Thinking on Three Levels

This is hopefully the start of some more in depth conversation as it’s the beginning of the framework for thinking about game design.

As usual, it all starts with some possibly spurious analogy that I have in my mind and that I end up free associating into something that makes sense.

I play hockey. I’ve played for about 15 years, off and on again for various reasons. It’s one of those things that I’ve sort of grown with and wish that I had started earlier, if only for the reason that I would be a better player. These days, I mostly just play in a beer league, where the beer is debatably more important than the hockey.?

When I play, I notice a lot of things going on. Namely, the way my teammates are playing and the way my opponents are playing. Everyone has strengths and weaknesses and I find it really enjoyable to watch people play.?

Play can be distilled down to three levels: strategic, tactical, and mechanical (or individual). What I love about thinking about it in this way is that there’s so many ways to slice it up. One way to think about it is the way it addresses the 5 W and H questions. Strategy deals with the why and what, tactical deals with the where and when, and mechanical deals with the who and how. Another way to think about it is the level of teamwork that’s being engaged. At a strategic level, everyone is engaged, at a tactical level, several people are engaged, and at the mechanical level, a lone individual is engaged.

If you were to argue which level is the most important, I’d have to say that they’re all equally important, because neglecting one aspect will hinder the group as a whole. A bunch of players that have good strategic sense, but no ability won’t be able to execute the strategy, no matter how good it is. And the best mechanical player on the team might be a whiz on skating and shooting but if they don’t have tactical and strategic sense, they’ll eventually be shut down by superior tactics and strategy.

Okay, so what? How does this apply to game dev? Interestingly, it applies in multiple ways, to the game dev team, to the player and to the game itself.

On the game dev side, I see the strategic layer as the lead devs, who see the big picture. They know the game inside out and how all the pieces fit together. If the game fails to engage the audience as a whole, it’s on them. At the tactical level are the teams that are assembled for each of the parts of the game. Combat, movement, gameplay, UI, etc. A team that works towards their objective, trusting what they do is contributing to the whole project. If a part of the game isn’t up to par, that’s where you need to look. And at the mechanical level, you have the individual contributor, on a team and tasked with accomplishing things that fit within their team’s objectives and they need to execute as well as they can. Some people are predisposed to thinking at a certain level, but everyone should appreciate and recognize each contributor at the level that they are at. In our industry, the junior level jobs are usually relegated to individual contributors, which makes sense because the lack of experience means that their impact is limited, positively or negatively. But everyone is contributing, the main difference is the amount of information that they’re working with. Ultimately, at the end of the day, everyone’s on the same team.

The game that the team is working on also needs to consider each of the three levels.

Games that are lacking in one of the three ways usually hear common complaints. For the record, any game that I list here isn’t an indictment of them, merely an example. I will also caveat that it’s mostly the early entries in the genre, as each genre becomes more sophisticated and the learnings of one genre bleeds into the next genre.?

Games that have high strategic vision but low mechanical execution can feel artsy, or can be accused of being boring if the player doesn’t engage with the lack of action. Walking simulators are an example of this. But done well, they can convey a story or evoke an emotion. “What Remains of Edith Finch” is one of my favorite games in the genre, and it is chef’s kiss.

Games that are mechanically complex but strategically simple can feel shallow and repetitive. Arcade games for the most part fall into this. “Easy to learn, hard to master” has always been the mantra in that space, as people need to understand the goal of the game almost immediately and then spend all those quarters perfecting the mechanics of it.?

Games that don’t have intermediary goals and objectives are arguably described as too short. Assuming that the player has a robust skillset that they have gone about mastering, and an overarching goal that they know they need to accomplish, if they achieve it too simply, then there’s no reason to continue. It’s the reason why live ops games and DLC exist, because if the gameplay is fun, players will want to play in different situations.

Games themselves exist with differing amounts of interaction at each of the different levels, and correspondingly, players exist in all types, and gravitate towards games that challenge or entertain the level of engagement that they’re looking for. They’ll find the most enjoyment in the game if they are exercising all the aspects of all levels at the level they want. Humans are relatively simple creatures that are searching for dopamine. The level that we engage with it determines the type of entertainment that we enjoy. Some people want a story, some people want violence. It’s all worthwhile. (See my previous post about putting yourself out there.)

The mismatch in this set is when a game fails to deliver on the engagement at the level that the player expects. To me, that’s more of a marketing issue than a development issue, if the game got into the wrong person’s hands. The initial version of Sims appealed to more hardcore players originally before it was taken out of their hands by less hardcore players and found its mainstream acceptance. It doesn’t mean that the game devs can just put out whatever. I do think that the devs need to have enough awareness to know when to step back and see what aspects of their game are lacking, and to make the decision to address it or not.