So, I've been trying to beat Psychonauts* recently, instead of rocking some Revolution Under Siege, which was originally going to be the topic of a post. This is mostly because Revolution Under Siege, despite being a fascinating turn-based wargame in which I can order Trotsky around like a good little academic Pinko, is basically impossible to understand. I exaggerate, but only slightly. I think I've just about got the first real scenario figured out*, but I find it extremely non-intuitive, thanks mostly to the fact that there's a LOT of weird stuff going on that only makes sense if you read all the political updates, and then THINK about them, and sometimes I'm bad about thinking**.
Speaking of being bad about thinking, this post is the nexus of several observations:
1)I'm having a hard time bringing myself to play a lot of hard-core strategy games, instead, opting for the simple pleasures of Minecraft or Psychonauts
2)It's (much much) harder to write up a game of Dominions than a game of BSG, and, moreover, a game of Dominions is a lot less fufilling than a game of BSG
3) I am sick to death of Operation Barbarossa. Also- Operation Barbarossa is everywhere.
The link that ties these three threads together? The problems of the dramatic arc of the strategy game. We'll take a look at how strategy games can actually have a narrative arc below the jump, true believer!
My grand plan, to justify the idea of thinking of strategy games as telling stories stories, and the conclusions that follow from that, is buoyed by the following pieces of evidence: Quite a few games have a structure which is analogous to the generic narrative arc, it's vitally important to have the results of the game flow from the player's actions, the presence of the possibility of a sudden reversal helps to make games interesting.
I want to begin the argument proper with the following disclaimer, I am not arguing for or against any sort of statement about the quality or artiness of games. There has been a lot of debate about games**** being art or not. Honestly, this isn't an issue that I feel qualified to discuss, being a horrible philistine. Art has all sorts of connotation associated with it, and is a fundamentally creative activity, whereas what I want to talk about are things where you push a bunch of pieces of cardboard (or digital representations thereof) around until they reach a certain configuration, at which point you have seized Berlin. What I want to talk about is the use/misuse of the dramatic arc, specifically in the context of classical drama.
Moreover, I'm not going to give a solid definition of a strategy game. This is mostly because I don't have one at present. The fuzzy, non-rigorous definition is that something is a strategy game if it fundamentally involves making choices about resource allocation. That's about it. I know it's a bad definition, but I haven't really put in the thought to making a better one at present, and this post is already 500 million words long.
The (generic) narrative arc (GNA) looks something like the thing on the right. You start out slow and small, building towards a point of maximal action, followed by a wrap-up of what just happened, in which things are brought to a close. As a general rule of thumb, this is how a story should be shaped (this doesn't apply to every story, there are a lot of good stories that don't follow this sort of progression, etc.)
Think of a game of typical game of Starcraft. The initial build-up as both players focus on economy, the initial poking attacks, and, eventually, the confrontation which determines the winner. Has a certain sort of similarity to the GNA, doesn't it? Of course, this is proof the shittiest type: "it looks vaguely like what I want it to, therefore, it must be the thing I'm claiming it to be." Which is nearly as shitty as putting up a bunch of straw men counterarguments and shooting them down, which is what I'm about to do.
1) Not all games of Starcraft work in that way, for instance, what about drone rushing?
- In general, I feel this is an argument for my case, rather than against it. Games that are decided by an early "cheese" feel, at least to most players, somehow incomplete and unfufilling. This is due, in my opinion, to the premature climax (eh he he), without sufficient buildup.
2) What about games with multiple climactic battles, for example, a PvP 4 gate vs. 4 gate type thing?
-You're quite right, these sort of games don't fit the GNA very well. Each of the battles is important, and there's no build-up to a single, dramatic conflict. In my defense, I didn't say that ALL games will follow the arc, any more than ALL stories will follow the arc. Also, a lot of people find 4 gate fights boring and unfufilling, leading to the argument addressed above.
3) Starcraft is a bad game to make arguments like this from, because it's DESIGNED to have the GNA, like most RTS games.
