|
"The rich get richer and the poor get poorer," my father used to say during the last stages of a family game of Monopoly. As he was the only one of us who really understood the strategy of the game when I was a kid, he tended to be the one who got richer.
Eight years ago I wrote a column called "Positive Feedback." In it I explained what positive feedback is in game mechanics: the tendency of a player's achievements to perpetuate themselves and strengthen the player. Positive feedback helps the rich to get richer in Monopoly. But what about the poor getting poorer?
Unfortunately, the terminology is rather confusing, because positive feedback that works against the player isn't called "negative feedback." Negative feedback is a mechanism that tends to keep things in the same place, preventing either growth or decay.
A household thermostat is a negative feedback device. If the temperature gets too hot, the thermostat turns on the air conditioning. If the temperature gets too cold, it turns on the heating. The thermostat tries to keep the air temperature at the same level all the time.
Marc LeBlanc illustrates the concepts of positive and negative feedback in game design very nicely with a combination of racing and combat -- think Mario Kart. If cars can shoot at each other with weapons that only fire backwards, the leader can shoot those behind him and they can do nothing to him.
This creates positive feedback for the leader and he tends to get farther ahead. If the weapons only fire forwards, the leader cannot shoot at anyone, while they're all shooting at him. This creates negative feedback: whoever is in the lead tends to be knocked out of it.
Negative feedback is a useful tool in game design; you can use it to put the brakes on positive feedback. (You don't want to make it too powerful, though, or you'll produce a stalemate.) But this column is about positive feedback in the downward direction: a mechanism that works to diminish, rather than increase, some value. In order to avoid confusion, I'm calling it the downward spiral.
 In Monopoly the downward spiral begins when a player has to hand over properties to another player to pay a debt. The primary way that a player makes money is by charging rent when other players land on her property. When she has to give up a property, it deprives her of this source of income, which means that she is less competitive, and less able to deal with future bad luck.
Worse yet, the properties she once owned now belong to someone else, and have changed from being a safe place to stop (when they were hers) to being another place she has to spend money (if she lands on them in the future).
The downward spiral isn't completely bad, but it's depressing. (The Uruguayan persuasive game designer Gonzalo Frasca put this to good use in his brilliant Shockwave game, September 12.) Nobody likes the feeling that they have no chance of winning, and a slow grind down to failure isn't much fun.
I'm going to make some concrete suggestions about how to avoid creating downward spirals, and how to manage them if you must include one in your game.
Suggestion #1: Don't allow negative events (e.g. damage) to impair performance.
The most obvious video game example of the downward spiral occurs when damaged units in a war game fight less efficiently -- firing shots less often or less accurately, for example. When a unit fights less efficiently, it doesn't destroy its enemies as quickly, so it tends to take still more damage, and so on.
In practice, we seldom implement this. Most war games follow Suggestion #1: their units fight at full efficiency right down to the last hit point. Arcade-style fighting games usually work the same way. Otherwise, the first player to make a mistake, or catch a bad break, will probably lose.
Of course, real life isn't like this: a person who has been injured fights far less efficiently than a fully healthy one. There have been a few heroic counter-examples -- men who went on fighting even while dreadfully wounded -- but they are exceptional, which is why those men get medals.
In modern practice, military units try to get wounded soldiers off the front lines as soon as possible. The first reason for this is humanitarian, naturally, but there's a second reason as well: wounded soldiers slow down the whole unit. It's better to have all the soldiers fighting fit, even with one less man, than to have a squad rendered inefficient by the presence of a wounded man. They, too, are trying to avoid the downward spiral.
If you don't allow damage to impair performance, then damage is simply a measure of how close a unit is to destruction. It doesn't feed back into the system. This suggestion applies whether performance is defined as fighting ability, productivity (such as that of a factory), or the performance of a vehicle.
|
Printer-Friendly Version
Thus the richer you get, the more taxes you pay. Under a certain threshold you pay none. It could be interesting as well to see the methods of tax evasion that people come up with.
To begin with, you name one of the best selling board games of all time as an example of "bad" game design. Perhaps, as an academic exercise, we look at this "downward spiral" as an example of good game mechanics. How does this improve the game?
I'm obviously not including all downward spirals as good examples, but hear me out. A downward spiral, when properly managed, creates several things.
