Teaching Your Players: Board Game Edition

Teaching your players how to play a video game is very different from teaching them how to play a board game.  There is no interactive component of a board game that can show you how to lay out the pieces or explain how to win, so players are required to read the rule book at least once (at which point that player may teach other players and intentionally or not make up other rules for the game...).  This does not mean that you can't make it easier to teach the player.  It also doesn't mean all the game explanation should go in the rule book.  There are three areas to focus on to help the player understand your game quickly: The Rule Book, Helper Cards, and the Game Components themselves.

The Rule Book

This is where the bulk of the game explanation needs to go as well as all special case situations that came from your play testing.  Most players won't want to read a wall of text to figure out how to play a game, especially when they are playing it for the first time.  Also, I don't think many players want to have to study a game they just bought before their friends come over to play it for the first time.  The first thing to do to alleviate these problems is to have clearly separated sections explaining each aspect of the game as well as a section for explaining the general flow of the game.  Generally, you'll want the following sections: Objective (how do you win?), Game Components (explain each component, which also builds a vocabulary for talking about your game), Board Layout (what should the board look like while playing?), Game Flow (how does one turn or round play?), and then detailed sections of each phase of a turn.

For ease of clarification, there should be plenty of pictures (Game Components section has pictures of each of the pieces, Board Layout has a big picture of the board) as well as examples (Jimmy draws 1 card and then plays an Action card).  The examples should be either off to the side or somehow separated from the game explanation (italicized or put in a different box) so that players who don't need further explanation can skip to the next part they care about easily.

If this game is a small card game, the rules might be either a card itself or a very small sheet of paper (both Fluxx and Bang have rules like this),  which makes it even more important to have good layout and lots of pictures, since you have such limited space to describe the rules.

Helper Cards

Even if a player has read the rule book and fully understands the game, it is a pain to have to hunt through the rule book if you forget something of the game.  This is why a lot of games come with cards that display some key information used repeatedly by a player.  This way, multiple players can have this information in front of them at the same time.  For example, Settlers of Catan has a card that illustrates the cost of the various things to purchase.  Bang has cards that quickly describe what each symbol in the game means.  I like to make Helper cards that describe the game flow so all players can see what is supposed to be happening.  Some games like to put this information on much bigger cards that every player already needs.  For example, Tales of the Arabian Nights has a Character mat for each player for the player to store their tokens on.  This mat also has lots of information about how the game plays.

Game Components

In many cases, the game components themselves can teach the player how to play, sometimes without them even realizing it.  The simplest way is by having outlines or colors on the board that match specific tokens.  This way, the players know where to put specific tokens.  Another simple way is in a game with cards, the cards themselves have a brief explanation of what they do.  My favorite example of this tacks on another method of teaching.  In the game Bang, not only do the cards tell you what they do (with a few exceptions where you have to look them up in the rule book), but they do so with a set of symbols that are universal to the whole game.  If you ever see a hat with a line through it, you know that card counts as a Miss, no matter what other effects it has.  As stated above, these symbols are explained on Helper cards for all the players.  The reason this is so nice is that it gives the cards more room to display art that gets the players in the right mood/mindset/character for the game.  It also means that when any expansions come out, cards can be added with combinations of the symbols and players will immediately know what they do.

Ultimately, all of these methods require a good graphic designer and/or artist since ultimately it's all about the layout.  If you can utilize these ideas during the prototyping phase, it will significantly help things out, but it's not a requirement since you'll be there for when those prototypes are being played.

Character Movement

Moving your character around is essential to any first or third person video game, so much so that most modern games insist on teaching you how to move within the first few minutes of the game.  In some games, it's very methodical.  For example, Robotron, players move from one space on a grid to another in one of 8 directions.  In Super Mario Bros., players move left or right with the ability to jump up and "gravity" pulls them down.

Most of the time while playing a game, I don't really think much about character movement, but every once in awhile, a game will make some poor decisions in regards to player movement.  I have classified three consistent design flaws that can happen with movement - backtracking, slowing a character down, and speeding a character up.

Backtracking

Backtracking is when a player is forced to walk through an area they have already been through before.  In most single player games, once a player has gone through an area, there won't be any more events in there and they have already seen the location, so walking back through it is incredibly boring.

