Asymmetric Play - Can One Game Cater to Many Playstyles? - Extra Credits

Doing those episodes on Fable Legends and checking out Evolve has got us thinking about asymmetric gameplay lately and where it's headed. So, I figured we'd discuss that today. At its most basic, asymmetric play is gameplay where the players aren't all using the same set of mechanics. So, for example, chess is a symmetric game. Both players follow the same set of rules to achieve their goals. Something like StarCraft on the other hand is sometimes asymmetric. Each of the three factions, Terran, Protoss, function fundamentally differently. Even a game like Team Fortress is fundamentally asymmetric. The two teams of players may collectively play by the same rules, but individual players can use a variety of different asymmetrical classes, like engineer and spy and pyro, all of which play with slightly different mechanics. For our discussion, I'm going to divide asymmetric play into two types, weak asymmetry and strong asymmetry. In weak asymmetry, players utilize some of the same mechanics to play the game. This is the case with Team Fortress. Basic rules

for how bullet collision works, health bars, death, the basics of movement and navigation, these same basic mechanics apply to everybody, but engineers and spies will still play fundamentally differently. In games with strong asymmetry, on the other hand, players share few or even none of the same mechanics. Artemis would be a good example of this with its completely divergent crew roles. Weak asymmetry has been a mainstay of multiplayer games for years, so much so that it's easy to forget that there was once a whole era when multiplayer shooters like Doom and Quake were played with identical mechanics for all players. And there were MMOs like Ultima Online where all players weren't restricted by their class, where they had the option to play with all of the mechanics available. But, seeing how prevalent things like class selection have become in multiplayer games, how we barely even register them as asymmetric these days, it's worth asking ourselves, what function does asymmetry serve? Luckily, there's at least one fairly straightforward answer. Asymmetry fosters teamwork. Compare a Team Fortress match with a team deathmatch in a more symmetric shooter like Quake 3.

You'll find a lot more teamwork in the asymmetric game, even amongst unorganized strangers. The medic just naturally heads off to work with the heavy. So, why do players default to cooperation? Because no one player has all the tools they need to win. By denying any one player all those tools, the game forces players to work together to achieve what they want. You'll see asymmetry in almost any multiplayer environment where the designers consider teamwork beneficial to the game. Almost all modern MMOs and MOBAs rely heavily on asymmetry. And in shooters, you can usually tell whether the game is meant to be more focused on teamwork or individual play based on the presence or absence of weak asymmetry. When creating a weak asymmetry game, you need obvious synergies, abilities that players will instantly identify as being effective when used together. These synergies immediately signal to the player that your game is a team game, and will start to get them to think in that mindset. Additionally, these obvious synergies, which games will often call signaling mechanics for this very reason, allow players to signal to one another that

they're going to play together, even if they can't talk. When the medic approaches the heavy and hits him with that medigun, both players share a little unspoken moment thinking, "All right, pal, I'm sticking with you. Let's do this." Even if they never said a word to one another in chat. But even when creating a weak asymmetry game, you also need to build in much subtler synergies. These smaller mechanical benefits reward the player for approaching the game with teamwork in mind and train players to work together. These subtle changes can even become larger multi-person synergies as players graduate to the point where they can begin thinking of team dynamics. This all allows you to lean on the asymmetric nature of your game to encourage players to climb the skill ladder. But the real reason we wanted to make this episode was to talk about strong asymmetries and how we're starting to see more and more strong asymmetrical experiences lately. Strong asymmetry is something we've often shied away away as an industry. Games based on strong asymmetry can be some of the most rewarding and memorable multiplayer experiences when they work, but they also absolutely rely on a team that's

highly communicative and that has strong communication skills. These games often turn into a miserable experience if even one person isn't communicating or cooperating. That's a pretty intimidating design challenge. But the interesting thing about the recent surge of strong asymmetry in multiplayer game design is that not all of the games featuring this kind of design are even about communication anymore. What we're seeing are games where all the players on one side share symmetric or weakly asymmetric rules, but the opposing team plays in some totally different strong asymmetric fashion. And because such teams are competing rather than trying to work together, these games no longer require the intense level of communication that strong asymmetry games generally demand. But since we're no longer using asymmetry to make interesting communication challenges, what's it doing for our design? It's giving us gameplay variety within the same shared space. This is the kind of thing games like Fable Legends, Dungeon Land, and Zombie U Multiplayer are attempting to achieve. By using strong asymmetry in this way, you can create a game where all of a sudden one doesn't have to like the same type of game to

play with their friends. If you've got a buddy who doesn't really like action RPGs, but loves RTSs, they can still hang out and share the game with you. This idea is potentially brilliant and all kinds of exciting, but also really intimidating. On the one hand, such a game could potentially reach a much broader audience. Then again, building such a product basically requires making two games, and they better be equally good or the whole experience falls apart. Even if your action RPG team mechanics are amazing to play, if your streamlined RTS doesn't also knock it out of the park, the experience is ultimately ruined for everybody. No matter how good one side of your game is, if nobody's playing the other side, nobody's playing your game at all. For a long time, this type of game was thought too risky to attempt, but we're starting to see more experiments testing the waters of strong asymmetry, and I'm excited to see where these go. I'd love to see an experience where I could play a match-three puzzle game to generate minions to fight off my friends who are playing a shooter. Or I'd love to play a post-apocalyptic city-building simulator while my buddies could play a brawler, periodically turning up as raiders to

storm the place. The pie-in-the-sky final destination for this train of thought is the impossible dream of the ultimate MMO which everybody could play. The idea that someday we'd have a game where no matter what type of games you liked, you could do something fun and productive within it. I don't think that's going to happen, and I'm actually not completely sure I'd even want it to happen, but this early experimentation with strong asymmetry, mixing game types and genres in a competitive way rather than simply using asymmetry to foster communication, is a branch of game design with exciting possibilities. If developers can afford to pull it off, I am eager to see where this goes. See you next week.