Games are composed of rules. In my past game design works, the common feedback was that “the rules were too complex”. During the design of American Dream in the past two weeks, I encountered the same problem. However, with the help of the course, my team members, and play testers, I gained new insights into solving this problem.
Previously, I used to start the design from Mechanics, making some “reasonable abstractions” of reality, and combining them with verified classic gameplay. However, this approach required subtracting from a large amount of information, which was often intrinsically related and difficult to reduce, leading to the complexity of the rules.
In the CS377G class, the focus on serious games, especially the backward design process based on MDAO, was a cure for the problem of complex rules. The key point was an assessment standard: aesthetics should lead to the expected outcome, dynamics should bring about the expected aesthetics, and mechanics should trigger the expected dynamics. Following this line of thought, “subtraction design” turned into “addition design”, and finding the corresponding tools (mechanisms) based on the expected effect became my standard for designing American Dream.
In American Dream, the learning outcome is to make players empathize with the situation of potential immigrants. They should feel uncertainty – so we added dice. Players’ feedback indicated a lack of agency, in order to create a “sense of control”, we added a life simulation. Based on observations, the potential immigrant group in reality has a behavioral pattern of cooperation followed by competition, which became the design standard for the game’s numerical system (creating resource scarcity).
The MDAO analysis method made the design thinking of the rules clear, but in the actual operation process, I still designed some redundant mechanisms (such as work outcome). At this point, the significance of group cooperation began to show. If I were designing alone or with familiar people, when designing or modifying a rule, I often did it “by inspiration”, making changes casually. But this time, working with randomly paired classmates and with my limited oral expression ability, I had to provide detailed written explanations for every change or find players’ feedback as evidence, guiding me to constantly conduct logical reasoning and in-depth thinking. Sometimes, during the thinking process, I discovered the problem with my “inspiration” and gave up the modification. Similarly, when making changes, we also followed the principle of Occam’s Razor and the “minimization of changes principle”, carefully maintaining this delicate “artwork” to avoid deviating from the theme.
In conclusion, in this game design, I still faced the complexity of the rules. The solution to this problem is not casually modification, but confirming the assessment standard of the game (for players and for designers), and reviewing various ideas based on this assessment standard. Inspiration is not precious; what is truly valuable is rational thinking about fleeting ideas.
