Sid Meier's Psychology of Game Design

ladies and Gentlemen please welcome event director of the game developers conference Megan [Laughter] scavio Good morning and welcome to the game developers conference uh the gentleman about to take this stage to present this morning's keynote doesn't really need much of an introduction as the Creator of some of the greatest games ever made from railroad Tycoon through Pirates to the civilization series he has already taken on taking his place on the list of Legendary game design icons and he's not done yet so please join me in welcoming the director of creative development at fraxis and the father of computer gaming Mr Sid Meyer thank you very much thank

you thank you thank [Applause] you thank you very much it's great to be here um the uh the title of this talk is uh the psychology of game design uh everything you know is wrong um I was going to call it you you know um people are funny gamers are goofy uh it's all in your head or everything you know is uh questionable but I thought everything you know is wrong um kind of get the juices flowing maybe get a little more interaction um the uh the premise of this talk is that um is there any way to get the slides up in the back of the uh back of the hall um is that game play game design uh is a

psychological experience gameplay is a psychological experience um when I design a game a lot of my games are based on um historical topics uh the history of civilization railroads Pirates and the and the way I would generally approach those topics is you know make it realistic make it true make it about uh you know the more historical uh I can make the game the better it would be the more railro the game is the better the more piratey it is the better um and what I found in in taking that approach was that a lot of what I thought I knew was wrong and um the reason was because I really hadn't um taken into account what really happens in the player's head and once that became an important part of kind of my design process uh things started to become a lot clearer so um the premise here is that uh by acknowledging that that the game gameplay is really a a psychological experience we can um

uh save us ourselves a lot of time in certain areas it makes certain parts of the process um easier certain makes other parts of the process more difficult but at the end of the day I think we we end up with with a better gain um in the proc as we as we kind of uh explore this idea we're going to kind of run into a few psychological Concepts um ego Mania so one of them we'll have to explore basically if you play Civilization you are an egomaniac I mean it it says right on the box you know build a civilization to stand the test of time and you're there like oh yeah I can do that I can do that no problem so you are an egomaniac okay uh we'll also be uh looking into uh paranoia uh delusion and um self-destructive Behavior this is ways that players actually kind of make the game Less Fun for themselves things they do to to um to kind of detract from the of the game

and and ways that as a designer we can uh try and minimize those uh preempt those and and try and prevent that from happening so those are some of the things we'll be looking at uh in the course of this uh talk so the first area where psychology really kind of plays an important role in in in game design um something I call the the winner Paradox um in real life you don't always win there are um what 28 teams in the National Football League and only one of them gets to win the Super Bowl um there are 25 teams in the NBA uh you know they all go to the playoffs I guess but um at the end of the day there's only one team that gets to hold the golden trophy of NBA champion or whatever whatever that is so in in the real world um win the winner you don't always win um however in the world

games you pretty much always win um and the psychological phenomenon is that the player doesn't really complain about that doesn't object that's not a problem I don't get letters saying you know dear Sid I loved your game but I won way too much um and this is actually true of other forms of of entertainment uh you know Rambo we know at the end of the movie he's going to come out all right uh Sherlock Holmes always solves the mystery by the end of the of uh of of the of the chapter so I think this is kind of fundamental to entertainment but it's certainly something that that we're aware of um in designing video games that the player um we're looking the player's looking for a satisfactory conclusion that might not always U include winning but but very often it does um and this idea of kind of a satisfactory conclusion to the game I think is is something to really keep in mind uh in in the design process um

some of the tools that we have at our disposal to to create this journey for the player through the game um reward and and Punishment in other words you know good things happening to the player not so good things happening to the player there's an interesting dichotomy in how these are are deployed in games um when you reward the player um you know you discovered uh this cool place on the map here's 100 gold um the player you know glad L accepts that doesn't question you know did I did I really earn that is do I deserve that uh players are are very much inclined to to accept anything you give them uh gladly and feel it was their own um clever play their own uh incredible strategy that earned them that that cool reward on the other hand um if something bad happens to the player your game is broken there's something horribly wrong the game is cheating uh it's it's really important to uh to be very careful with the

setbacks that the player experiences is the game it's important that the player understand why those things happened and especially how to prevent that from happening uh the next time uh and anytime you can kind of plant that seed of the next time in the player's head you're you're well on your way to this idea of replayability that the player's going to play again next time I'm going to try something different maybe that might not happen so uh a big part of the value of of these games is in their replayability so any opportunity that you have to uh plant the seed of replayability I think is is is important and by really carefully handling the idea of punishment and setbacks where where you explain what why it happened and how it how it can be prevented the next time uh that's very important um in terms of rewards another key thing that that we think about is the first 15 minutes one of our rules of game design is that the first 15 minutes have to be uh really compelling really fun kind of

almost a foreshadowing of all the cool stuff that's going to happen later in the game and these rewards are really a way of of U making the player feel comfortable in this world uh letting them know that they're on the right track they're you know they're they're on their way cool stuff is happening and even cooler stuff is going to be happening later on and these the early rewards you can almost not reward the player enough in in the very early stages of the game to kind of get them invested get them committed get them to be uh part of the world that you're creating um now this doesn't negate the value of difficulty levels uh I'm not I've advocating uh an elastic uh difficulty that kind of always uh pushes the player forward and never provides any challenges um uh a number of years ago um I gave a talk on on difficulty levels and and was very convincingly uh made the point that four difficult levels were the perfect number

of difficulty levels there needed to be one for um introducing the player to the game where the where the player could basically always win one for the Casual player one for the U the player who's really experienced and then the fourth difficulty level which would be the ultimate Challenge uh I was wrong about that um apparently we need uh nine difficulty levels the latest civilization 4 has uh nine difficulty levels and it really points out how um this this idea of progress and advancement uh is is so rewarding for the player the reason we have these difficulty levels is to give the player this feeling that there's always another challenge out there that they've mastered this level they're ready to move on to the to the next uh level and that's another reward is this idea of uh of getting to the next level in the game um so you want your player to feel that they are above above average they're doing well and they're going to do even better as they go deeper into the game I

