THE 400 PROJECT RULE LIST              © 2006 Hal Barwood & Noah Falstein  All Rights Reserved  version GDC06 032306     ID Imperative Statement Explanation in 250 words or less Domain Contributors 1 Fight Player Fatigue Games are a challenge, and playing takes effort — actively work to keep the player involved, and make sure the appeal of your game always exceeds its difficulty.  (The Flow idea, where the designer neatly guides players between boredom & frustration, is a subset of this rule.) Basic, Variety, Flow Hal Barwood 2 Maximize Expressive Potential Get the most out of your (always limited) material -- either find ways to exploit an element of your game, or cut it out Simplicity Hal Barwood 3 Maintain Level of Abstraction Immersion is easily disturbed -- don't make the player re-calibrate his "suspension of disbelief" and lose touch with your game Psych Hal Barwood 4 Concretize Ideas All your game ideas must find a concrete expression in playable elements   Hal Barwood 5 Make Subgames Players want to participate in the course they take through your game -- so give them plenty of opportunities to voluntarily take up ancillary challenges Basic Hal Barwood 6 Provide Clear Short-Term Goals Always make it clear to the player what their short-term objectives are.  This can be done explicitly by telling them directly, or implicitly by leading them towards those goals through environmental cues.  This avoids the frustration of uncertainty and gives players confidence that they are making forward progress. Basic Noah Falstein, others 7 Let the Player Turn the Game Off A player should be able to save and exit the game at any point, losing at most a few seconds of progress as a result.  Our objective as designers is to entertain, not punish – and many games force players to play for extra minutes, even hours, until they can reach a “save game point”, forcing them to recapitulate those minutes if they quit prematurely, in frustrating repetition of now-familiar events.  It’s a commercially important rule, akin to the old adage, “the customer is always right”.  Players have been known to give up on games that did not follow this rule, and even return them. Single Player Games (?) Noah Falstein, Dale Geist 8 Identify Constraints The first step in any design should be to identify the critical constraints on that design – what must be done, what should be done, and what cannot be done.  Specific areas of constraints can include creative constraints (required game genre or sequel to existing game, the designer’s previous experience), technical (the need to use a specific engine or work within the capabilities of a specific programming team), business/sales/marketing (budget, hard delivery date, license), and personalities (boss’s preferences, lead artist’s love of anime, producer’s fixation on Monty Python, etc.)  Often, the biggest constraint is budget – all games have to justify how much can be spent on them, and usually the vision exceeds the funds. Meta, Production Noah Falstein 9 Detailed Design Docs for Novice Teams Design documents should be detailed in inverse proportion to the skill of the team and their familiarity with the genre. Meta, Production Noah Falstein 10 Maintain Suspension of Disbelief In any game which uses or relies on narrative content, the player should be encouraged to suspend their disbelief and become imaginatively involved in the work.  Once so engaged, the player should be protected from other elements which might shatter their imaginative experience. Meta, Story Mark Barrett, others 11 Emphasize Exploration and Discovery Players like to figure out the territory of your game — it's a basic human impulse to investigate the unknown — so let 'em do it. Basic Noah Falstein 12 Provide Parallel Challenges with Mutual Assistance When presenting the player with a challenge – a monster to kill, a puzzle to solve, a city to capture – provide several such challenges and set it up so accomplishing one challenge makes it a little easier to accomplish the others (that’s the mutual assistance component).  It is also effective to set up these parallel challenges on many levels of scale of the game, from the ultimate goal down to the small short-term steps.  This eliminates bottlenecks and makes the game accessible to a wider range of players.  Ideally the different challenges use different domains of player skills, e.g. strategy and action. Meta, Balance Noah Falstein 13 Turn Constants into Variables Create variety without overburdening the game system by identifiying constant values or other system elements and turning them into variables.  For example, taking a constant rate of damage and making objects or spells that change it, or taking a constant rate of fire and creating weapons that fire more or less rapidly. Basic, but best applied late in design process Jurie Horneman 14 Differentiate Interactivity from Non-Interactivity Always make it clear to the player when they are expected to shift from interactive to passive (e.g. cut scenes) and back.  Switching to wide-screen mode is often used for passive scenes.  But it is best to use multiple sensory cues, e.g. shape, color, and sound so the player is never left in doubt. Meta, Psych   15 Localize Narrative with a Two Step Process While the goal may be to find one individual who can localize text and other story elements, it should be remembered that this individual will still be doing two tasks. The first task is the translation of the current elements into the language of the country into which the product is being localizes. The second task is infusing the result with the mood and drama of the original, which has almost certainly been lost in translation. Production, Localization, Story Mark Barrett 16 Distribute Game Assets Asymmetrically When there are objects or experiences the player can encounter in a game, place them asymmetrically, both spatially in the sense of clumping some together and spreading others thinly, and temporally in the sense of having some be common, some uncommon, and some rare over time. Of course, particularly useful or powerful items are good candidates to be the rarest. Basic Teut Weidemann, Noah Falstein 17 Begin at the Middle When you are setting about to develop a game, rather than starting with the first level or initial scene of a game, pick a representative point near the middle and start there.  