At The Gates: Jon Shafer's new strategy game

Jon Shafer has posted a new article titled "Strategy games are broken" to his blog, and at the end, says he will show his solution to these problems in his new game, to be announced very soon.

http://jonshaferondesign.com/2013/02/04/strategy-games-are-broken/

Good luck to him. I disagree with the 3D point, but the rest pretty much make sense. Though I think some strategy games over simplify, to the point where I find myself not interested in them, like Skulls of the Shogun.

That's my kind of pre-release hype.

I don't see it mentioned in the blog post, but will his next game be a Stardock game?

It's said in his blog's "About" section that he's still a lead designer at Stardock, working on an unannounced game, so it will be a Stardock game.

I wonder what his take on Eador is. I think they get a lot of those things spot on, which is why I love it so much.

He obvioulsy is going to teach us all to play Go. and about fucking time too.

I agree with the section he has on solving puzzles not being strategy, which has long been a major complaint I've had about strategy-in-name-only titles like Majesty II (a game with just about zero replay value), or half the strategy 'campaigns' I end up playing in various games. It's what has always kept me more interested in the sandbox experience.

Given the language of his post regarding tomorrow's announcement, it sounded to me like he'd be announcing and putting out some sort of solo effort. Thanks for clarifying.

I've been wondering what he's been doing at Stardock.

If necessary, RyanMM and I can kidnap him and get him inebriated enough to reveal his secrets.

Can you get him inebriated enough to quit?

That is also part of the plan.

Phase II, to be precise.

Oh. Well then, cancel that.

What, no reflexive kneejerk that he's turning strategy games into a shallow, casual-oriented experience?

Only yours.

Maybe because that would be an incredibly stupid way to interpret his post, and no one of sufficiently limited intelligence has posted yet.

I think this is what you meant.

This.

He was just asking a question. He might have been doing it with a raised brow of meta-irony! And then how foolish we would feel.

Well, he's correctly identified the most common problems in strategy computer games. A good solution isn't quite so simple though; I'm curious to see what he's planning.

I'm on the record as liking Civ 5 more than 4, and my favourite game of last year was 30 Flights of Loving, so don't think I'm unappreciative of reinventing stagnant genres or radically simple experiences. On the other hand some of my other favourite games are the sort of blearily unfocused, needlessly complex, puzzle-as-strategy games he decries here, eg Dwarf Fortress & Eve Online.

I think Schafer's post makes clear there's a split in the strategy world between games that value complexity-as-gameplay and ones that prefer, er, strategy-as-gameplay. He calls complexity "fluff" in his last point, and I'm inclined to disagree. It's just strategy at a different layer.

Fortunately a solution to the very real problems he's posed has been found already. Modern strategy board games, which because of their very physical medium require graphical clarity, simplified design with easy to follow workflows, and relatively short playing times which usually means you can avoid mid-game sag.

These games can now be played online, on portable devices, or even consoles and pcs.

I look forward to his announcement that someone is finally finishing the project to bring Agricola to the iOS.

;)

Having odd, niche tastes is one thing. But what you said previously was a flatly inaccurate characterization of his post. And this, while less inflammatory, is not really any more of an accurate assessment. I'm not even going to get into your examples and your choice of key features that make them "good"; it's enough to say that he isn't calling complexity per se "fluff", and indeed is simply talking about justifying complexity by connecting it to important decisions.

Now, obviously, "complexity as gameplay", whatever the hell that is, is still not what he's going to try to do. But you don't have to mischaracterize his arguments to plant your flag on mount crazy.

I think it's pretty clear that Shafer is strongly influenced by the current state of the art in boardgames (regardless of how interesting or useful I find those insights, for example). But there's something to be said for learning from them and applying it to what's good about videogames and the stuff they permit to happen under the hood rather than simply porting boardgames. Which I know you weren't advocating as the end-all be-all, but I think it's useful to underline the distinction.

Oh I completely agree - and I think modern boardgames are themselves heavily influenced by the (now) relatively straightforward pc strategy games of the 90's - which often featured strong thematic elements as well as focused gameplay and easy to interpret graphics. In any case, I hope modern computer game designers are rediscovering the joy of streamlined and focused game design whether from SimTex/Microprose nostalgia, modern boardgames, the need to fit into the tiny screens of mobile computing hardware, or just as a reaction to the overly fiddly and complex state-of-the-art strategy pc games of today.

Too many modern designers get caught up with the idea that more is more, graphics need to be constantly updated, features bolted on, epic lengths, etc. So I look forward to seeing Schafer's take. A few more announcements/releases like this, and hey - maybe its a trend.

Schafer says "A trap many games fall into is to include so much stuff that determining what’s important becomes difficult. And that’s not fun.". I would say DotA is a perfect example of the sort of game he's complaining about here. DotA's needlessly complex -- you would have just as much strategic depth with an order of magnitude fewer heroes and items. And yet masses of people play this game.

Schafer asks "If players can’t wrap their head around the options available to them, how are they to choose one? And even if they do, how can their choice have any meaning?". Making choices with incomplete information is part of the fun of strategy games, and it's not necessarily important whether your information is incomplete because the rules of the game are hiding it, or because the rules of the game are partially incomprehensible to you.

Masses of people wouldn't know a good game if it bit them in the ass.