think that um again if you kind of follow the first 15minute rule it's very important that um you kind of start the player off with a very positive uh experience uh the Unholy Alliance uh this is a concept that I want to trademark I think this is a really cool idea I missed out on The Uncanny Valley um and I never trademarked interesting decisions but uh un holy Alliance I think is a as a a concept that um in many ways uh defines the relationship between the player and the designer um the the Unholy Alliance is an agreement that the player and the designer make with each other I'm going to pretend certain things you're going to pretend certain things and together we'll have a great experience um so one of the things that that we present we pretend as designers is that the player is is good you're really good that's

that's kind of a um a mantra from us that we want the player to feel good about the play experience and and themselves as they're playing and one example um perhaps of where this kind of went off the tracks is in the the history of flight simulators going back a number of years uh early on they were um kind of easy to play uh very accessible you shoot down a lot of planes you'd have a lot of fun um and then we got to where every succeeding iteration of flight simulators became a little more realistic a little more complex a little more of a simulation and um and pretty soon the player went from I'm good to I'm not good I'm I'm confused I'm I'm my plane is on FL fire and I'm falling out of the sky and and the fun kind of went out of them and I think we have to uh be be be aware of this phenomenon that um

uh it's all about the player the player is the star of of the game U their experien is what's key what's uh what's critical and keeping them feeling good about themselves is is certainly an important part of the experience that we provide for them um another part of this Unholy Alliance is the player's role the player really needs to be willing to suspend uh their disbelief they need to inhabit that character they need to take on that that role that you're providing them whether it's a king of a great civilization or managing a railroad or being a cool pirate uh the player has to uh be willing to suspend their disbelief that's part uh they're part of the of the of the bargain um when uh when we go to a movie my my my wife and I ask her after we've seen a movie you know how did you like the movie A lot of times she'll say well you know I came out of that movie twice or I never got into that movie or never came out of the movie um very aware of the the value of

suspending your disbelief to to uh to enjoy the experience or to make it uh more compelling so so part of our job is to help the player to to suspend their disbelief um and I think in some ways um those of us that are oldtime designers have a little bit of an advantage there in that we we worked in the good old days of of 16 color graphics and things like that where we we really had to work hard to uh to get the player to believe that what was happening on the screen was uh the management of a great Empire or or or building a railroad system or things like that so um I think I think having that experience was helpful in really understanding uh some of the challenges of of getting the player to suspend their their disbelief um one of the other agreements that we make I think in in this Unholy alliance with the player is um the the idea of

moral Clarity and let let me give you an example uh here's a a screenshot from uh a Civilization Revolution where we're negotiating with with the great genas Khan um and one of the comments that I got back from from my from play testers was um these leaders um you know are very kind of cranky and aggressive you know I'm I might be winning the battle against them they might be down to their last City and they're still kind of up there saying you know hey you know you're you'll never take me down I'm the greatest civilization of all time you know come on attack me I I are you you know and and they said well you know that just doesn't seem seem right they should they shouldn't have that attitude if I'm if I'm winning and and my my question was well you know what what would you like them to say do you want them to say oh you know please don't hurt me we we have only one city left and there's women and children there and you know please leave me alone um to me that's like a moral dilemma you know I

mean I want to win I want to capture their city it's genas Khan for goodness sake um but I'm faced with a moral moral dilemma um I think it's more satisfying and we and that's something we discovered it's more satisfying to win against um bad genas cranky genas um than it is if if you know there was some kind of a a moral Cloud over the actions that that you were taking um mad is a concept called uh mutually assured destruction um how many of you remember the Cold War let's hear it for the Cold War okay uh uh the idea of mutually assure destruction was that you know we had all these nuclear weapons and the Russians had all these nuclear weapons that we could just blow each other up anytime we

wanted to but the reason we didn't because we knew the other side had all these uh nuclear weapons and there's an amazing parallel to that in in the relationship between um game designers and the player um the player can actually destroy the experience at any time they want to they can quit the game they can uh you know play in a way in a different way they can they can sheet they can do all sorts of stuff to kind of destroy the experience and uh as a game designer we can we can uh mess up the game as well we we can kind of lose the threat of the fantasy there was a game that we were working on at micropro uh many years ago that kind of Illustrated this to me it was an adventure game and and basically um you kind of started at the beginning of the road and you had ventured your way on down till you got to the castle and you know finally got to see the king and and and had gone through this great adventure and when you got to the king

all of a sudden it was revealed to you that the king who you thought was a good guy is or actually a bad guy and and everything was turned around and you had to go back down the path you just uh come to back to the beginning to do the real thing that you were supposed to do in the first place so um to me that was um us messing up the game I mean basically you know I can imagine the design meetings you know imagine the look on the player's face when they realize that all this work they done has to be was in vain and the surprise and the the you know the amazing design you know they'll think what an amazing design to surprise me like I said no that's not what they're going to think they're going to think I just wasted eight hours on this stupid game and so they would at that point they would mutually assuredly destruct the game I believe and and so there are ways I think again that that that we need to be careful that we're true to um the the the story of the game and and and and and value of the players uh time another

part of this Alliance I think that we make with players is in the area of um of style uh things that convey uh what what the spirit of your game is you know what what's if if you start the game off and it's kind of you know have kind of a lightharted uh music Atmosphere cartoony Graphics you know and all of a sudden people's heads start exploding then you you you haven't uh you haven't lived up to the alliance you you you know you're you're you're not giving the player what you promised them you know on the other hand if you um you know if you have dark forur boating graph Sound and Music and and and ends up being a very simple game again you you you you you kind of are are fooling the player and uh you know if if I'm if I'm playing a game that starts off light and happy and and and uh and and cartoony and all of a sudden you know terrible things start to happen you know that's that's when the player uh you know loses their suspension of disbelief um and turns off your game and moves on

so I think um the the only way to kind of maintain this suspension of disbelief which is critical to keeping the player in the game is to really um uh make that a priority and and and use things like humor Style music Atmosphere all these all these tools to uh to be consistent and and keep the player in in your world so probably where it became most clear to me that um uh player psychology has absolutely nothing to do with rational thought was um in the process of putting together the battle system in in Civilization Revolution um my background is in mathematics and science and programming and I think of myself as a logical person um and what we did in C uh Revolution was we would show you before a battle what the O what the odds were in this example um our attacker here has

