I found myself inspired by Sean Preston’s recent post on his Reality Blurs blog. In it, he pondered the viability and appeal of a small, focused tabletop RPG that incorporates both the rules and the adventure. For example, a product that’s “You’re undercover cops investigating a circus full of evil clowns” rather than a “police procedural RPG.” Such a game would allow the designer to zoom in on one type of game and gameplay, without be bogged down with a whole world’s worth of baggage.
His ponderings got me thinking about how the narrow approach could be applied to all games, not just tabletop RPGs. How many games have sacrificed their purity on the altar of feature creep, only to stagger beneath the weight of all that needless bloat? How many good games could have been great if only they had focused?
Find the Focus
“You raise an interesting point, Darrell,” you might be saying, looking over your spectacles at me, a glass of sherry in your well-manicured hand. “But I say, how does one find the focus and, as you say, avoid the bloat?”
The first step, I say while putting another log in the drawing room fireplace, is identifying what your game is about.
And then think smaller.
For example, Magic: the Gathering is about wizards summoning creatures and casting spells, trying to destroy each other. But if we focus — think smaller — we see that it’s about players attacking each other with cards.
And then think smaller yet.
Magic is about attacking with cards, yes, but I’d argue it’s mostly about attacking with creatures.
And when you can’t think any smaller, then you have found the heart of your game, its core game loop, or what Tadhg Kelly calls the “essential atom of gameplay.”
Identify the Atom
I like the “atom” metaphor. After all, an atom is the smallest piece of an element you can have and still have that that element. Anything more, and you’ve got a molecule. Anything less, and you’ve got a radioactive crater where your game used to be. (Don’t split the atom, kids! It’s bad for your eyes!)
To put a finer point on it, the atom of a game is:
- the smallest unit of play,
- the one thing the player will do over and over again, and
- without it, there is no game – or it’s a different game. (this is important)
In Magic, this is attacking your opponent with creatures. In a shooter video game, it’s shooting. In a tabletop RPG… well, that depends on the game a wee bit, but since most of them revolve around combat, I’d say the atom of gameplay is the player attacking an enemy.
I’d like to take a moment to address the third bullet point. Games can be complex beasts, with multiple systems woven together like the internal organs of a yak. Looking at this pile of yak guts, you might wonder how you can identify one element as the core game loop. That’s why I added the last point — without this element, your game does not exist.
Going back to my much-abused example of Magic, there’s far more to the game than simply attacking with creatures. There are other card types, the mana system that lets you play cards, and many other nuances that pile up into vast web of yak viscera. But if you remove “attacking players with creatures,” do you still have a game? More to the point, do you still have the same game? I guess you could play a version of Magic with nothing but lands and sorceries, but it would be a fundamentally different game than Richard Garfield’s cash cow.
Polish the Atom
The point of identifying the atom of your game is make it as much fun as possible. After all, this is the thing that players will be doing dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of time per play session. If it’s not fun to do, the game is in trouble.
This is where playtesting comes in.
Because you’ve identified the atom, you have something specific and isolated on which you can quickly iterate. Forget about the mana system. Ignore the world-level meta-game. Cleanse from your mind the side quest with the shark-punching mini-game.
If you allow yourself to get distracted by all the other elements, you’ll find yourself up to your elbows in yak guts, unable to move.
Focus on the fun.
Polish that atom until it shines. Once you’ve got that, then you can worry about the rest of the game.
Then you can think about molecules.
