My biggest conception about a systems game when starting this project is that they had to be hard to learn, unwieldy board games with countless tokens and counters. When playing Pandemic, I got to understand that a systems game doesn’t have to be quite as intimidating than I initially thought. Then in the second games that we played, where almost everyone in the class had the experience of frustration and confusion in a sea of complicated rules and procedures explained confusingly, my initial assumption almost seemed confirmed. I wanted to set out to create a game that models a system that is as simple as possible.
A large part of my team’s reasoning for ultimately creating a digital game as opposed to an analogue game was because we dislike the extreme set up and meticulous procedures that are often a part of systems games. (In my P1 project, I saw first hand how it’s extremely hard for players to remember to carry out procedures especially when there’s no strategic motivation to do so.) Opting for a digital game was the smoothest way to simulate the fast moving, real-time decisions people have to make when running a social media.
We also opted to very simply model a very tiny portion of the chosen system. The primary control the player has is to increase or decrease how many ads are on their site. Despite its simplicity, it seemed to really engage many of our playtesters. I think it’s relatively easy to immediately grasp how each of the controls are effecting things, and it’s up to the player’s judgement to decide how to prioritize user growth versus profits. That being said, the simplicity of the game means that it’s more vulnerable to being too easy once you’ve played a little bit.
Looking forward, I think one extreme advantage of digital games is their ability to introduce new mechanics over time, so the player is not overwhelmed from the beginning but can continue to be challenged as they progress through the game. Looking forward to P4, where I want to iterate upon and drastically improve this game, I’m weighing which elements to prioritize. I have ideas that really excite me around seeing the social media feed as you play the game scroll past so you get a better sense of the consequences of your actions, but maybe I should introduce new mechanics, which would pop up gradually as the player progresses, that will keep the game interesting and exciting while better modeling the real world.
