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Designing Simulations
Procedural representations clearly can provide meaningful play for game players. But designing simulations is challenging Once you decide what it is you want your game to simulate, how do you put the pieces together to arrive at the kind of simulation that you want? A simulation, as a representational process, is more than a series of independent procedures producing a result. A simulation arises from the operation of a system in which every element contributes in an integrated way to the larger representation.Adventure Game, Warren Robinett outlines some of the key design issues involved in creating a simulation:Given a phenomena to simulate, the problem is to decide what are
its parts, how these parts can be represented with numerical values,
and what the relationships are that let these parts affect one
another….Making a simulation is a process of abstracting—of selecting which entities and which properties from a complex real phenomena to use in the simulation program. For example, to simulate a bouncing ball, the ball's position is important but its melting point probably isn't. Any model has limitations, and is not a complete representation of reality. [6]
In these few sentences, Robinett makes a number of very important points about the design of simulations, including: sented through procedures that created distinctively "witchy" characteristics, the character of the Blob possesses
Simulations are abstractions. The real or imagined pheprocedural character traits (fearful, steadily growing, nomenon you want to depict in your game is most likely ingests players, fragments and recombines, inevitably wins) overflowing with layers of detail. But as with all forms of that are exceedingly Blob-like. An elegantly designed game representational media, you will never be able to fully persona, the Blob generates a character through excep-represent every facet of your subject. Thus your simulated tionally effective procedural means—and completely representation, as Robinett points out, is an abstraction. without digital technology! Chess is a highly abstracted representation of war. Sim City is a very stylized version of government and city planning. D&D even abstracts people—into the characteristics of Strength, Intelligence, Wisdom, Dexterity, Constitution, and Charisma. A simulation does not attempt to simulate every aspect of its referent, but instead focuses on those elements necessary to the game. Virtua Fighter 4 simulates the fighting capabilities of its characters: it does not simulate their biological immune systems or taste in classical music, since these are not relevant to the play of the game. Being able to select which components of your subject to ignore and which to retain and abstract is an absolutely critical game design skill.
Simulations are systems. A simulation is a whole made up of smaller, interrelated parts. As with any complex system, meaning emerges from the interaction of the parts. Brainstorming a list of attributes or effects that you want to include in a simulation is not enough. You must conceive of a system that incorporates them all. You might want a fighting game that can simulate the difference between a fast but weak character and a slow but strong character. But what does "fast,"slow,"strong," and "weak" mean in your system? How do they interrelate? How do these attributes affect the decisions and outcomes a player makes? All games are systems, but when we frame them as simulations, the systemic aspect of the game is harnessed directly for representational effect.
Simulations are numerical. Not only are simulations abstracted, systemic representations, but they are also reducible to a formal, numerical structure. We know this already about games: at some level games are composed of rules, and at their most formal level, all rules are logical, mathematical, constituative rules. The six D&D statistics listed previously are represented in the game as numerical digits between three and eighteen. Complex physics simulations in computer games are based on mathematical modeling. The behavior of artificial characters, whether on a Magic: The Gathering card or inside Deus Ex, can be reduced to their formal identity. The fact that simulations must reduce their subjects to formal, numerical values is exactly why it is so challenging to procedurally depict social, psychological, and other experientially complex phenomena in a game.
Simulations are limited. Because simulations are numerical abstractions, they are intrinsically limited. As Robinett points out, "every model has its limitations and is not a complete representation of reality." We emphasize this aspect of simulations because of prevalent ideas in the computer game industry that more complex simulations automatically guarantee meaningful play. In fact, on a digital platform even a supposedly "realistic" simulation only depicts a tiny slice of any real world or imagined phenomenon. But this doesn't mean that simulations can't provide meaningful play. The inventive shareware game Bridge Builder simulates its subject, but it chooses a very narrow aspect of bridge building—the engineering challenges of the support structure. This design leaves out thousands of other possible characteristics that might be simulated, from the aesthetics of the building materials to the effect of the bridge construction on the surrounding ecosystem. But that's OK. The game turns the intrinsically limited nature of simulation into an asset, by focusing player activity on a fun and educational aspect of building bridges.
Design involves choice: to create a simulation, you need to decide what to simulate and how. Every choice you make as a game designer opens some possibilities and closes others. What is meaningful in the context of a particular simulation? Is it meaningful to blow wind into the face of the player as she is piloting a hang glider? Is it meaningful to provide a full-body harness in which the player can lie as she interacts with the simulation? Is it meaningful to simulate the insurance and legal procedures by which a player purchases or rents a hang glider? Pilotwings for the Nintendo Entertainment System, a popular game simulation of hang gliding, includes none of these features.