a 1.5 and the uh the defender The Barbarians have a a 0.5 um they they would have a one barbarians are basically one but since they're uncivilized they take a 50% penalty for that so they're only 0.5 and part of the part of the fun of being a designer is kind of throwing those little things into the game you know uncivilized minus 50% ah take that uh so in this case as a mathematician this would be a 3 to1 Battle 1.5 to to 2.5 you know 3 to one the attacker should win three times the defender should win one time out of four uh very clear very simple you know that's what mathematics says that's the way it should work um that's not the way our players saw it um basically at a certain point players feel they going to win the battle and um they would come to me and

said you know I had this battle it was 3 to one and I lost I was like well yeah you know 3 to one uh you're going to lose every once in a while said no no you don't understand it was 3 to one three three is big one is small I I had the big number I you know shouldn't I shouldn't I have won so I realized okay there's something going on here um so we adjusted our system um by actually breaking the battle up into kind of more Atomic little battles to make the the results come out more uh than the player expected um and then I watched some more players playing and um this time the player had had one against three the player had one the little tiny one and the the the AI had the big gigantic three um and I watched and and lo and behold the player won the battle and I said doesn't that feel

wrong to you that that that you with your little tiny one won against the huge three and they said no doesn't feel well at all uh I had you know clever tactics and strategy clean living it it all adds up to me winning uh so we realized that something was going on there psychologically that that isn't exactly mathematics I'm not sure what it is but it's not mathematics so we made a few adjustments and said okay now now are you happy with uh the way combat works and we found that there is this point and it's kind of around 3: to1 4: one where people do expect to pretty much win every time so so so okay we said okay that's fine we can we can live with that um anything else you know um they said well there's just one little thing um I'm okay you know here's a 2:1 battle

are you okay with you know winning most of the time but every now and then losing a 2 to1 the player said yeah yeah yeah you know two to one I'm I'm I'm I'm okay with that two to one I should I should win most of the time but every now and then I can lose so okay good um so what's your problem well I had this 20 to 10 battle and I lost it was 20 to 10 I said yeah 20 10 I had 10 more than the 10 I had 20 but it's that I said you know it's not 2 to 1 20 no that's 20 to 10 that's a whole different whole different odds than 2 to one okay so we um we actually adjusted you know okay I can see you have 10 more so that's a lot okay cool okay so now you know maybe they just went gave the game back now are you

happy well kind of but let me tell you what happened I had this two to1 battle and I lost which is okay you know we've had this discussion I understand now that every now and then I'm going to lose a 2 to1 battle but right after that I had another 2 to1 battle and I lost again how can that be how can I lose two two to1 battles I mean one I can understand the computer's have to get me obviously um okay so we actually take into account the results of previous battles uh now when we do our our combat calculations and um then the player was very happy um and and we don't really do this just to make the player happy but it's really uh um when when something happens in a battle like this that that feels wrong we we start to lose that suspension of disbelief the player comes out of the game and um and starts to you

know uh pay attention to other things that are going on not what's in the game so it's all part of the process of of really trying to maintain the suspension of disbelief as the player is playing the game and uh something really kind of uh clear and instructive about this process I think you know the interaction between logic and science and math and psychology uh kind of really became clear to me in this process and you know I think it it it it all makes sense but it's it's very uh counterintuitive and I think one of the things about um really including the psychological part of things in in in game thinking and design is it's going to run into a number of counter counter counterintuitive things and we'll see a little more of that later but um there there are many times where that actually can work to your advantage uh it's not always uh quite the process that we just uh went through um so this part is called my my bad uh times when I really screwed up and

kind of came to realize that it was because my brain was too logical and scientific and I hadn't really included a lot of the psychological aspects of uh what goes on in in games um the first bad bad thing I did in life was uh to make uh civilization a real time game the original prototype of of civilization was real time uh kind of inspired by uh Sim City and that genre of games where you're kind of watching something grow um you know Sim C I think it inspired a lot of designers to to Branch out uh in in kind of construction oriented games growth games um but what we found with the uh the real-time version of of civilization was that the um the player really uh became an observer uh was was watching what's going on was was really um just an observer and the kind of the the Mantra that we had in mind for for civilization was it's good to be king um

and we found that that when we made it a turn-based game all of a sudden you know lights went off uh all of a sudden the player was no longer an observer they were the the star of the game they were the the key uh key ingredient and and they made things happen um kind of ironic since Civ is now the poster child for for turn-based gaming but uh Civ uh actually started off as a real-time game and that was my that was my bad sorry about that um another um bad thing that I did um in the original civilization design was to uh include this idea of Rise and Fall um you know wouldn't it be cool if you built this uh cool civilization and then you know you had this kind of setback and it started to crumble you know and just before it disappeared you rescued it and you came back to win even more strong and powerfully than you did before wouldn't that be an awesome experience um no it U not really what we

found was that that just at the at the the cusp of the crumble most players would reload a save game and they would never experience the the Glorious rise that we had uh in mind for them so uh civilization is basically um a game about progress It's a game about rise rise and War rise uh um and not so much the fall um another Badness that I perpetrated um was in the original civilization Tech Tree um the idea that I had in mind was that technology would be this um interesting path of kind of Discovery through the darkness and you would kind of never know where the different Paths of Technology would lead you know it seemed to me totally wacky that um you would be thinking you know back in 3000 BC okay if I discover iron you know someday I'm going to have gunpowder and nuclear weapons you know

um so we randomized the tech tree we did a lot of things to make that process uh kind of mysterious uh but once players realized you know generally the second time they played that there was Gunpowder out there their only goal was you know how do I get to gunpowder most quickly you know give me give me uh the road you know don't randomize don't don't mysterious size this thing I know there's gunpowder out there you know you can't fool me um and we we understood that players want to be in control they really want to know what's going on and um the kind of broader lesson from this for me was that uh any any kind of Randomness really needs to be treated with a lot of care um we also had the idea in the original civilization of these kind of great natural disasters you know wouldn't it be cool to have like volcano croca blowing up or the uh the plague and all these kind of famous world events happening in in the game um yeah kind of