Event/Enemy Respawns

One solution to this is to have enemies respawn in an area once the player has left.  Dead Island does this throughout the game - even though there are no people left to zombify, zombies keep reappearing after you clear an area out.  Although this does make backtracking more eventful, it also makes it even more tedious since not only is the player not experiencing anything new, but they're being forced to experience something they have already experienced before.  Traveling to the same village/hub again and again also adds additional design flaws such as the repetitive NPC who is spouting out some dialogue to try to make the world feel alive, but when he says the same thing for the hundredth time you passed him while revisiting the town, it gets a little ridiculous.

One-Way Levels

Another solution is to make levels one-way so there is no chance of backtracking a la Mass Effect 3.  This can be a major problem for the Collection gamer because if he thinks he missed something, he won't be able to go back to it later and it will be a constant irritation that will affect his outlook on the game. If this happens enough times, the player may stop playing altogether.  The player should always be able to backtrack if they choose to do so.  If it's the player's choice to backtrack, then they cannot (or at least should not) blame the game.

Fast Travel Maps

My personal favorite solution is the fast travel map like in Skyrim.  Once you have visited an important location, it appears on a map and at any time you can select that location an instantly travel there via Load Screen rather than walking.  This is the closest solution I've seen to eliminating backtracking, but what happens if you want to go somewhere that doesn't have a quick travel point?  When I played Legend of Zelda Wind Waker, I hated the sailing.  I would point my ship to the next destination, set the wind to take me there faster, and then just get up and do something else.  There was at least one time I had enough time to go to the bathroom and make myself a sandwich before I reached my destination.  At one point you get a song that lets you teleport to specific quadrants on the map.  At that point, I thought, "Finally!  Now I can enjoy this game!"  Much to my dismay, I discovered it only took you to certain arbitrary quadrants on the map, not any of them.  What's the point of quick travel if it doesn't take me where I want to go?

Slow Down

Generally, the player speed is calculated out so the player can reach their goal in a good amount of time, but not so fast that they miss the view on the way.  Generally, players are pretty impatient if they feel like they have nothing to do where they are and want to move the game along (or maybe that's just me).  So when a character is forcibly slowed down, it is incredibly frustrating.  In both Uncharted 3 and Mass Effect 3, there were sequences where the player was chasing something and was either badly hurt or had been drugged, so they understandably walked slower.  That part makes sense to me.  What doesn't make sense to me is why these parts are interactive.  The character is moving slow (not fun) and there is nowhere to go but forward (no hidden goodies around).  The end result is that the player is just holding the joystick forward during what essentially is a cutscene.  So why not just make this a cutscene?

I stopped playing Red Dead Redemption for this very reason.  Every mission started the same way: meet a character in a town and hold A to follow him on a horse while you two talk.  You know what'd be more fun than sitting there holding the A button?  Making it a cutscene or locking my movement to auto-follow him unless I press a button so that I can put the controller down and enjoy the dialogue someone worked hard on writing and voicing.

Now if slowing the character down was caused by some action the player took and gives them some risk/reward situations (doing a power move, which uses up all my stamina, which causes me to move slower while the fight is still happening), then that is fine.  But even then, the slow down should only last a few seconds at the longest.

Speed up

Eric, I thought you said gamers (or just you) are impatient!  Why would speeding the character up be bad?  That's a good question!  This is only a problem if you ever expect your player to replay your game from the beginning.  Once they get used to moving quickly, starting over and moving at the original speed is going to feel like the character is walking through molasses.  So really, this is the same problem as the previous one, but indirectly.  I generally don't play games more than once (at least not since high school), so usually this is not a problem for me.  It has become a problem for me with Star Wars: The Old Republic.  In that game, there are 8 different classes, each with their own story.  Since it is from Bioware, I know I will enjoy the stories, so I want to experience them all.  At level 14, you get an ability called Sprint that lets you run faster when not in combat (you can turn it off, but why in the world would you want to do that since it costs nothing to have active?).  Then at level 25, you get the ability to ride a personal speeder around in most open areas.  However, once you have a character that far, if you start a new character, guess what?  It feels like torture getting around for those first 25 levels!  What's the harm in eliminating Sprint and making that the default run speed and letting players have speeders from the beginning of the game?