This argument is actually where I'm going to draw the majority of my inspiration from. Why on earth would you build a game that has a slow buildup before every game? Considering that the average game of starcraft is on the order of 20 minutes long, and it takes ~6 minutes before the first non-super rushy attacks, you have a game where nothing interesting happens for the first ~1/3-1/4. Not only Starcraft, but also Civilization, Dominion (the board game), Dominions (the Computer game about pretenders trying to be a god), Diplomacy, Agricola, and many more. This is weeeeird^*.
Speaking of being bad about thinking, this post is the nexus of several observations:
1)I'm having a hard time bringing myself to play a lot of hard-core strategy games, instead, opting for the simple pleasures of Minecraft or Psychonauts
2)It's (much much) harder to write up a game of Dominions than a game of BSG, and, moreover, a game of Dominions is a lot less fufilling than a game of BSG
3) I am sick to death of Operation Barbarossa. Also- Operation Barbarossa is everywhere.
The link that ties these three threads together? The problems of the dramatic arc of the strategy game. We'll take a look at how strategy games can actually have a narrative arc below the jump, true believer!
My grand plan, to justify the idea of thinking of strategy games as telling stories stories, and the conclusions that follow from that, is buoyed by the following pieces of evidence: Quite a few games have a structure which is analogous to the generic narrative arc, it's vitally important to have the results of the game flow from the player's actions, the presence of the possibility of a sudden reversal helps to make games interesting.
I want to begin the argument proper with the following disclaimer, I am not arguing for or against any sort of statement about the quality or artiness of games. There has been a lot of debate about games**** being art or not. Honestly, this isn't an issue that I feel qualified to discuss, being a horrible philistine. Art has all sorts of connotation associated with it, and is a fundamentally creative activity, whereas what I want to talk about are things where you push a bunch of pieces of cardboard (or digital representations thereof) around until they reach a certain configuration, at which point you have seized Berlin. What I want to talk about is the use/misuse of the dramatic arc, specifically in the context of classical drama.
Moreover, I'm not going to give a solid definition of a strategy game. This is mostly because I don't have one at present. The fuzzy, non-rigorous definition is that something is a strategy game if it fundamentally involves making choices about resource allocation. That's about it. I know it's a bad definition, but I haven't really put in the thought to making a better one at present, and this post is already 500 million words long.
The (generic) narrative arc (GNA) looks something like the thing on the right. You start out slow and small, building towards a point of maximal action, followed by a wrap-up of what just happened, in which things are brought to a close. As a general rule of thumb, this is how a story should be shaped (this doesn't apply to every story, there are a lot of good stories that don't follow this sort of progression, etc.)Think of a game of typical game of Starcraft. The initial build-up as both players focus on economy, the initial poking attacks, and, eventually, the confrontation which determines the winner. Has a certain sort of similarity to the GNA, doesn't it? Of course, this is proof the shittiest type: "it looks vaguely like what I want it to, therefore, it must be the thing I'm claiming it to be." Which is nearly as shitty as putting up a bunch of straw men counterarguments and shooting them down, which is what I'm about to do.
1) Not all games of Starcraft work in that way, for instance, what about drone rushing?
- In general, I feel this is an argument for my case, rather than against it. Games that are decided by an early "cheese" feel, at least to most players, somehow incomplete and unfufilling. This is due, in my opinion, to the premature climax (eh he he), without sufficient buildup.
2) What about games with multiple climactic battles, for example, a PvP 4 gate vs. 4 gate type thing?
-You're quite right, these sort of games don't fit the GNA very well. Each of the battles is important, and there's no build-up to a single, dramatic conflict. In my defense, I didn't say that ALL games will follow the arc, any more than ALL stories will follow the arc. Also, a lot of people find 4 gate fights boring and unfufilling, leading to the argument addressed above.
3) Starcraft is a bad game to make arguments like this from, because it's DESIGNED to have the GNA, like most RTS games.
This argument is actually where I'm going to draw the majority of my inspiration from. Why on earth would you build a game that has a slow buildup before every game? Considering that the average game of starcraft is on the order of 20 minutes long, and it takes ~6 minutes before the first non-super rushy attacks, you have a game where nothing interesting happens for the first ~1/3-1/4. Not only Starcraft, but also Civilization, Dominion (the board game), Dominions (the Computer game about pretenders trying to be a god), Diplomacy, Agricola, and many more. This is weeeeird^*.
