Design - Cohesion – Execution

I don’t believe in simple black-and-white schemes in which there are good games and bad games. The reality is always a shade of gray. For review purposes I can list the good and bad points of every game. But when I decide whether to play a game or not, I need to make a simple yes/no decision. And that decision is based on a mix of objective criteria and subjective preferences. MMORPG players are often very passionate about the games they are playing, both in positive and in negative ways, which makes discussion about games often difficult. So to improve the discussion, we shouldn’t just look at a game as a whole, which we love or hate, but look at different aspects of the game. The system I am proposing here groups these aspects into three classes: Design, cohesion, and execution.

What I call “design” is the fundamental decisions game developers take, often even before coding the first line of the program. This can cover aspects like what genre the game is, the balance between PvE and PvP, the general graphics style, how hardcore the game should be, and how much opportunity players have to shape the game world. The important point here is that there is no way to classify design decisions as “good” or “bad” in an objective way. I can subjectively say that I don’t like PvP-heavy games, but that doesn’t make going for PvP a less valid design decision. Another player might be just the opposite, refusing to play a game without PvP. The only thing you can say, based on experience, is that some sorts of design tend to be more popular than other designs. For example games that are less hardcore and require less powerful hardware for the graphics usually end up with more subscribers, just because the possible number of people that have both the time and the hardware to play it is larger. But there are definitely a number of people who would prefer games that require more time investment, and/or more photo-realistic graphics, and going for that niche instead of for the mass market is a valid design decision. Game blogs and forums often discuss design aspects endlessly, but in the end we can only agree to disagree, because each of has different personal preferences here.

Personally I prefer fantasy games to science fiction games. I prefer PvE to PvP. I don’t really care whether a game has photo-realistic graphics. I prefer games that don’t require too much time investment to achieve goals. And I prefer MMORPGs that are more on the “game” side of the world <--> game scale. Regular readers are probably aware of my preferences. But I can imagine how comments of mine saying “I am going to buy / not buy this game” can be misunderstood by the casual reader. A major part of my buying decisions are based on how much the design aspects of a game match my personal preferences.

With “cohesion” I mean how much the game actually achieves its design purposes. That can be subjective to some degree, for example if you discuss how close a game is to some licensed lore. But you can also make some objective statements as well, just by observing how much players accept certain features. If the designers wanted to make a PvP game, but most players avoid getting into PvP combat, there is indisputably something wrong. This is often a matter of designers hoping to evoke a specific behavior by setting up a structure of sticks and carrots, and not always succeeding, or causing unintended other consequences. Another typical example is games in which some zones are deserted, with everybody preferring to play somewhere else. Obviously something went wrong in the cohesion between risk and reward, driving players away from places where the risks are too high or the rewards too low. Cohesion flaws are most likely to be noticed after playing a game for a long time, and are a frequent cause for burn-out.

The third class of game aspects is “execution”, and here it is much easier to be objective. Bad execution means bugs, graphics errors, crashes, server-side lag, but also unfinished features, empty areas, or broken quest lines. A game can be perfectly well designed, but sloppily programmed or rushed out to release too early, and that hurts the overall evaluation of the game. In the worst case the bugs, lag, and crashes make the game unplayable, and then it doesn’t really matter how good the game would be if you could play it, because you just can’t. The only thing that is arguable about execution is how much it matters, because the most dedicated fans of a game will often be willing to overlook bugs and other bad execution aspects, because they love the game so much.

The perfect game would have a design that fits your personal preferences, as well as a good cohesion and execution. It gets a lot harder in the far more likely case that not everything is perfect. Many people can’t admit that a game in which they don’t like the design could have a very good cohesion and execution, because they think that if the design doesn’t fit them, the game must be “bad”. Others like the design of a game so much, that they become positively apologist about objective flaws in the game’s cohesion or execution. If you dare to point out obvious bugs, you get labeled a “fanboi” for some other game, or deluged in a barrage of game design arguments that have nothing to do with the execution flaws you were pointing out.

I invite to have a second look at the games you love or hate, and check whether it is just the design that is causing that response. That happens frequently before the game is actually released, because flaws in cohesion often only turn up when a larger number of players are playing that game. And bad execution is often excused with the old “this is only the beta” argument. On the other extreme, and much later, you might react negatively to a game that you have played for thousands of hours, because you just burned out, and minor cohesion flaws became unbearable after endless repetition. It takes a strong character to say “this is a good game, but not for me”.