Gadgetory

innovations to you know to achieve things with your organization training that sort of stuff and also a bit with Dean balancing how do you have you met matically ahead lytic leaf ounce the game mechanics sup me I'm bill burr news I'm with CCP my wolf currently working with the world of darkness mmm CCP you know like Wolfgang's for 20 years also on baking subsection 1 game with holistic design I'm how man go open with green running publishing and what do you call the topic of my press as well and I don't re-use on renege layout and gently everything Conservation's for about 15 years so let's start with uh I guess a little more philosophies on just the art of game mechanics Oh Mike greenlar philosophy is looking at things as I mentioned a couple of you we're probably my talk before the exploration versus exploitation trade on and along with that is also the you know the whole narrative the whole experience so how much do you want the player to explore both a little sense but also in a in a gameplay sense how much you wanted to explore the mechanics of the game force being told what to do but use use fire against this use something against something else and look at that for more analytical perspective so my perspective is looking at things saying well you can treat everything's numbers you can treat it all as the richness as how do you balance the game how you communicate that information how do you communicate it effectively and how do you measure it back and I think that they can you can tie a lot with the story and setting with that and that let's take over to build two because I know you've done a lot with with rebels in particular I'd say my philosophy on the game design first of all I think most gamers love systems on a certain level that crunchy sort of things I especially love doing that in high school it was it I got older though like I got much more interested in just the storytelling aspect so that the themes and the mood and stuff and I'm less interested in the actual mechanics I still am obviously has a gamer there's no way around that but sometimes right run game to beat all the system plus almost rules elasticity of here and I cyril magnin and but as a publisher I think it's really necessary to have a strong rule set or consistency because here have been gamers do is do not sit at the table argument more than that completely a general agreement there through the rules I guess where my perspective my philosophy would be that the game mechanics the mechanics of the game should support the type of play that you are attending and play experience that you're attending that players have and that comes very much down to the type of style we speaking for our own games for instance we've got very different sets we made Dragon a case of the computer game very ancient tabletop version and that is a very very different rule set than the game we make for the game thrones or plugin which because you know they're not they're completely different sort of animals in terms of the play experience your your players are expecting when they approach that game so it's like that's not the key thing to me is that your rules that need to be tight and strong and balanced but only balance it so much as it supports the gameplay that you want the players that have I guess calculating balance can be booked so I noticed an interesting thing between both of you bill you saying that you like sir to almost a rulest environment and then how are you saying that you sort of like this this rule set well it all depends I mean once again it depends on what you're trying to do I mean there's a big in the tabletop and roleplay game industry right now there's a big movement of so many games as well as the bigger games and a lot of those are much much more about sort of an interactive storytelling environment or i think the term i come up looking for is there 3h its socket wrench games if you have to take off the 38 inch nut there is nothing better in this particular thing but it's not so good at doing other things and that that all comes down to you know are you making a broader rule 7 you making a narrow rule set their RM there are very specific targeted for one type of environment rule sets and then there are tool cables at something like dirts or or even the hero system which is much more intended to model be able to model everything and those have very different requirements in terms of when you're designing I think because with the toolkit rule safe to cover everything the other types you can kind of go it's with one you go well we're not going down this point so we open the bottle anything beyond that so so I cut this sort of both of what Bill is getting but again and what I was saying I think in that thing that will set design thing so I absolutely there's something to be said about simplicity of games too so if you're planning tabletop game if you're your Dungeon Master sitting there looking at the rules half of the time they're just massively take real book that's not very fun because you're not getting much narrative you're not doing what you're not experiencing much making any decisions but versus a computer game I know you guys talked about this a little before you can have more more rich models on a code you can have very complicated things but at the same time if the player doesn't quite follow them then in a great name a little bit you know we're all used to we're all pretty using Newtonian physics because we live in it and so if barrel NP girl goes up in the water okay we expect that but sometimes especially there's a interesting game called velocity wrapped or general a few you've heard of it it's a flash game that came out recently where you're playing is this this rapid skates on ice but you're you're dealing with relativity where the speed of light is set at 33 meters per second or something like that so all the spatial distortions and time distortions and information distortions so you're watching these bullets fly by and as you move in one direction Bulls get tighter together further apart and how do you maneuver around that and so sometimes it's difficult to convey those complex rule sets that break our expectations so long if you guys can also comment on other examples you can think of where there's prudence even oceans of a particular archetype of character or a mechanic that you wanted to break sort of innovation and give the player some richer experience that you had difficulty doing sir that's a tricky question there I mean certainly as far as breaking expectations I mean you can do that very specific fashions like the first game that ever came out from green running puncturing was called pork and if you played an org and orcs were you know it did it didn't so much break the expectations as it played into them to the point where you got Ludacris you know where it works are incredibly stupid ignorant creatures and then we actually but it was funny because the press can contain a really cool mechanic in as much as everything that an orc did was opposed or but the difficulty of it was determined by how their God crumb felt about what they were doing so crowded like what you were doing he got more dice and he rolled against your gods feeling on your on your action to see who come hated what you were doing or come language you were doing so it's much easier to do things to be liked so you know works were very stupid so it's a funny game but it's an interesting thing where the mechanic broke the expectations of what you're generally you know usually in a role playing games you're like what is my target number or how difficult is this and the difficult that this was very fluid it was very much like how does it even field on what you're trying to do yeah that God hates that that's really hard so that's the best example 12 slips off my head because I mean a lot of a lot of game design is is fulfilling expectations or we don't it's hard it's hard to shatter people's to expectations without leaving them completely at sea about what they do in a game that's a no we play the standard ropes all the time games and we always good at something like