This is a version of an article that appeared in the January 2013 issue of Game Developer magazine.

When Magic: the Gathering first entered the gaming scene back in 1993, the mere idea of a game based upon an ever-evolving pool of collectable cards was just a zygote of an idea. Richard Garfield and the rest of Wizards of the Coast knew the game had real potential, but no one really knew how the game experience would really play out.

It’s not surprising that they got some things wrong. Their limited playtesting was not nearly enough to find all of the convoluted strategies that players would devise, and they had no historical data to look at problem spots. Sophisticated analysis of the game did not yet exist—they did not know (or fully appreciate) how powerful drawing cards would be in their game, and thus printed a cart that allowed a player to draw three cards for one mana.  And many of the rules were written to be ambiguous, so new expansions that introduced new rules brought in unexpected conflicts, and made it clear that card rules language needed to be much more structured and unified than it was previously.

They also underestimated their own popularity. They expected players to buy a deck and a couple of booster packs. Hardcore players started to buy booster packs by the case. Rare cards that Wizards of the Coast assumed would only show up once or twice in a deck ended up being highly sought after, and soon devoted players were packing 4 of each (the legal limit) in their decks, and destroying their less-invested opponents in the process, often in a couple of turns. The value of the best rares shot into the stratosphere, creating a legitimate aftermarket for cards.

Wizards has succeeded beyond their wildest dreams, reinventing the board games industry (and in the process saving America’s gaming and comic book stores) in the process. But it was clear that Magic had some bad structural problems that would need to be addressed. Fortunately, Magic had a winning core game design, which gave them the resources and time they would need to fix these structural issues. Magic was a game that had a long life after ship, and their game designers took advantage of this to great effect. Continue reading

This is a reprint of an article that first appeared in the October 2012 issue of Game Developer Magazine.  It has since also reappeared on Gamasutra at this link.

Ultima Online and EverQuest represent two very different game philosophies. Ultima Online‘s creators tried very hard to create a virtual world with physics and interactions that mimicked the real world, so players could interact with each other in ways meant to model reality: You can chop down trees, dye clothes, build houses, attack almost anyone anywhere, and steal anything that isn’t nailed down.

By comparison, EverQuest is a simple game, not much more than a combat simulator designed to mimic the basics of combat found in tabletop board games and old online Multiuser Dungeons (MUDs). Combat in EverQuest is very deep and intricate compared to that in Ultima Online, with far more ways for players to attack and manipulate their enemies. However, combat aside, EverQuest was perceived to not be a very feature-rich game. Most of the world interactions in Ultima Online aren’t in EverQuest, and when they are, they aren’t particularly deep or fleshed out—to the extent that many observers felt thatEverQuest would be too simple for the newly invented massively multiplayer genre. As it turned out,EverQuest easily beat Ultima Online‘s numbers, and a few years later, a rematch of the two MMO design philosophies paired Star Wars Galaxies against World of Warcraft — with a repeat of the same end result.

As it turned out, Ultima Online has a lot of features, but many of those features don’t have a lot of depth to them; it is broad, rather than deep. EverQuest has fewer features, but a combat model that is very deep (and became deeper as new boss mechanics were added to respond to an increasingly savvy audience).EverQuest is a game about depth. Continue reading

A version of this article first appeared in the June/July 2012 issue of Game Developer magazine.

Football is a sport with a lot of situational game decisions – the plays that the coaches call are going to be very different if they are sitting on a 30 point lead are going to be very different than when they are down a field goal with two and a half minutes to go.  Indeed, the fact that the playbook varies so strongly based on the situation is one of the reasons why football can be so deep and strategic – the team that is behind needs to score quickly and needs to leverage certain rules, such as running out of bounds, in order to stop the clock. Defenses adjust in order to limit these likely plays from happening, but often in doing so leave the field open for a high-risk, high yield play.

This kind of play is interesting, but there is another kind of situational play in football that is more strategic and less tactical – teams spend a considerable amount of time preparing for every game.  Most football teams only bring a limited number of plays they will call, and so time is spent studying the opponent’s film.  If they have a prolific quarterback, defenses may opt to sacrifice run defense in favor of better pass defense.  A key injury on the other team might prompt an attempt to exploit the second string player taking his place.  Even the weather factors in – heavy rains may prompt a coach to abandon the passing game, and strong winds may limit the effectiveness of a kicker.  Continue reading

This is a version of an article that first appeared in the March 2012 issue of Game Developer magazine.