The best order to develop a game is middle, beginning, then end.  (cf. book, The Illusion of Life, wherein Disney's similar method of ordering scenes into production for animated films is discussed) Meta Noah Falstein 18 Balance Units Starting with the Middle of the Pack When balancing a variety of characteristics, abilities, or powers of individual units (e.g. Pokemon creatures, RTS military units, or RPG characters), begin with a unit that has near-median statistics, instead of starting with the weakest/strongest/fastest or other extremes. Development, Balance Noah Falstein, others 19 Make the Game Fun for the Player, not the Designer or Computer This may seem obvious, but often game designers forget that it is the player who is the final audience.  It’s hard enough to make a game fun for the player – in fact, that’s what most of the craft of game design is about – but it’s even harder when you lose sight of your audience. Basic, Psych Sid Meier 20 Make the Effects of the AI Visible to the Player It can be tempting to model subtle choices in your AI, but unless the final results are clear to the player, you may well be wasting your time.  One way to do this is to choose to model clearly visible choices – a possible Sims mate can touch your character’s arm and laugh, or turn a cold shoulder.  Or to flip that around, you can alert the player directly when a subtle choice is made – for instance when an enemy sniper is responding to a player’s choice to run straight ahead instead of crawling stealthily around the flank, an audio cue like “Look, there he is!” lets the player know the AI is on to them. Basic, Psych, Simplicity, Feedback Noah Falstein 21 Use Real-World Formulas and Minimize Cheating with Simulations Avoiding early shortcuts often saves time in the long run.  It can be tempting to cut corners with canned animation or table-driven behaviors, but use real formulas to simulate real-world consequences and you’ll find that later expansions to the AI that also stick with actual physics can fit in seamlessly.  For instance in a racing game it may be tempting to have an AI car jump a gap with a preprogrammed animation, but if an opponent’s race car is subject to the same constraints as a player’s car when jumping a gap the level designers can add new jumps or adjust old ones without having to go back and change all the previous enemy behaviors. Games that simulate real-world systems, Simplicity, Balance Noah Falstein 22 Add a Small Amount of Randomness to AI Calculations A little randomness can make a dumb AI look very smart.  If an enemy responds exactly the same every time, they’ll feel robotic and predictable.  But just 5% variation can shock a player out of complacency and make an opponent seem alive.  Sometimes the easiest way is to add plus or minus a few percent to a basic calculation of distance or direction.  This is particularly effective for animal behavior. Basic, Variety, Psych Noah Falstein 23 Create AI in the Mind of the Player The ideal AI implementation is not actual intelligent behavior but the illusion of intelligent behavior.  Much like Sun Tzu’s precept in The Art of War that the best way to win a battle is to make fighting unnecessary, the best way to provide AI is to let the players imagine it with no coding necessary.  Simply implying that special behavior might occur can plant it in your player’s imagination.  Call an enemy unit “elite” and give it a special color and players will treat it differently, crediting it with superior abilities.   Psych Noah Falstein 24 Don’t Penalize the Player It’s often tempting to design a penalty for the player to emphasize failure at a task or to discourage the player from attempting to do something in the game you don’t like.  But “failing” and “being discouraged” just aren’t fun.  There’s always a way to turn it around and reward the player for success, or encourage them to do what you want. Meta Noah Falstein 25 Provide an Enticing Long Term Goal Many (but not all) games benefit by having an ultimate goal that is made clear to the player fairly early on.  Making this goal enticing is one way to pull the player into the game world and encourage passion. Basic, but most important for Narrative-based games   26 Make the First Player Action Painfully Obvious The first thing a player can do in a game should be painfully obvious.  Even if you are sure that everyone will understand what to do, go out of your way to make it easy to do.  Don't make someone click on a doorknob, make the whole door active - or better yet, have it standing open with a flashing sign saying "Enter". Psych Noah Falstein 27 Keep the Interface Consistent (many trumps of this one) Make the player learn as little as possible to control your game — if you have several avatars and/or vehicles available, try to make them all work the same way. Psych   28 Be Consistent in Feedback to the Player One of the stronger "consistency" rules, it is best to remain consistent when giving feedback to the player because variation merely for the sake of relieving boredom is particularly likely to result in frustration when the player reads intent that is not present.  