the Western apology models and stuff like that is we don't have to explain a lot you know everybody knows the tropes everybody knows the games every knows that or Muslim out of the ground have axes and stuff like that and so breaking the tropes is it is it it's a vicious move when you do it and I think it's more than any games these days and once a lot of times right but I think they can do because they focus on one of many games is that very specific one day where I read in this room and this is how we're doing it whereas if you're trying to do big setting especially a kitchen sink study or whatever you know you bring to me from Adam because just about here yeah we talked about this in the name of a mole above in front of the panels when I talk about your world but it's so weird it's very hard yeah there's a game called children which was similarly just rich and great you dive into it was great explaining it to anybody to tell you that is even possible it's just makes no sense whatsoever this is a place where I think computing centers going to get advantage over over over tabletop games because you can break a trope and instantaneously the players see what the result of breaking that is it's like Oh physics works differently here so when I what I leap off this cliff I kind of float through the air rather than so it's exactly exactly exactly I want to have plenty more from the science fiction perspective one thing that it is as a scientist roles me a little bit is when I see bad science and film or games or things like that we had we're developing a car there was a long discussion we had about whether or not lasers should be visible when the ground want to keep very hard science fiction and it meant large number of ways but it contains so much information to the player about what you're shooting where you're shooting it and we kind of long debate about them actually we've cited ok we'll make most lasers visible except for this one type which we'll call it a certain type and just have a puff of smoke with it yeah and so that was that was one way that we manage that but again some people felt like oh this kind of breaks the trope this breaks what we're used to a little bit let me but the same time you must back-ended yourself into something where it's like you know if I've had all days again I couldn't see where it was firing let me who views that laser cutting you know so i think the movies they actually having it I can see we're doing the limited fashion makes eliminates is just interested in you don't have people going like whoa what do I how it thinks I'm running well thank you me hard science is not very romantic and that's right I've space hopper has a laser you can see as well as a visual cues for you yeah it has lightsabers but as an example of where hard sci-fi can be almost a little too dry sometimes I know if anybody ever played 2300 it was a GW game back in the 90s and it was a it was a near the near future point 300 was the year it was super super hard as far as it could be but when you come up against weapons whether their damages listed is as tamped explosive you know where you have to look down at the explosives rules and it actually gets the more realistic something is looking at and harder it is i mean if you look too far you end up with something like phoenix command which was a super realistic you know fire combat science fiction game that nobody wanted to play because you was you know if you got shot by a gun well look you just died from hydrostatic shock that's too bad what a character creation for travelers drive me great because you can roll them to survive character and in the argument for that always as well too realistic because it won't late I'm seeing on a table rolling dice that's not realistic it was almost at a certain point here it was almost a pre game right yeah exactly i was just teaching you how tough life is I Imperator's down I finally got the six book for you anyway as a more of it as a pc game and interactive game designer i went as you guys from can't I perspective how is it dealing with dykes knowing that you have a uniform this probability distribution over so many things if you want something other than uniform proud of distribution they have a lookup table or you have to have more complicated making the game take longer how do you trade off like probably distribution that you would desire for for the feel of game versus what is easily achievable good question well you know a world of darkness there's the old story teller systems numerous system and the old one the probabilities were all over the place and it's really hard to calculate them in your head so you're just going by gun stuff what just feels right in other words if I'm going to raise the difficulty or the target you have to roll or do I instead you know subtract the number of dice you're going to roll up stuff and the newer one all that stuff is fixed and standardize difficulties are number stays the same and it's just that reflects that going to help and partly that was because it just so crazy especially the more naughty world and then like the bot rules for the original system work the more days you had actually easier was the box that that was reminds him was the same initially 0 plus of these ancient powerful vampires could be watching you know failing horribly more frequently than the muni oh yeah it was crazy so yeah let's look at Rapunzel on the way but yeah it's fun because it's a lot of days but it's also got level to this feel right yeah there was a lot of I think nice analysis kind of as a newer thing because certainly when games like my favorite buddy ever played first edition shadowrun but the calculating difficulty thing curve in that game was unlike mary has you had you had target numbers you had numbers of successes and you had these two axes of success and it was just yeah and also the fur told I was the right manager for deadlines back in the late 90s and the system is really really good with the one part that was always frustrating was figuring the statistics and that were all based on on-die types like savage worlds now is the same way worse t68 but back then it was but 46 like it's 46 better than 38 or you know which what's better what's worse and it was really really hard to calculate and I think now it's much easier because you get the internet you can be like what's the dice probability of this and you can probably some of that up on the web pretty quickly so doing doing this organelle sits a little bit easier thumb and one thing that though though is you can constrain stuff too much like that what you can what it can lead to is it can lead to I mean they can lead to power meaning it in that same work once you've codified everything to such a certain level then the players can sort of you know use that against Akane master it's a little more if once again they're using AC computer game is good because once the player feel so smart and they feel a bit beaten it using it against the GM can actually be corrosive to everybody's experience I think and that's a little trickier thing the computer games don't have to deal with so often they said anything Wow and what is those of arguments of simulation is for some parenting systems such and I think simulations is just the pen and paper tabletop environment I think it's just you're chasing after their own boobs there whereas in a computer game yet that you can get a lot closer to that sort of thing because your odds and stuff can be really fantastically calculated by the computer uncle quick but just doing it with dice and charts and forever sometimes trying to get a desk writing plus especially like in adventure game you've built one of the lots of real there's a new edition of shaming sons which I didn't actually work on but it was a licensed property there was all sorts of argument about putting in radiation rules because it's realistic you're in space exposed to radiation even can't you're gonna die but you really want that what your character happen if even a gamble world when you got exposed to radiation mutations cancer so the kids are so much the opposite of funds