What Is Your Video Game Nature?

I've always had a great fascination with personality tests.  I haven't figured out why, but I love to classify myself and see what I am/where I belong.  I even love the silly "Which Harry Potter character are you?" quizzes that used to be all over Facebook (at least if they're well made and especially if there are more outcomes than Ron, Hermione, and Harry).  So I guess it's no surprise that I love to try to classify my video game play style to try to figure myself out even more.  I've come up with six ways to describe my gaming nature: Collector, Explorer, Strategist, Button Masher, Problem Solver, and Problem Maker.

Collector

There has always been an inherent need in my game style to collect everything and see every bit of content a game has to offer me.  Sometimes this need is so overwhelming that I will push through a game I'm not enjoying because I need to check it off my mental to do list.  Sometimes I know I won't be able to find everything by myself, so I resort to cheating (I played Assassin's Creed with a map of all flag locations up so I could get them all).  I never feel good about that, but it means I won't be bothered at the end of the game when I have 99/100 of something and there's no way to know where it is.  The lack of free time that comes with being an adult has gotten me to be able to override the Collector.  If I start losing interest in a game, I may be able to ignore side quests and just finish the game because unfinished games are an even bigger problem to me than a beaten, but not completed game.  The Collector loves any game with unlockables.

Explorer

I like to go into every nook and cranny of a game and see what hidden goodies I can find.  Partly this goes hand in hand with the Collector, but it doesn't always.  The Explorer in me likes to get to places I'm not supposed to get to just because I want to see where I can go.  This need to explore is precisely why open world games like Skyrim and Dead Island are so dangerous to me.  Those worlds are so gigantic that it would take hundreds of hours to explore everywhere, but not exploring somewhere means not seeing an interesting view or getting a bonus item of some sort.  The Explorer is also why I never beat Baldur's Gate.  I fully explored every single area in the outside world in that game, finally got to Baldur's Gate, and found out it was yet another giant grid of areas to explore...The Explorer loves non-linear games and secret areas.

Strategist

I love being able to take time to assess a situation and figure out the optimal way through this.  Min-Maxing (making choices in a game in order to maximize strengths and minimize weaknesses) is a crucial part of strategizing.  This is another reason I have to do all side quests before I complete any main quests in a game.  By the time I get to the main game, I am so powerful that nothing can stop me.  In the game, Blue Dragon, the final boss didn't even get to attack my players a single time before I killed him.  The Strategist loves turned based RPGs and tactics games most, but strategy can be found many action games as well (do I kill the large, powerful enemy first or all the little weak ones?  Which attack works best in this situation?).

Button Masher

I've never been any good at fighting games because when I start to panic (like when my brother has me trapped in a corner in Street Fighter II), I start to wildly push buttons and hope something happens.  I also love to just push buttons to see what happens (which is why I think explaining what buttons do in a game is pointless).  The Button Masher WILL ALWAYS push the red button that says Do Not Push.  The Button Masher works best when the Strategist has had time to analyze the situation because he can direct the Button Masher towards the correct buttons.  For example, with nearly any third person action game like God of War or X-Men Origins: Wolverine there are heavy and light attack buttons.  The Button Masher will begin mashing these buttons arbitrarily when he sees his first enemy.  After a few fights, the Strategist will be able to see patterns of button presses achieve what result and will direct the Button Masher to repeat that button combination in the future.  The Button Masher loves any game with combos or interactables.

Problem Solver

I have always had a huge fondness for puzzles.  One of the reasons I love programming is the deductive part of code debugging.  Trying to figure out what caused a crash, following the trail, and analyzing the data is amazingly fun.  The Problem Solver combines with the other parts in interesting ways.  Seeing a floating object to collect, the Problem Solver goes in to action to figure out how to get the item so the Collector is appeased.  When the aforementioned button combo stops being effective, the Problem Solver goes into action to figure out why this enemy is different from the others and figure out how to stop him.  The Problem Solver loves puzzle games and any game situation that makes him stop and think.

