“Just Don’t Use It, Then”

This is another great example of how bad we are, in the digital-game world, at talking about games.

Often times I’ll get into a discussion about a particular game.  I’ll mention that I consider one weakness of the game to be that something – some feature – is over-powered.  And in return, I hear the same response over and over again:

“Well, just don’t use it, then.”

Okay, sure.  I can just not use that over-powered thing.  But then what I have done is I’ve created a new rule.  A pretty significant new rule, too – I’ve chosen to effectively remove the most powerful thing in the game.  If a game is a set of rules, and you change what that rule-set is, then what you really end up with is another game.  Sure, it has the same assets and probably plays mostly the same – but it is a different game.

This means you cannot use this argument to defend your favorite games.  I am saying, “I don’t like this ruleset called Super Pigeon Blaster 5000“, and you are saying “then change the ruleset”.  Sure, I can change the ruleset, but then it will no longer be Super Pigeon Blaster 5000 anymore.

Whether through “mods”, “house rules”, or “variants” – whenever you are changing the rules of the game, you are changing what the game is.  Anything can be modified into a good game – you can “mod” a roll of toilet paper into a good game.  That doesn’t mean that a roll of toilet paper is a good game.

Games are about finding the optimal move

Games are systems which allow us to practice mastery.  The best games allow you to seek mastery for a lifetime, but never find it.  You cannot ask players to seek “a little bit mastery”.  You cannot tell them, “do good, but not… too good”, like Dash at the end of the film The Incredibles.  All you can do is what I described above:  set new rules which now draw the new line for what mastery is.  But again, once you do that, you’ve changed the game.

Below are a few examples of some games and various forms of this argument:

  • Skyrim:  “If you think using quicksave is too powerful, then don’t use it.”  (Granted that this is a problem with almost every single player game, but that’s not an excuse.  It’s still the most over-powered weapon ever wielded.)
  • Counter-Strike:  “Yeah, the AWP is too powerful, but just play on ‘no-AWP’ servers”.
  • Super Mario World:  “If you think using the cape to fly over entire levels is too powerful, then don’t get the feather / use its power”.

Somewhere, down there, is a platformer level

The main thing I want everyone to take from this article is that none of the above are defenses for these games.  If I say “Counter Strike is good except I deduct some points for the overpowered AWP”, it is not a counter-argument to tell me to not use the AWP.  That’s what’s really funny about this “defense”, is that when you give it, you are actually agreeing with me.  You are saying yes, the game does indeed have that flaw, and suggesting that I play, again, a different game.

It’s also worth mentioning that most of the time, when you just rip one rule out of a game without changing anything else, it causes problems.  Skyrim (and almost any RPG) is designed with save-scumming in mind.  If you don’t use it, not only are you not playing the same game as was designed by Bethesda, but it actually may be a completely broken experience.  A game ruleset is like a machine.  If you just rip one cog out, the whole thing will likely break down.

Finally, I leave you with this question:  if we’re charging players with the responsibility of balancing our games, then why do we even bother trying to balance games at all?  If anything’s too powerful, we can simply trust that players will house-rule it out, right?  Obviously, this is not what I believe, and I hope that other game designers are not thinking this way.  Designers need to take pride in your work and trust that you have the ability to create a ruleset that couldn’t easily be improved by some random dude who happens to be paying for server fees.

Posted on 12/01/2011 by keithburgun. This entry was posted in News. Bookmark the permalink.
  • Le Roux

    I need one of those super pigeon blasters, please. They aren’t responding to reason.

    • http://www.dinofarmgames.com keithburgun

      Everyone THINKS they want a super pigeon blaster, until they get one. After five minutes of that though, it gets boring.

  • http://brindlebrothers.blogspot.com John Brindle

    Long have men been heard to say “blast that infernal pigeon!” Now that power is within their grasp, and yet they weep, for there are now more worlds to conquer.