For example, the old Adventure Game classic "I can't do that" - "I can't do that here" implies there is a place where it can be done, and "I can't do that yet" implies there is a time where it will be possilble. Basic, Feedback   29 Implement the Hardest Part of the Game First Resist the temptation to start implementing the best-understood parts of the design first - by starting with the hardest parts you force yourself (and the team) to test and possibly change difficult design decisions that may in turn affect the rest of the game development process. Production Noah Falstein 30 Provide a Consistent Single Vision for the Game It is vital from the beginning of design to make sure that there is one consistent single vision of the user's experience as he or she plays the game.  It is most often a problem with shared design responsibility, but even a single designer can make the mistake of being inconsistent in vision.  The vision can change during development, but everyone must know and be informed of the change immediately. Production, Meta Noah Falstein 31 Use Common Sense When Applying Rules The Uber-trump.  Any rule, carried to extremes, can become non-functional.  It's impossible to consider every possible situation when drafting rules and identifying trumps, so don't follow any rule blindly. Basic, Meta Noah Falstein 32 Ask "What does the user do?" One of the most basic rules, a designer must always stay focused on the choices and actions available to the user.  Games must be fundamentally about interactivity, and interactivity is fundamentally about the choices the player makes. Basic Chris Crawford 33 Begin Each Project with a One-Page Specification of the Gameplay A good general-case rule for the early design phase, but trumpable by alternative methods.  This is one way to ensure the team (or an individual designer) follows the "Provide a Consistent Single Vision" rule. Production Chris Crawford 34 Emphasize Micromanagement for German Speakers This rule is an instance of a more general rule to "consider national sensibilities" Games for Germany and Austria Noah Falstein 35 Address Needs of Instructors, Teachers, and Trainers Make sure a serious game is easily usable by teachers - provide ways to assess learning and make the game customizable to specific curriculums. Serious Games, Meta Ben Sawyer 36 Make Even Serious Games Fun Don't let pedagogical content "suck the fun out" of a game. Serious Games Prensky 37 Design to the Medium's Strengths Instead of Struggling with its Limitations With an untested medium or new platform, consider what it does well and focus on that, rather than trying to shoehorn in concepts from a previous medium.  But see Judo Rule: "Turn Your Limitations into Strengths". Mobile Games (or other new platforms?) Greg Costikyan 38 Design to Fit the Revenue Stream The "Show Me the Money" rule - similar to the previous rule, but focusing on specific revenue streams.  For example if an MMORPG has a monthly subscription, design to maximize "stickiness", but if it is free and gets revenue from buying special items, design to maximize the desire to use those items. Production (several - column 26) 39 Vary Rate of Difficulty Increase within the Flow Channel A specific rule addressing "Fight Player Fatigue".  Over the course of time a game should increase in difficulty in rough proportion to the player's increasing expertise - but that rate should vary like a sine wave (or think of it as vibratto) to provide peaks and valleys of increasing difficulty. Meta, Variety Noah Falstein 40 Use Camera Position to Elicit Emotional Involvement A rule from the film/TV industry, the position of the camera will convey emotional content, and game designers must take this into account. Depict Physical Surroundings, Psych Hal Barwood, Noah Falstein 41 Every Person and Idea has Equal Worth A "Training Wheels" rule for beginning brainstormers, this rule encourages people to contribute "wild" ideas.   Brainstorming for Beginners   42 Critique Ideas, Not People Focus discussion on ideas, not the people who propose them. Brainstorming   43 No Bosses in Brainstorming Sessions Another "Training Wheels" rule meant to encourage participation from the timid.  Even as an observer a boss can elicit sub-optimal brainstorming, causing some to withhold ideas, and others to emphasize ideas for purpose of brown-nosing only. Brainstorming for Beginners   44 Challenge Assumptions "Everyone Knows That" is not a valid proof. Brainstorming   45 Alternate Discussion Between Theme (Story) and Game Mechanics When a brainstorming discussion stalls while talking about a theme/story, try switching for a while to talking about the gameplay mechanisms, and vice versa. Brainstorming Noah Falstein 46 Raise the Emotional Stakes to Maximize Player Involvement A meta-rule with many more specific examples, this should be the underlying rule behind many design decisions about story, characters, and theme, as well as choices of gameplay Meta, Story Noah Falstein 47 Game Play Comes First A more specific version of "Make it Fun" - more important to emphasize game play than other elements, like story, special effects, or fidelity to license. Basic, Meta   48 Provide for Friend or Virtual Leader to Demo Gameplay Many girls and women generally prefer to learn games by example or observing someone else play for the first time, and many males prefer to learn by having a chance to simply try out every interface and gameplay mechanism safely without external direction. Games for Girls Sheri Graner Ray 49 Provide Indirect Competition Many girls prefer to compete indirectly instead of head to head.  Providing for gameplay mechanisms that allow competition without a pure winner/loser split can increase the appeal to women. Games for Girls Sheri Graner Ray 50 Simple as Possible "Everything should be as simple as possible, but no simpler" - find ways to simplify any game element or system of game elements, but only to the point where further simplification takes away more interest than it compensates for with clarity.  The master simplicity rule Simplicity Albert Einstein 51 Make the Interface "Desperately Simple"