Problem Maker

I've always been good at breaking programs.  I love doing things that I shouldn't in them to see how it deals with that.  The Problem Maker is precisely why I was so good at being a tester for Atari and it's why at work, my co-worker will ask me to break his new system he implemented once he thinks it's complete.  The Strategist likes the Problem Maker because he'll find exploits that give the Strategist a bigger advantage.  Much like the Explorer, the Problem Maker likes to go places he shouldn't, but mostly because he wants to fall through the world.  The Problem Solver and Problem Maker go hand in hand when coding since the Problem Maker gives the Problem Solver something to solve.  The Problem Maker is the game designer's worst enemy and his happiness is usually mutually exclusive to the game designer.

I'm sure there are many other categories of gamers (i.e. reasons you play games and you play them how you do) and as noted, these categories tend to go together, so this exercise isn't about pigeonholing your players (a.k.a. customers), but more about assessing their motivations so that you can include something to appease all the different aspects in your games.  For me, the ideal combination would be an item that let me jump extra high so I could get to weird locations, hidden down a side path, blocked by a door that has a puzzle involving buttons to solve, followed by a wave of enemies of different types (support, combat, etc.).

Teaching Your Players: Video Game Edition

Anytime you play a new game, you will have to learn the rules, objectives, and tools at their disposal for that game.  In video games, this generally means figuring out which action is performed with which button on the controller, what causes a game over, and what your objective is.  In board games, this generally means figuring out what purpose each game component serves, how they operate together, how the game ends, and how a winner is determined.  This learning process is the first major hurdle players have to get over in order to enjoy your game.  So it's very important that you make this process as painless and enjoyable as possible.

Video Game Education

In video games, you have two extremes for how to teach your player: experimentation and exposition.  Experimentation is where you don't tell the player anything and instead you let them figure out everything on their own.  Exposition is where you explicitly tell the player how to play the game through visual prompts and tutorials.  These lessons aren't just for teaching the controls, but also if players are free to explore (Will an invisible barrier keep them from jumping off cliffs or will you let them fall to their death?  When they fall off a cliff do they die or do they reappear on the cliff's edge possibly with some health gone?  When they do die, how much of the game do they have to replay?), what the terminology of the game is, what actions can the player perform, how does the player distinguish between something that aids the player and something that hurts the player, etc.

Experimentation

First party Nintendo games (Mario, Zelda, Kirby, Metroid, etc) are very heavy on the experimentation.  The games rarely tell you how to play and instead just put you in situations where you need to figure out the rules of the game yourself.  For example, in Super Mario Bros. 1 opens with Mario on the left side of the screen and nothing else on screen.  The game does not need to tell the player to press right on the + Control Pad to move forward.  It assumes you'll try the various buttons (granted there are only 8 buttons to try on the original NES controller) and find out that moving to the right moves the screen to the right.  Suddenly you're presented with a ? block and a Goomba walking towards you.  You either continue using the one thing you've learned so far and press right, thus walking into the Goomba and dying (and learning about death in the game) or you try other buttons and learn you can jump by pushing A.  If you got killed by the Goomba, the level restarts with the same scene, so maybe this time you'll try jumping over the Goomba since touching it kills you.  If you time it poorly and land on top of the Goomba, the Goomba is squished, a 100 appears where it was, and a pleasing sound plays.  All that is a lot of small rewards to indicate to the player that's a good thing.  Super Mario Bros. 3 continued this style of teaching.  The risk with this method is that a player may never learn about some aspect of the game and possibly blame the game when they don't understand something.

Exposition

The other extreme is exposition.  If you do this too much, you will inevitably make your player feel stupid or feel that you think they're stupid (which is essentially the same thing) and this never goes down well.  I'm amazed at how many modern games force me to move my player and the camera around with explicit instructions before I'm allowed to do anything else.  Even if you haven't played any other video games in your life, if you start up a game, are given a controller with two thumbsticks on it, then chances are good you can figure out how they work.

Balance

The ideal balance is in between, but closer to experimentation rather than exposition.  As many game lessons as possible should be taught by requiring the player to figure it out.  If you just got a new item, there should be a barrier you couldn't pass previously that requires you to use that new item and figure out how it works.  This lets the player feel smart and it also eliminates the need for illogical barriers to guide the player.  For example, say the player gets some sort of hookshot/grappling hook/whip/etc, then there should have been a cliff they needed to cross with some sort of obvious protrusion above the other side.  For more advanced tools (button combos, complicated combat or crafting systems, etc.), you will need to display text prompts or force the player through a tutorial to teach them how to use those systems.  If this happens, try to make it flow as naturally as possible.