The GNA adds to the enjoyment of a story, but it's not without it's problems, namely, that a story which follows the GNA takes a lot of initial investment to get going- you can't just sit down and immediately get into the thick of things. Therefore, unless you're willing or able to sit down and make an investment without getting an immediate return, a story with a strong GNA is very dull, unfufilling thing.
One might counter this observation by noting that most video action games^* have a tutorial period at the beginning, during which the player is relatively shielded from conflict. However, the increasing trend is to allow for more and more action during the tutorial section, so that the player can feel involved and in control of the situation, which is something that I wholeheartedly approve of, and the tutorial is only done at the very start of a game, rather than at the start of a session. In contrast, strategy games of all stripes (as noted above) tend to be marked by a build-up at the start of each session of play, and the purpose of this build up cannot be as a tutorial, as the choices made by the player during their initial moves tend to have a very large impact on the final outcome, such that a player who was using the period of rising action to "learn" how to play a game is strongly disadvantaged, something not shared by the tutorial period of action games.
This is why it's a lot easier to sit down and play some minecraft than it is to play some HOI3. Even though both games are endless timesinks, the minecraft game has no GNA, and, therefore, can begin dispensing enjoyment immediately, rather than having to sit through hours of build-up before war breaks out in 1941. I specifically DON'T want to claim that one is "better" than another, or that one is for people who aren't serious or dedicated, it's a silly argument in the face of the elaborate, long-term building projects engaged in by players of minecraft, or the finger-hurting difficulty of Meat Boy or IWBTG in comparison to the 20 minute Starcraft game. The presence of a GNA just makes things more dramatic (as in drama-esque, not as in "did you hear XXX was sleeping with YYY behind ZZZ's back?").
An argument could be made that in traditional sports, as well as in actiony video games, there is less tension at the beginning than at the end, allowing these activities to mirror the GNA, which would make the GNA non-unique to strategy games, making the fact that a great many such games feature this arc unremarkable. The increase in tension at the end of a game of, say, baseball, does mirror the GNA in several respects, but there is a profound difference, namely, that the rising action of most strategy games is two-fold, in that the rising action reflects both an increase in tension and a change in options available, while in most sports or action games, the tension increases, but the options available don't change. The change in options can be, but is not necessarily, towards the more/better end of the spectrum. Moreover, I feel that the non-uniqueness of the GNA is a sort of non-argument. So what if other sorts of things have a GNA, they're more than entitled to it.
It's the changing options that gives strategy games their strong GNA, but this feature is predicated on a linkage between action and aftereffect, the second part of the tie between games and drama. At this point, I'm going to wheel out Aristotle's Poetics, and invoke the concept of "Hamartia," which I am going to translate as "mistake" or "tragic flaw." One of Aristotle's markings of a superior drama is one in which the plot is driven by the choices of the characters, rather than things merely happening to the characters. For example, in Antigone- Antigone's choice to bury her brother is what ends in her death, while Creon's choice to kill Antigone as punishment is what leads to the death of his son. Both of these circumstances occurred, not because of random chance or fate (though one could argue that both of these factors did play a role), but because the character's choice. This, to my mind, is central to a proper strategy game.
Strategy games are about making choices that constrain and/or affect future play. Playing a card in Magic means that you have spent mana that you can not use for the play of other cards, and, at the more basic level, the cards that you put in to your deck define the options that you will have available during the game. Strategic decisions constrain future choice not, in general, by design, but because they are choices about resource allocation. Spending your resources in one place means that you're NOT spending them in another place, and spending resources changes the game state in one way or another. In chess, every turn, you're trying to maximize the value of the move that you are making. You are trying to change the game state to something more beneficial to yourself, that is to say, you're trying to spend your pieces and turns to
This is what it means to allocate resources. Some resources are renewable, some resources are finite, some resources are "meta resources," which are emergent from the properties of the game, for example, in chess, the center squares of the board are more powerful than the edges, due to the range of movement that they enable, and they become a resource to be fought over, and some resources are sort of fuzzy and difficult to talk about, for example, attention in a RTS game. When you allocate a resource, you are binding that resource to a particular use, such that it cannot be used for something else (at least for a little while). For example, jumping in a Mario game is a strategic decision, as, once you have jumped, you cannot jump again until you have touched a platform, this is to say, you have allocated a resource which is temporarily tied up, and your movement options have become limited. In more strategically focused games, i.e. strategy games, a resource can be something like gold, which you spend on units or cards or what have you, or it could be something like a card slot in a deck, or an army in a particular position.
