Universal Agreements

We tend to live today in what most people would agree as a Relativistic world. I don't mean precisely that we all can see things using a frame of motion of 4/5c and everything is smacked over the head with the gamma value (haha Mudd joke), but rather that people seem to believe in a relativistic model of morality and ethics. I believe one thing and you believe one thing based perhaps on upbringings, social constraints, views of relatives and friends, schooling, and so on. Thus, my view is different but not more "correct" than yours since it's all perhaps just a derivation of environment.

Many enjoy the versatility and acceptance that this view provides. Sure we all disagree, but we can all reflect and accept everyone! Plus, it avoids lots of sticky edge cases. For example, if we had a belief system that murder (defined as intentionally taking of another human's life) is "bad" then how do we reconcile the "Kill one, save a million" problem? Or, even better, where do we draw the line as to what is a "human's life"? Suddenly we need huge numbers of clauses and rebuttals for how the rule that "murder is evil" operates. Ew. Why not just say that I personally hold that "murder is evil" and leave it that? It's all relativistic anyways, so I could be completely wrong, but it doesn't matter.

Ironically this view also allows for an extremely rigid Universal Truth viewpoint to exist. Universal Truths holds that there are certain things that are purely and unequivocally true. The most familiar of course would be that there is a God and that its rules of morality are the "correct" rules for Good and Evil. Since Relativistic allows any and all views to exist without one superceding the other, UT is perfectly valid as well.


However, this isn't a post about right and wrong, but rather on Universal Agreements.

Recently I was reflecting on certain things people say on forums that seem to resonate with other people. There appear to be, at least within these little nexuses of anonymous spouts of text, certain little quips that just seem "right" and you'd be a fool to argue against the summed logic of the rest of us. Of course, none of us have any idea how to actually carry out our little vignettes of wisdom, but we like to feel smart knowing them anyways. Since I tend to frequent game design forums, here are a few.

• Easy to learn, hard to master. The concept of make it easy for new players to get into the game, and then hook them for the long run via depth of skill required and how the little basic building blocks of the gameplay can interact in amazingly deep ways. Perhaps the universal example is the Japanese game Go, a strategy game with a few simple rules but years of learning to even come close to competency. Similarly, the western Chess is hailed as an example of this tenant. Checkers doesn't have the depth to apply, and many, many other board games fail miserably the easy to learn portion with their giant handbooks of rules. Other claim that StarCraft did this back in the day for strategy games, but from the testimony of plenty of non-RTS players it was a beast to learn anything except mine stuff and build stuff and Attack-Move army. I personally don't feel it fits well the easy to learn tenant.
• Listen to both the competitive and casual players of your community. See my previous post on the disparity and lovely quagmire this brings.
• Make the game fun. Seems like a simple enough tenant, and many indie developers have mentioned that one way to add new features is to test drive it and then ask "was that fun?" However, many seems to forget this little caveat and add needless grind and game lengthening stupidity just so they can claim "70+ hours of gameplay". See how short Portal was? See how awesome that was? Do that more often. See FarCry2 and its fail grind? Don't do that. Also, remember that your idea of "fun" doesn't always mean fun for others, so pick your target audience early and check with it often.
• Realism only without sacrificing gameplay. Seems a little obvious to me, but sometimes people really want things like realistic bullet drop or localized damage or a Senate that could overrule your orders to the populace if the war goes on too long. Sure war is nasty and politics are tricky and if the US President invaded the rest of the world with Pikemen while they had tanks, I'm pretty sure the general populace would impeach the sucker and then send his body parts to the offended nations. However, in a game, we are willing to suspend disbelief for the sake of fun. See the Rule of Cool. Sure it's impossible to backflip off of a launching missile, and then grapple to a jet, kick out the pilot, take control of the plane and crash it into a building just before the missile hits the same building and survive, but who cares? IT WAS AWESOME! Realism would have had you dead after the first bullet hit you and then you had to spend 32 years from an embryo to schooling to training just to get back there. To heck with that, I have save points!
• Dividing the Community is Bad. Don't ever put yourself in a position where your community is fragmented and isolated and no way to interact with each other. Even though games like World of Warcraft have several different servers, they also have giant forums where the diverse ideas and epic wins and strategies can be shared. If you let your community fragment you have to work at least twice as hard to maintain it. Plus, once the rift forms, it's nearly impossible to smooth it over. Another example is the skill curve. If there becomes a strong "pub" and "pro" region, and a giant barrier of entry to move up tot he "pro" area, the "pro" area tends to have only a few to join and keep it fresh, and they become insular and detached from the "pubs". "Pubs" then also see no way to easily progress into the "pros" and either stagnate or eventually leave. Slowly and surely your community suffocates.
• Release early, release often. This is actually a surprisingly recent one and perhaps one of the most misused. I believe it has sprung up mostly from the indie development scene, and touted more publicly from developers like the Civilization 4 development team and Mass Effect 2's level design team. The key component is that you want to get feedback as quickly as possible and design in an iterative fashion. That way mistake made in the beginning don't get unnoticed and create huge amount of work later in the development process. However, some developers mistake this to mean "publicly release everything, no matter how awful and unpolished it is." This creates a negative effect. Recall the phrase "negative publicity is still publicity"? Turns out in the gaming world negative publicity kills future publicity. You only have one or two good shots to prove yourself noteworthy before the masses give up and ignore you. So, by releasing half-baked bug-ridden betas to the masses you make the majority of them give up. Until a glowing report appears about how awesome it is from a major trusted reviewer. Instead, you need to slowly release within a controlled environment of peers who will critique and look past the early development flaws and help guide you in the design process.
  
• Make the game fun. It's worth mentioning twice.