords & Legends for over two years alongside Dokken has not only been a rewarding exploration into such frameworks but also a wonderful testbed to see if gameplay concepts we value actually hold any merit in the real world.
Do these principles actually create fun player interactions? Are you rigidly holding onto an idea that was created in a lab? Applying that idea in nature can pose new questions. These are realities that challenge your way of thinking.
From my own anecdotal experience, there is one very important fork in the road when designing progression in a strategy game. I call it Transformative versus Incremental design.
Incremental vs. Transformative
Incremental Design is when the game rewards progression with incremental stat increases to units or other board pieces. This is generally represented by percentages - it’s found across all mediums with strategy games, including video games and card games.
For example, your army movement speed is increased by 3% or give all Goblin units +1/0 counters.
The beauty of this design is that it’s very left-brained and great for a specific type of player. They know exactly what they are getting and with enough of them, perhaps their army can move 25% faster by the endgame. Wow, a whole quarter!
Then there is Transformative Design - this is when the game rewards progression with large-sweeping gameplay changes. Unlike Incremental Design, this style of progression uses little to no percentages. In fact, I’d say percentages and any visible numbers are antithetical to the core concept.
For example: your army now employs the use of chariots or give all Goblins units bazookas.
Transformative Design is rarer than Incremental design because it requires us game architects to do a lot more work in creating theatre for the player. It requires imagination, construction and an understanding of meta progression - unlike Incremental Design which gets you to the finish line while doing less.
Transformative Design creates the kind of experiences I personally seek as both a designer and player…but it comes at a great cost. It requires constant testing. It requires extra work. But the reward is a new tactical landscape.
If you go down this path, you create games with staying power because players remember the experience. Is it more likely that a player is going to remember that upgrade that allowed their cavalry to move 15% faster or when they deployed Urukzatu?
That’s what I thought.
The irony in all of this is that everything is 1’s and 0’s. Both Incremental and Transformative present as different things, but under the hood (especially in a video game), the only difference is presentation.
That’s all I got time for today - so long!
