I'm very happy to hear tens of thousands of people have read my articles.
But at the same time I'm so sorry to let you know that I had to disable comments on all pages because I don't have enough time to respond to each comment or filter spams properly.
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I'm going to take a summer break. Next article will be published in October.
In a previous article, I asserted that rules are atoms of games. Naturally, it leads us to a thought that gameplays, each of which consists of a play and a set of rules, are molecules of games. As you know, every atom existing in this world has different characteristics and is almost useless by itself. But when a single atom is coupled with specific quantities and types of other atoms, they can form a molecule essential for human life such as O2 and H2O.
Likewise, every rule embedded in games is not fun at all. Rather, they are restrictions which by their nature prevent you from enjoying pure form of plays. But when they are combined together in a proper manner, some kind of chemical reaction occurs and an enjoyable gameplay magically emerges.
But it's not an easy job to find a right combination since it's very likely that you attempt to build a gameplay with either less or more number of rules than actually needed. Like a molecule exists in this world, a gameplay only requires a specific number and kind of rules.
Needless to say, if a gameplay lacks some essential rules, it's either not fun to play or unplayable at all. And the opposite case, where a gameplay has some redundant or irrelevant rules, is equally problematic because such kind of rules prevent you from enjoying the maximum level of fun the gameplay could potentially provide.
In another previous article, I wrote Pong is one of the most beautiful video games. That's because it contained just the right number of rules to realize it's sole gameplay : "Avoid missing boll".
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Pong has many predecessors. Among them, the two most important ones are "Tennis for Two" and "Table Tennis". Tennis for Two contained exactly the same play as Pong - hitting the ball back and forth - but it unfortunately lacked essential rules. Above all, there was no rule to decide which side has won a match. So it eventually ended up as just a novel scientific experiment.
In Table Tennis, the play evolved into a complete gameplay. However, there was also a problem - it had some redundant rules. I assume its developers added them to provide variety and depth. But as a result, its gameplay became unnecessarily complex.
Considering from this perspective, what Nolan Bushnell and Al Alcorn did when they developed the innovative game can be interpreted as follows:
* Bushnell found a very good gameplay in Table Tennis.
* He got rid of some redundant rules to simplify the gameplay and handed the job off to Alcorn.
* As the result, the gameplay became much more clear but also became too simplistic and lacked depth. So, Alcorn added some rules to improve it.
Although some critics argue that Bushnell just copied the gameplay from Table Tennis (he was actually sued by Magnavox and all but admitted it), it's not an accurate description. It's unquestionable that he stole the gameplay. But by going through this disassembly and reassembly process, it became a much more engaging one. So, there are no reasons not to call it "game design".
If you're not convinced yet, I'd like to point out that the way Masahiro Sakurai makes games is essentially the same.
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Only a few people including Shigeru Miyamoto and Will Wright created multiple successful video game franchises. So, it's obvious that Sakurai, who launched Kirby series and the sole director of Super Smash Bros series, is a genius game designer.
However, he is not the kind of person who rely solely on instinct. Actually, he takes a very practical and scientific approach.
In his theory, every game has its own “fun core". He begins game design process by extracting a fun core from a game he's interested in.
First, I try taking away everything unnecessary around that core.
He called it "disassembly" process. After that, he explores its other possibilities.
Then, it’s like I place the fun core somewhere else and build around it again.
- from the same page
He called it "reassembly" process. Needless to say, he took this "disassembly and reassembly" approach when he created the original "Super Smash Bros.".
YouTube: Super Smash Bros. (Nintendo, 1999)
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In the first half of 1990's, 2D fighting games was by far the most popular genre in gaming arcades in Japan. The boom began when "Street Fighter II" was released, and smash hit titles like "Fatal Fury" and "The King of Fighters" accelerated it.
YouTube: Street Fighter II (1991, Capcom)
However, as frequently occurs in the video game industry, the boom suddenly ended after 3D fighting games such as "Virtua Fighter" and "Tekken" caught people's attention with its novelty. But he was confident that 2D fighting games still had unutilized potentials.