to brain yeah lizardy liam neeson recent YouTube video check that out good so one thing with that is a chocolate the narrative is linearity versus ladder well laterality if you want to call it that so talking about that we had radiation we had these different things to or you know somebody says well I can maybe I can jump out of a window this car what happened in a game of unexplained reason there said well you know there's a motorcycle driving here by the third pump game as I well could I pass the gym can I jump out of the window of the car and jump these guys like okay sure and if using a lot of left points so like that did something that was it didn't break the game to do something very far from I feel that and added a lot to the narrative that we wouldn't have otherwise considered but at the same time you also want to have some windows any game you have some sort of fixed or or some money or two because otherwise you need to basically write a chooser adventure book a lot of content especially for pc gaming or or for consoles you have to develop all that out that abscess yep the old voice acting old story line all I kind of stuff plan on that out and what's he doing some sort of newer things with narrative generation but even add is still you don't get quite as good stories yet so don't you guys any other comments about I just think would you brought up as a concrete trade-off that you made between computer games and and tabletop games is a computer game can give you all the calculations done very very quickly for very specific scenarios but you know if I'm playing you know let's just say it's a good example of what the goods that will be what world of warcraft of use this into another panel the other day we're in the original world of warcraft when you couldn't fly you know you didn't have to do some kind of scenes he's going to me could go there and if somebody else that had had the ability to fly the game couldn't have adapted to that but you know in a role-playing game around a table somebody else i can fly the jam had just has to go on all right well let's see what happens here and you know you can you can account for for enter phenomena and players making you know there's never with the right kind of GM of the right kind of flavors there's never play with the ga where the player has to go can I do this and the GM can has to say no if it's a good idea you know if it's something that we're is in a computer game the computer game is constantly going now you know and thatthat's it's constantly telling you you can't do things and that's a fact of any game when you start to play is you figure out first of all like okay one of the rules what can't I go through what doors don't open you know what directions can I go and in an RPG you can instantly change that more fed you know if I've run games where our players had a good idea and I've just gone after let's roll with that see where it goes and I can come out to some really great stuff and you know that sometimes that's the trade-off one of the trade-offs between tabletop and computer what their strengths due to their strengths are these computers are complexity and sophisticated systems reduced to things you don't even have to think about and RPGs are complete flexibility in the ability to change the story on a dime just because everybody thinks they should go that way bring some of interesting of distinction there where if you look at the so he takes them take a simple game this computer tells you no you can't do this and says no all the time as you grow let's see have a very rich sandbox game where you can have tons of tons of things operating all the same time down the computer can model and say yes more often than cam can because more than the person can come out at the same time so interestingly I think people sort of bridge that gap yes for the middle size maybe not the two yeah because I think that was the problem is sick of us sandbox game campy what do i do you know right you know I just run around and climb buildings and you know a bunch of people or you know what where's the story and that I know there's just the flexibility of the city heart attack lumpy friends and being able to go okay guys you're doing this wrong let's just do this sense that you know you can explain stuff you could stop things whereas computer game requires so much more sophisticated you know also there's a case if you want to make you don't want to make constantly saying no suck ya know you want to make it an exploratory experience where I'm figuring out the world I'm being told no but I mean told know which means i can figure out what the game will say yes to yes but you're still going against the game storytelling because the human mind imagination is so much more devil top still I think that the paradigm in some of the mix is the two of those is something like neverwinter nights where you can actually design on that scenario run by a game master and that's still something I don't think it was out there people did it all these it's fully developed I think we'll see some really interesting stuff about that in the future toolkits for people to create adventures online that also brings up an interesting point about content generation so if you look at different types of median or dip excommunicating if you reading something you can absorb something certain information right here listening its lesser right if you're looking at something like watching a video something it's a different rate but for different types of things and for a good fear of managing if you have the GM talking about things and saying well here's how to describe it you're started filling in all the details in your online it's sort of distributed distributed problem so I just want to try point of you talk about a little bit about exploration in games is it from a narrative perspective so on the one extreme you have games which are being released now which are a little more than okay press the x button now and then watch a cutscene all the way through two different sandbox means certain they're sort of a and I think tabletops are an interesting middle point for them so I wonder if you guys want to talk about the the narrative rates and the exploration rate of traversal in the game really depends on the game time if you run into genres and son I'm in a game of vampire almost no one origin except in a sense that here he doing macchiavelli apologies for the deaths of the Jared so or just you know how much can you screw that guy by entering his allies against him especially at a lark or college or personal you know making deals and stuff that guys it's gonna backstab you know and so it's not so much an exploration except for exploration yeah an interesting part of games versus a Jew games is also choosing when to gloss over things like I played the Elder Scrolls games not big curtain on out he was a Libyan or the one before that bar line but it was the one where you still had to walk everywhere like every Marlin yeah and and it it was it was an example of like of gameplay actually getting the way the experience of the game i think in a way that would never have it on the table top thing was just like you know I've walked to this place and I fought the monster now i'm going to walk back and it's able to go okay you walk back in the computer game of like I'm walking for five minutes and if I really get tired a monster attacks me and I die you know that's it fix that in later games but I mean that's a case where we're computer game didn't correctly calculate the I think the narrative rate the things need to be presented didn't you didn't calculate when to cut the corners and actually just you know cut scene of you know you know because you don't even want that there's something to be said about that what I explore I so you're walking into this just be a really tough boss walking this very rich pleasure they spent tons of money in the art it's really the experience is like walking through it but again he'll I watched Erick more than once maybe twice tops eventually want some sort of mode of transportation or method to get through there more quickly