1) Heightened emotions, such as elation or excitement on the part of the winning player, and frustration, desperation and fear of inevitability on the part of the losing player.
2) A gameplay which, like chess, lends itself to long moments of equality and high level play, followed by swift defeat once an imbalance is achieved. ie. A thinking man's game.
3) Assured ending. As an example, should one retard the downward spiral of monopoly, how then would the game ever find a conclusion between two equally matched players?
As an example of a game which manages this downward spiral well, look at DotA. It's hugely popular, and is based almost entirely on a downward spiral. But that induces thoughts on how the players should prepare and adapt, and elevates the game to a much higher standard of play.
And let's not forget the emotion this generates. Without going into details, people are addicted to emotion. Even negative emotion, and that often times enhances the experience and keeps players playing. It's the reason that online games where one plays against another human are more successful than those where you only ever fight a computer that one knows can be beaten easily.
I'm leaving a lot out for brevity's sake. But in conclusion, calling this a "bad" design is, I believe, overly critical, as it has many good attributes for the player. It is, no doubt, a consideration for developers, but should not necessarily be viewed as a negative element.
Thanks ;)
I think I would like to counter your disagreement. Each of your points were addressed in the article so this will be quick.
1) Just before point #1 Mr. Adams wrote, "Nobody likes the feeling that they have no chance of winning, and a slow grind down to failure isn't much fun. " his point is that all players should feel they still have a chance of winning. In Monopoly, all but one player reaches a point where they are left with zero options for success. Thus making players less likely to want to play the game again. Add to it the fact that it takes an extended period of time to go from realization of the fact to bankruptcy, the player may end up quitting before it gets to that point and thus ruining the fun for other players who still have a chance of winning.
2) Chess's balance is not quite comparable in this situation. In Monopoly, a property you lose goes to another player bringing you a disadvantage and providing an advantage to another player. In chess it is just a disadvantage for you. The other player is still at the same level they were. If the loss of a piece moved ownership of the piece from the player who lost it to the other player, then that would change things and make it more comparable to monopoly in this instance. As it is right now, the chess is more comparable to the racing game mentioned in the article where one player's car takes some damage and it becomes a bit slower but does not make other cars faster.
3) There are other ways to assure an ending aside from the removal of other players. Racing is a fine example of this. The first player to reach the finish line wins. Not the last player on the track. Same with Chess. The first player to corner the the other player's king is the winner, not the player to remove all the other player's pieces. By looking at alternate win scenarios, the game experience can be greatly enhanced.
i have never played DotA so I cannot comment on its use of the downward spiral.
But again, one needs to be careful when generating emotion in the player. While I am a supporter of generating a variety of emotions in the player to make the gaming experience more memorable, you need to be careful.
Frustration is one emotion specifically that you need to handle with care. Especially if that frustration is targeted at the game rules themselves. If a player becomes frustrated with your game, they will stop playing, especially if they feel the rules of the game are stacked against them. Such frustration leaves a bitter taste in their mouths and they will not be afraid to express that to potential players.
Furthermore, your first and third point are effectively the same (ie players see who will win long before the winning occurs). While certainly some players enjoy this sort of feeling, most people would rather the game end at that point so that a new competition can occur.
DotA is an interesting example of a popular game that utilizes the downward spiral (similar to Monopoly), but it's imitators like LoL are becoming more popular, and they as well also de-emphasize the downward spiral effect. As such, one can conclude that the downward spiral effect is not as desired as much as you think (or you like, depending on your gaming preferences).
The crux is whether or not you want to call downward spirals bad game design, but as with most design features, that can go both ways. There will always be people who enjoy games that employ such punishing elements, but that quantity of people is a niche. It all depends on the game in question and who the target audience is. However, for most people, not including or having counterbalances to existing downward spiral mechanics engenders more enjoyment out of the majority of the audience.
In fact, the ideal thing in a competitive, multiplayer game is to have the game remain close for as long as possible, and then come to an end as quickly as possible once it's fairly clear who will win. The way to do this is to have weak-to-moderate negative feedback when the game is close (to help keep it close), but then strong positive feedback once a certain advantage is reached, so that the end comes swiftly. Another similar design strategy would be to make it time based. Have negative feedback early in the game, then gradually introduce positive-feedback elements so that the game doesn't drag on forever.