    I agree with this post, both in its conclusions and in its fundamental assumptions, though it seems to me fair that a player should praise a designer’s part in collaborating to make the modified game thats actually being played. Also, it isn’t a big deal to charge players with the responsibility of changing games, because they will always do so, perpetually, greedily, gleefully, forever, as they like it and whether you ask them to or not. It’s just that this should not/does not detract from duties of a designer.

    You say: “The best games allow you to seek mastery for a lifetime, but never find it.” This is alarmingly, tin-foil-hattingly close to my own thoughts about ‘great art’: proper well good art always rewards but never fully surrenders to examination. i.e. you can try for 80 years to understand it but there will always be something new. In both cases we are hoping for a system of such complexity and skillful construction as to be functionally bottomless.

    • http://www.dinofarmgames.com keithburgun

      >Long have men been heard to say “blast that infernal pigeon!” Now that power is within their grasp, and yet they weep, for there are now more worlds to conquer.

      I believe this was the introduction to an early Kurosawa film. At least, the translated version…

      You’re a cool guy, John Bindle!

  • http://blown-to-bits.blogspot.com/ Kdansky

    I heard that there are CS-servers where you get kicked if you buy an AWP, and I know for sure that there are (were?) TF2-servers which “disallowed” (through the means of a message during log-on) certain weapons such as Natascha.

    You know what? I’ll use the soft-banned weapon just because, even if I’m bad at it. It’s in the game, it’s in the ruleset, and I am because I want to master the game.

  • http://www.thatsaterribleidea.com evizaer

    Sometimes a player is faced with the choice of ignoring an overpowered ability and having fun, or using the overpowered ability and not having much fun but doing “better” in the game. In multiplayer games, players can’t choose what mechanics other players can and can’t use, so a big flaw is damning. But in single-player it’s different. The best games have very little that one must ignore in this way in order to have fun. But I think that many people do themselves a disservice by being unable to just ignore a feature that makes the game boring or less fun. House-ruling can lead to a lot of enjoyment for the player–I don’t see a reason to discourage it; and it is indeed a sign of bad design or execution that it ends up being required to continue having fun with many games..

  • http://www.thatsaterribleidea.com evizaer

    And also: the “then just don’t use it!” defense is actually not a defense of the game design. It’s an attack on the person who pointed out the flaw. It halts discussion through its irrelevance to the actual discussion of game design decisions. It lowers the discussion from one about how the game’s designed to one about how the game is played. It suggests that you, the player, are incapable of making basic decisions about how to have fun–it’s somewhat insulting and definitely irrelevant to a game design discussion.

    I see it as akin to saying “The American system is first-past-the-post–that’s how it is: deal with it or leave the country if you don’t like it.” when people are trying to discuss the pros and cons of various different polling methods. It adds nothing to the conversation. It’s a flat condemnation of even discussion itself.

  • Jon

    I think your argument is ridiculous. You are correct that rulesets are like a giant machine with many interconnected parts. The thing is, we, as gamers, are capable of agreeing on different rulesets to play games with, thus replacing one machine with another. This is something that gamers everywhere have been doing with all games forever, and it doesn’t imply a weakness in the original game.

    All that matters is that the players involved in a game agree on a ruleset. From there it doesn’t really matter if you want to call it another game or not, as the players have already agreed on what they are playing. “What’s in a name?” and all that. Case in point: the AWP being OP is basically just an opinion held by many CS players, and myself included. Our ability to agree on a ruleset that removes the AWP is a really nice bonus that the developers have afforded us, and it certainly is not something that they have cursed us with. As a machine, the addition of the AWP doesn’t affect other components so much as it changes the machines overall function. The game simply plays differently with it, and its inclusion is left to the preference of those who play it.

    For single player games, you are the only player, so agreeing to a ruleset should be easy. I am able to enjoy games like Skyrim and Super Mario World by ignoring these “flaws,” and if you can’t then that sounds like your problem to me. My point with all of this is that your examples are not flaws because the developer actually gives you a clear option to ignore them. They would be flaws if this option was not present.