randomly um no it wouldn't um again whenever anything random happens to the player um paranoia strikes in paranoia was one of our early um uh psychological feelings uh the player feels that the computer did that rolled that random number just to make their life more difficult or they were just about to win um so random events have to be treated very very carefully uh because if they're significant um uh basically the player will find the worst and and and and most paranoid explanation for what just happened in the game uh Randomness at a at a low level certainly um helps a lot to variety replayability things like that but really need to be careful with Randomness um at a at a really significant uh level um the um I'm going to skip the cover action rule that's kind of boring

um the the dinos game was another mistake that I made um while back I I I gave a talk called uh you know Dinosaurs the three glorious failures um basically that was a game that I thought would be very cool tried to create uh did three different versions one was a RTS type game one was more of a strategy game one was actually a card game um and none of them really kind of jelled together and and and I was disappointed I thought dinosaurs are very cool and we got may be able to make a cool game about this but it it it never really uh came together for reasons I I'm not quite sure of yet but um what's what's interesting to me though is that after civilization that's almost the best known game when I talk to people when I run into people you know besid civilization the other question is where's the dino game you know so this game that I never made is like the second most interesting game for for for

gamers so um that was my bad but I'll um oh life is not over yet um and civilization Network this is a new game that we're working on uh civilization for the Facebook platform um a lot of kind of fun game Concepts that that we get to play with here uh you know uh people playing on kind of an interesting schu SCH you know maybe a little bit of time a day a little more time a day uh kind of making the game interesting if you're playing at the same time as other players or if you're playing at different times with other players uh the idea that you're playing with friends so that you won that we can really focus a lot on Cooperative gameplay also include competitive gameplay individual gameplay all different kinds of gameplay mixed together so this is really kind of a fun uh Fun World to take civilization into and one of the ideas that we that we played with here was uh the idea of being able to give gold to other players

you know it was like wouldn't it be neat wouldn't this really kind of lead to all sorts of interesting uh possibilities if we if we put into the game the the ability to give gold to other players could say you know I'll give you this much gold if you do this for me or you know I feel sorry for you uh you know I'm going to give you 300 gold um or you know hey please give me some gold you know whatever um there' be this fascinating U kind of diplom diplomatic negotiating Dynamic that would that would arise in the game um what we found however was that nobody ever gave gold to anybody else no just the thought did not cross their mind to give gold to other people um I don't know what this says about the human condition or the future of mankind but it's kind of a sad sad commentary I think uh another another bad idea that that that I had okay one of the things that I I kind of uh promised in the uh the blur to

this presentation was to explain how to uh make uh save millions of dollars in in in game design and so if you're interested in that part of the presentation this would be the time to pay attention um one of the techniques I think that's very very uh important in making AAA games on a on a Sho string is to really use the player's imagination as as a very key tool um no matter how good your graphics are no matter how cool your technology is what's happening in the player's mind the player can always visualize something uh more compelling more Dynamic uh so so the goal of everything we do is to make something happen in the player's imagination that is uh that is really cool and and often we don't have to literally show everything in the game to make that happen if if the player can imagine what's going on you know imagine what Napoleon is doing when he's not actually on the screen uh imagine what's going on

behind the scenes then uh we save uh a lot of money by not having to create all those assets and do all those things and one example again from uh Civilization Revolution is uh is the screen here um it says foreign rulers seek your favor the Sultan of Zanzibar sends you a caravan of exotic gifts including seven dancing bears the the princip here is something I call go with the flow in other words um if it's something the player is already inclined to believe if it's something the player that wants to believe it's very easy to make that happen in the in the player's imagination the player looks at this and says oh oh yeah foreign foreign leaders should be seeking my favor um and uh you know exotic gifts cool they should be sending me and seven you know dancing bears that's that's very cool so it's it's happening up you know in your mind the Bears are dancing it's all happening up there uh because you know I'm in kind

inclined to agree with this sentiment right here and um we actually don't have any dancing bears there there's no real there's no Sultan of Zanzibar there's no caravan but by going with the flow we've saved ourselves millions of dollars in not having to create all these models and textures and assets and all this kind of stuff uh because the player is going to is going to wants to believe this and um all we have done is basically put up uh ACH box now that allows us to save our our our resources our time our energy for the things that that are kind of harder to sell the things that the player might not be so inclined to believe or or kind of want to see uh brought to to to to life with all sorts of cool graphical stuff um another technique for saving millions and millions of dollars in designing games is to to use uh take advantage of what the player already knows um players bring lots of their own

information to games and they don't have to uh a lot of that doesn't have to be reinforced uh literally P you know pirates for example a game where uh people bring a lot of um of their own knowledge to the game so if you know they see a a swordsman with a black curly mustache you know they probably know that that's going to be the evil U meta villain that they're going to have to sword fight and and and we don't need a whole lot of backstory to explain you know how he got that way and what his childhood was like etc etc uh black curly mustache you know okay bad guy time for a sword fight um millions of dollars saved in backstory um so these are just a couple of techniques by which um you can kind of focus I think your energy and your resources on uh what's going to be really impressive what's going to be new and what's going to be hard to sell in the game and and and take advantage of of of things that the player kind of going to almost

automatically provide uh through their own uh imagination let's talk about artificial intelligence uh for a moment um AI is often a place where psychology really comes strongly into into play because um the AI kind of represents your opponent the enemy and whenever you're in in a kind of conflict situation um your psychological juices are are are are flowing even more strongly you know you're really committed and invested in that in that conflict and so um a lot of uh players project a lot onto the onto the AI because they feel this this competitive situation and there's there's a number of different philosophies about AI um and and you my point of view is not necessarily the only point of view there may be other other points of view but I look at um AI I as one element in creating an

integrated uh overall experience for the player um in in a in a single player game um like most of the games we're talking about the again the key the star of the game the key experience is the experience that the player is is is is having um and so a AI is kind of a tool to to craft that experience to customize it to make it uh seem even more uh real to the player um there's point of view which is that the AI should act like another player another person should have humanish characteristics and should feel like another another player um I don't actually subscribe to that philosophy there's there's a couple things that that I've seen that that make me shy away from that I'm not saying it's absolutely the wrong idea but um in my experience um if an AI has human characteristics one thing we you know talk about is um I want it to surprise me I want it to be tricky and clever um no I don't I don't think when