The real problem with games is when they do things the other way; if a designer sees that the game is unstable due to excessive positive feedback based on small initial advantages, and tries to compensate by inserting negative feedback elements later on, then the person who gets ahead early on still wins, but it now takes much longer for it to happen, because of the "friction" of the negative feedback. Though it might mask the inevitability from beginners, experienced players will eventually see what's going on, and then the slide is all the more boring and frustrating.
1. As mentioned, some degree of downward spiral is not necessarily a bad thing, but it does need to be a deliberate design decision based on your target audience and gameplay style. Naturally, though, I believe that in all games, once victory is assurred, it shouldn't take long to achieve (Monopoly is a great selling game, but it's one that its players rarely finish).
2. Chess actually is a downward spiral game because losing pieces damages your ability to play. The only games that avoid downward spiral are those where your ability to generate progress does not change as a result of what previously happened. (or where benefits are given to weak players). If missing a shot in basketball made your hoop go higher, it would be a downward spiral regardless of whether it made your opponent's hoop lower because your ability to make progress would be impaired.
3. DotA's downward spiral is actually a great frustration. When you hit a point where there's almost no way you can kill an enemy hero but there's still 10 minutes left in the game, it sucks. That being said, success in DotA is enormously satisfying because of the positive in-game results, and the tactical side is deep enough that spectacular comebacks are possible. I don't see the downward spiral itself to be a good thing: it's more of a side-effect of some other mechanics that are good.
A game should ideally be over by the time that someone can win decisively, and many games seem to take that into consideration now more than in the past. Another old and best selling game, Axis and Allies, is one where things can get very bogged down for many hours, but over the years they've tweaked it by adding more mechanics and board reworks to make a stalemate less likely.
Once again, merely being a slow game isn't a problem, as some folks might want to spend hours playing a game. But if one has very little chance of winning and the game is still long from being over, it means that the winning conditions or speed likely need to be reworked.
Drivers, whether emotional or rational, are critical points to address. Some groups tend to tackle it in 'big picture' elements like asking, "is this fun?" and whatnot. Others look at it from a mechanical form of implementation such as stages with 5-second time intervals or multiples of such.
Probably the most interesting process mechanic was from the board game 'Cosmic Encounters' where there was a particular character (players have to pick a character at the start of play with specific abilities) won by losing first.
Then there is GDW's game Paranoia, where the game play isn't just focused on improving your position but sabotaging everyone else around you. (My eye still tears fondly over the successful roll in reversing the hand grip on the tac-nuke launcher. My miscalculation was that the firer would be shooting at something up above. Killed the entire party, me included. Fallout 3...sigh...)
So spirals aside, games that require participation as well as competition and asymetrical end-results (a winner and loser) can be perceived or taken in different ways. I've never been angry or less like to play 'go fish' or Bridge because I take it as a neutral sum game. Now Poker on the other hand....
Added Note:
Sorry about the general GDW comment. The fun came from ensuring the 'epic fail'-ism. The game became less about the 'mission' and more about how amusing you could screw each other over. The downward spiral was avoided by altering the driving force or 'goal' of game play...which I don't suppose helps this discussion.
About the Monopoly issue, I think the real problem caused by the positive feedback loop is not the feedback in and off itself, but the game's winning condition. There is no fun when you can predict what is going to happen, and all Monopoly matches do tend to drag on when the winners (or at least the losers) are already decided.
Take, for example, Dawn of War 2's Annihilation mode (I think that's the name, correct me if I'm wrong). I never play that. Victory Point matches are way more interesting. The game's feedback is still pretty much the same (and this plagues a lot of RTSes): when you start to lose a lot of units, you lose a lot of resources (due to lack of map control), and so forth and so on.
Problem is, when this happens on Victory Point matches, the game is over. On Annihilation, it drags on and on as the opposing team dominates the entire map and slowly destroys every single thing on your base, and you will never be able to fight back and win.
It's the same thing on Monopoly. If the game would end when the so-called "downward spiral" starts to appear, it would not be as frustrating as it is.
On a final note, I think that the way Mr. Adams presented his article made some people believe that a positive feedback loop is not good or even desirable in any design, and it's clearly not what he meant.
We should kept minimal divergence in design terms :)
@Lorenzo, what you are talking about is not related only to positive feedback. It is part of larger general design axioma called "analysis paralysis".
Ben