YouTube: Virtua Fighter (1993, SEGA)
Masahiro Sakurai (2001 @ HAL Laboratory):
Super Smash Bros became a 2D fighting game because I thought it would be more easy to grasp and play than a 3D one. In fact, some people consider controlling characters in 3D environment is non-intuitive. So, I decided to make a game where you can easily distinguish whether your attacks hit the opponent or not ...
... When I designed the game, 3D games was the big trend in the industry and 2D ones was almost out of fashion ...
... I knew 2D fighting games was a stagnant market. So, I believe any new idea wouldn't occur to me if I followed established fighting game conventions. Instead, I wanted to develop an "action game" in which you can gain pleasure just by jumping in high sky.
- Weekly Famitsu (around Dec 2012) Enterbrain in Japanese
To revive the game genre, he disassembled it and found its fun core:
Masahiro Sakurai (2012 @ Sora):
When you hear fighting games, you can’t help but think of having to execute fancy combos.
... I do like the organic, ad lib nature that happens distinctively in fighting games, rather than learning specific ways to get stronger.
... instead of asking players to pull off specific combos that require instant elaborate manipulation, I wondered how I could bring out an element of ad lib.
So, he noticed the fun core of fighting games must be "ad lib", by which I guess he means continuously changing environment and situation surrounding you. To extract the fun core in pure form, he took away unnecessary features like long commands and the health bars.
In typical 2D fighting games popular at that time like "Street Fighter Alpha 3" and "The King Of Fighters '99", you had to press seven or more buttons in the right order to initiate very strong special moves called super combos. Besides, each character had their own set of commands. So, remembering and performing them precisely was a must-have skill to win a match, which would discourage beginners from playing fighting games.
In contrast, you can initiate any action including special moves with a combination of less or equal to two buttons in the original Super Smash Bros. Moreover, all characters shared a single command set. So, making a right choice based on your current situation, not remembering commands, became the most important factor.
In the last article, I quoted from a presentation Sid Meier made at the Game Developers Conference titled as "Interesting Decisions". This is exactly a "situational" interesting decision he talked about.
Replacing health bars with cumulative damage system was a much more important and bold choice. I believe Sakurai borrowed the concept of battle royal between four players from "Yu Yu Hakusho - Makyou Touitsusen", but the damage system made a big difference.
Sakurai: ... I wondered how we could draw out that element of ad lib that I liked so much and thought it would be fun to have the reactions change every time. The result was putting in cumulative damage.
Iwata: By doing that, what you need to do will change depending on the situation. Players will engage in more ad lib - including the by-chance happenings that occur when players who aren’t very good are just punching buttons that can change the course of play. Is that right?
Sakurai: Right.
- from the same page
In this way, he succeeded in recreating the "ad-lib" fun core he extracted from 2D fighting games with different ingredients.
The fact that Super Smash Bros became one of Nintendo's most successful franchise and "Street Fighter IV" gained high popularity not by adding new systems but by omitting complicated ones from its predecessors tells us that games do have "fun core" and redundant rules disturb their work.
Although he didn't mention it, I claim every fun core consists of a combination of a play and a set of "crystal clear" rules.
As we've seen, both Nolan Bushnell and Masahiro Sakurai takes similar steps to build a game. I'll call this a "subtractive approach" as they begin by removing redundant rules from a gameplay constructed by someone other than himself.
On the other hand, the approach Shigeru Miyamoto takes is an "additive" one - he starts from scratch. Without this attitude, he would have never created "Wii Fit" - one of the oddest games in history - because it had no predecessor.
Although these two approaches involve completely different methods, there is no way to decide which one is superior - can you say Super Mario Bros is superior to Kirby in all aspects?
Therefore, they must be doing the same thing - finding crystal clear rules - in a different way.
So, by comparing those two approaches, you'll find a way to build good games. In the next article, I'll write about the ways Miyamoto makes games.