AI does that most players feel that uh it's it's being stupid it's being uh it's it's dumb because there's a fine line between uh between clever and dumb and the player is inclined to uh to see the AI as being dumb um if the if the player if the AI does something really brilliant the player will assume that the AI peaked behind the scenes and looked at my numbers and looked where my stuff was was and and and cheated basically um so there's a lot of kind of psychological um stuff that goes on uh if the AI acts in ways that are that are kind of out of out of the norm and and they generally uh lead to the player kind of jumping out losing that suspension of disbelief and trying and kind of blaming the AI for for um uh what's going on in the game so um in the way that I approach AI is to is to make it almost a um a metric kind of a a

solid competition against which you play but which you can uh kind of feel and and your advancement as you as you go on you you you get this real sense of of progress there's this Improvement metric that the the AI is kind of predictable kind of solid and steady and and you're the one doing the brilliant things and the clever things and and and getting better and better versus the the AI another thing that AI can do is give you uh feedback uh when you're talking to the the leaders in in Civilization they often comment uh upon what you're doing and how you know whether it's good or bad or whether they like it or don't like it um when we're playing a s a single player game uh kind of feedback um validation is really important because you're kind of the only person there and and these AI characters are kind of your only friends at that point in time so having them acknowledge what you're doing be aware of it is really validating for the player and is uh something something we found in Civil re Revolution was really important that

that the more the more that the other leaders in the game kind of reflected on what you were doing and and reacted the more that the more the player felt that that uh somebody understood them you know kind of oh you you know what I'm going through and and the the um they weren't just kind of playing in a vacuum they were playing in a interesting uh World okay um talked a little bit earlier about self-destructive behavior um ways that the player actually can can damage their their gameplay experience um and one of the the responsibilities that we think we I think we have as designers is to protect the player uh from themselves and there are a couple ways where places where this really becomes an issue um one is how do you handle the idea of load and and save um I've watched people play Civilization where before every battle they save the game if they don't win

they reload that saved game play the battle again save it until they win the game to me that's not really playing the game that I designed that's not the experience uh that that that I think is most interesting it really doesn't require to have a flexible strategy it doesn't kind of require to think uh think ahead if you know you're going to win every battle the game I think is a lot less fun um so in Civilization Revolution we actually save the random number um with the save file so that if you reload the save file you get the same result in your battle you know hahaha that'll you know that'll teach you I guess people did find a way to get around that but um by providing the player perhaps too easy access to loading and saving you you may actually be diminishing the experience for the player and that is something to think about in game design um in in Pirates we actually only allow you to load and save the game when you're in a port um as you as you Voyage around um you need

to live with the consequences of that of that Voyage um and and by and kind of by building it into the fantasy of the game I think it's a little less obvious that we are trying to uh kind of control your load save Behavior but that's something to think about is finding ways to to build your load save restrictions kind of into the the fantasy the story uh of the game um another um area where I think we can we can damage the the gameplay experience for the player is in providing them too many options settings uh things that they can kind of customize in the middle of the game uh there's all sorts of good things that the player should be able to customize you know whether you think the joystick works this way whether you're left-handed or right-handed you all those things are are key but there's been a a tendency that I think has kind of Gone Away more recently but to kind of open up all sorts of gameplay play decisions to the player and to me you

know that that's kind of that's kind of wrong we're we're as designers we're here to make the game and and not to kind of hand it over to the player and say you know I'm not sure how this game should work you know you you figure it out so kind of being careful with the types of things that you open up to player uh is is U is one thing to think about um another is is cheat codes again it's I think it's a way that players can um can actually uh damage the the gameplay experience for themselves um I remember when we were working on civilization 2 uh I looked at uh Ryan RS brought the the game and I looked at it and there on the main menu was cheat you know it was like play a quick game play a random map uh play a game cheat and I said you know Brian cheat you know on the main menu said yeah it's cool you know you can bring in tanks in the Middle Ages and run over people and you know people it's cool and and I don't disagree that it's is cool in fact I watched my my son when he was playing

you know have a wonderful time bringing in all these tanks and running rough shot over the the Pikeman in the Middle Ages but I like but Brian you know just the main menu can't we just bury it one or two levels deeper cuz you know I kind of want the players to play the real game first before they start experimenting with the cheats and the Egg the Easter eggs and things like that so um um The Good the good good news is that this this cheating idea actually led directly to the idea of modding uh which is very powerful uh certainly uh was civilization 2 was was was a breakthrough for for civilization and and added incredible amount of variety and energy to the civilization Series this is a a picture from the fall from Heaven uh and so there there's a happy ending to the story of of of cheats um and and modding has been a very cool cool addition kind of allowing players to exercise their uh

their inner designer and and become part of the the community process so um cheating not so sure but modding is definitely a cool thing um so another kind of psychological skill I think that we need to develop as designers is um listening to the to the player um I'm kind of assuming at this point that you've bought into the idea that uh game design is an iterative process you know starting with the Prototype and kind of building on that uh getting a lot of play getting a lot of feedback um build building a game over time and if you do that you're going to spend a lot of time talking to the players the people that are playing your game getting their feedback and and taking advantage of that to make your game better um but what I found in that process is that it's it's it's really not that useful to kind of uh take literally what your players are saying

to you um there are um different different kind of ways that player players will react to to the game um one is to kind of provide you with Solutions you know uh I think you should take this out I think you should change this um I think you know this should work this way uh some occasionally that's useful but a lot of times that really doesn't take into account um other parts of the game that that would break it etc etc and it's tempting to kind of discard that you know that that's not going to work I know that's not going to work we might have even tried that um but I think it's important as a as a designer to get get some real value out of that to drill down to what is motivating that solution what is what is wrong what is what is the kind of thing that the player is feeling or doing that is unsatisfying that leads them to to kind of suggest the solution and a lot of times you can find something that uh is consistent with with your game design and your game ideas that will solve that problem for them it might not be the exact solution that they proposed but it