Review: Mass Effect 3

Mass Effect 3 is the finale to an epic sci-fi series made by Bioware.  The purchase suggestion itself is pretty short: if you haven't played Mass Effect 1 or 2, don't get 3 (start with 1 if possible and work through all three); if you have beaten Mass Effect 1 and 2, you need 3.  Unlike most video game trilogies, the Mass Effect trilogy really is a series.  There is a grand sense of continuity and that your choices matter.  Obviously, the major choices you make in 1 and 2 (did you kill this person or that person, who did you romance, etc.) will impact the third.  But I noticed numerous times where even my more minor choices impacted the game or at least felt like they did.  And that is the key here, player perception.  If you can make the player feel like his choices mattered, then they mattered whether it actually changes any dialogue/events or not.

In the Mass Effect series, players take the role of Commander _____ Shepard.  They can choose whether it's a female/male Shepard, what the first name is, and what they look like.  The forced last name and title allow the main character to be mentioned by name in the voiceovers, which was a clever trick when Mass Effect first came out.  The first two Mass Effect games have you fight a threat to the galaxy, while building suspense towards the much larger threat you fight in Mass Effect 3.  Mass Effect 3 is essentially just one big set of cameos from all the characters you've come to know from the first two games.  The really interesting thing that comes out of this is that if you talk to anyone else who has played Mass Effect 3, the stories can be very drastically different.  The most obvious example being choice of gender - every time my friend talks about Shepard and says he, I get confused because I play as a FemShep (Female Shepard voiced by Jennifer Hale, my voice crush).

These choices and differences in story really help to solidify the Mass Effect story as a whole as a player story. I think because of this, the ending to Mass Effect 3 hit players much harder than a typical video game ending.  Typically, video game endings are nothing to talk about (Rampage only gives you a single Congratulation.  Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles for the NES gives you a Game Over when you beat the game.).  There are a few exceptions I can think of (first off, don't click those links if you don't want endings to Splosion Man, You Have to Burn the Rope, Portal 1, and Portal 2 spoiled, secondly, I think I see a pattern in the video game endings I enjoy...).  Mass Effect 3's ending represents the culmination of 120+ hours of commitment to your particular Shepard's story.  I think just like Lost's ending, there's no way to appease everyone.  Maybe it's because I knew this ahead of time in both cases that I was able to enjoy both endings for what they were.  Yes, that's right, I enjoyed Mass Effect 3's and Lost's ending.  Not just "was okay with them", but was actually pleased by both of them.  Obviously, I can't really discuss the endings here without spoilers, so if you want details, you'll have to talk to me personally, but I'd love to do that to see where our stories differed and what you thought.

Game Jams

If you're not familiar with the term Game Jam, it's where a team of game developers (artists, programmers, designers, etc.) get together to try to create a new game from scratch in 48 hours.  Sometimes this is done as a challenge to see what the developers are capable of, sometimes it's done in order to try to make a simple game to sell on an app store, and sometimes it's done to perpetuate a running gag.

Peter Molyneux is a famous game designer who created the Populous, Fable, and Black and White games.  He's also famous for making ridiculous promises or having wild ideas for game concepts.  He's so well known for this that a parody twitter account was created spouting even more ridiculous ideas.  At some point someone decided there should be a game jam using these fake ideas as inspirations for games.  Some of the results look surprisingly fun.  I don't understand how some of them are games (without any explanation, the videos I watched didn't make much sense).  Of those 18, these are my top 5:

#5: Don't Deux It

You play a pigeon who must find the right item for people on rooftops to keep them from jumping off.  Honestly, I just like this one because of depressed Spider-man, although the game does seem fun and well made.

#4: PsychoBaby

You play as a baby with the arms of "a dead baddie".  The arms do not believe this is reality, so they are wantonly destroying and killing things.  You must convince them this is reality by finding cameras and getting your picture taken.  The concept of this one is just so insane and the look on that baby's face for not being able to control his arms is pretty hysterical.  I also like how the arms just randomly pick up any objects in range and chuck them around angrily.