Strategy games tell their stories best and most intuitively, that is, dramatically, when the outcome of the allocation is clear and unambiguous. This is why I claim that Dominions, while a very enjoyable game, is harder to write about than, say, BSG. In Dominions, the effect of a buy is difficult to see, especially several turns down the road. For example, buying money is quite often the best choice, but the effects of buying a gold or silver are much less dramatic than buying an action card, the effects of which you can see directly. In contrast, in BSG, the outcome of almost every decision is immediately shown, either by a loss of "resources," by a loss of cards in hand, or by destruction or creation of Cylon ships (potential threats to "resources"). The one area in which BSG deliberately obscures the link between the choice and the outcome, the skill check, still allows for a quick, intuitive understanding of people's individual choices (the "oh, I should have put in one more card" factor), but it obfuscates things to allow for the possibility of a Dramatic Reversal (DR).
The DR is another key element of Aristotelian drama, referred to as Peripetia; a situation in which a situation is turned to its opposite. Aristotle's key example of this was in Oedipus, in which the king, who was hunting through his city for the source of the impiety that was causing devastation in Thebes discovers at the end of the play that it was he who was the source of the impiety all along. In games, the DR usually comes about when one side, which had the advantage, is upstaged by another side. This can happen organically, as in chess, when a side overextends, allowing the other side to counterattack.
However, in general, the organic turnaround happens rarely, because a side that has the advantage will tend to keep or extend that advantage (if played skillfully and assuming there are no strong mechanics that restrain a player in the lead). This is a problem, because the lack of a DR means that the game is likely to be played out to the finale only in a cursory fashion, as the result is likely to be predetermined. Moreover, if the game punishes success too strongly, all manner of perverse incentives trickle in and make the game very odd, for example, most Mario Kart games have furious rubberbanding in the AI controlled racers, and the items, specially, the blue shell and the lightning bolt, mean that deliberately doing poorly is the best bet in many cases.
To compensate for these twin problems, designers build in asymmetry to allow for fixed points of DR. The classic example is in Axis and Allies, in which the Axis players start with a much stronger position on the board (the have a lot of starting units), while the Allied players have a stronger economy and a number of obstacles (the English Channel, the Mediterranean, and the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans) to slow the advance of the Axis, allowing for their superior economy to catch up. This, at core, is the essential nature of Operation Barbarossa, and all its many children. One side has the strong initial position, but must capitalize on it, as the ground will wash away under them if they aren't careful.
Many, many games have this sort of balance built in, to name a few:
War of the Ring, HoI, Chaos in the Old World (Compare Nurgle and Khorne, or Slaneesh and Khore specifically), many games of Civilization (e.g. Montezuma), BSG, 1960: Making of a President, Twilight Struggle (less on those two games, but still true), and many more!
Of course, not all games have this feature- symmetric games like chess don't, because both sides are (more or less) the same. Other games have different ways of making the sides asymmetric (Warcraft II has both sides mostly symmetric, but the spells that differentiate the two sides do not make one side more "long term" than the other), or in the best case, have a balance that shifts not only once, but several times!
A perfect example of this can be found in high-level Starcraft II play, to give an even more specific example, consider a typical Zerg vs. Protoss match. Similar to the Operation Barbarossa theme, at any point, the player can choose to sacrifice more stuff later for stuff now, but, unlike Barbarossa, one side is not automatically shoehorned into being "the German equivalents." Moreover, instead of having a single reversal, it has several, each of which is a small "window" that gives one side the advantage over the other. to get down to the fightin' pixels themselves-
At the beginning of the game the Zerg player (Z) has a window in which attacks with Zerglings have the potential to completely destroy the Protoss player (P). However, P can wall off and hunker down in his own base, rendering these attacks ineffective, but giving Z the ability to expand (increase his economy) easily. While this is going on, P can research Warpgates, which increase his unit production rate AND give him the ability to re-enforce anywhere. Once those are finished, P can push out and put the hurt on Z, giving him the potential to win the game, or at least giving P enough breathing room to expand.
