Thank you all for attending. Here are the unstructured notes for those who couldn’t make it. I’ve bolded the key points.
Panel
Paul Stephanouk - Design Director of Candy Crush. Previously EA, Zynga, Bossfight, Schell Games, Big Huge Games. 20 years experience building and running creative teams.
Kelly Tran - Game Design Professor researching games and players. PhD in learning and tech. Solo Twitch - Group Twitch - Website
Jon Radoff - CEO Beamable. Previously Disruptor Beam. Entrepreneur, game designer, metaverse builder. Founder of Game Industry Club on Clubhouse.
Jody McLain - Developer and Designer Math Facts. Previously Published and Exec Produced branded videogames and books for PBS Kids, Bob The Builder, Top Chef, Diner Dash, World of Goo and many more.
Xelnath - Game Designer World of Warcraft, League of Legends, Ori and the Will of the Wisps, Snackpass Tochi. Founder Game Design Skill.
Kristina Drzaic - Narrative Director and Game Designer. Previously Halo, Bioshock, Bioshock Infinite, Galak-Z, Twitch, Amazon Game Studios.
Mohamed Abdel Khalik - Co-Founder Karnak Studios, Creators of The Daily Tut webcomic and Game Director on Tut Trials, an upcoming high action 3D platformer.
Notes
Sometimes roles might not align with your player fantasy. Such as being the imposter in Among Us, sometimes players don’t get the role they want and they just have to deal with it.
The dynamic is different if players are actually choosing their roles. The issue with that is that eventually strategies get figured in tactical games out. This design choice would not work for social deduction games.
Illusion. There is always a best composition/golden path. If players don't follow it then they’re considered a noob by the community. Experimental builds will not get them recruited in top guilds and raid teams in MMORPGs.
Asymmetry has friction in role based games. Overwatch has strict roles before match making to take that out of the players hands.
Scythe has nesting properties and scaling properties. It is asymmetrical in tools and in goals through the variance of objective cards.
Game designers need to differentiate between visible and invisible asymmetry.
Catan at a mathematical level has a golden path. Trade factor and human interactions allows for variance in probability of win rates.
Game designers must understand their criteria for asymmetrical design.
In order to achieve maximum asymmetry, game designers need to use different internal mathematical models in order to achieve different outcome objectives.
Identify and have hooks to react to a player in the lead. If other players could identify the leader far ahead but don't have the agency to counter then it's boring, knowing someone will win and waiting three hours for that prediction to manifest isn’t fun. If the player has agency and no intelligence they couldn't act on it and so it would feel random.
Attribute value to different properties in units (RTS) or classes (MMO) by just setting numbers for attack and speed and resource generation, then price units differently and start playtesting the hell out of it and start tweaking values of the rest of the categories accordingly.
Use Sid Meier’s rule of double or half the value when balancing.
In social deduction games, game designers need to differentiate between each game and the experience as a whole. Players will engage in many rounds and different people sit in the chair each time meaning that while each game is asymmetrical, the experience as a whole is symmetrical as everyone gets a turn.
Counter Argument: If you extend that logic to a higher degree of abstraction you’ll come to realize that Starcraft is symmetrical as players will eventually play all the races.
Having more choices results in either boredom or players not make choices.
Reductive design. Take away choices like removing CIVs or removing character attributes and stats in RPG games.
The optimal golden path is forsaken for a casual experience as players would just like to have fun and not worry about min-maxing.
Allow for rubberbanding. Prime example is the Blue Shell in Mario Kart.
There is a social norm to certain games. Game designers don’t expect the player to competitively grind Mario Party.
Absence of agency does not allow for unique playstyles and variance. Players will always go faster in Mario Kart if they choose a light character. Game designers should allow players to understand that heavier characters have other components that make them valuable. This gives players the agency to pursue that method in order to achieve victory.
Iteration in aggregate creates symmetry.
Pandemic plays like a singleplayer game as one player tells the rest what to do and other players follow. It is up to players to break that flow of communication. Other games like Captain Sonar and Space Cadets throttle in the info.
Game designers need to understand what mediates their game’s asymmetry. It is the player in Pandemic, technology in Mario party WiiU by having one player use the gamepad for a unique perspective unseen by other players, and rule sets such as different game modes.
When game designers leave it up to players then it allows for high variance - which either creates high outcomes or low outcomes. Game designers must hold onto something so the game doesn’t go out of scope.
Starcraft is easy to decipher in its asymmetry. It’s just different races with different damage and speed values, focused on the same objective of depleting the opponents HP pool.
Innovation is a unique card game. Where other card games give players an action as they play the card, in innovation players build a board of actions. If a player owns the market on a certain power, they reap rewards or get immunity when other players use it against them.
Dune (Boardgame)
A good example of Asymmetry
The game has underlying asymmetry through formal alliances.
The game forces players to make alliances in certain intervals because it's impossible to win the game by yourself.
When two players win together, they both win.
Players can't break alliance until the next interval, making kingmaking difficult.
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Thank you for reading the notes, hope you found them useful. The upcoming Design Dive will tackle the role of UX in games. Wednesday March 31st 3pm EDT.
Mohamed Abdel Khalik
Co-Host Design Dive