yeah yeah I mean I that may be a personal purchase req repetition games is the thing that I have the biggest it can you do the same thing over and over again if I've done it once please don't make me do it again that's not a Mustang box be different oh absolutely and also can if there's a ga under 30 displayer certainly walking through the same place in wow which I've done over and over in is never the same thing twice no there's also different details about what you're glossing over remember way back when I'm a long time about fitting ife holder for those pc long time ago and that can really suck up to me because you've had to manage food you had to manage water of your party and at first I'm like wow this is really cool they really got all the stuff in like I hate doing this and I don't I can't think of any games i've seen or many things I've seen do things like that recently and you know just like you never see people into bathrooms in the movies because it's kind of boring right yeah yeah let me talk to up not the panel on tabletop to computer game stuff that we could talk about the other day baldur's gate which was very very you know a direct translation of the tabletop experience into the computer game that did you have to manage food water than I can remember what are you were one character in all this game we really know that was one another spice gay sex there's no law who are watering okay drive to rest for spells though malice bitter Cinco de bunda clear if you rested towards metals you can trust another couple of interesting and so a lot of translation of that sort of stuff to know the tabletop experience did and then along this mechanics has been learning what made payments to dispose of I don't say a lot of this mechanics have just got disposed of in table top two i think that you know there's much less emphasis in a lot of games now on you can plan for enough water it looks like your day I said put the exception of maybe dark sun recently they actually have those but I think a lot of them way has the dump unique aspect of the game system it doesn't take as much focus because the idea they're here on an expedition you getting a blatant Bob these resources yeah I doing this right members were expelled hearing the right amount of water yeah well you know the war becomes just a social game or we're going to go into town down these guild cares what you're carrying at that point yeah and I think I think that may be enough games to admit to this engine up when you should implement that sort of those girls have a place because when you're worried about it when you're going on a dungeon crawl or something that's in there that's a part of your narrative right there if you're like you're like the monsters destroyed half your water that's a problem no water yes the flip side though if you let it if you let things to lose so you have sort of a path dependence if you go to the dungeon you have planned for all these different things and you lost in the water but you didn't have enough resources and now you're I don't know an hour into it you realize I gotta do this whole thing over again even though I've saved several times those weren't good enough they need to go back and replant everything differently it frustrates you is a player however on the flip side if you can reduce stuff so easily like take the AZ score for example in there you can create basically any kinetic creature you wanted they were all kind of equal you couldn't make it creature that you know you have all of your creature and it couldn't be something that is so bad you had to start over again and that sort of heard the feel the game too because now there's you can get to the goal anyway it's so simple in a way that almost becomes not a game really that becomes open or may become an experience except you know and I think that's the danger of the removing the narrative even if that narrative is you know you're the story of your creature of all being successful because if you remove the failure rate then you've got the story of your creature revolving and that's not really a story that's just you're watching a process I thought evolution failures yeah another thing that the to bugaloos were always liked my food water incumbrance writing conference is actually all the computer games too because if you think about like old first-person shooters we were carrying like an entire personal on your and not every time in some future still like that like I don't think Serious Sam you need to worry about that sort of thing but like a tower like you have an accent where weapon slots what you carry and what your juice is actually important to how you deal with the story as you go forward yeah so another that's a good thing that's like whoops picked our weapons or that's problem anything been immersed in the world of darkness for so long it's always so alien cocaine that does calculate encumbrance and money and pieces of gold you have any compromise vampire you have resources dots one through five that tells you rich you are but that didn't get something or not I think that speaks to help the type of players the place our games though to like a slow no storyteller player if the jam goes you can't carry all that is going to go right here it says you know where as with other games you know there might be arguments like that and this is the part where Tiger ruleset getting back from tighter rules everything like that can feed into that or that the player can go clearly right here it says that i can carry all that GM has no recourse but to go you know god oldenburg yeah very much poor church s and resident evil that also does that end reply organization different player catcher some players that are there curators of what they do and they like micromanaging all that stuff they'll have all their materials and everything packaged in there and bin packing just so so they fix everything fit everything they possibly can there's something like that along we do in your painful it is it is and i mean i guess a ruleset a GM GM who has a fighter who likes that can be like all right let's let's do something on the fly to reward you for that or something I might be a way to view it it's like it something wants to do that and the rule set is actually supported you can possibly reward for taking steps that would concretely be good ideas if they were supported by the rule set I'm never going to do that just because I've never played people that actually like to do in conference that also an interesting game called gratuitous space battles if there's any game that came out a few years ago where the game was all about configuration management so you as a space space rap game you built when configure all your spaceships and they let him go in the AI fought and then he watched I and I I personally was a huge fan of the game although I thought some of the aspects really cool to focus all on that and target was the discovery forgot what combinations of things work which ones don't and you know but also trying to tell you how they how they work it reminded me there's a you know my flight recently done tabletop where we got bogged down for probably an hour working in the configuration by the end people or Kent board but nobody wanted to agree well how exactly can figure this ship that's an interesting it sounds like an interesting game because that's a case where you're reviewing the system to the player through trial and error okay put something together you go out there and if they're watching the fight they learn something about the system underlying things and how to breed convenor configure their next one that's nothing that's that's a can you do that tabletop kind of people that would be really really interesting to play a game where the mechanics the players literally don't know them until they play I know it's a great that's actually kind of an interesting you know trying to Alicia ninjas yeah we just set up a premise and you don't tell the players I mean they're certainly games where you told the players like the river of those that follow the Phoenix there's this one particular game that I'm not wearing