Z has not been sitting on his thumbs during this attack, and once he gets his Lair and Hydra Den up, his ground units (Hydra/Roach mix) can rip through P's basic units, forcing P back on the defensive, allowing Z to expand again and/or nerdstomp P. P can counter by getting Colossi, which give him a window until Z gets Corruptors and/or Broodlords, reversing the dynamic until P gets a big bunch of Blink Stalkers, at which point the game typically favors P. At each reversal, the balance of power shifts dramatically, but the window does not obscure the gains made by the disadvantaged player during his previous position of dominance. Moreover, not all the windows are guaranteed to occur, if a player is in a strong position, he can either crush his foe, expand his economy, or otherwise begin prepping early for the next window, allowing for him to extend his lead/ reduce his deficit.
There is strong drama at every reversal in this game, enhanced by the slowly growing capacity of both sides, as evidenced by the expanding economies, giving the game an underlying GNA. Moreover, in general, the outcome of each choice is clean and clear, linking action and result in an intuitive manner. In fashion, the strategy game tells its own story, which draws heavily from the well of classical drama.
That's about all I have to say on this time on this subject. Sorry it took a while to poop out, but it needed a bit of a think-over, and I had analysis to do and papers to read. Good luck, and happy gaming.
*And succeeding, strangely enough
**By figured out, I mean: I can actually play it and have it make sense
***For example, you receive an update the Red Army has been formed without a hierarchy. I think to myself, "ooh, what a nice bit of historical flavor," and then move on. Later, I am stumped by the fact that I am unable to form hierarchical divisions, which are important for ensuring that your troops are at full effectiveness. I spend a lot of time reading the manual to figure out what I'm doing wrong. I complain at length to everyone within earshot. Then, in a blast of insight, as I stare at turn 4 of the scenario, I realize I am functionally retarded sometimes.
****Specifically of the Video variety
^ It's like RAAAAAAIIIIIIIIINNNNN on your wedding day.
^*I'm using this term loosely. In general, think of Super Mario or HALO.
One might counter this observation by noting that most video action games^* have a tutorial period at the beginning, during which the player is relatively shielded from conflict. However, the increasing trend is to allow for more and more action during the tutorial section, so that the player can feel involved and in control of the situation, which is something that I wholeheartedly approve of, and the tutorial is only done at the very start of a game, rather than at the start of a session. In contrast, strategy games of all stripes (as noted above) tend to be marked by a build-up at the start of each session of play, and the purpose of this build up cannot be as a tutorial, as the choices made by the player during their initial moves tend to have a very large impact on the final outcome, such that a player who was using the period of rising action to "learn" how to play a game is strongly disadvantaged, something not shared by the tutorial period of action games.
This is why it's a lot easier to sit down and play some minecraft than it is to play some HOI3. Even though both games are endless timesinks, the minecraft game has no GNA, and, therefore, can begin dispensing enjoyment immediately, rather than having to sit through hours of build-up before war breaks out in 1941. I specifically DON'T want to claim that one is "better" than another, or that one is for people who aren't serious or dedicated, it's a silly argument in the face of the elaborate, long-term building projects engaged in by players of minecraft, or the finger-hurting difficulty of Meat Boy or IWBTG in comparison to the 20 minute Starcraft game. The presence of a GNA just makes things more dramatic (as in drama-esque, not as in "did you hear XXX was sleeping with YYY behind ZZZ's back?").
An argument could be made that in traditional sports, as well as in actiony video games, there is less tension at the beginning than at the end, allowing these activities to mirror the GNA, which would make the GNA non-unique to strategy games, making the fact that a great many such games feature this arc unremarkable. The increase in tension at the end of a game of, say, baseball, does mirror the GNA in several respects, but there is a profound difference, namely, that the rising action of most strategy games is two-fold, in that the rising action reflects both an increase in tension and a change in options available, while in most sports or action games, the tension increases, but the options available don't change. The change in options can be, but is not necessarily, towards the more/better end of the spectrum. Moreover, I feel that the non-uniqueness of the GNA is a sort of non-argument. So what if other sorts of things have a GNA, they're more than entitled to it.
