This is probably my best game-design related writing so far, as the topic not only relates to a game project I’ve done in the past, but also just resonates very strongly with my personal approach to creativity in general. This is also the first topic I’m splitting into two posts, as they’re getting altogether too lengthy to keep in one post. This post covers
- the difference between making approachable games and games that give the user a specific “experience”
- the concept of having a “target vision” that makes creating such games easier
- and how targeting an indie market makes the difficulties of making/selling a visionary game disappear.
Art is defined by “the expression or application of human creative skill and imagination, (…) producing works to be appreciated primarily for their beauty or emotional power”. Painting, writing, music, plays, movies; nearly all art is created for the appreciation of the viewer, and in this way, games are no different. Where games stand out, however, is in the potential strength of user experience; this is due, in no small part, to several of the aforementioned creative mediums all naturally contributing to the sum total of a game. In games, everything that is presented to the player is ultimately a product of the player’s actions; this automatically makes any game resonate with the viewer more strongly than other mediums, as it is something they are actively driving (and experiencing). Due to this, games can become very engrossing; the possibility for the player to do vastly different things based on their approach to the game, in addition to the game’s rich universe, leads to the possibility of the player becoming immersed in the game itself. An interesting byproduct of this comes in the form of “watercooler stories”. Watercooler stories, in games, can be described as a moment where a player does a notably unique thing as a product of the wide range of possibilities inherent in the game, and has a story to share as the result of that.
These stories are notable in the fact that they are an incredibly close simulacrum of real-life watercooler stories (where said unique things are a product of the randomness of human life); such things are only possible with games, due to the player’s experience being driven by their interactions with the game. How would one design a game to elicit such a thing from a player? Watercooler stories come most commonly from randomly-generated, open-world, or multiplayer games, due to the large range of possible interactions inherent in the type of game. Artfully inserting any of those mechanics into your game, however, is both difficult and costly; not only are they all naturally difficult to do, but said types of games all commonly require large amounts of funding. Nevertheless, if the aim of the design is still to provide a novel experience for the player, the only logical option to avoid needing large amounts of manpower and funding is to reduce scope, i.e. pinpoint the exact kind of experience you want the player to have, instead of having a wide range of possibilities.
One might assume that such a thing dilutes the potency of the target experience, both for being so thin (having no other appeal except for the explicitly stated experience), as well as being clearly hand-crafted (being able to tell what the point of the game is). In the Real World (TM), data would suggest that the opposite is true. Looking at the common appearance of “design lead” roles on game projects shows that, by focusing on a specific target from the outset of development (regardless of size), the effectiveness of all your work and workers increases, only because you now have a direction (more about this in Pt. 2).
Rather than rely on anecdotal data, though, let’s examine a real world comparison of two similar games, one “indie”, going for a more niche vision, and one “triple-a”, going for mass appeal as well as strictly just enjoyable gameplay. A good example of two extremely similar, yet individually popular, games that fit these descriptions are XCOM: Enemy Unknown, and Darkest Dungeon.
High Budget, High Reach
XCOM Enemy Unknown is a beautiful example of when everything Triple-A goes horribly right. The game began as a remake of the original PC game UFO: Enemy Unknown, a cult-classic hit that would undoubtedly have a great degree of appeal. The Firaxis dev team spent a lot of time iterating on their remake of the game, going through many revisions, as well as requiring everyone on the team to have played through the original game. As a result of all this hard, dedicated work, the game is very much an improvement on the original. All the facets of the old game that were needlessly confusing were refined or cut, and every aspect of the new game is streamlined or polished to a mirror sheen. In pursuing the target of a easily-approachable, well-vetted XCOM remake, the Firaxis team hit their mark with astounding accuracy.
The core mechanics of XCOM: Enemy Unknown are rather simple: you’re a United Nations-esque military organization tasked with repelling an invading alien force. At your base, you build facilities, recruit and upgrade troops, and research the alien technology to either reverse-engineer it or find its weaknesses. When you receive a report of alien activity, you send your troops out to hunt down the aliens in various sites around the world, and based on the preparedness of you and your team, the encounters can range from relatively easy to maddeningly difficult. In addition to simply fighting the aliens back, you’re fighting to keep the funding of all the various countries that are contributing to your organization; if alien activity goes uncontrolled in any nation, that nation’s leadership will pull their funding and make it that much harder for you to combat the alien menace.
XCOM lends itself well to the watercooler story; by both having a wide range of potential alien encounters (all randomly-generated) as well as having a myriad of different approaches to gameplay, it creates a lot opportunities for shocking twists of fate and heart-racingly tense last stands. In addition to the flexible gameplay encounters, the variety of difficulty settings and game mode modifiers (more introduced in an expansion) further allow the game to both appeal to a large array of players and provide further gameplay diversity. As a result of all these things, the potential experiences to be had in playing XCOM are plentiful, due to the broad nature of many of the gameplay features. XCOM is essentially just an extremely intense strategy & tactics game; the format it’s in allows the player to take as much time as they would like, as opposed to traditional RTS games, but the large range of options available in gameplay, environment, rules, and player/enemy formations turns it into just an all-encompassing strategy game.