The simple die roll is one of the single most vexing tools in the designer’s repertoire.  Rolling dice is fun.  Landing double-sixes is a lot of fun.  Seeing big critical hit numbers pop across big bad boss monster’s head is deeply satisfying.  And yet, the experienced designer knows that, much of the time, the dice are his enemy. Which is tragic, of course.  Most game designers, at the core, love absurd amounts of dice rolling.

There are few ways to get a room full of RPGers excited than to bring back the fond memories of the Rolemaster Critical Hit Tables, where simple acts like trying to climb a ladder might result in accidentally dropping your sword and dismembering your own arm.  The sheer magic and hilarity of events like this is transcendental – it’s a story that will be described to other gamers for years after the fact.  What is often is only fun in retrospect is passing that point and actually playing further as a one-armed Paladin. Continue reading

This is a version of an article that first appeared in the December 2011 issue of Game Developer magazine.

Left 4 Dead has many things going for it – tight mechanics, compelling atmosphere, great characters, all of which make Valve’s zombie-pulping low budget masterpiece a must-buy for serious gamers.  However, without a doubt, the center pillar of the game was the focus on cooperative play – the idea that all players are working for a common goal.

Cooperative play used to be an afterthought in games, except those made for consoles played on the same couch.  For a while, designers focused more on direct conflict (i.e. player vs. player combat or deathmatch) as the natural way to play.  However, cooperative play has survived, and indeed now thrives, now frequently as a fulcrum to multiplayer game’s design.

Capture the Flag

Cooperative play is nothing new, however the shooter market seemed to almost abandon the concept, putting in very nearly token cooperative modes in games, while focusing more and more time on making other multiplayer modes more popular.  But along the way, a funny thing happened – the two gameplays merged.  As id moved from Doom to Quake I and Quake II, Capture the Flag slowly emerged as a gameplay mode far preferable to straight up deathmatch, and almost every gameplay mode since then that has emerged has focused on various team vs. team structures.

There are a lot of reasons for this.  Capture the Flag offers a lot more strategy and depth than straight up headshotting opponents endlessly, and there are a lot more different ways to play the game: as the defender of the home base, as the kamikazi flag runner, or as the sniper taking potshots across no-mans-land.  But I think most of all, it is the sense of teamwork and camaraderie that enriches the game experience, and keeps players coming back.

Consider the various psychological emotions that happen in a good capture-the-flag game.  Leaders get a chance to shine.  The very skilled get a chance to display mastery over other players, but the lesser skilled can still contribute and get the good feelings from a victory.  Winning team members congratulate each other.  Losing members console each other.  The odds that a player will have a positive interaction in a game with a cooperative element are far higher than in one where everyone is trying to crush each other – especially online, where the other driving factor is anonymity.

Cooperative Board Games

While it is no means the first, the excellent board game Pandemic ushered in a wave of cooperative dice-throwers (with other games like Forbidden Island and Defenders of the Realm offering very similar gameplay styles).   And beyond the fact that they offer interesting and different game mechanics from the usual fare, it’s not difficult to see why.

In most of the great board games, gathering 6 people means that after a couple of hours of play, 1 player will be the winner and 5 will be losers (this math is even worse on a 32 person Quake Deathmatch server, of course).  But in Pandemic, either everyone wins or everyone loses.  As a person who runs a lot of board games, this comes in very handy when, for example, you have more than one person who cares about winning a little too much.  Or more crucially, when you have a new person at the table, who is unsure of the rules and concerned about making foolish decisions.  The tone of the table changes considerably when everyone has a vested interest in the new guy’s success.

Pandemic is not without its flaws.  The nature of the game means that it is possible and likely one domineering player may effectively run the game, controlling everyone’s turns, for example.  And some designers, such as the team that did the excellent Battlestar Galactica boardgame, have managed to find success in creating tension and interesting social mechanics with the introduction of a traitor mechanic into the cooperative gameplay style.  Still, board games have improved dramatically as a whole since some designers have taken cooperative gameplay to heart.

