Tag: simulation ruleset

Why Persistent State Makes Player Actions Matter In Systemic Games

Posted on by Myles Blasonato in Analysis, Blog, Game Design

A lot of game worlds have the memory of somebody walking into a room and immediately forgetting why they’re there. The player breaks into a secure facility, empties every cupboard, knocks out twelve guards, destroys the security system and leaves through a window. Five minutes later, the guards have returned to their original positions, the building is operating normally and somebody has apparently restocked every cupboard during an active emergency. Games can’t remember everything the player does. Recording every moved chair, opened drawer and disappointed shopkeeper would become expensive, complicated and a wonderful way to make the save system begin quietly smoking. However, a world should remember the actions that matter to its fantasy. When behaviour changes the state of the simulation, decisions gain weight...

Coherence Is Expensive: Why Consistent Game Rules Require Disciplined Systemic Scope

Posted on by Myles Blasonato in Analysis, Blog, Game Design

Systemic games are often described as though the solution is simply to connect everything to everything else. Fire affects grass. Water conducts electricity. Sound attracts enemies. Objects have weight. Characters remember what happened. Weather changes visibility. Food spoils. Doors react to pressure. Somebody suggests adding wind, and suddenly the engineering team is explaining why every loose object in the game now needs an opinion about aerodynamics. These relationships can create remarkable depth. When rules remain consistent across different situations, players begin treating the world as something they can understand. They form expectations, test ideas and carry knowledge into new encounters. A mechanic stops being a button they press and becomes part of a larger model of how the world behaves...

The Fear Of Letting Go: Why Game Designers Need To Author Rules, Not Outcomes

Posted on by Myles Blasonato in Analysis, Blog, Game Design

Games are expensive, complicated and held together by an alarming combination of specialised technology, production planning and at least one tool that everybody is frightened to update. When a team spends months creating an encounter, cinematic, environment or narrative sequence, it naturally wants the player to experience that work correctly. The problem begins when protecting every authored moment prevents the player from meaningfully participating in the game. The player can move, aim, select dialogue and activate objects, but they can’t genuinely construct an outcome. Their role is to confirm a sequence that has already been decided. Systemic design asks designers to let go of some direct control. Instead of authoring every solution, we author rules, relationships, spaces and constraints that allow players to form solutions for themselves...

Model Transferability Is How Players Learn The World

Posted on by Myles Blasonato in Analysis, Blog, Game Design

Good game systems do not just teach players what to press. They teach players how the world works. That difference matters because a player who only learns inputs can only follow instructions. A player who understands the model can solve problems the game has not explicitly explained yet. This is where Model Transferability becomes important...

The Problem With Modern Immersion: Why Looking Real Is Not Enough

Posted on by Myles Blasonato in Analysis, Blog, Game Design

A lot of modern games look immersive before they actually feel immersive. The lighting is expensive. The animations are polished. The worlds are huge. Characters blink, breathe, sweat, stumble, and stare dramatically into the middle distance. Everything looks like it should pull the player in, but somehow the experience can still feel strangely hollow. That is the problem with modern immersion...

Mechanical Foreshadowing: Teach The Rule Before The Test

Posted on by Myles Blasonato in Analysis, Blog, Game Design

A lot of difficult moments in games are not actually difficult. They are simply unexplained. The player enters a room, touches something they did not know was dangerous, and dies. A hidden sniper fires from outside the frame. A floor collapses without warning. An enemy suddenly becomes immune to the strategy that worked five minutes earlier. The game may technically be challenging the player, but the player is not being tested on understanding. They are being punished for missing information they were never given...

Activation vs Construction: Why Pressing A Button Is Not The Same As Solving A Problem

Posted on by Myles Blasonato in Analysis, Blog, Game Design

A lot of games give players choices. The problem is that not all choices ask the player to think. Some choices are simply buttons attached to pre-designed outcomes. Press this to distract. Press that to persuade. Select this option to set a trap. Choose this dialogue line to resolve the scene. These interactions can be useful, readable, and satisfying, but they are not the same as letting the player construct an outcome through the world. This is the difference between activation and construction. Activation is when the player triggers a designed outcome. Construction is when the player builds an outcome through interacting systems. Both can look like agency from the outside because both involve player input, but the player’s relationship to the result is completely different. One asks the player to select a solution. The other asks the player to understand the world well enough to create one...

The Simulation Mask: Why Players Need to Become the Character

Posted on by Myles Blasonato in Analysis, Blog, Game Design

Most games tell players who they are. You are a detective, a soldier, a thief, a hunter, a wizard, or a survivor. The problem is that being told something and feeling something are not the same thing. A game can spend hours explaining who your character is through dialogue, cutscenes, lore entries, and exposition, but if the player’s behaviour never changes, the fantasy remains superficial. They are controlling the character, not inhabiting them...

The Simulation Compass: Why Players Need Direction Before They Need Freedom

Posted on by Myles Blasonato in Analysis, Blog, Game Design

One of the biggest myths in game design is that player freedom automatically creates immersion. It doesn't. Freedom only matters when players understand what they can actually do with it. This is where many systemic games fail. Designers spend months building interconnected mechanics, emergent interactions, and multiple solution paths. The systems are there. The depth is there. The possibilities are there. The player never sees them. Instead, they walk into a space, identify the most obvious solution, and move on. Not because they don't want to experiment, but because the game never taught them how to recognise opportunity. This is what the Simulation Compass solves...

Responsibility in Immersive Design: Why Consequences Create Meaning

Posted on by Myles Blasonato in Analysis, Blog, Game Design

Most games want players to feel like their choices matter, immersing them in a world where every decision has weight and significance. The problem is that many of those choices don't actually change anything meaningful within the game. You pick dialogue option A or dialogue option B, often leading to interactions that feel strikingly similar despite the initial differences in choice. You choose one path over another, venturing into distinct story arcs that ultimately converge at the same destination. You spend resources one way instead of another, believing that your strategy will yield varied outcomes. Yet somehow, the game quietly bends itself back into the same shape, leaving players questioning the impact of their decisions...