Mr Meier’s keynote speech at GDC was an interesting one, I was drawn to its promise “everything you know is wrong”, that and the fact that I really enjoyed a game of Civilisation back when I had any significant amount of spare time. I liked the idea that I’d learn something about myself as a gamer and how that’d impact development; the psychology of gaming, contentious, yet interesting stuff indeed. Sadly, it didn’t seem as if the talk really gave what it was supposed to, here are my impressions on it.
The catalyst to the speech was that when Sid first started to design games he didn’t consider what was going on inside the gamer’s head, instead he was trying to pursue some purist goal of fidelity to his chosen area with the assumption that this would make a good game. Now Sid, having been designing games since I was probably being potty trained, has had enough experience to know that realism is a fickle mistress, there is a difference between was is realist and what is perceived to be so by the gamer. Shame he couldn’t just say that really. Instead he sets out to outline various traits of the player, which whilst sounding good on paper, didn’t really come together all that well on the day. I won’t try and outline them all because they are scatter-gunned, but I’ll point out those which I found most important here. There is the egomaniac tendencies (i.e. The player thinks they can create “a civilisation that can stand the test of time”), they think they’re better than they are. This also leads into “The winning paradox”, the utopian ideal with games – you (basically) always win. Obviously this is has real founding in life, it comes with wins and looses, Sid used the NFL and NBA to illustrate this, only one team out of 20-odd will win. This creates the first major problem Sid is describing, a search for realism overshadowed by a lust for victory.
Amongst other things, Sid outlines (and patents) the term “unholy alliance” in reference to the pact which gamers and developers have to make in order for them to both enjoy games. Gamers have to pretend its real – therefore devs have to promote this. This is based on a number of different factors, but is essentially based on “suspending disbelief”, which should be pretty evident by now. This though, is problematic and that is because of what Sid discussed when he started the speech – his quest for realism. Because he’s a mathematician first and foremost, his games are created with equations and coding, rather than narrative and emotion. So, when he presents a player with a battle whose odds of winning are 3:1 it is perfectly fair, he says, for the player to loose one in four of the fights – i.e. Expect to loose gamer! However, not everyone can appreciate this, or perhaps they find the potential mathematical uncertainty frustrating and “cheap”, but for what ever reason Sid said a 3:1 chance of winning (for his typical gamer) should mean a win every time rather than three in four (because 3 is a bigger number than 1, ergo big beats small every time). So, humouring the player he made the odds “fairer”, however this isn’t enough. Sid then outlines a number of other odds in which the player shows a lack of knowledge for probability and logic and essentially how his games have had to change because of this. This section probably should have been titled “why the player is stupid”, Sid appeared to be a little bitter at this behaviour.
The following few moments are remarks on things he is sorry about over his career, the list might seem to contain some welcome admissions for the die-hard fans including things like “real time Civ,” the randomised tech tree, natural disasters and not making “the Dinos game”. I believe elements in his next section however, should probably belong on his “my bad” list. Sid goes onto describe how to make “AAA games on a shoestring budget”. Firstly this was probably here to make people happy that he’s mindful of financial difficulties, although I can’t help be think Sid may have lost it, just slightly. His points here are based on two things, leave out expensive graphic design and don’t bother writing extensive narrative, just rely on cultural memory. I think I should explain this a bit better for those who haven’t seen it. The first point was based on the fact that in Civ Revolution they illustrated riches from one empire being bestowed on the player shown simply as a line of text, i.e. “you received seven dancing bears”. Apparently the fact that the player will read this and then imagine the dancing bears will be enough, no need to go to the expensive of showing it, simply telling it will be fine. I’m not going to patronise people with the “show, don’t tell” argument, it just seemed really strange that in 2010 a game designer was opting for text approach. The second point was a lousy one really, that games can simply rely on stereotypes to tell the story rather than paying someone to write something advanced, detailed and well thought out. If you see a pirate with a black, curly moustache and a sword you can tell that he’s evil – no need to write some complicated reasoning for it. Okay, I know this is money saving we’re talking about here, but this is lazy on a shameful level, whilst stereotypes can be useful for limited purposes, I hardly think you can base antagonists, protagonists etc on them (although some games do still try and come off worse for it).
Sid then goes on to give another almost basic lesson which is “listen to the gamer” and interpret the answers to work out what drives them, rather than taking it at face value. I can only speak for myself when saying this but this isn’t anything new, even coming from Mr Sid Meier himself. The final moments are spent describing the process of making the epic journey of games, more epic and the apparent holy grail of gaming, replayabilty. This is down to choice making, progression and apparently Word of Warcraft does this well (seems like over 11 million people can’t be wrong). I couldn’t help thinking that all I already knew about games and the gamer wasn’t wrong, so the premise the speech is based on is perhaps a little thin. It might seem like I have ripped on Meier rather heavily here, that is not to detract from what was a very interesting speech, just a shame it seems to come from one of dinosaurs of games design, someone we should learn from, but ultimately someone who will be/has been surpassed – I think the remarks at the conference, no matter how well received, are a sign of this.
*Alright, I know that my title might seem a little hyperbolic, but so was Sid’s!
Chr15 6r33n (Follow me on Twitter at chrisgreen87)
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