It's the changing options that gives strategy games their strong GNA, but this feature is predicated on a linkage between action and aftereffect, the second part of the tie between games and drama. At this point, I'm going to wheel out Aristotle's Poetics, and invoke the concept of "Hamartia," which I am going to translate as "mistake" or "tragic flaw." One of Aristotle's markings of a superior drama is one in which the plot is driven by the choices of the characters, rather than things merely happening to the characters. For example, in Antigone- Antigone's choice to bury her brother is what ends in her death, while Creon's choice to kill Antigone as punishment is what leads to the death of his son. Both of these circumstances occurred, not because of random chance or fate (though one could argue that both of these factors did play a role), but because the character's choice. This, to my mind, is central to a proper strategy game.
Strategy games are about making choices that constrain and/or affect future play. Playing a card in Magic means that you have spent mana that you can not use for the play of other cards, and, at the more basic level, the cards that you put in to your deck define the options that you will have available during the game. Strategic decisions constrain future choice not, in general, by design, but because they are choices about resource allocation. Spending your resources in one place means that you're NOT spending them in another place, and spending resources changes the game state in one way or another. In chess, every turn, you're trying to maximize the value of the move that you are making. You are trying to change the game state to something more beneficial to yourself, that is to say, you're trying to spend your pieces and turns to
This is what it means to allocate resources. Some resources are renewable, some resources are finite, some resources are "meta resources," which are emergent from the properties of the game, for example, in chess, the center squares of the board are more powerful than the edges, due to the range of movement that they enable, and they become a resource to be fought over, and some resources are sort of fuzzy and difficult to talk about, for example, attention in a RTS game. When you allocate a resource, you are binding that resource to a particular use, such that it cannot be used for something else (at least for a little while). For example, jumping in a Mario game is a strategic decision, as, once you have jumped, you cannot jump again until you have touched a platform, this is to say, you have allocated a resource which is temporarily tied up, and your movement options have become limited. In more strategically focused games, i.e. strategy games, a resource can be something like gold, which you spend on units or cards or what have you, or it could be something like a card slot in a deck, or an army in a particular position.
Strategy games tell their stories best and most intuitively, that is, dramatically, when the outcome of the allocation is clear and unambiguous. This is why I claim that Dominions, while a very enjoyable game, is harder to write about than, say, BSG. In Dominions, the effect of a buy is difficult to see, especially several turns down the road. For example, buying money is quite often the best choice, but the effects of buying a gold or silver are much less dramatic than buying an action card, the effects of which you can see directly. In contrast, in BSG, the outcome of almost every decision is immediately shown, either by a loss of "resources," by a loss of cards in hand, or by destruction or creation of Cylon ships (potential threats to "resources"). The one area in which BSG deliberately obscures the link between the choice and the outcome, the skill check, still allows for a quick, intuitive understanding of people's individual choices (the "oh, I should have put in one more card" factor), but it obfuscates things to allow for the possibility of a Dramatic Reversal (DR).
The DR is another key element of Aristotelian drama, referred to as Peripetia; a situation in which a situation is turned to its opposite. Aristotle's key example of this was in Oedipus, in which the king, who was hunting through his city for the source of the impiety that was causing devastation in Thebes discovers at the end of the play that it was he who was the source of the impiety all along. In games, the DR usually comes about when one side, which had the advantage, is upstaged by another side. This can happen organically, as in chess, when a side overextends, allowing the other side to counterattack.
However, in general, the organic turnaround happens rarely, because a side that has the advantage will tend to keep or extend that advantage (if played skillfully and assuming there are no strong mechanics that restrain a player in the lead). This is a problem, because the lack of a DR means that the game is likely to be played out to the finale only in a cursory fashion, as the result is likely to be predetermined. Moreover, if the game punishes success too strongly, all manner of perverse incentives trickle in and make the game very odd, for example, most Mario Kart games have furious rubberbanding in the AI controlled racers, and the items, specially, the blue shell and the lightning bolt, mean that deliberately doing poorly is the best bet in many cases.