    One last related point: “Games are about finding the optimal move.” I don’t really want to argue about what the definition of games is or what they are about. I just want to point out that “games” are only one component to what we call “video games.” In addition to the game component, video games also contain art, story, adventure, mystery, discovery, crafting and the list can go on really. You are arguing that a game like Skyrim is about finding “an optimal move,” which I think is silly. Clearly Skyrim is more about the adventure and story components than that. Clearly, quicksaving is an option given to players who maybe don’t want to be punished by the difficult sections of the game. Even if games are about finding the optimal move, Video games are about having fun. I don’t think that the developers who designed the three games you gave as an example thought games are where the player should find the optimal move, not even with CS. I think that those games were certainly designed for the players to have fun. I wonder what philosophy you use to design video games. Do you see them as purely games, like poker or chess? Or do you see video games as a platform that combines gaming, story, and art? Finally, do you want your players to find the optimal move or do you just want them to have fun in the end?

    • Aaron

      Jon, I think you completely miss the point of the article.

      He’s not telling anyone that they can’t change the rules to their own liking. He saying that when someone criticizes a game’s design and it’s overall implementation that the defense “Well, then don’t use it!” is a horrible argument stance because it ignores that it is the JOB of the developer to create a game that is balanced and fun. It should never fall upon the player to make the game better because the moment we have to do so we have created a game with an entirely different ruleset and thus an entirely different game and experience.

      Yes, you can do that. Yes, gamers have been doing is since forever. But that doesn’t excuse bad execution by developers.

    • http://www.dinofarmgames.com keithburgun

      >This is something that gamers everywhere have been doing with all games forever, and it doesn’t imply a weakness in the original game.

      It does mean that. If you need to change it to enjoy it, that’s a weakness.

      >My point with all of this is that your examples are not flaws because the developer actually gives you a clear option to ignore them.

      Technically, you could ignore any game’s problem if you mod it. With boardgames, this is particularly easy. So then I guess no game is bad, because all of them could be modded into something fun?

      >Or do you see video games as a platform that combines gaming, story, and art?

      Sometimes video games contain stories and artwork. Sometimes not. ROGUE is a great game that has no story and arguably no artwork. You could maybe argue Tetris is the same way, and it is probably the greatest video game ever made. And Tetris is great because it could not have existed before video games. I think its real-time level of interactivity is actually a much more significant difference than the ability to include story, which I think actually tends to be a problem.

      >Finally, do you want your players to find the optimal move or do you just want them to have fun in the end?

      “Have fun” is crappy terminology. I am a game designer and I want players to enjoy playing a game. This means “searching for the optimal move”. Luckily, searching for the optimal move in a good game *is* fun.

  • Mauro

    Super Mario World: “If you think using the cape to fly over entire levels is too powerful, then don’t get the feather / use its power”.

    Super Mario World… is an easy game. The thing is, there’s a cost to flying over the level: you don’t get to explore the level. And where there are Yoshi wings, it’s either hard to get to them with Yoshi or you miss out on secret exits later on or both. But it’s an easy game.

    I think we have to keep in mind that games have flaws, or at least features that are not universally loved. Things get unbalanced (like the Top Secret Area in Super Mario World in 2-player — you can go into it over and over without losing your turn), or there’s an easier way to do things than what the programmers intended.

    …So? I agree with you completely that if you don’t like the game, don’t play it. Think SMW is too easy? Try SMB3 instead. Think Counterstrike is unbalanced? Play something else. I think that the real reason we gripe about these things is that we *like* the game but wish that it were slightly different. We’re saying, “This game is GREAT! *This* feature is frustrating, but the game overall is too good for me to not play it.” I think that the counter-argument, “then don’t play it”, misses the point that we like to complain because we like to complain. (:

  • embarrassing

    I’m just about to start Skyrim, wonder how I’m going to deal with the saving. I hate it how quick-saves ruin the tension.

  • Robyrt

    A lesson from fighting games is applicable here: Often, a supposedly game-breaking object or technique doesn’t actually break the game, and a “new” game emerges with the overpowered bits included, that could be just as good or even better.

    Of course, this isn’t a hard and fast rule; sometimes, the game without the AWP is a better and more fun game than the one where everybody has an AWP.

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