Ultimate Nerds

This blog post was inspired by a combination of playing computer games such as Master of Orion 1 and 2 and the Might and Magic games, and reading pulp science fiction magazines from the 70s. I began thinking on the design philosophy that drove much of the innovation and creation of new genres in late 80s and early 90s computer games. Computer games from that period were often part simulation and part game. When I say simulation, I don’t mean they all necessarily simulated something real, but rather that they simulated a fictional experience (Although, of course some, like Sim City, did attempt to simulate something real. The early Might and Magic games, for example, called themselves “Fantasy Role-Playing Simulations” as they simulated pen-and-paper role-playing and, by extension, the world of high fantasy fiction. The Master of Orion games, on the other hand, attempted to simulate science fiction stories of space conquest. The modern RTS genre was created in this same design philosophy, as it was made to simulate the experience presented in the Dune books. Many of these simulations follow directly from the tradition of tabletop miniature games which were often simulations of specific wars or, again, space battles.

Most of my formative years were spent playing console games, which were less often designed as simulations and more often designed as sets of mechanics, worlds or stories. They focused more on the game element and less on the simulation side, although they still often simulated things (the original Legend of Zelda, although primarily a game of exploring a world, finding items and sword fighting, is also, to some extent, a fantasy simulation, just not an elaborate one). The games market, as a whole, seems to have moved away from the simulation design philosophy towards the philosophy of game design. However, I have recently been gaining an interest in these early simulation games and how their influence is alive in current games.

Let’s look at Master of Orion and Master of Orion 2, for example. Master of Orion is quite focused on being a simulation of space conquest. It helped form the 4X genre of strategy games, with its inclusion of warfare, diplomacy, exploration, economy and research. Explore, exploit, expand and exterminate. The game attempted to simulate as many aspects of conquering a galaxy as possible. You could build space ships, research technology, use that technology to design new space ships, fight other space empires, attack planets, build colonies, ect… However, the game was quite unruly. All of these elements had to be micromanaged. If you didn’t keep designing new ships, your technological advancements would be meaningless and you’d fall behind in the tech war. You needed to make sure you were keeping up on all fronts, and the game’s interface wasn’t much of a help with that either.

Then there was Master of Orion 2. What Master of Orion 2 did was take the first game and streamline it. It still maintained this 4X space conquest experience, and thus still worked as a simulation, but it simplified many aspects so that it worked better as a game. Ships would automatically be upgraded with the most recent technology, colonies didn’t have to be micromanaged as much, and many new features were added that added to the experience while not overburdening the game with complexity. The interface was also streamlined in many ways. For example, at any one time, you could see all the stars in the game, and thus didn’t need to scroll around to find what you were looking for. Explored but un-colonized stars were also given names so they’d be easier to keep track of.

So we can see with Master of Orion a two step process. Step one was to make a simulation of a particular experience, ie. Space conquest. Step two was to compress that experience down to it’s essential elements to make a more streamlined and, I would argue, fun experience. In the process, some elements were, of course, lost.  Ship design, for example, became less of an active part of the game. But that’s the beauty of simplifying. You could probably make a whole game out of the ship building mechanic from the first game (Take Gratuitous Space Battles, for example). Just simplify the other elements of the game, and add elements that add to the ship design experience.

Unlike my previous Design Musings, I’m not going to bring this one back to something I’m doing, but rather something you could be doing. Consider it a mental exercise or design challenge. Try to conceptualize or design a game as a simulation of some experience. Read a science fiction story and think of how it could be simulated in terms of a game. I think this is an important style of design that’s too rare these days, as it’s greatly responsible for creating new genres and styles of games.

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 26th, 2010 at 9:57 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.