will solve the problem and everybody everybody's happy um another type of um comment that you might get back is is kind of the opposite of that it's it's an emotion you know it doesn't feel right it I'm frustrated I'm confused I you know again no very little information and again it's kind of our job as designers to figure out what is it what is it that's causing that emotion you know what what can I change um to to make that emotion go away if it's a bad emotion or or to strengthen that if it is a um if it's a positive emotion um another important oops don't look at that slide um the last thing I think is important about talking to your players is is knowing their individual personalities um a lot of times it's very helpful in in in deciphering decoding what they're saying because a certain player you know might not like that type of game and is never going to

be happy uh there are there are certain players we call uh Mr anecdotal who will be convinced something has happened that you know is impossible but you know we'll just kind of harp on that one thing that that that there are people that are very generous you know kind of afraid to say anything bad about the game you almost have to force them I know you hated something about it come tell me tell me what it is um so kind of knowing the personal ities of uh your players is is important in again in deciphering um what they're really trying to tell you and uh kind of really tapping into this resources which is really invaluable uh the gameplay experience of of your testers as you're playing the game so what is the point of all this you might be asking um kind of like to wrap it up with this idea of the epic journey I think this is what we're trying to create for the player is an an Epic Journey I think I should trademark this

one too epic journey keep that in um you know there's so many genres so many styles of games so many different ways of gaming but I think in a way they they can kind of all be encapsulated in this idea of an an Epic Journey and how do we use psychology to make our journey more epic and our epic more Journey like you might be asking um here are a couple of tools um that we have to make that happen um I come back again and again to the idea of interesting decisions um that's really the core the the the the basic fundamental pieces of your game are these decisions that you're giving the player and um the process the journey is the process of exploring all these decisions and seeing how they relate to each other and and and playing through them so um think about the decisions that you're giving your player um are they ones that that that

encourage them to project to think into the future you know if I do this what is going to happen do they have interesting um kind of not taken paths and the most the coolest decisions are the ones where the player chooses path a but they're kind of saying well next time you know that path B looks kind of interesting too so I'm going to play I'm going to play next time and try that other path those are the really powerful decisions if you can if you can build them into your game you you're you're you're uh well on your way to creating the epic epic journey um learning in progress um this is fundamental to the journey the idea that you are constantly progressing you're constantly um at a better place than you were before you're smarter than you were before you're more powerful um it's kind of fundamental but it's easy to lose track of this I think that you cannot uh reward and acknow and and and reflect this progress too much in a game it's

very important for the player to know how they're doing what progress you know what value has this last half hour this last hour been to me in terms of of of of playing um you I think World of Warcraft is a great job of this you know the the level system you makes it very clear uh the kind of progress you made and and their their ways of building this idea which is very powerful uh into into your game one more turn this is another way of of making the journey epic um it's concept that that we relate back to civilization but it applies to almost every game the idea that the player is constantly kind of leaning forward they're anticipating things that are going to happen later theyve they they're looking forward to their plans coming together they're wondering what's around the next Corner uh you can foreshadow you can you can kind of uh just let people know that cool stuff is going to going to happen soon and it draws them very much into this um one more turn phenomenon and it it kind of all comes

back to this idea of of replayability that if you if you create a a fantastic Journey um and the player comes to end of that Journey they suddenly realize that that this is only one segment of this Epic Journey this this journey is much more epic than they even thought because it's only this has only been a part the Epic was a part it's like epic squared or epic cubed or or multi this journey is multi- epic um and replayability kind of plants that seed and and and and makes that happen for your game so these are some tools some psychological tools that uh that that make your game the coolest epic journey of all time so now you know everything thank you [Applause] [Music]

[Music] we have a little bit of time for questions um there are some folks with microphones um I'm sure much of what I've said has been wrong and you're going to correct me on it um but I'd be happy to take any questions or thoughts uh if there's anybody who would like to ask a question look for some someone with a green raise your hand and look for somebody with a green shirt and a microphone right [Music] here what do you normally tell your animators designers artists exactly how you want uh the art for particular games to feel like what do you what do you how do you explain to them what you have in your in Your Vision uh the question is how do I explain to animators and artists what I what my vision is what I want them to do um there's a couple Dimensions to that a

lot of times I will actually build a prototype myself using um pieces from other games and things like that that kind of uh create the big picture so they know what what how how what they're going to what they're doing fits into uh the bigger picture one of the issues I think with art is often it's easy to get kind of a keyhold and only focus on the one thing that you're making um the other thing I think is important is to kind of let your artist be be artists be creative um create you know put a pretty big box around what you want and let them surprise you with something that's even cooler than than than you imagin so um you know one is having a prototype that they can always go back to if it's if the question is you know how does this fit into the game what is it supposed to do uh but then you know let them be artists I think that um games as a as a collaborative medium uh really need to take advantage of all the talents that you have uh available to work on it so I I try to let the artists uh you know be as creative as they can as they can

be question here hi um uh you sort of talked about player egoism and that sort of approach to that players come come approach games with and I guess I'm having a hard time uh like figuring out like do you think that you know this egoistic approach to games is kind of prefigured by the themes that that you give them like you know you're going to build a civilization you're going to become a railroad tycoon or do you sort of pick these themes because you anticipate that this is what players like how players want want to feel with when they play a game I think one of the the fundamental attractions of gaming is that you can go to places that you can't go in in real life that you can inhab inhabit characters that you probably don't have the opportunity to do in real life and I think it's you know it's kind of the Walter midi fantasy I I get to be um a dashing swashbuckling pirate you know I get to to run a great civilization so we

definitely look for topics that are that are epic that are big that that kind of really empower the player and make them much larger than life because I think that's what that's what you're looking for in a gameplay experience is is something to kind of take you out of the real world and into a into a cooler World take you out of your real life into a cooler life take you out of maybe your real character into a into a cooler character so um epic is definitely part of our our our thinking in putting together these game worlds because they are um I think at the end of the day you know that that Journey just feels cooler if it's been through thousands of years of history or through the the hard the Spanish main ending up with that that horribly evil guy with a mustache you know Etc so yes we definitely choose kind of Epic uh larger than life situations because I think it makes a a more compelling game and it Al Taps into a lot of common knowledge and and and and and fantasy which we we can then use