In digital games, much of this decision-making process involves the scope and depth of a simulation. If a racing game is composed of a single car on a single track, it can be extremely detailed. It might include a complex set of physics models, simulations of the internal suspension of the car, or wear on tire treads as they are used over time. Given the same design resources, the addition of more cars and more tracks means that fewer characteristics can be simulated in an equally detailed way. If even more elements are added—such as cars that can transform into jets and fly around the track—the focus of the simulation shifts once more. If a character can get out of the vehicle, walk around, and interact with other people, that casts the net even wider and the "depth" of the simulation decreases accordingly. In designing a simulation, you must decide exactly what kinds of procedural representations you want to provide for players. In a fighting game series such as Tekken, a detailed (if fancifully cinematic) fighting simulation, the characters don't also get into cars and drive around a track. On the other hand, in an ambitiously open-ended game such as Shenmue, a player's character can have simple conversations with many other characters in the environment, examine, carry, and utilize a wide array of objects, and explore a large detailed space. As a result of the range of activities simulated, the fighting system in Shenmue is much more stylized and limited in scope than that of Tekken. Why is it that games can't simulate everything with a high degree of detail? Why can't a game simulation be both wide and deep? There are several reasons. Limited development resources require that game designers decide where those resources will be spent. But the limitations of time and budget are not the only things affecting the scope of simulations. There are game design factors as well. Meaningful play stems from the ability of players to make meaningful choices from a limited set of knowable options. If a player has trouble recognizing everything that is being simulated, an understanding of knowable options decreases. In an essay by game designer Harvey Smith on simulation and games,[7] he uses the fictional example of a vehicle-based game with terrain simulation so exacting that the geometry of a player-driven truck can get stuck on a tiny bump on the ground. In this case, the designer chose the wrong element of the game to simulate in detail. Smith's example also points out the problem of thinking that a simulation is anything but an abstraction. The "reality" of a game is determined by the meanings it creates within the magic circle. The terrain simulation in Smith's fictionalexample might be based on scientifically accurate mathematical models, but the only thing the player will experience is the frustrating, "unrealistic" experience of being unable to drive on what looks like relatively smooth terrain. The proper scope of detail for a simulation is largely determined by expectations set by the broader context of the game. In Gran Turismo, a game that deeply simulates real-world car physics, players come to expect a finely grained driving experience. However, driving is clearly the focus of the game. No player expects to exit their car, wander up into the stands, and interact with spectators. A game such as Shenmue, on the other hand, has been criticized for disappointing players. If players can interact with many different kinds of objects in the game, why can they enter only some of the buildings and not others? Player expectations are raised to unrealistic levels: the implied breadth of the simulation is far greater than what the game actually delivers. Given that simulations are abstract and limited, as a game designer you must choose your battles wisely. The elements you select to depict through the procedural representation of a simulation determine the experiential focus of your game. Another of Harvey Smith's thought experiments is to take a typical driving game and give it additional depth by having computer opponents take note of their fuel consumption and try to drive directly behind other cars, strategically using wind shear to conserve fuel. He contrasts this to a driving game with emotional simulation, in which one of the computer opponents might drive recklessly during a race because he had just ended a relationship with a girlfriend.[8]
Whereas Smith prefers the fuel consumption adjustment to the driving game, we find both of the game ideas equally interesting. Each of the two scenarios points to a very different game experience. Both driving games—one a hardcore strategic sim and the other a romance set on a race course—would require simulating different kinds of phenomena. These procedural representations would be part of the larger game system and would determine what the game could represent and what the player would experience. You most likely wouldn't want both the fuel consumption simulation and the romance simulation in the same game. Why? Because each pull the space of possibility and the focus of the play in opposite directions. The fuel consumption feature implies an entire system of detailed car simulation mechanics that would be the central focus of the game.The heartbroken driver implies a game system that would focus on simulating dating, emotions, and stylized romance. As you craft representations in your game system, you simultaneously create the meanings that players will experience. The key is to remember that just because a simulation is limited in scope doesn't mean that it is impoverished in what it can provide players. The abstract play of Go contains an infinite number of strategic options. The fine-grained driving focus of Gran Turismo supports meaningful exploration because the simulation rewards players for learning about and taking advantage of its subtleties. And the broad-but-shallow world simulation of Shenmue lets players focus on the rich narrative surface of the world without getting tripped up in interactive complexities that would not be appropriate to the game. The creation of a simulation is the creation of a space of possibility. By defining the exact nature of your game's simulation, you are sculpting the shape of your game's meaningful play. [6]Robinett, Inventing the Adventure Game.
[7]Harvey Smith, "The Future of Game Design," <www.gamasutra.com >.[8]Ibid.