anything because it was a fantasy game they loaded game you're never going to find a copy of it but I think it was an up you basically make up your players as a bunch of astronauts that's the premise of it put your players in the spaceship and you tell the players is a space exploration game and you set them up for it and what it actually is is they go up into space and there's like some sort of beer dimensional shift and they come back and everything is different so you lie to your players about what the game's about yeah goodnight a movie yeah when we come back and everything I think it's become like there's a little game called action castle which is there's two games of this genre where it's a text adventure via spoken text and there's keep you guys I know who run this at some different inventions like the game thanks guys room and Scott where they go up there you have the person who says that they freeze off just like you would a text adventure and then you know queue of people every person gives a command they did this last night of the d20 burlesque show okay yeah action on tavi it was pretty funny it's orc striptease yeah so amazing thing about that about discovery is that they'll be playing if you will say up or climb the ladder or the different valve moves and if they don't get it right the narrator says sorry can't do that or some some no that was the funniest thing was watching the people who had never played a text adventure and then say something that made no sense in the person we gillard sorry I can't do that yeah shooting right they watchin like yeah its own experience will say save restore yeah save and one guy finally word check his inventory and even had the persuasion thing we're like one person with the purse a close they shouldn't have gone and they were killed me game ended to the next person had to start over so one thing like that about game rule discovery which I feel like this changed a little bit back in the 1980s you had an instruction book The Oaks Henry for the games and figure things out oh how do i how to pass this chasm whatever you had to figure that out versus now I feel like everything's guided the first time you're showing how to do something the first time you do something you're shown explicitly how to do it and maybe the game will have you put two things together which you didn't know before but that's at most and I'm not sure that's necessarily maybe that's what we haven't seen such teams where you discover more of the rules I know yeah certainly like I just behind the times I just start playing Assassin's Creed recently and Emma but there's stuff in that opening part that you never figure the game didn't show you how to do it like a disappearing socially that sort of stuff you really need to be shown how to do that but there's some things like the climbing that you know I can figure that out it'd be better if the game that show me that just the stuff that I hadn't there was no possibility we know what kind of learn I guess interesting yeah ideally wouldn't need a tutorial but we're not human error all over the world or kids cheat yeah and there's also the expectations of your talked about before if players play the genre before they expect out this is how things should generally work but sometimes it's very difficult to so in for us i'm making an RTS we had a few constraints of a cron than other games don't have so we had a ton of emulation aspect but that puts such a strong burden on our computational resources that we had to make some shortcuts that haven't been seen in years four games in terms of path fighting in terms of like how basement food versus physics face collisions and stuff like that and so in some ways younger players who've not play earlier games in the genre we're more loss than older players so there are some general generational aspects to them and there's also some examples if you've seen them somebody a long time ago made a video of what super mario brothers the first game would be like if you played it today it's like here's ago but press a now to jump yeah yeah yeah that's actually I came to play better yeah we come so used to him holding the way you're introduced to games that you know and i think you know that's an interesting thing because there's an opposite movement i think in tabletop games where right now there's a lot of this is on because this it's not so quick seven and you can't show you like teaching the player how to play as they read the game is or you know telling them probably how to play the system but what kind of game they are playing is a very important thing and i think a lot of mean because these easy everybody knows it's kick down the door Gila monster take the treasure but other games you know the expectations are totally different and you have to really tell people how how the game has been designed to be played I think it's what it comes down to because you try to play a game every game like DD it really won't work out so well you know oh yeah baby much have fun which is the most important about every games if you have fun that's so after that reminds me of another thing with try to have enough of a rule set that you can start off the game playing with and have fun with it so if you have a few actions you can do a few items whatever you wanna make sure that that's fun enough yet the play are cooked otherwise they need to read the entire row boat for tabletop game or have tons of tons of items before it gets interesting then they're not going to play it so there's a lot of platformer games where ok this is I've played up the Jillian platformers and they're all the same this one is really cool stuff but we need to get you through all these hoops before you can do like braid might be a really interesting example of that where it did subverts a lot of your expectations of what a platformer is and how it works and I that game is almost ruthless and not explaining it to you it's like it here I really have to figure out what's going on and watch things in trial and error and stuff and I thought that was a very interesting experience when I played it to try and think that was a case where I think they ought to get the system sort of reveals you reveal it's revealed to you by you just trying stuff and doesn't work figuring out how to do it is part the game and at the same time I think it's important to design that if you're going to make that type of game that the price for failure is is not a pain in mud it's like you're back in the game brother Cleveland and upon which I learned because no one start on the entire thing that we're again if you just because you didn't figure out the games look pretty little way that you know something work as the night those arcade games in there way back way at first the price of failure Larry's you know the quarter yeah yeah exactly so much money on those in the sort of the roguelike games which embrace death it's all procedural content and every type of pleasure the game is different the whole layout is different than enemies that you kind of were different and people sort of like that it's not it's not my thing but there's a culture around embracing death and racing new experiences with them yeah where would you play something that I just played journey and I'm interested this inquiry where we would feet fit in here because the rules of that game are very simple once you know once you've figured them out and the system is never revealed to you at all the systems of totally opaque it's it's almost more an experience but it still feels like a game you know because there are enough puzzles to solve and things to do and and threats and things like that but it's an interesting eli's on the cusp I think between game and experience I mean if you guys played it all yeah yeah I'm going to describe it for presenters race play journey and all okay so do you have you got a good discards okay so it's the journey of life you start off as this it's been a number of years to fill in things I played but you walk it you walk the journey of life and it's like you just move around but as you move towards the right you get older and erotically