The Designers Preference vs. Players Choice

 

“It is your work in this life that is the ultimate seduction” – PABLO PICASSO

I may design a game which uses tile laying as a mechanic that is both the objective and the means to win the game (my preference), then I may give the players different ways to place these tiles, and different ways to acquire these tiles, and play these tiles (their choices).

For clarity reasons, I’m going to dichotomize the difference between Preference and Choice. In this article, Preference will define as being when the designer is faced with a decision and Choice will be used to reference the players’ decision. In all reality, the player doesn’t have a preference because his inputs and outputs are limited by the Preferences of the designer and/or developer. Therefore, as a rule, the player must always Choose based on the designers Preference.

I wrote briefly about this concept in the article “Utility Maximization and a Trading Card Mechanic,” here I will advance this idea. I ended that article with the following suggestion:  “Ideally we want to give players the choice between the thing that is really strong and fantastic and difficult to turn down, and something else that is really great and useful and desirable to have.” I purposefully presented two sides to the same coin here. The reason being, the designer doesn’t want to give players two equal Choices, but what he wants to do, or at least should focus on doing, is provide the players with the Choices that make them the most happy.

For the purpose of our game design, Preferences aren’t the same as Choice. Allow me to lead by example, concider the following:

You’ve all heard the old saying, “but this is the way we’ve always done it, why change now.” I get this enough from my employees, and co-workers.

“Why not change it now?” I ask. Usually, this ends the remedial chatter.

The critical thinker may have asked, “Is this really the best time to change? What are we changing to and what are we changing from?” In other words, ‘is changing such a good idea, at this juncture; with these resources and ideas.’

I can think of at least one way in which change isn’t a good idea, at all. There is only one method to brown sugar-sap for maple syrup processing. Though there remain yet many different golden delicious grades of color, the method doesn’t change.

If someone were to come along and suggest, say cutting down the maple trees, because it would yield more syrup this year, none of us would listen to that individual who suggests this. There may be small variances within the method that change from year to year or producer to producer, but the method generally stays the same.

Though we may all choose a different grade or flavor of maple syrup, and some may not like it at all, the preferred method for production remains relatively the same. And there might be many uses for sugar, just as there are people who have different preferences for how that sugar is consumed. Sugar remains to be sugar. I will reiterate, for the purpose of our game design, Preferences aren’t the same as Choice, though both have eerily similar hypernyms, we have to make and grasp that distinction if we are going to be better game designers.

As a rule, players will always Choose to be happy. As a designer we know that between two Choices we Preference to give the players, they will always make the Choice to be happy. For this reason players will also always Choose to be the most happy, so whatever makes them the most happy, this is the thing that the players will Choose as often as they can.

Sometimes it may turn out that the player won’t have a Choice, because for whatever reason everything is taken from him already, or in the case of a Legacy themed game, such as Pandemic and some other games that use this mechanic, the Choice is pre-determined by the player, prior to the player having knowledge of what the outcome will be. They can make an educated guess, but in reality, they don’t know.

Because players Choose to be happy, as often as they can, as designers we can Preference the Utility that Maximizes the enjoyment the players get from playing the game.

Through-out playtesting the designer should throw out all the Preferences the players don’t use. He then should conduct a new playtest as a way of beginning this process all over again before proceeding.

When players don’t Choose a Preference, the designer should take this into account the way the players do, of the two, it’s the Choice that makes them less happy. By doing it this way designers can eliminate that which makes the players less happy and provide them more of the Choices that make them most happy.

It goes back to the paradox, designers will be happy to design so as long as the publishers are happy to publish and the players are happy to play. Change any one of those factors and the market will experience loss of equilibrium. Or it will deflate like a balloon.

The same thing that causes markets to collapse, causes games to break. The good news is all we have to do is make everyone happy again and they will keep playing, publishing, and designing games.

This is easier said than done.

I have a game I’m working on where my Preference is to limit the players Choices; they may choose to build then move, or move then build, or move and not build, or build and not move, or they may pass. I should also mention, players who pass first, get to go first in turn order next round. My Preference is to provide players with a hint of a dilemma toward the end of each round. Because players can know this ahead of time, they will be able to think constructively on what they might do and what the other players at the table might do.

By Preference, I’m counting on players needing to juggle small bits of information during the lead up to this Choice. Playtesting will discover, for me, if I’ve Utilized the right string of Mechanics together to design a fun and enjoyable experience for the players.

Just as our maple syrup producers experience micro changes from season to season and producer to producer, the people playing our games are bound to face similar micro changes in the games they play. And that’s good they do, otherwise, their games would be dry and boring, and players would no longer be happy.

Earlier I wrote that ideally, we want to provide players two choices, I also made note of the types of choices the player should be faced with, let’s look at these more in-depth.

They are: strong vs. great; fantastic vs. useful; and difficult to turn down vs. desirable to have. The most obvious example of this dilemma would be the same one used so often as a plot line for many of the old western tv shows of yesteryear, at least once a season every show would run an episode were the characters would have to choose gold vs. food/shelter/survival and someone always chooses gold over survival. The real answer as it pertains to our game worlds is, it depends.

The game Grand Austria Hotel consistently presents players with these two types of dilemmas. The designers Virginio Gigli, Simone Luciani, also co-designed a number of other games that demonstrate the Preference vs. Choice argument very well.

Ideally, once we learn to design Preferences that present the player with the Choice of necessities or a bonus, the player will work hard to obtain enough necessities so later they can take the bonus Choice. This is the point where the designer must make sure the necessities are neither too abundant nor too scarce. This is balance and once here the playtesting will go much faster.