in in building the [Music] game question over here hey uh with the limited amount of time that people have to play games like as an adult wouldn't it make more sense to uh like make a single Epic Journey rather than having them play through it like two to the end times um I think people appreciate um the Val of replayability I mean there's sequels out there you know so if you if you had a great experience with a game you you often want to do it again you know it's I I don't think people um uh people do have a limited amount of time to play games but I think they select what games they want to play uh in that limited amount of time and and it's even more important for that reason that that they're playing a game that they like so replayability kind of allows you to play a game that you know you're going to like uh with that limited amount of time that you have here hello um I have a question about

the flight simulator point you made earlier yes um I've worked on racing games for a while and the last one we released was Midnight Club 4 last year which critically got slammed because everybody thought it was too hard and we worked really hard to make it so you didn't have to win to progress and succeed in the game but the conception was that people were really really frustrated when they weren't coming in first all the time and I was wondering if you had any advice there solutions for trying to condition the player to accept that they're not going to win all the time you are definitely uh walking uphill there walking into the wind it's I think the expectation is out there that that you're going to win I think you have to do a lot of work to to make it fun you know not to win the certainly realism and authenticity are are cool things but um you have to work hard to I think to sell that idea um uh even you know even I mean I'm a

big Gran Turismo fan and but even that game I think you you still end up winning uh very often even though it kind of has the uh the real feel of of of authenticity um you know good luck but but that's that's a tough that's a tough one over here hi you were talking about how um it's really good to present the player with choices and um when it comes to a lot of games lately they've been do a lot of the moral choices like good or evil is it more positive to do that and have the player expect a certain outcome or would you rather see games start moving into the morally gray area where it's more uncertain that's a good question I I am not a fan of of morally gray games I think that um this Alliance this Unholy Alliance that we made with the player to me uh excludes that unless you're very clear upfront that this is a game about gray moral choices because the the

you're asking the player to invest this time one of the analogies I use is like like uh showing up in your first day of high school you know you're kind of wondering what are the rules here what who are the cool people who you know what how does this this this place work and you're so you're kind of very vulnerable early in the game and you want to kind of be uh encouraged and and and kind of know that this time that you're investing and spending is is taking you down the right path and these you know the idea the morally great choices and things like that I think it always plants the idea in the player's mind that you know I might be on the wrong track here and all this time I'm investing now this might be just taking me off in the wrong direction and that's a I think that's a that's an opportunity for the player to kind of say you know maybe I should try something else so I think you have to be very clear if your game is about morally gray ambiguous choices that you you know that you're going to all make sure that wherever they go something interesting is going to happen that they're not kind of going to be allowed to go off on some deadend

uh path because they made a poor moral choice here uh given the number of trends that you have seen come and go during the course of your career what would you guess would be the next uh big Trend in gaming where do you see the Avant guard idea coming from in the future um it it's a really cool time I think to be a game designer we certainly have seen um the indie games movement uh put a lot of new energy into into gaming you know we have have new platforms uh whether it's Facebook or or or the the live or places browser games a lot of places where uh the whole kind of big budget thing has has gone away and opened up a lot of new opportunities for um for gaming you know where do I see gaming going I think this is the year of civilization frankly um [Applause] [Music] um I think there's a civilization five

maybe coming this year and civilization Network so you know in the immediate future I think this is the year of civilization but uh F looking further out um there's so much energy and dynamism I think in this industry that it's it's part of I think what keeps us you know every day looking looking to see what's new and that's part of the big part of the excitement I think of being part of this industry thank you over here no okay hi uh throughout your presentation you've talked a lot about how people hate failure in voo games and um avoid it I would like you to speak a little bit more on how you can make a video game that just keeps getting better and better or if that is possible um and how you personally avoid the feeling of losing or failure in in the video game um I think almost every video game is built on the idea of of of progress um now that doesn't mean that progress

is free or automatic or guaranteed um but the player wants the basic experience to be one of getting better learning progressing um but the more that feels earned the more satisfying it is so in order for that to feel earned there has to be uh the potential of a of a negative outcome the potential of something bad happen happening and and when that happens uh I think one of the key points is that the play understand why it happened and what the player can do to prevent that from happening the next time I think that that that's a win-win in many ways because the players is now thinking about another way of playing about playing again but you've also added to the value of the the next piece of progress because it was one in spite of this adversary adversity so managing the kind of reward and Punishment uh process uh is is really fundamental to to game design over here over here hello hi he uh you talked

earlier about trying to maintain the players's idea of winning always wanting to win and the the whole problems um arising with the load save issues and a lot of times when I was playing Civ um even though I'd win the game it much be became a point about trying to beat my own score and in order to do that I had to take much more of an edge by you know and it did come down to that whole load save issues I hated it when I lost a Wonder or there was something else I needed to get me to the next point so my question you is how do you accommodate your design when the players not just trying to beat the machine but beat themselves I think that's another another dimension of progress in one way that that you feel that progress against your own own score you know whether you lose the whether you use the load save mechanism to do that or not it's kind of your own moral choice I think you know I mean games give you many many ways to play and you get to pick the one that's hopefully most satisfying to you um you know some of the talk about self-destructive Behavior was was was kind of oriented towards you know maybe there's some things we shouldn't make that easy because at the end of the day

you you might not feel as good about your Victory if you use some of these things and in in uh Civ Revolution we we uh we actually had these kind of Iron Man modes or or you know we would actually keep track of the number of load saves that you did and that would be uh mentioned along with your score so you could kind of you know by doing it um without loading and saving for example that would actually be something that would be noted on there and you know let you feel even better about your your final score hi Sid over here all the way to your left um in regards to the Social Network gaming um there is a rampant kind of issue with cloning of games so there's like 12 farm games and you 22 Island games and 73 uh Sim games now how do you foresee the protection of of your your IP or your your kind of your big civilization Network cuz it's an issue

for everyone who's developing on social networks that's that's definitely an issue um I think my role is to make the best game that I can make um we're doing we're playing the game almost daily right now and we're putting in all sorts of cool stuff so you know I think the way that we try and deal with that is to make the best way that we guess best best game that we can and and and in that way make it very difficult to duplicate CU someone would have to go through that same testing experience and and trying all the same dead ends that we tried that didn't work before the before getting to kind of the the what what does work um you I think that question is is my role as as a designer is just to make the best game I can make uh what the industry does is it's kind of out of my hands but uh I I love my job so I'm not not complaining know that already right here hi uh thanks for the talk loved it um my question is about player