Force Multipliers

When most people imagine the possibilities inside of an MMO like Ultima Online or EVE, what they tend to gravitate towards is the ‘massive’ part of the equation.  Getting hundreds or thousands of people in the same space is interesting because of the possibilities there of doing something much larger than yourself, whether its attacking an enemy player city with 50 close friends in Shadowbane, or killing the Lich King with 25 close friends in World of Warcraft.  These spaces are interesting largely because of the uniqueness of the experience, and what adventuring with other players brings to the table.

Even on PvP servers, MMOs are largely all about cooperative play, and the cutting edge of that play is typically dominated by guilds who have embraced the three great force-multipliers of cooperative play, Leadership, Teamwork and Communication.  Guilds with strong, charismatic leaders can motivate and drive their players through conflict.  Players acting in concert can be devastating.  And the degree of coordination and responsiveness that can be achieved with strong communication tools like voice chat can dramatically increase a team’s effectiveness.

One of the great challenges of an MMO designer is finding ways to challenge players who have embraced these tenets of cooperative play, without making the game impossible for players who can’t find these guilds.  But the interesting thing about these principles — leadership, teamwork and communication – is that they take hard work to achieve.  Whether it be hardcore PvP or top-level raiding, excelling requires players need to know each other, learn how to work well with each other, and depend on each other.  And these dependencies work to build strong communities inside of your game space.

Asynchronous Play

One of the principle knocks against Facebook games is that, even though the games are called social games, the games to be found there are typically profoundly asocial.  Playing most facebook games is somewhat of a solitary existence, and the play patterns are very short.  A player may spend 15-20 minutes getting a group together in an MMO like World of Warcraft or Rift – few entire Mafia Wars game sessions last more than 10.

Some games, like Frontierville, allow the player to visit another player’s lot, but the short time cycles are so brief that the odds of actually running into the owner of that lot are fairly low – and considering many people are tending their crops when they’re supposed to be at work, they may not be in the mood for a prolonged conversation anyway.

However, Facebook games lean heavily on cooperative play in order to build virality into their products, and they do so with asynchronous game concepts – i.e. finding ways for players to assist each other even when they don’t play on the same time.  They like to do this with both carrots (offering rewarding mechanics for giving gifts) and sticks (putting in roadblocks that can only be overcome by getting help).

Facebook games are still hitting their stride in finding the way to do this.  Spamming up a player’s wall provokes a fair amount of backlash from players, something I think not enough Facebook developers worry about.  Asking for help is often socially awkward, and introverts in particular may resist.  But logging in to find that while you were offline, your high school girlfriend gave you a rusty pump handle is a surprisingly powerful emotional event.

Other Players as Content

Playing Guitar Hero and Rock Band alone is one thing.  Playing it with a full group of four is quite another.   The former is a test of your own personal skill, and little more.  The latter is more social, and more fun.   Suddenly, new concerns come up, such as maximizing star power bonuses or saving a weaker link.  Players play song outside their comfort zones.  Virtuosos have an audience to show off to.  And like most cooperative gameplay, the sense of shared triumph is even more intoxicating than beating the game alone.

One of the most central tenets of multiplayer game design is that, when designed correctly, other players are the content.  Few things bring this home like handing the microphone around in Rock Band, and hearing your mother sing Metallica – often while reading the lyrics for the first time.  Like all cooperative games, the presence of other people makes old content new again, and the presence of different people brings new strengths and challenges.

In Conclusion

Making great cooperative content isn’t easy, but if done right, it can result in powerful gameplay elements that strike strong emotive notes in the player.  Principles like cooperation, teamwork and leadership become very important.  Designers need to work to account for these, and to encourage players to bond and sympathize with each other to achieve loftier goals inside the gamespace.

One of the best ways to make cooperative gameplay interesting is to elevate other players to be interesting actors inside the space, who can bring different skills, talents and personality to a task.  Designers that succeed may find themselves rewarded with games that have greater replayability, stronger communities, and memories that resonate in the player’s mind long after the game is gathering dust on the shelf.  Other people are interesting.  Cooperative gameplay should embrace that.