System Dynamics

Studying games and how they are created, it is very difficult to pinpoint one solid approach. We often see studies from other fields come into our perception, because although game designers are many different things, they are not the best sociologists, physicists, biologists etc. which is why it is so important to allow these experts to discover "a new way to play" so to speak, and we designers jump on their discoveries. Today's method comes from a biologist Ludwig Von Beralanaffy who studied the very ambiguous concept of systems. His goal was to take that abstraction, and boil it down to tangible elements that we can understand and use to describe the complex behavior we see emerging from "discrete elements". this could be mechanical, biological or social according to Beralanaffy (which I fail to see how a biological system can be considered discrete, unless it is the observation of a certain metric recorded from a biological life form, or attributes of a larger ecosystem)ObjectsSystems are defined by what is inside of them, and the building block of any system weather it is a game, a person, or an ecosystem, or a piece of software, we will call objects. that's easy enough an object can be anything from a state withing a programming code, 3D geometry in a game, or a mitochondria in a cell. Just to be clear. in a game objects are literally EVERYTHING. from the monsters you can summon to your actual player character to the little pretty billboard particles that fly out of Soras Key-blade when he attacks.That is really all there is to objects... don't hurt your brain thinking to much about it. lets keep going!Propertiesnow this is where things get interesting. Each object must have an attribute associated to it. this is unavoidable, especially in games. it could be simply an xyz coordinate.. thats still an attribute, but lets look at some more interesting examples shall we?Variety is a really good way to show off different properties in a game. you could have a battle system where different weapons are available and each of these weapons do something different.Radiata Stories. a japanese role playing game has some of the best variety of any game. not only could you choose from a multitude of weapons that vary in reach, attack power, attack speed etc... in Radiata Stories you can even unlock different attacks to customize your combos each of which have their own unique properties that allow you to create a play style that works for you, (weather you like speed over power etc)Behaviorsanother interesting attribute of our objects are the behaviors they may have. this brings us back to basics as behaviors are mostly really simple. ie walk, run, jump, attack. but they can also become much more involved. A fantastic example are the ghosts from pac-man. you may think they are following a simple pattern of follow the leader, but it is actually much more involved than that. Blinky does actually just follow pac-man but Pinky has a more interesting algorithm, which targets 4 spaces ahead of where pac-man is facing.there is even one ghost (Clyde) who pretends he is following pacman but then runs into a corner!??!behaviors create character. they are what defines the objects in the game and it makes them interesting. A good rule of thumb is -the more behaviors an object has, the less predictable its actions.RelationshipsOk so now we have a bunch of objects with some nice properties and they all behave in a certain way. how can we take this one step further? the answer lies in the way that these objects interact with each other as a result of the overall system. you can think of it as a math equation in its simplest terms. 1+2  = 3 is the relationship between adding 1 and 2 together. in the number system you will always get 3 form this addition and that is what makes it work. in a game system it could be something more complex than simple addition. for example rock paper scissors. there is a certain effect for every combination of choices the 2 players make. this system is developed further in the Fire Emblem games, with the sword, axe, spear system, in which sword beats axe, axe beats spear and spear beats sword.EconomiesEconomies are another interesting way to create a dynamic system and engage the player. you do this by making several items/resources each with their own properties except some are much better than others. these resources should be harder to find or at least don't come around until you are much later in the game. you could have a simple bartering system which keeps a constant amount of resources throughout the game and cannot be created consumed or changed throughout the course of the game.Complex bartering may break these boundaries and have expanding markets such as in Settlers of Catan. in Catan the perceived value is more important to a player at any given time, since there can be times of the game where one resource is completely scarce and another is in abundance, and this can change almost instantly.  Another type of Economy is the Market. where we also can have a simple and complex examples. the simple market is rather boring and you only really find it in board games. like monopoly where the amount of resources are fixed, the money is controlled throughout the game and all the prices are set out by the game rules.however digital games,(especially MMOs) have been able to create a truly complex market, out of which some people make their living. Diablo 3 is a good example of a market economy being created from -again-the perceived values by players from grinding for hours to find the epic loot or the immensely hard boss fight you had to endure to obtain it.I could actually go on about economies and talk about things like a meta economy but that would just be too much info for one blog post and- no time! moving on.Emerging Systemsthis is where we see a system being put into motion and coming up with compex behaviors all on its own. a good example would be the Sims, where you throw together a bunch of people in a room and add some objects to see what they do with them. the results can range anywhere from hilarious to absolutely frightening. Like leaving the stove on at night and falling asleep while your house catches on fire. waking up in a derranged panic and then falling asleep almost immediately after ( ok so this is more of a funny glitch but it still goes to show how interesting behaviors can arise from having multiple things to interact with ie they need to be afraid of fire and they also need to sleep)Tuning Game Systemsso now that you have everything set out, it is time to actually make it playable and enjoyable. Economies should be fair and the best way to do this is to see how a certain item will be received by play testing. do the players break the game with this item? are they constantly using it or does it kind of sit in the bottom corner of the inventory? this will allow you to decide the value of certain items. as far as properties go, you need to make sure that one move doesn't over power all the others rendering them pointless. This is why in games like League of legends you have hundreds of players using a certain character who "breaks" the game by having one over powered move. Starcraft does a really good job at balancing its units by keeping it simple (three races each with ground, and air specific builds) yet adds complexity through the emerging play styles that come through these different choices.The Dynamics of a game are what define the experience. the Type of object describes what kind of game it is where the properties and behaviors define how the game will be paced and what kind of effort you have to put in. When you add in the whole market economy thing you start to realize how truly epic a gameplay experience can be and why games have become so engaging since they became more complex digitally enhanced experiences.