1. Identify the basic elements in a game of your choice (actions, goals, rules, objects, playspace, players).
Dicey Dungeon
Actions: Roll dice, use equipe
Goals: Escape
Rules: Dice must be facing the correct way to be used (as described on abilities/equipment), you must move through the dungeon as described by the path, you cannot progress past foes until you have defeated them.
Objects: Health, dice, abilities, equipment.
Playspace: Computer screen, dungeon map.
Players: One, ideally interested in roguelike games.
2. As a thought experiment, swap one element between two games: a single rule, one action, the goal, or the playspace. For example, what if you applied the playspace of chess to basketball? Imagine how the play experience would change based on this swap.
Swapping the goal of Dicey Dungeon into a first-person shooter (let’s say Apex Legends) would make the game highly asymmetrical. Whereas the players trying to prevent escape would get a sense of nervous power as they found defensible positions and kept watch to make sure no one left (assuming there are players in this role, the environment could be an obstacle instead), those attempting to escape would feel like clever underdogs, finding ways to sneak around or breach through the defensive lines.
3. Pick a simple game you played as a child. Try to map out its space of possibility, taking into account the goals, actions, objects, rules, and playspace as the parameters inside of which you played the game. The map might be a visual flowchart or a drawing trying to show the space of possibility on a single screen or a moment in the game.
After watching Avatar, the Last Airbender, my sister and I would frequently pretend to duel. It never had particularly coherent game states or rules, but my best guess at the possibility space is as follows:
4. Pick a real-time game and a turn-based game. Observe people playing each. Make a log of all the game states for each game. After you have created the game state logs, review them to see how they show the game’s space of possibility and how the basic elements interact.
Turn-based game: Not Going Home
In Not Going Home, the players are placed in the role of Search and Rescue volunteers, attempting to find a missing person in the woods. The catch is that the missing person keeps moving.
State 1: Players move one search team deeper into the wilderness, and another to a different trailhead. They keep the last team at the trailhead for flexibility.
State 2: The gamemaster writes down a new location for the missing person.
State 3: Players move their search teams further, headed towards the center, assuming (correctly) that the missing person starts far from all the trailheads.
…
State N: Players find a clue, learning where the missing person once was and where they went next from there. They begin to narrow in on their location but are frustrated by their limited information and the fact that the missing person could have moved far since then.
Not Going Home’s elements create a fundamental information asymmetry: the information players get expires quickly as the missing person moves, whereas the players, having three search teams, can control large areas of the map and cut off escape routes. To win, the searchers must utilize the map’s limitations, forcing the missing person into dead ends and running them out of their triple moves.
Real-time game: Really Bad Art
State 1: Players grab their cards, ready to flip
State 2: The buzzer sounds. Some players begin drawing immediately. Others hesitate for a second and draw little or nothing at all.
State 3: Players reveal their drawings and laughter ensues as players begin to try and decipher what they could mean.
State 4: The possibilities for what the drawings could be are revealed, and the table goes silent. Players place a few guesses quickly and stop to contemplate the more difficult ones.
State 5: After all the guesses are placed, the answer is revealed for each drawing. Players discuss the clues and reasoning that helped them get the right answer, or in some cases, led them astray. Then, points are scored.
Really Bad Art’s timer is ingenious. The possibility space of the game is severely restricted: drawing skills and cleverness aside, there is simply only so much pencil lead that can be used in six seconds. Drawings are forced into highly recognizable, simple symbolism: arrows, faces, buildings, stick figures, and so on. These abstract symbols also happen to be fantastic clues: vague enough to require reasoning and interpretation, but meaningful enough that, when combined with a process of elimination, the right answer is usually found by most of the players. In their rushed, often incomplete form, they’re also often humorous, keeping the game light and friendly.
The game also restricts the possibility space in a second way. Rather than asking players to guess in the abstract what each drawing represents, the prompts are revealed and players are asked to match them to drawings. This limited set of options makes it possible to do comparative reasoning, to think that this face looks unhappier than that face, and therefore it must be ‘total freak out’ rather than ‘extenuating circumstances,’ and so on. Players also become able to solve the problem empathetically, imagining what they would draw when faced with each of the prompts, and then seeing if any of the drawings match those intuitions.
In these ways, Really Bad Art is a prime example of a semi-paradoxical truth: restricting the possibility space of a game frequently expands the variety and richness of players’ interactions with it, as they are forced to think creatively to work with and around the limitations.