different get this is their game so this this game literal you start out in the desert you're in here this cloaked figure and you start walking toward there's this mountain with a light on it you start walking toward it was this that mean company zine damage anything okay again and it's interesting because you know you learn that you can do like you can do you can sing a song that will activate some things and as you get you go along you know this this up it's a sash behind you gets longer and longer as you do certain things that you can fly around a little bit and it's it's very it's funny because there actually aren't a lot of walls you can strain showing you the way you just know there's this big mountain and it seems like a good idea to head for it and and it sort of goes from there and you're there are things you just open and that you know things that you have to sort of build and stuff and there's another aspect as well then I think if you're online at the same time I only encountered one other player in my journey I played it but other place where online you can encounter them in the same place at the same time they look exactly like you and stuff but it just it was a very interesting experience to experience to sort of coming something that was so close to game and so close to not gain at the same time I think so to describe that I believe the game is called the journey of life which the one that I thought no games grabbing is very similar in a way where you start off as this character that you just sent us this flat map and you start walking and you realize as you walk to the right you age your kit and eventually you can find things like you can get things that earn you the stuff like like I forget what how it works with different points you can find a wife and then as you keep on moving to the right or you might different progress through a passage for the passage that's what it's called and you pat you passed your life again it's one of those questions is this a game isn't that or isn't an experienced and wise right between two of them yeah yeah and I guess those are much less much less system dependent in terms of the game system underneath them it would be interesting this is the case where to be interesting to actually talk to the designers would be like so what is the system by this is this just a movie am I just you know am I just reacted going through these motions or is there an actual system for what I'm doing you know only repeated is this the the eyes of nuts I've yeah I haven't done it again done it again so I don't know I know you're gonna be different because you encounter different people and like things certain things can get done in open done faster quicker fashion like I went through this one section where they've been nobody there about half an hour but this dude you know sort of it before went around did everything I just kind of followed along and overcome play well but it was an interesting experience that's something that would be actually very hard to replicate I think the tabletop review guys with me player to movie really okay so okay on the flip side is also again at the house it takes away the experience as much as possible it's called we have to burn the rope and this was a sort of a spoof game in 2009 and a lot of critics Tommy where you come into the game you have to burn the rope and all the instructions you walk you through this really simple super simple platform where you cannot guide and everything is telling you how to beat the boss or you go up if you burn the rope and then you bring the rope and kill and that's a little game it's just showing how simplified and how how tutorial Ornan oriented and how lack of a game some games are today yeah she's leaving should we take some questions you're gonna take some okay great questions are there come out so I like a Gaelic games where you can choose between either hoping another player are screwing them over how important would like be a balance and making sure that players can get through a certain luffy's Abby Atlas games are notorious for having end of the poem but kind of like how do you determine like where is that balance to be like be able to progressive out somebody there wow I would think that's entirely on your your goals for the game I mean it is a competitive game or is a property game and if you don't like the statement about you know both the Uni both some balance is good in my experience people tend to prefer a clean cut collaboration or competition in general in other games we have so unique Ron you know with all the time equation we have the ability to change alliances during game play during any point in time now if you're planning RTS you say well I with someone else or something and now I'm break that alliance that creates into some strikes but when you go back in time and say I never wanted to have had this alliance to begin with players basically were like wow this is powerful amazing but nobody wanted to touch it because they wanted to keep all their friends and as I talked about earlier in my previous talk about game theory is there's an interesting custom where you have the National Libya where you're doing the best that you can give everybody else's strategy and the Pareto optimality where everybody is nobody can be made better off without making someone worse on and when those are a misalignment that's when you get Mexican standoff that's what you people who were backstabbing each other and that's fun and interesting happens all the time in the real world but it creates tension and animosity among game player sometimes so if you're very delicate with how you apply those in game design I think just as a sign of time travel is probably a focus for a game that as difficult on the tabletop as it is you know if your way if you want to do a realistic there was uploaded one time travel RPG I can remember that was continuing yeah yeah and that game the fact that it had 3 supplements against OSHA well isn't a testament to it being a bad game it's a testament to how freakin hard it is to recommend around actual time travel if you try to get it out what you can computer or not I mean well it's one of those things where it baffles any attempt to do a lot of any detail work in your game because some of this comes with doesn't really quickly changing we gotta run out of the chronal energy though and that worked pretty well but even today there's some people who they have their own mental model time travel from various fiction that they've encountered and most of time ninety-nine percent of stuff out there is not internally consistent right and they they're used to that but though you're in a consistent system they feel like I can't break it I'm stuck I think that's the best hazard taking time travel from from pendency of science fair society advanced charge of those not be consistent you know bars a river ya later buddy besides little hard present creating game design can be such a various private different ideas stories need different kind of game mechanics where you guys like to start it's good to me i always start with story I mean that nuts I don't you know where you like like here is the narrative about but more like what what types of stories do you want the game to facilitate to tell I think that's the jam oh it's are the court the question was when you're designing a game and you're trying to determine the basically where do you start what do you what do you the first thing you choose to as your starting point to determine when you're designing a game like that like I said reads it's you have the overall stories that you want to be able to tell in the game I think yeah I remember that that's certainly where I started with fading suns which was a system came after the idea of what what are we building here what's the game what kind of stories you're standing but what kind of layers area what kind of people you're gonna play and all that and of course fading suns was very intentional kitchen sink science fiction thing so it had to be a system that was brought enough to handle huge reindeer things as the black sheep here who works