Last week I wrote about how no two people walk away from a piece of art with the same conception of what they just saw. I mostly couched that in terms of older media like visual art and film, but this idea applies to games in an especially interesting way. If we regard a film as a set of visual moments set to narrative that creates an experience in the viewer, a game is sort of like a set of systems that generate those visual and narrative moments – a sort of movie machine. This is not an especially popular perspective, since most games that try to directly reproduce the experience of seeing a movie tend to be hamhanded and tedious, but it’s a useful analogy for understanding some of the ways games can be interesting.
Sometimes, as in the case of a strategy or classic arcade game, the point of interest is meant to lie within the systems and learning how to understand and exploit them, with the visuals and narrative working to express the system state – sometimes, instead, as with RPGs or visual novels, the point of interest is in the narrative, with the systems working to vary the expression of that narrative. The art of games becomes a kind of meta-art – so, just as our perception of the experience of the game varies from person to person and context to context, so does our perception of the systems of the game that created this experience. Most people, in effect, never end up playing the game itself, but playing their perception of the game – they don’t follow the rules that are coded in, they just follow their understanding of the rules. They don’t engage with the systems that exist, they engage with the systems that they find useful and interesting. The game which they experience is, in the end, just a sub-game made of a larger whole.
All this is very abstract, but one doesn’t have to look very far to see instances of this dynamic. An obvious example of this is in skill trees, which many RPGs such as the Diablo series have and which only allow you to pick a small subset of the existing abilities to use. A somewhat less obvious example are the huge variety of spells and weapons in Dark Souls, of which most people have only used a few. A perhaps even less obvious example is when games provide some tactical option that many players simply choose not to use – such as the cover system in Deus Ex: Human Revolution, which I personally largely ignored after about 15 minutes of play. In each of these, the game that you actually end up playing is a smaller subset of the game as it exists, comprised of those systems which you find interesting or believe to be useful.
What do we mean when we say that a game allows the player a large degree of choice? To a significant degree, what we are saying is that we allow the player to choose what parts of the game to ignore, to allow them the freedom to create the sub-game within the game that most appeals to them. Puzzle games offer very little choice, because you’re forced to fully engage with and understand the systems in order to solve them – since, in most cases, the puzzles have but one solution. Strategy games provide a vast field of solutions to various interlaced dilemmas, many of which you can ignore in order to implement your chosen approach.
This understanding of choice through systemic engagement is of particular interest when considered in the discussion of difficulty and accessibility. While it’s often possible in RPGs to hammer through challenges through sheer skill or cleverness, the systems other players might ignore frequently become ways to progress to those who can’t manage the straightforward solutions. Helpful tools such as turrets, which might be useless to a player who has no issue with aiming, could be fundamental to a player who does not have that capability. If the game is designed to be expansive, and to encompass many approaches that are applicable to different capabilities, then the sub-game the player ends up creating might end up feeling more complete and satisfying – potentially more so than if you simply offer difficulty or accessibility settings to achieve the same purpose.
However, this comes with a drawback. If the player is creating their sub-game out of the systems you have provided, there’s nothing that guarantees whatever system-combination they devise will actually generate a satisfying experience. Many games are actually designed in such a way that this outcome becomes likely – such as, for instance, having a mechanic that’s de-emphasized for much of the game only to become useful, or even necessary, at the end – long after the player’s forgotten about it. Or, as in many cases, the method of play that the player identifies as most effective are actually the most tedious ways to play the game, so the player quickly gets bored of the experience, a problem which I’ve discussed in the past.
This all adds up to be a lot to keep in mind while designing your game. How necessary are the different mechanics? What capabilities and aptitudes do they open windows for? Are there combinations of these systems that will create a bland and uninteresting experience? What will the scope of created experiences look like? It seems, at times, impossible to account for all of these permutations and their significance. Just like the player, you may never fully grasp your game. All you can do is seek to shape it into something which ends up interesting and appealing, no matter how you slice it.