HackerI designed a world to explore. Why is everyone in a hurry?
Start with Fallout’s deadline and a lump of charcoal in Ultima Online. A visible cue can shift a goal, and an item’s actual use can turn a penalty into a prize. Five encounters reveal the rules a player takes away.
Questions in this reading · 10
- An open map with a clock running
- How did charcoal become a prize?
- When does falling lava look like a mistake you made?
- Can a shovel in five places still feel discovered?
- Which losses are worth keeping?
- Can a player read a locked door?
- Where does the experience table start?
- What a waist-high wall tells a player
- Why can another dimension remove the challenge?
- When players can see the consequences, what choices are available to them?
An open map with a clock running
Would you take a detour on an open map with a deadline looming? Fallout’s timer gave its story urgency, but its designer worried that it pushed players past things worth exploring. Koster deliberately uses that same effect. Measure and display time, which was passing anyway, and a level can become a speed challenge. In one design the new goal displaces something the author wanted. In the other, creating that goal is the point.
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he had to rush through the game and miss fun things to doThe minute you track it and display it, goals will be created around itHow did charcoal become a prize?
Ultima Online gave charcoal to players with bad reputations. Would you try to avoid it? If it dyes armor a rare pure black, you might seek it out. Civilization shows a similar gap in an action. Meier imagined battle lines at the border, while players found reasons to mass their units around cities. To inspect a rule, try following what a player can actually do with it and what another player might pay for the result.
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turn their armor into pure black, which made it rareputting together a bunch of units and moving them aroundWhen does falling lava look like a mistake you made?
Lava dropping from nowhere in Noita looks like a glitch. Let the player see a plank burning beneath it and the same death becomes a story they can reconstruct. Alone in the Dark exploits the reverse effect. One collapsing floor taught testers to hesitate at a dark pixel on later, perfectly safe floors. Pause a playtest one second before an accident. Which links in the causal chain could a viewer already see?
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the wooden plank sets on fire and the lava drops on themeach time they saw a darker pixel somewhere, say, be carefulCan a shovel in five places still feel discovered?
Players missed the shovel at a supposedly inevitable crossroads in A Short Hike. Its designer placed five and removed the others when any one was picked up. Several routes could lead to one discovery. Breath of the Wild instead gives wind, electricity and other effects a common way to change objects. One design varies the path to an encounter. The other lets shared rules produce different encounters. Decide which kind of variation you need before choosing the mechanism.
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as soon as a player picked one of them up, though, all the rest of them would disappeara state calculator for all these objects that are connected to one anotherWhich losses are worth keeping?
A Civilization player could accept losing at two to one and object at twenty to ten. An identical ratio can feel like a different promise. RimWorld asks a question further upstream. Can the loss itself make a worthwhile story? If a setback changes how a player feels about a colonist, removing it might erase an experience the game was designed to provide. Separate the local odds from the larger purpose a defeat serves.
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it's 20 to 10. That's a whole different odds than two to oneStories can end in success or failure and still be great stories.Can a player read a locked door?
An app verifying invitations gives the game a definite answer at a doorway. A guest who never got an invitation may not even know about the missing scene. Valve’s recollection of placing Ravenholm after the gravity gun offers another sequence: players arrive with a tool they can try. One prerequisite leaves its explanation backstage, the other puts a clue into the player’s hands.
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everyone else has deeper missionsunless the app verifies you've been invited by a characterIt was like a development tool.reorganizing the game to put Ravenholm after you get the gravity gunWhere does the experience table start?
In the developers’ anecdote retold by Extra Credits, the same experience rates can be introduced as a fatigue penalty or as normal progress with a rested bonus. Record both the baseline presented to players and the points actually awarded. Copying only the rates loses the part of the design that changed.
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it had an unrested penalty mechanicthey started referring to the unrest experience penalty state as normalWhat a waist-high wall tells a player
A waist-high wall in a shooter can suggest combat before any enemy appears. The essay carries that visual cue into schools and public buildings while distinguishing the aims of emergency protection, protest control and combat-level design. Peterson proposes abstracting an ideal from recurring actions in a lecture on religious stories. The wall illustrates a limit of that move: observed sheltering documents an action; inferring its designer’s original ideal requires evidence of the design process.
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adding cover fundamentally recontextualizes the spaceDesigning to stop active shootersextract out the core ofan attempt to abstract out the idealWhy can another dimension remove the challenge?
If players rush through a level, inspect the choices it actually gives them. Gavin found that moving a 2D platformer into 3D let players sidestep enemies that once formed an unavoidable sequence. More space with the same enemies no longer produced the intended rhythm. Chasing boulders, a constantly moving hog and narrow jungle routes constrained different freedoms; crates could then invite an optional risk. Players could take a safe route or attempt harder timing to collect a crate. This serves a different aim from an open world: forward pressure is deliberately part of the experience. Before judging a constraint, state whether the intended experience is exploration, urgency or optional risk, then check whether the available routes support it.
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diluting the ratio between choice and conflictadding constraints or removing areas of degrees of freedomWhen players can see the consequences, what choices are available to them?
Nijman adds a short hit animation so players can tell that their action changed an enemy’s state. Blow asks what choices a payment model creates. He imagines adding a paid option to Papers, Please. The player originally weighs enforcing the paperwork rules against the person’s circumstances, and payment would introduce another decision into the same scene. When evaluating a game mechanic, ask whether players can see what their actions changed and what the rules and payment model give them reason to do.
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you communicate the changes the player put into the gamethe shape of a container determines what can be containedTry it on your own example
Recall the last time you stopped exploring and started hurrying. What was counted? What did you expect to lose? Remove one cue and ask whether you would still make the same choice.