more on pc games and strategy type of it like RTS type games we think more about what what do we want the player to think about first what type of decisions do we want them to make a very technical information we want them to assimilate to make those decisions because that's really what the from a strategy perspective looking immersion is about where is their head at we don't want them to be bogged down in details that don't matter to them we want to be making interesting and engaging experiences that fit with invested with an area that is very important that filled with their preconceived notions of what they're playing and it's start there and say okay what do we need to focus on what are the important aspects of game playing what parts do we did not matter and they do some exploration because sometimes you know the game mechanic that oh this is we thought this is a great idea play test that nobody cares about to the southern part of the games really cool we should flush that out more and so there is a little bit of exploration in that regard to I person guys in valve talk about that where there's a forgive whose philosophy there was you take the you make you make a bunch of game mechanics and you find the two minutes of gameplay that is the best and most fun and you make the game out of that and then you do that initial exploration then you exploit that two minutes of gameplay and on the flip side from the tabletop perspective sometimes you just come across like a killer mechanic and you go that's really neat like what is this fake and I think a lot of indie games have come up that way or somebody's like this is a really cool way to model x and you know if it models X really well and X is fun just make X and sometimes you don't have to worry about a broader rule said there was one of connotative it was is logging back in the two thousand around 2900 it's been experimental game play sessions talking about how he felt that a lot of indie game developers were now deconstructing and reconstructing game mechanics in ways that are brand-new a couple examples one was a shadow physics which I don't think was ever made yet I hope they make this thing look it was so cool where you played as a shadow in three-dimensional world and there's a ball there's two light sources you push the ball with one Shadow Ball to roll that way you jump around with the platform and push it the other way so you interact with the tree world through the shadows and taking and looking at things from new perspective like light darkness or sound there's another friend of mine who made a game that called aura that had no graphics you're just listened are uh it's I think it's called aura the unseen like a UH a you are a it made that like 45 years ago I didn't bidden some of many copies but if you had to like listen in different directions there was a tile-based puzzle game think about kind of dungeon crawling and alleged result of the original that's kind of what it was like but looking at what can we remove from game and how can we take these pieces put them together in new ways another one mega here the four-dimensional platformer where your L&R buttons are sliding through the fourth dimension and they choose two of two circles and two rings that are brings three dimensions and a lock them via the fourth dimension between portal is a probably the highest profile example does anyone yeah um on the table top siders game called drag which I mean it's a uni game that's a four game and the attention of the horror is is facilitated by a Jenga tower you guys ought to have known every time the dread level rises you remove towers and you know and its really interesting way of using a physical object to actually provoke the emotional response you're trying to get from the players in the game ion plated personally that if your friends who played and they say it actually really works and like bored and you're like super tense well it's not says that's an interesting way of taking something i'm taking a completely other thing from a completely other game and just going we could roll in a row clunky about this happen it works when we had a sense mechanic too that's a cool thing we had similar connoisseur if you feel about a cron where they said it feels to us like a survival horror game in a way because there's always this unsettling feeling that someone's going to go back in time to change something you see in pop back and pass and what are they changing at you go figure that discovery and there is that sense of surprise will wear you know poor is all about being surprised in again unpause ative way over and how do you harness that any different ways that are necessarily scary don't frighten people draw in your player base a second game we were really into for a lot of months ago year ago the shadow City order to use your GPS on your smartphone and use you set up your realm of sorts around your house and example towers and it will powers and stuff that you're fighting in southern people they've got their rooms and so you have to get in your car go to actual relevant not nothing like at night cause I top paying attention that also becomes all dumb shit all over town just talking about town to other question this lets so we get it back there back there so you guys are talking about hearing capacity or managing food games the candidates an element of like previous or realism in so really talk with the name of the talking the argument has is if you want to make sure that the player feel something I feel like you know give them again you and that say this game focuses on thing sometimes especially like reading through werewolf the apocalypse one of the things they didn't give the werewolves an event for at all was house spirits specifically interactive wearable after an average and so it's like kind of leave it up to the storyteller but what is important like like how do you make a decision to go there's not a mechanic and so it doesn't have a cannibal wait but you stop your players you still want to be no and what makes me what makes a differentiation between heading into your players and saying no we can't codify this what caused it would not go justice or hear what makes that decision what did you own is to say no this is yes it is well it really just spirits especially is one you over mechana sighs those sort of things and then they will feel experience they feel like widgets that you're just plugging something in town and since there were something of the other worlds you're supposed to be able were mysterious and it's something I wish I explored more when I was actually working on wearable and because there's so much of a richness there in those interactions in those relationships and there's a tendency because of the gifts and such where you learn this from a badger spirit to where it seems like it's just a very simple 110 cal earnest but but there should be a little water you know interaction going on and what does that add your spirit one and so yeah I wish I had you know we done a lot more it is future really and I think a lot of things you gave Oakland games as you can without like reducing something two numbers you can you can codify how it works and you don't have to turn it into a die roll and maybe that's sort of the area where you wish you've got a lil for you know what to turn into that wasn't right le diable it was a concept of Chi manoj you had to give them something yeah it's very open yeah we should have gone into a lot more guidelines yeah yeah and I think that's one one thing that another thing that Oakland games can't do is after their out you can go lovely invoke you know there's more information on that right now and it's a little easier you know with computer games is and some are obtainable certainly something like a or what we have point releases and things but it's super easy to go on your website yo hey this is how that works you know or something like that but I'm just just got a feeling that right you know and sometimes you just don't know like you put something out it's something you think is a throwaway deal turns out to be something that players are like