#3: Friends 'Til The End

"You play as a small boy with a remote control helicoptor that is alive and your friend, then you discover a nuclear missle inside it".  This game actually looks like it'd be a challenging, but fun game to play.  Although they do make losing pretty spectacular, so I might die on purpose a few times.

#2: Days of Your

You are a period.  When you meet other punctuation marks they will speak to you and you must place yourself at the right points in the sentence.  Once you do, you collect that punctuation mark and go meet the next one, but now you have two punctuation marks at your disposal.  This one actually seems like it could be a really awesome edutainment game if it is more fleshed out.  People may actually learn the difference between your and you're or its and it's with this game!  I would love to see this turn into something that ends up in schools someday.

#1: Breaktris

I can't really describe this one without ruining a bit of surprise, so just watch the video.  I could definitely see this on the AppStore and of all of these games, it seems to most complete to me.

Bonus: Pause Pirate

This wasn't in that one playlist and is definitely an epic game worth noting.  The original idea was "What if the pause button was a weapon? Until developers think outside the box we're going downhill."  Again, I don't want to ruin the novelty of the game's idea by describing it, so just watch the video.

Game Design: Testing != Playing

So you've got your great idea and you've spent all the time to build a prototype so now comes the time to play your game. This should be the fun and easy part, right? Unless you're some game design wizard, chances are the game will have to go through a lot of testing before it's really marketable. Make sure to stay focused on what part of the game you are trying to test while conducting your test. Each area has its own quirks and pitfalls. Also, make sure any rules you set at the beginning of the test remain the same throughout the test. One small rule change can drastically alter how a game plays.

Game Mechanics

To start off with, you should simulate a few turns or an entire session of your game by yourself acting as multiple players. This will help you figure out if you don't have a component for a certain aspect of the game you have to keep track of or find out that two game mechanics work horrendously together. It also can give you a rough estimate of how long your game will take and where you could speed the game up (hint: If you're constantly swapping tokens with a bank or other players, this is a large time sink that is generally not fun for anyone). These tests should be done before anyone else sees your game so you don't waste your friend's time.

Game Components

You always need to keep a few things in mind with regard to game components. The fewer components there are, the cheaper it will be to make and sell the game and the less frightening it will be for new players. Also, more standard game components (6-sided dice, hex tiles, 18"x18" game board, etc) will be easier and cheaper for most manufacturers to produce (I'll go more into depth on manufacturing at a later time). Also, be mindful of the ease of using those components. For example, I have a game that made sense to have square tiles that made up the game board, but you also have to flip the tiles over while they are laid out. During one test I realized (with the help of my testers) that that was difficult once all the tiles were laid out, so I've cut off the corners of each tile and made them hex pieces. They are still laid out on a square grid, so there are two corners to use to flip the tile over with.

Strategies vs. Exploits

One of the most interesting things I've noticed while testing a strategy game of mine is trying to decide the difference between a clever strategy and a broken game. Whenever a special case arises and you need to decide how the game should deal with it, it can be tempting to make a decision that best helps you win the game. Whatever you decide, make sure you take a note of this case to make a final decision on. This decision will have to appear somewhere in the text of the game (generally the rule book).

Social Interaction

Players should always have something to do/occupy themselves with. If players take turns, then either turns need to go fast, players need to interact with each other, players need to be able to strategize, or players should have something to play with. A good example of these is Settlers of Catan. On anyone's turn, they can trade with other players so there is always potential for social interaction even when it's not your turn. You also have lots of little tokens for roads and settlements that people invariably build pictures with while they're waiting (or is that just me?). You can always look at the board and your cards and be strategizing about what to do next. Also, if the player doesn't trade on their turn, then turns tend to go relatively quickly. So while testing your game, be watching what people are doing between turns. Are they looking at the board? Are they just plain bored? Are they constantly zoning out?

Don't worry if the first few tests are no fun as long as you can still see potential for fun. Just figure out what to fix and try again. Also, don't be afraid to do drastic redesigns on your game. Just keep in mind the game design goals you have for the game.