To obtain such wide appeal, however, is where the true cost of development shows itself. XCOM: Enemy Unknown‘s development team was 50+ people strong, from a studio with a very strong history, in addition to working with publisher used to a lot of high-scope games (2K Games). In game development, so many cogs in this system can go wrong, but when all of them go right, you get a game as fantastic as XCOM. But despite its achievements, the chosen comparison game performs beautifully in several areas where XCOM is purposefully simple; namely, the story, vision, and style. In these, Darkest Dungeon prevails.
Low Budget, Low Reach, High Impact
On the basis of gameplay alone, Darkest Dungeon and XCOM share a great deal; both games focus around working with a player-chosen team in a strenuous strategic & tactical environment. Both require you to mitigate losses to the best of your ability (as they WILL occur), and in both, your time inbetween missions is spent advancing your tech and turning your team into a better fighting force. The main difference between the two, then, is scope. In XCOM, the combat and environment is fully 3D, forcing you to make formation and attack vector decisions in a myriad of spatial arrangements. In DD, the combat is arguably 1D, as the attack vectors and formations have only one unit of direction attached to them. They offset this somewhat by having a large range of status ailments and potential enemy types/attacks, but taking the weight of axes in mind, XCOM has a deeper combat system.
Darkest Dungeon compensates for this by having an extremely strong creative content core that also synergizes with the gameplay beautifully. This is due in no small part to the well-directed, succinct vision. DD‘s vision is a game where: “[you] focus on the sword-arm and not the sword.” A more in-depth description of this, from their creative director:
“Darkest Dungeon is an uncompromising gothic roguelike turn-based RPG about the psychological stresses of adventure. A low fantasy Lovecraftian adventure that forces players to make the best of a bad situation, face difficult tradeoffs, and live with permanent consequences.”.
Because of these things, DD is a far better example of a hand-crafted experience than XCOM is. A bitter, yet poignant, example of this comparison is to look at the differences between reviews of XCOM and Darkest Dungeon. A cursory glance of the reviews on XCOM show a lot of the watercooler potential, a lot of blanket praise, and general approval. The reviews of Darkest Dungeon, however, mostly border on somewhere between good and bad. People are upset with the game being difficult and unrelenting, but relent by admitting that this is the message the game tries to deliver from the outset. Very rarely does any one review call it a bad game, but a great deal of them remark that the experience offered by it “is not for everyone”. That, in one way, is Darkest Dungeon‘s greatest strength.
DD‘s strength lies in the gravity of the experiences it gives players that are difficult to share; namely, grief and remorse, due to misfortune. By definition, watercooler stories are granular, simple to tell, and easy to enjoy. All of these things are vastly contrary to a truly meaningful experience. In comparing the two games by the simple, approachable appeal, XCOM is superior, but only in that aspect, and by design; as previously mentioned, XCOM was designed with wide reach and appeal in mind. In the same vein, Darkest Dungeon‘s gameplay of a difficult, unflinching reality where people you’ve grown attached to will die, is by design: “The game is *sometimes* unfair (by design), cruel (by design), and unpredictable (by design)”. Something that DD relies upon a lot more than XCOM is the use of randomness. Their self-defined reliance on “RNGesus” is a perfect allegory to the RPG system of D&D that the game took inspiration from, and mirrors how the misfortune people suffer in normal life is commonly driven by the inexplicable randomness of the universe.. Most of it can be prepared for, but never all of it. And when, how, or who it happens to is fate’s choice and fate’s choice alone:
“I wish it need not have happened in my time,” said Frodo.“So do I,” said Gandalf, “and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.”
In making this kind of game, however, the Red Hook team have innately reduced the size of their audience. Not all people want to be reminded of the misfortune ill luck can bring, and video games most certainly do not naturally have that connotation. This is where the strength of the “indie” appeal shows its hand, however. Indie games are the only logical market where you could do such a thing and expect financial success. By making your game for such niche appeal, you innately reduce the size of your target audience as well, and so the resulting profits (and possibility for the game to be made) are reduced. However, in targeting your vision, you can reduce content and scope so that you only build what is necessary, and therefore reduce costs (and increase the possibility that the game is made). Targeted visions are double-edged swords in that sense; the more specific the game, the more streamlined it will be, and the more niche the appeal becomes. However, this is where the comparison between Darkest Dungeon and XCOM has to end; as DD is most certainly not the only example of niche audience indie games that become cult classics, due to the quality of content and experience they give. The Indie development scene has been growing in popularity due to the rich range of games and experiences offered; rich enough, in fact, to have far more examples of “strictly good” games, on the basis of the fact that they accomplish what they were aimed to do, and nothing else.
