The Player’s Advocate « Patrick Curry’s Thoughts on Game Design

February 1st, 2007

The Player’s Advocate

When people ask me what I do I usually tell them that I make video games. If pressed to be more specific, I’ll admit to designing video games. But if someone (like my pesky wife) asks me what I really do… I’m often left without a good explanation. Some days my time is filled writing design documents, others researching mechanics, but most days are a mix of meetings, scripting, playtesting, more meetings, the occasional deep conversation, and usually a dozen or so coffees.

A couple times Neill and I have had one of those deep conversations, and in one such discussion I came to realize that it’s my job to be the player’s advocate. It’s my job to look out for you, the person who will one day (hopefully) play my game, and try to make sure that the game we’re giving you is as fun and rewarding as possible. If you walk away from the game feeling like you had a positive experience, and you got your money’s worth, then I’m doing a good job. If you throw your controller down in disgust and return the game the next day… then I could be doing better.

Being the player’s advocate is hard work. There are days where I really want to be my own advocate. Most people making games can afford to do this. Everyone wants their work to be as good as possible. But more than any other discipline, design has to be evaluated from the perspective of the gamer first, and the designer second. There are plenty of features that I think would be totally sweet, but when push comes to shove, I’m forced to realize that it’s probably not in your best interests for the game to work quite like that. You see, I spend thousands of hours with the game before you get to spend one playing it.

Needless to say, it helps to be a bit schizophrenic when being a game designer. This isn’t to say that I spend my time designing games for some elusive mass market, or for some mythical demographic. At the end of the day, I can only put myself into the shoes of people who are at least a little bit like me… people who enjoy action films and action games and want to have a good time when they sit down to play one. Some day I’d like the challenge of designing games for people who aren’t quite so much like me, but for now I’m happy to be blowing up stuff.

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2 Responses to “The Player’s Advocate”

christopher mcarthur commented:
posted February 3rd, 2007 at 9:38 pm

So how do you go about the role of being the player’s advocate? I mean who are you to be the players advocate in the first place, how do you have such insight into who will be buying your game. Will they be casual? Will they be hardcore? How do you advocate both?

In order to be the players advocate dont you have to do serious market research to know what demographics buy your games, and how they play them? Or do you purely go off your gut instinct and draw from your personal experiences as a player?

Patrick commented:
posted February 3rd, 2007 at 10:43 pm

Man, Chris isn’t pulling any punches tonight… here goes an attempt at an answer.

Short answer: no, you don’t need expensive market research to have a pretty good idea who’s going to be playing your game. A good game concept has an obvious audience, be it a gamers’ game or a causal puzzle game. Licensed games have a really-obvious audience, and even with games that genre-blend you can make assumptions about which players of each genre will be interested in your new game.

Long answer: you can make an educated guess who your player is based on a couple assumptions. I always assume that the person playing the game has played at least one game in the same genre before. MobyGames lists about 500 action games released last year. What are the chances that mine is the first one they’ve ever played? Not to mention, modern 3D action games have had roughly the same formula for at least the last 10 years.

Secondly, I assume that the player has probably played at least one of the hit action games in the last year or two. Simple fact: if a game sells well, more people have played it. The player is more likely to have played God of War or Gears of War than Stubbs the Zombie. So the player is going to have some expectations based on his prior experience with all these other games.

Then I can consider those expectations during each design decision. I think it’s particularly important when designing controls and core mechanics. If I released an FPS that had movement on the triggers, aiming on the dpad, and firing on the left analog stick, I’d be shooting myself in the foot. Or another good example, with Gears of War and Rainbow Six Vegas both emphasizing cover as a core mechanic, we had to really think about how much we wanted to promote and reward cover use in Stranglehold (there will be an entire post on this topic shortly).

Now, this might sound like I take a look at all of the best-selling games in the genre and start stealing features. This is only half true. I steal all the ones that I as a player like, I dump the ones I don’t like, and I try to simplify the mechanics that I thought had promise but were too complicated. For every feature that you add to a game you have to remove something else. For one, controllers only have so many buttons (and I loath “press and hold” mechanics). But secondly, the player can only think about so much stuff at once.

And that’s just to get to the starting point. Then you have to constantly question and challenge yourself during the creation of the game. You have to listen to player feedback from playtests, and press feedback when they get their hands on the game. You really have to try to be ego-less and selfless during the process, and never be afraid to dump one of your “genius ideas” for the idea that some random kid throws out during his playtest. It happens all the time, and it really can make your game better.

So yes, I do use gut instinct and draw from my personal experience as a player, but I also consider what’s going on in the marketplace, and I try to listen to the player when he’s able to tell me what he thinks. Perhaps some day I’ll work on a game that doesn’t fit into any genre at all, that doesn’t have a license, and can’t be compared to any game that’s ever been created before. That would be rad.