To compensate for these twin problems, designers build in asymmetry to allow for fixed points of DR. The classic example is in Axis and Allies, in which the Axis players start with a much stronger position on the board (the have a lot of starting units), while the Allied players have a stronger economy and a number of obstacles (the English Channel, the Mediterranean, and the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans) to slow the advance of the Axis, allowing for their superior economy to catch up. This, at core, is the essential nature of Operation Barbarossa, and all its many children. One side has the strong initial position, but must capitalize on it, as the ground will wash away under them if they aren't careful.
Many, many games have this sort of balance built in, to name a few:
War of the Ring, HoI, Chaos in the Old World (Compare Nurgle and Khorne, or Slaneesh and Khore specifically), many games of Civilization (e.g. Montezuma), BSG, 1960: Making of a President, Twilight Struggle (less on those two games, but still true), and many more!
Of course, not all games have this feature- symmetric games like chess don't, because both sides are (more or less) the same. Other games have different ways of making the sides asymmetric (Warcraft II has both sides mostly symmetric, but the spells that differentiate the two sides do not make one side more "long term" than the other), or in the best case, have a balance that shifts not only once, but several times!
A perfect example of this can be found in high-level Starcraft II play, to give an even more specific example, consider a typical Zerg vs. Protoss match. Similar to the Operation Barbarossa theme, at any point, the player can choose to sacrifice more stuff later for stuff now, but, unlike Barbarossa, one side is not automatically shoehorned into being "the German equivalents." Moreover, instead of having a single reversal, it has several, each of which is a small "window" that gives one side the advantage over the other. to get down to the fightin' pixels themselves-
At the beginning of the game the Zerg player (Z) has a window in which attacks with Zerglings have the potential to completely destroy the Protoss player (P). However, P can wall off and hunker down in his own base, rendering these attacks ineffective, but giving Z the ability to expand (increase his economy) easily. While this is going on, P can research Warpgates, which increase his unit production rate AND give him the ability to re-enforce anywhere. Once those are finished, P can push out and put the hurt on Z, giving him the potential to win the game, or at least giving P enough breathing room to expand.
Z has not been sitting on his thumbs during this attack, and once he gets his Lair and Hydra Den up, his ground units (Hydra/Roach mix) can rip through P's basic units, forcing P back on the defensive, allowing Z to expand again and/or nerdstomp P. P can counter by getting Colossi, which give him a window until Z gets Corruptors and/or Broodlords, reversing the dynamic until P gets a big bunch of Blink Stalkers, at which point the game typically favors P. At each reversal, the balance of power shifts dramatically, but the window does not obscure the gains made by the disadvantaged player during his previous position of dominance. Moreover, not all the windows are guaranteed to occur, if a player is in a strong position, he can either crush his foe, expand his economy, or otherwise begin prepping early for the next window, allowing for him to extend his lead/ reduce his deficit.
There is strong drama at every reversal in this game, enhanced by the slowly growing capacity of both sides, as evidenced by the expanding economies, giving the game an underlying GNA. Moreover, in general, the outcome of each choice is clean and clear, linking action and result in an intuitive manner. In fashion, the strategy game tells its own story, which draws heavily from the well of classical drama.
That's about all I have to say on this time on this subject. Sorry it took a while to poop out, but it needed a bit of a think-over, and I had analysis to do and papers to read. Good luck, and happy gaming.
*And succeeding, strangely enough
**By figured out, I mean: I can actually play it and have it make sense
***For example, you receive an update the Red Army has been formed without a hierarchy. I think to myself, "ooh, what a nice bit of historical flavor," and then move on. Later, I am stumped by the fact that I am unable to form hierarchical divisions, which are important for ensuring that your troops are at full effectiveness. I spend a lot of time reading the manual to figure out what I'm doing wrong. I complain at length to everyone within earshot. Then, in a blast of insight, as I stare at turn 4 of the scenario, I realize I am functionally retarded sometimes.
****Specifically of the Video variety
^ It's like RAAAAAAIIIIIIIIINNNNN on your wedding day.
^*I'm using this term loosely. In general, think of Super Mario or HALO.
Maybe in another two weeks you'll be able to poop out the remainder of your abandoned footnotes :)
ReplyDeleteI forgive you, tho - it's obvious that this post had severely obstructed your colon.