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New episode - How Games Use Feedback Loops (Patreon)

Published:
2018-01-09 15:03:46
Imported:
2021-01

Content

Hello! First episode of the new year is a look at a game I played over Christmas (the enchanting Pyre) and a breakdown of a pretty important bit of game design: feedback loops.

It's part of what I talked about at the end of last year, about wanting to do more stuff that can prove helpful to new designers. 

This episode will go live for everyone tomorrow. And then the next episode is Breath of the Wild Boss Keys! 

Files

How Games Use Feedback Loops | Game Maker’s Toolkit

Playing Pyre over Christmas got me thinking about feedback loops: the reward structures in games that can reinforce or balance out winners and losers. In this episode I’ll explain what this all means, and talk about the design of Pyre’s positive and negative loops. Support Game Maker's Toolkit on Patreon - https://www.patreon.com/GameMakersToolkit Sources Solving XCOM’s Snowball Problem | Pentadact http://www.pentadact.com/2016-02-25-solving-xcoms-snowball-problem/ Git along there, little doggies | Team Fortress 2 http://www.teamfortress.com/post.php?id=1872 Find Out More Level 4.4: Feedback Loops | Canvas https://learn.canvas.net/courses/3/pages/level-4-dot-4-feedback-loops Designer's Notebook: Positive Feedback | Gamasutra https://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/131426/designers_notebook_positive_.php [PPT] Feedback Systems and the Dramatic Structure of Competition | Mark LeBlanc http://algorithmancy.8kindsoffun.com/cgdc99.ppt Games shown in this episode (in order of appearance) Bastion (Supergiant Games, 2011) Transistor (Supergiant Games, 2014) Pyre (Supergiant Games, 2017) Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare (Infinity Ward, 2016) Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare (Infinity Ward, 2007) Chess Ultra (Ripstone Ltd., 2017) Mario Kart 8 Deluxe (Nintendo, 2017) Tekken 7 (Bandai Namco, 2017) Splatoon (Nintendo, 2015) Forza Horizon 3 (Playground Games, 2016) Titanfall 2 (Respawn Entertainment, 2016) Team Fortress 2 (Valve Corporation, 2007) Arms (Nintendo, 2017) XCOM 2 (Firaxis, 2016) Battlefield 4 (EA DICE, 2013) SteamWorld Dig 2 (Image and Form, 2017) Final Fantasy XV (Square Enix, 2016) The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt (CD Projekt, 2015) Resident Evil 4 (Capcom Production Studio 4, 2005) NBA 2K18 (Visual Concepts, 2017) Civilization V (Firaxis Games, 2010) Dark Souls (From Software, 2011) Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 (Infinity Ward, 2009) Call of Duty: Black Ops (Treyarch, 2010) Devil May Cry (Capcom, 2001) Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze (Retro Studios, 2014) Music used in this episode 00:00 - Surviving Exile (Pyre, Darren Korb) 00:58 - Strange Voyage (Pyre, Darren Korb) 04:05 - The Blackwagon (Pyre, Darren Korb) 06:10 - Path to Glory (Pyre, Darren Korb) 07:11 - Moon-Touched (Pyre, Darren Korb) 07:49 - Path to Glory (Pyre, Darren Korb) 08:16 - To the Stars (Pyre, Darren Korb) 10:54 - Surviving Exile (Pyre, Darren Korb) 12:25 - Surviving Exile, Acoustic (Pyre, Darren Korb) 12:47 - k. Part 2 - 01 untitled 1, animeistrash Other credits MW2 - 6 KILLS WITH ONE PREDATOR MISSILE | Volound https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zPjlZTqdFh8 TACTICAL NUKE with AKIMBO Model 1887 - Modern Warfare 2 | TheKoreanSavage https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lFexH5_lwg8

Comments

Anonymous

There's one thing I always love first about your videos and it's them thumbnails! Just...so concise and neat and striking!

Anonymous

Great video. I had heard of Pyre, but didn't look into seeing what it was about. But after watching this, I think I'll be picking it up.

FoxDeploy

Hadn't heard of Pyre but I'll be getting it now. Love your videos, keep up the great work buddy, and I hope you're having a nice new year.

Anonymous

I wanted to see a mention of MOBAs; both League of Legends and DOTA have quite strong positive feedback loops that feed individual success and failure into team success that can be very frustrating for some players.

Anonymous

Hey Mark! Welcome back - strong open for 2018. Gonna be a bit of a "well actually guy" here: You mention Tekken offhand as an example of a game without feedback loops, but the Tekken clip you used is literally showing Tekken's Rage system; aka when on low health, you do more damage. Actually a clear example of the same Mario Kart style negative feedback loops used for choreographing comebacks

GameMakersToolkit
>>9370287

It's a valid "well actually"! You're totally right, I missed that. Luckily the overall point still stands about nothing carrying over from round to round, but the rage system is indeed a negative feedback loop.

Anonymous

Hey Mark. Regarding the Civilization and 4X games in general, a lot of behind the scenes info can be heard on the Designer Notes podcast (hosted by Soren Johnson and Sid Meier himself is the interviewed guest in several episodes) and on early episodes of Game Design Roundtable (when Jon Shafer was one of the hosts). Anyway, from what I remember players in Civ considered AI ganging up on them to be extremely unfair (even if completely logical), so the code is written specifically so that the AI gangs up even less than it would naturally occur (due to the sheer player's country size) and more or less lets the player steam roll the AI players.

Anonymous

It's worth noting that these examples only represent extrinsic reward systems related to game balance. There are many feedback loops which exist as positive/negative intrinsic rewards as well. These tend to align with mechanical skill like the power slide in Mario Kart, aiming in an FPS, or movement in a platformer. A player can improve their skills in these areas through practice, and the game typically won't provide a discrete reward for this. What's interesting here is that many balance systems counter this type of player skill with negative feedback - the Mario Kart items, for example.

Anonymous
>>9371669

Continuing on that note, one grand strategy game I remember that explicitly used AI cooperation as a negative feedback mechanism was Shogun: Total War 2. If player managed to gain control over more than half the provinces, the emperor would declare them the enemy of the empire, causing all AIs to declare war on them. It was quite harsh, but by letting the player know what is the trigger condition, and thus letting the player to some degree choose when they want to trigger it, it made it feel kind of fair.

Anonymous

MARIO KART 8: DELUXE

Anonymous

One thing that I think is worth mentioning is that a lot of multiplayer matchmaking systems are filled with negative feedback loops, especially when the game is team based. The majority of systems use an Elo/Glicko based system, which comes from chess. This is brilliant if you are playing one versus one because your true skill is rewarded, and failure is punished with relation to your direct opponent. In my humble opinion, there is a problem with squad based multiplayer games, Heroes of the Storm being a prime example. The problem is that if you have a bad team and you lose, your ranking goes down, and you play with continuously worse players making it harder and harder to escape the loop.