He's not going to take away your "meaningless decision buried in complexity for its own sake" games. He's just going to try not to make them. Most people, unintentionally, will continue to do exactly that. I agree that it gets nebulous when he says things like "fun", because it's impossible to have a good read on the many things that make gamers and "gamers" tick, but he's not wrong about the importance of the connection between understanding and meaning. That doesn't mean tossing out layers or details or hidden information altogether (quite the contrary, if recent brilliant turns in boardgames like Sekigahara's implementation of loyalty and fog of war are any indication). It just means carefully considering everything the player has to choose on to make sure it's worth his time.

Rather than contrasting it with the "complexity for its own sake" idea you bring in, which I have trouble seeing as an actual design purpose for all but really odd games, I think it would be more fruitful to compare it to the simulation school of thought or the realism people. That is, in wargames you have a clear divide between the people who prioritize the clever conceits that model strategic and tactical decisions effectively (ie what Shafer is getting at) and the people who start with what would be "realistic" and reverse engineer from there. The latter is how you get games where you manage every stage of logistics in Northern African war campaigns and the like, for instance, not just literal rivet counting.

In a way, a lot of the 4x or other strategy games that adds complexity comes from that sense of "realism", in my view, even if in many cases it's realism in a sci fi or fantasy context. Does that make sense?

Oh, I agree. That's easier said than done though, and bringing inherently multiplayer boardgames to the almost entirely single player PC game market is trickier than it at first seems.

I firmly believe there is much to learn about elegance from boardgames, but the genres are substantially different in the details.

DotA would not, in fact, have "just as much" - or even nearly as much - strategic depth with an order of magnitude fewer items. If you cut the number of items in half, you'd see the depth of the game plummet. What items would you even remove? I mean, there's some outright, complete cruft (Shadow Talisman or whatever it is that is only ever bought to build into Shadowblade), and you could consolidate some items without appreciably losing depth (the two wands, various components such as the 1200 vs 1400 weapon item), but that's maybe a tenth of the items and you're already losing depth.

The problem is magnified when you realize that you build items towards other items, a paradigm that is now built into the DotA2 shop interface. How many mid- or endgame items can you cut without reducing strategic depth? Maybe you could cut Sange & Yasha, and I guess Mjollnir? That's really all I can think of; everything else has massive effects that make a real difference in the game.

DotA certainly has problems related to needless complexity, the biggest, easiest example being having to memorize / get an instinctive feel for blink range without having range indicators, and being penalized for not getting it perfect without any indication that you messed up. But hero and item depth is not one of DotA's problems.

Some iOS/Android/handheld strategy games have been making strides at cutting out so much of the fat, and leaving behind what boils down to a strategy boardgame experience anyway (and although many of these games make it to the PC, I wouldn't mind a whole lot more of them making the jump). Ignoring the ports of actual board games, and paying more attention to new(er) franchises like Hero Academy or UniWar (not to mention more complex entries like Advance Wars), it seems as if the simple act of trying to properly fit a strategy game into the pad/phone platforms has already helped those game developers figure out what's important and what generally just amounts to fluff. In the end, both games end up delivering a steam-lined, simplified board game experience that even old die-hard strategy/war gamers like myself have been looking for in a video game recent years.

Although I think there's a place for these types of games in the PC market, I do think they're gonna have some trouble selling it to experienced gamers who pride themselves in having the patience to suffer through the seemingly insurmountable learning curves of series' like Sword of the Stars or Crusader Kings.

I think any gaming company that wants an easier time of winning over experienced gamers when trying to sell what really amounts to an ultimately simplified strategy gaming experience, needs to do a much better job of trying to sell experienced gamers on the idea that a game is easy to learn and tough to master (thus suggesting and selling people on the idea that the game is much more complex than it looks on its surface, more rewarding for those willing to work at it, and not as simple and shallow as it might appear on first glance), as opposed to merely being "casual enough to be fun for everyone!"

Well substitute an example you like and discuss the point rather than example of my post then.

I did. I agreed with your larger point (see my line about the blink mechanics) but think your example was dumb.

Yes. Spyparty is approaching the same location but from the hardcore PC gamer direction. Right now I'd say the game is incredibly tough to learn and incredibly tough to master, but Chris Hecker has spoken several times about wanting to design an "easy to learn, hard to master" game, and there is still a line of hardcore PC gamers waiting to play.

Incredibly tough to learn? Granted I haven't played it but from most descriptions it sounds an awful lot like "pretending to be a npc" ala Assassin's Creeds multiplayer except there are only 2 people and one of them is a sniper. Did layers of complexity recently get added?

I'm glad Shafer is citing the "Midgame Drag" as an important issue in his design. If a game is compelling enough, I can push through most of the other issues he mentions, but the Midgame Drag is what kills so many strategy game for me.

Here's his announcement -- and it's not Stardock -- so have at it:

At The Gates:

http://jonshaferondesign.com/2013/02/06/announcing-at-the-gates/

No wonder the language of that post felt so telling.

Features:

http://jonshaferondesign.com/2013/02/06/features-in-at-the-gates/

In his fourth paragraph, he starts talking about supply. That doesn't scream "reducing complexity" to me, but we'll see.

Kickstarter page:

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/jonshafer/jon-shafers-at-the-gates?ref=live