expectations do you always have to Aces to these have you ever purposefully flown in the face of what the player expects and um you're about the example of the math and the soldiers 3 versus one is there a deeper immersion achieved if a player's belief is rectified and he gains a feeling that he understands the the player or the the mechanic rather than just having a vague notion of math that he was using before um I think the the fundamental purpose for for dealing with the uh the combat odds situation the way we did was to not give the player a reason to to jump out of the game to suspend uh their disbelief that was kind of our primary primary goal um what I kind of realized um though in going through that process was that in some ways the player is actually right about what they're feeling that um in in a in a computer

game you know we we say the odds are 3 to one but the player isn't actually rolling the dice you know that they don't actually see that process that's all happening somehow in some mysterious background code that some designer wrote you know that they may or may not trust and and so that they're kind of at the mercy of the designer so if if if bad things happen there that they can't see the reason for this paranoia is really going to kick in so that by making the odds uh the outcomes kind of conformed to what the players expectations were we kind of damped down this paranoia and also keep them keep them in the game uh so uh it was that was kind of the thinking process that we went through uh you we we don't always try and meet the players expectations exactly I mean there have to be surprises have to be new things um you know I put ballroom dancing into the new Pirates game that was a surprise to a lot of people might have been one of the things on the my bad list but um so we do try and

surprise players but um not in kind of fundamental things that that determine their success or failure hi thank you a great talk kind of a followup to that question in the way that your nine difficulty levels work uh does the math get more honest at the higher difficulty levels and second follow-up question your personal preferences in gaming uh do you enjoy games that are unabashedly difficult like Demon Souls um the first question was uh how are the difficulty levels implemented um that's there's no simple answer to that question I think that um again AI difficulty to me is a full range of tools that we use to create a customized experience for the player you know the first difficulty level um is one that basically uh takes you on a tour through the game you know you're you're probably going to win at the end but you're going

to get to see all the cool stuff that happens and you'll you'll understand that that the next time it'll be more difficult and you know with Civ in particular the highest difficulty level is um you know something that has to totally kick your butt every time or else you don't feel satisfied it's it's a point of Honor just to survive you know the the highest level so um we're we're customizing those difficulty experiences using all sorts of of different of different tools um do I enjoy games that are very are very difficult um generally not I guess the problem for me is um I I pick up a game and if I'm not really having fun in the first 15 or or or 20 minutes uh I'm I'm going to say you know I'm not going to really invest the the 10 or 20 hours it's probably going to take to start to get some fun out of this game or really explore it so I'm I guess a pretty typical consumer in that in that fashion over here um during your uh slide

presentation on my bad and the design mistakes there was a brief me mention of an Espionage game mechanic that you didn't feel was very interesting to talk about can you briefly uh summarize what that was and what you learned uh yeah that was we call that the covert action rule covert action is a game I wrote uh many many years ago um and basically it was an Espionage game and there was this kind of interestingly complex mystery that you were trying to unravel with uh people in different cities doing different things to do dastardly uh things to the world and in the process of unraveling that mystery you would go into these action sequences where you'd sneak through a building and open safes and clues and guards would chase you and you'd follow cars around and you'd un un break codes and and and unravel these circuits all sorts of cool action sequences and puzzles and and based on our Pirates experience we thought that was very cool the pirates for us was a really neat combination of action and role playing and strategy and all this kind of stuff working together uh but

what we found was that um there were really two games fighting very hard against each other that uh you were in the mystery part of the game and you trying to put together the clues and figure things out and you say okay I need to go to Cairo you know and break into this building and and that's the next you know it's going to take me to the next step of this mystery and you do that and You' kind of have this cool action sequence and you'd pop out of the building at the end you know maybe 5 or 10 minutes later and I was like you know what was I what was that mran what was I why did I go into that building and you know kind of the the two games are not necessarily better than one was the the the the the rule we call the covert action rule is that the the center of gravity of your game kind of has to be in one place everything else kind of supports that enhances that but you got to figure out is a center of gravity in the action is it in the strategy uh you know where how does that all work and and and we kind of when we look back at at Pirates we we realize that the center of gravity of that game is kind of in the strategy that the the um the chip battles the

sword fights Etc are kind of quick and and and clear enough that you you don't lose a threat of of what's going on um when you when you come back to the the strategy game I think we have time for one more question is there someone yes thank you uh when I was much younger I had a lot of time to devote to playing your games I I loved the detail and as getting older and I'm getting all these responsibilities I'm finding the detail overwhelming so I'm wondering is is a situation like mine the the Aging gamer is that playing a role in your game development process and how are you if so how are you dealing with it uh I i' have to say yes I mean I'm I'm an aging gamer myself um and and I think there uh we have certainly evolve from from a kind of a a hardcore based hardcore gamer based uh industry to to now we're seeing all these diverse audiences for for games and I think in in a way

Civilization Revolution was was kind of my response to uh complex complexity of games I think there there are players that that don't have you know 10 or 20 hours of 40 hours 10 15 whatever amount of time it takes to fully enjoy the fabulous Civilization PC experience uh but you don't always have that uh you might have a you you know and you might want to play a game with uh someone who's not that deeply into civilization so Civ Revolution was um an experience that was was geared towards that that audience and it was something that I found very interesting to design it kind of tapped into in many ways kind of where I was in terms of gaming I wanted to sample a a lot of different games um and so you know I think we're we we're seeing this incredible diversity of of games these days I mean from games that take only a few minutes to play games that you play every a little bit of time every day games that you sit down with and totally devour that take you know tens and tens of hours I mean it's a great time to be a gamer it's a great time to be in this industry because we

have all this variety all these possibilities but there's definitely I know an aging gamer demographic there's a Casual Gamer demographic there's hardcore Gamers there's all sorts of of Gamers and once a year we all get to get together here in San Francisco and celebrate ourselves so thank you again for coming and it's been been a pleasure