this is super important and you gotta whoops well I guess any more rules on and in a runaway GN and say oh and different editions of games are always away for that like the shower runs an example the first edition here the rules were a mess the decking that you know one of the core things of the game was this whole sort of human-computer interface thing liberals were just terrible I read the game and I pretty much at all nice and made stuff up as the GM because they just didn't support the actual play that they intended well that's interesting thing to think about is it you know is what you do when you encounter a rule that is antithetical to the type of play that somehow is made it into a published product and the wolf was just to do porn frankly yeah and keep you here I said this before one of my from the shadowrun this is great rich setting but actually playing it part of this is because we lose it almost and also means three separate several adventures are sort of yeah it does any better hackers going into the cyberspace yeah and nobody else is there with him even though they're physically in st. location the astral guy oh he's an ass yeah and also we're fighting the guards here and I wish they'd done a lot more to try to integrate these experiences and all along on the same I think they've done that over and over through the additions I think that's been one of those recursive getting there and therefore i played for the addition app yeah it's a tough thing again that's an example of where the the world you're sold as you want to play in the system doesn't support the group play that you want to have you experienced you want to have necessarily and put then i'm getting other rules I think they're probably more like you know that was more you need to be told how to apply the rules rather than necessary changes right but it leaves a case another singling out you know but it's just it's just an example of the whole basic part of the tabletop game is the experience of a group it's not a solo game for the most part yeah and a lot of games either down in consideration and one of the things I really like about werewolf is you could have a pack and that's already a pre-existing idea it also packs and it's already it's like well it's a very morphology from the real world into this world yeah and eight or attention of those sort of things that you know are together and they're not going to split the party own reasons not for the old cargo you mean in the tavern but if you have too many house rules we have different configuration spaces you end up with players who are getting good at and enjoy playing different completely different versions of the game so for example we've been fighting game and there were certain item drops that some players like I don't this I think this item breaks the game about like playing with us on you use these items instead and if I use the other items you can hit it with very very different games you know everybody's just using bazookas in a first-person shooter and that's it it's a very different game than the knife fight right but there are different servers that was no surgical things but they are really quite different paint yeah different flavors of the same game everybody has to be on the same page in terms of what you're playing is perfect that's definitely just come true for you and available liquor straight never be one of the weirder any way way way back when que hace of publishers and it rules for all sorts of different games that's been one of us traveler right so we're playing our traveler game in our game after crash learn about the world and one of the characters in there I wasn't familiar with point is a guy who does every time you hit everywhere generates just going to keep coming back and my friend gets so angry at this me what it's basically worked his way back car crash you to get his plasma gun in the hopes of that would take the darn thing down and so then you've got was never in one of the plasma gun what is a fantasy world haha by the way these worlds were series of books from the 80s and 90s but whenever you are aspirin and we're really over do another one we get to say right what's happened five minutes i read ticket soon as you watched uncle questions let's go good yeah so you mentioned early on about breaking the game balance for the sake of making to get better because you get like an example of that and how you would do that without unwanted side effects to be honest no it was a foot comment at the top of my head and i think it could have a valuable game good thing but i don't successfully apply it but it was a concept i think it's a valid one and i think that there's fun to be had there with it but i never successfully done it 2 comments that one go back in time and wash my talk at Tremont or 3 30 35 and another comment about that is sometimes by breaking the rules are changing them up a bit you get people who are used to playing one way to be in an equal footing so for example I'm not a great chess player but sometimes will say well let's look at the rules been play chess variant and then people who are better at chess tonight we can play in more equal footing I actually just not an example another be ARS magica in which which is a trigger is a fancy game which are playing medievals the wizards and sorcerers and it's a very very hermetic you know like wizardry is something you have to do it carefully and all this kind of stuff and usually in a troop there's one wizard the wizard is far more powerful nobody else and the game actually encourages true places that people switch characters from time to time so that nobody has to always be that it was a bit it's a case where the Wizard can you no is powerful enough to burn all of his other companions be felt like it and that's a case where the you know the player balance is completely off it does a lot of fun to be had because the wizard while he's the most powerful he doesn't like to go hit things that's what he has anything students that he sends to do that but that's it that's about the only example on behalf of the top of my head where game you know imbalance between power of players is an actual feature of the game and feature the way it's played rather than at a bug something kind of related is natural selection where it's an RTS and first-person shooter at once so one player is the general and then Evan else is the infantry let's go to go forward for you just over here okay I'm thinking about them in terms of when making game design and I you've got your mechanic set up how do you go about like deciding how complex you really want the mechanics a product given to example to a video game when do you decide to go with an inventory system from final fantasy where you have a little spots for everything but everything gonna be 99 to the hablo where everything has a shape and form as if it in your bag well it's about the design of the game goals i means someone is called Diablo RV for boys accessorize your stuff that system is there to facilitate that exact kind of game and I the contrast between sophistication and complexities you're probably brought up here we're like you know something could be sophisticated with means there are a lot of permutations to it a lot of depth to it and it can look at complex but I think actual complexity is when something is actually difficult to no purpose I think that'd be a good definition of complexity within games yes no monetary natori system but sometimes I mean there's those studies now side but you can really hit your hand just yeah that's as you can guard again detailing things where it's like you through the reason most game cards / games have set of cards as the hands because that's like cerebral II what most human beings can handle the choices of complexity is making more choices that's a ginger I'm probably seven five o'clock speak too much so somebody sort of permutation for complexity and sophistication being the richness of thinking that goes into something you can manage your head let me tell you apply to complexity I guess I took at the same time good we probably one more like sodium in yet