Emergent Properties, 10:1 Rule, and Brute Force

A really good way came to me to explain what emergent properties are.

You know when you write something, like a story or a poem, and someone says “Oh, I really like the subtext about such and such.” And you think about it, and yeah, there is subtext about such and such, but you didn’t think about it being there when you wrote it. So you reply, “Thanks, that’s what I was going for.”

That’s an emergent property, and one of the best parts of game design as a creative field.

Speaking of which, I realized that I hadn’t shared the all-important 10:1 rule of game design.

First, out of every ten game ideas, one will be worth prototyping.

Second, out of every ten prototypes, one will be worth trying to get published.

Finally, out of every ten games you have that are worth trying to get published, one of them will get published.

(There’s also a possible extra one that says out of every ten games you get published, one will be popular. Even the greats Knizia and Moon have their share of unpopular games out there.)

On the topic of “game ideas”, I’ve internally coined a new phrase. It’s the “brute force” method of game design. Basically, there are game designers out there who are able to say “I want to make a game about X” and then proceed to build mechanics to make the game happen. Of course, playtesting often has to fix major issues with the game, but that happens to every kind of design.

You might be saying to yourself, “isn’t that what all game designers do?” To which I say, “I don’t…” This goes beyond the earlier discussion of how you start your design- with a theme, a mechanic or a component– and is sort of in its own realm. I think the great designers are able to take a theme given to them and then make interesting mechanics that relate to that theme. They are able to “brute force” great mechanics. Several close friends of mine are able to design this way, and yes, I’m totally jealous.

The downside to the “brute force” method is a similar complaint to designing with theme in mind. To put it bluntly, the mechanics aren’t usually very good. How many cereal boxes have you seen with a game on the back of them? And how many of them are very good? “Brute force” means that you have to shove all the way through to your goal, instead of focusing on how the game actually plays.

For example, let’s say someone with lots of money comes up to me and says “Dave, I want you to design a game about elephants running after ostriches.” I could spend a lot of time thinking about fun race mechanics, or balancing an asymmetrical strategy game. However, that’ll take a lot of time to come up with something I like and works and is interesting. If the guy said “you have two days, and I’ll give you thousands of dollars,” that wouldn’t be an option.

So I might take a hex board, get some elephant pieces and ostrich pieces, and say, everyone gets an elephant. Each person has a hand of cards that says, I dunno, that the elephants run a certain number of spaces in a certain direction. (I’m already thinking about stealing mechanics from other games, like the now classic can’t use the same card twice until you use every card in your hand.) Let’s also say that the ostriches are differently colored, and have a deck that dictates how they move, so you can see which ostriches haven’t moved in a while so they’re more likely to move. And let’s say it’s simultaneous play, where everyone picks their elephant card face down, and then they’re all revealed at the same time, but if elephants collide in their path, bad things happen. The game ends when all the ostriches are gone, and whoever has trampled the most ostriches wins.

I just came up with all of that just now while writing this. There, it’s a game, it has rules, it just needs a few details of what all the cards are. Is it any good? No… there’s no mechanics to distinguish it, probably doesn’t have very many interesting or non-obvious decisions, and as I was writing it I went “oh, look, I made a kingmaker problem.” With some playtesting I could probably get it to function, but I doubt I’d want to spend the energy if I wasn’t getting paid.

Of course, there’s an even more brute force ruleset for this theme. Place elephants and ostriches on the board. On your turn, roll some dice, and move that many spaces. If you land on an ostrich, roll a die to see if you trample the ostrich. If you don’t, it runs away a number of spaces equal to a die roll.

Neither of these- for me- produces a good game. I’d rather come up with some interesting mechanics that fit the theme, create the game about those mechanics, and built it all up into something great. And as I said, not all those who are good at “brute force” are bad at it, in fact, many of them produce great games using that method. Hopefully, one day, I will be able to “brute force” genius games all the time. Then I will make millions.

And you’ll be able to say, “I read his column way back when he couldn’t do that.”