Anniversary Post: Systems and Criticisms

Words: 1814 Approximate Reading Time: 10-15 minutes

So it’s now been three years since I started this blog, and I’ve been putting down huge walls of text on a very simple white background with tons of thoughts about games. Sometimes about design, sometimes about how we talk about games, sometimes about how we approach games as a medium, sometimes about stories and thematic interpretation. There are a lot of angles from which to approach the topic of “video games,” and my blog merely scratches the surface, as is evidenced by so many others who produce their own essays and reviews.

Before I continue on, I need to present a major update. For these three years I’ve been posting fairly consistently once per week. Sometimes this would require rushing something out, and sometimes I’d have a decent backlog.

But that pace isn’t really sustainable anymore. I’ve started a new job as of a month and a half ago, and that new job leaves me with much less free time than I had in previous positions (or while unemployed). It is actually possible for me to keep up this writing pace, but most of the inspiration for my essays relies on me playing games…which I also have less time for. So if I want to keep the creative juices flowing at any reasonable rate, I need to cut back on writing to make room for playing.

So starting as of last week (since I missed that one intentionally), I will be posting every other Sunday. I may from time to time post something extra if I start developing a nice backlog, but the two-week period will give me plenty of time to rest and recuperate.

With that done, I’ll get to the meat of the essay.

I usually take this time to do a sort of overarching retrospective about the process of writing and discussing games. In part, that retrospective is focused on insights I’ve learned throughout this whole project.

And for this one I want to talk about systems. A game is a combination of all sorts of elements – visuals and sounds and controls and rules. And those elements do not exist in a vacuum. They take on meaning in combination. So understanding a game – and arguably games in general – requires seeing how the various components work together and form a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts.

I usually like to talk about this all through the language of mechanics, but we could just as easily add in the design of the world or the game’s score or its story into this discussion. But since what makes a game a game is the way the player interacts with it, the interaction is a useful starting point.

And one reason I am interested in systems is how infrequently they are discussed within criticism. I have a sense that game development is filled with people who think about how all of these different components of a game mix with one another, but that mixture seems to be less prevalent as part of discussion among players.

By that I mean that if we encounter something we don’t like, we tend to isolate that thing from everything else. Why can’t I attack faster with this gigantic weapon? Why do these extra items exist using my weapon works perfectly fine? Why bother with stealth if it takes so long and you’re never punished for getting spotted? All sorts of questions like that can crop up. And the implication of these questions is that these elements need to be “fixed” in some way. Sometimes by removing them entirely, sometimes by tweaking one specific element, sometimes by adding in all sorts of additional stuff.

The drive to criticize and offer suggestions is not wrong. The objective of a game is for players to have fun. Which in turn means that feedback from players about what they do and don’t enjoy is important. And game can improve from that feedback. But this basic argument does not imply that all feedback is useful.

Firstly, because we may not always understand why we like or dislike something. This can even go so far as us not enjoying something we should enjoy, but don’t for a trivial reason – we encountered it the wrong way the first time and then ignored it; we accidentally skipped through the explanation and thus never knew about it. But more common is that when we like or dislike something, we search for some explanation to explain why. And the initial grasp for an explanation is usually hurried. Because we’re ultimately thinking backwards: I like this, so let me start with the conclusion that I must like it, and then come up with some values for why the thing is “good.” Sometimes we reach for generic and uncontroversial ideas that aren’t helpful, sometimes we seek out more precise terms that may be at odds with the actual results. Whatever the case may be, we can sometimes arrive at bad explanations for our own feelings.

Secondly, just because we can adequately explain our feelings does not mean our explanations or solutions are “correct.” If a particular aspect of game design is helpful for others and something the majority of other players enjoy, but grates against our specific sensibilities, does that make it good or bad design? We often focus on what we as singular players want out of video games. In no small part because it’s hard to get a good understanding of other people and their likes and dislikes.

But I’m not here to litigate criticism as a whole. These flaws in reasoning exist, but they’re also flaws that we can work to overcome. Even if not completely, at least to a significant extent. It just requires effort.

Instead I am latching onto the specific focus on individual components of design. The “Shotguns should do more damage” approach to criticism.

I use that phrase as an example because a particular type of video game is especially useful for this argument: multiplayer shooting games. Whether it’s your Call of Duty, your Battlefield, your Fortnite, and so on. These games strive to create a very delicate balance between the different options given to players, so that every option feels viable. Using a sniper rifle is good for long range, but has drawbacks that might make a mid-range weapon seem appealing, which in turn will have drawbacks that make close-range weapons seem appealing, which will have drawbacks – and the cycle just continues.

Now balancing is not exactly scientific and can go wrong in plenty of ways. In fact, it does go wrong in plenty of ways. But I use this baseline because the tendency for players to offer critiques about balancing is to focus on one isolated aspect – often an aspect that aligns with their chosen method of play.

So when a new multiplayer shooter comes out, it turns out that shotguns are particularly strong. They have a pretty incredible range that makes them viable as a sort of all-around tool, and so much of combat turns into people running towards each other to fight with shotguns. Which means so many other weapons get ignored.

Which means that the developers go back to the drawing board and try to fiddle with the numbers in the background. They might impact the amount of damage a shotgun does, or its effective range, or how much the pellets spread. They might also increase the damage or range on other guns. All in an attempt to make different solutions more viable.

But even if they nail it – a big “if,” but let’s just accept it for the sake of the argument – a sizable chunk of the player base will be aggravated by this change. Because many of them like or have gotten used to this shotgun strategy. They may have become experts at it, and now they find they aren’t winning as much. And so they aren’t having fun, and blame the one thing that’s obvious:

The developers messed up the balance, and the solution is to make shotguns more powerful.

And the problem is that this argument is only valid if we’re ignoring everything else about the game. If we only think about shotguns in isolation and the specific strategy of fighting with shotguns versus other weapons. If our goal is to make shotguns the most fun thing to play with…then yeah, this solution is what we should go with. But if our goal is to make every weapon viable and force players to become well-versed in all of them and the different strategies available as they compete…then the solution doesn’t help.

This line of thinking exists in plenty of other games and genres. Competitive multiplayer games are the easiest to point to by virtue of the fact that they often create the most vocal backlash. But the process of tweaking and trying to push players in particular directions and the ways that players may chafe against that pushing is not unique to these games.

The failure we are seeing in these arguments is a failure to understand game design within the context of a system. Where changing one element of the game may have a broader impact on the rest of the game. How you heal impacts the health system, but it may also impact exploration, combat, equipment, and so on. These components rarely exist in pure isolation, and tweaking them or removing them or adding other stuff on top of all this requires thinking about how those changes impact the entire environment. Because a change might sound good on its own, but harm the overall game experience once all those connections start forming.

There isn’t a clear way to explain all of these impacts. Sometimes a mechanic can be safely removed, sometimes a new mechanic can be safely added, and sometimes it all falls apart. The better we understand a given game, the easier it is for us to foresee those consequences. The more we know about how players – as a whole – engage with a game, the more we know about how a change is going to alter their behavior.

Game designers can still make mistakes, and it’s worthwhile to point out those mistakes. But by the same token, we need to understand our own criticisms within light of larger systems. To step back and ask about the game as a whole, and not focus exclusively on a particular part. Or parts – because this error can apply just as much to highlighting many isolated components as it can one component. Because rules do not exist in a vacuum. They work together – or are supposed to work together – to create an interactive experience, one which allows players to choose all sorts of different solutions. And if we are careless in our assessment of that system, we can wind up throwing the whole thing out of balance for some short-term gain.