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This has always bugged me. What makes a 'good' map? We always see cheap 15-minute maps on bnet that people host and enjoy vastly more than maps that clearly have a lot more energy, time, and intelligence invested into their creation and gameplay. Ignoring the obvious "injustice" of this from a map maker's perspective, why the feck does this happen, anyway? What's the defining factor that makes a given map something someone wants to play versus ignore?
My theory now comes down to one main element: Balanced tension. One could also call it 'challenge', or perhaps just 'balance' or 'tension', even. Whatever it's called, I see it just as a measure of the 'energy' contained and sustained within the combined interactions of human and situational elements. These are all metaphorical, abstract terms, of course. The general idea is that, to make a 'good' map, you need to engineer your map to create a high amount of 'balanced tension' with the elements you have to work with.
I guess the best way to explain this is to be clear on what these elements are, starting with the set your human players bring with them:
You're generally not in control of these elements. The closest you can come is perhaps with the occasional tutorial explanation of a given piece of gameplay, but ultimately, as a developer, you should expect to be the players' bitch basically all the time. Not a lot you can do about that.
That said, within the constrains imposed on you by the players entering into your maps, you do have control of a few key elements:
I suppose I should elaborate upon that last item a bit more. I'll start by saying that I've been lying this whole time: 'Balanced tension' is only the beginning, or rather, the building material of a 'good' experience. I'd like to start migrating this now from Starcraft maps in particular to the overall concept of 'created situations' in general, as I've been sorta dancing around all along. The meat and bones of this whole rant lies in just one thing: Meaning.
Think of 'meaning' as sorta the moral or value you're trying to get across. Often you probably won't have any explicit moral or value in mind (especially in the context of a Starcraft map), but whether you're aware of it or not, any 'created situation' you're going to make will nonetheless have one (even if the moral IS no moral at all!) It's the very aspect of your creation's 'balance tension' itself that is both the medium that defines it and a part of its definition. The objective process of engineering your 'created situations' will form and are given form by its meaning, just as the strokes and colors on a canvas will form and are given form by the overall picture they create. And just the same as an artist could paint something really well that no one likes or cares about, one can also invest countless hours into the creation of a Starcraft map that a player would pass over for a game of Sunken D instead. It all comes together together, or not at all.
So how does one control 'meaning'? How do you 'change' your players with your creation, in other words? The answer is simple: You push them. The very aforementioned 'balance tension' I've been rambling about. It doesn't take masterful execution or countless hours of invested time and energy. It takes just a little bit of awareness of the tension effects created out of elements coming together, and a strong goal in mind with what to direct those effects towards. It doesn't have to be anything in particular. A TV advertisement may leave an impression while doing little more than selling a brand of diapers or car insurance that you may never care about. Remember: It's the players' own vanity that compels them to interpret their own meaning from the ultimate design you've created. You have only to choose what that is.
My theory now comes down to one main element: Balanced tension. One could also call it 'challenge', or perhaps just 'balance' or 'tension', even. Whatever it's called, I see it just as a measure of the 'energy' contained and sustained within the combined interactions of human and situational elements. These are all metaphorical, abstract terms, of course. The general idea is that, to make a 'good' map, you need to engineer your map to create a high amount of 'balanced tension' with the elements you have to work with.
I guess the best way to explain this is to be clear on what these elements are, starting with the set your human players bring with them:
- Intelligence - In a nutshell, a measurement of the player's ability to absorb or process new ideas. Basically what the ordinary bnet crowd sucks at. This measurement will generally never change with any given person, so you'll generally want to anticipate building your maps with this being in short supply.
- Experience - After a player 'absorbs' a new idea, it becomes a part of their experience. All of the things a player can learn about, from paths in a map's terrain layout, unit micro tricks, unit AI idiosyncrasies, game function behaviors and properties, etc. all come together to form a player's experience. Players will constantly gain new experience, and will always hunger for more thereafter.
- Capability - A given player's ability to use and apply what they've learned is a sort of 'intelligence' unto itself. It can grow over time as its own experience, and as it does, the players' freedom to use it becomes important. Think as to why Blizzard has continually tweaked Starcraft 2's gameplay for the last year and a half, for example.
- Endurance - A players' threshold for 'pain', or failure, if you prefer. Their patience. Not always wise to push this, but sometimes the most rewarding gameplay of all can result from it. If you enjoy Myst games, you likely have a fair supply of this. Pretty straightforward.
You're generally not in control of these elements. The closest you can come is perhaps with the occasional tutorial explanation of a given piece of gameplay, but ultimately, as a developer, you should expect to be the players' bitch basically all the time. Not a lot you can do about that.
That said, within the constrains imposed on you by the players entering into your maps, you do have control of a few key elements:
- Newness - Corresponding with the players' intelligence, or their ability to absorb 'new' elements, you can control when, where, and how much 'new' stuff the player gets to absorb. With regards to 'balance tension', the best execution of 'newness' in a map will ideally push a given player's intelligence to the limit as much as possible. But take care not to push it too far, as you'll begin encroaching upon their endurance (patience) limits by asking them to master too much at once.
- Depth - Corresponding with experience, you want to give your players a good supply of 'new' elements to feed into their experience within the limits of their intelligence. Often your gameplay elements can naturally unfold into new possibilities and experiences for your audiences with good design.
- Dynamics - Choices, basically. Corresponding with capability, the different outcomes available from the possibilities you've created with your gameplay will test your players capabilities. Again, another sort of 'intelligence' measure to be aware of on the player's part. The closer you can fit the choices of your gameplay to the player's limit for handling them, the more tension you can create. This is the building block of what a 'good' map is.
- Meaning - This could be either the most or the least important element, depending upon your perspective. But understand first that, either way, it's also a complete lie! As we all know, ultimately, there is no intrinsic 'meaning' to anything involved with any simulated experience. It's all in vain. Nonetheless, that very vanity is a real element unto itself as far as your players are concerned. You wouldn't be a gamer (or a hobbyist developer, for that matter) if you didn't have it. Having a map with a lot of novelty, depth, and rich dynamics that amount to little or no individual or cumulative meaning creates a very shallow experience. Like a movie with an anti-climactic ending, sex without an orgasm, etc. It's not necessarily the ending, mind you, but rather simply the 'impression' that comes of the experience. The best way to define 'meaning' is, quite simply, a measurement of 'change' with regards to your players. To put it bluntly, you want to 'change' them somehow to make them think or behave in a different way than they did before.
I suppose I should elaborate upon that last item a bit more. I'll start by saying that I've been lying this whole time: 'Balanced tension' is only the beginning, or rather, the building material of a 'good' experience. I'd like to start migrating this now from Starcraft maps in particular to the overall concept of 'created situations' in general, as I've been sorta dancing around all along. The meat and bones of this whole rant lies in just one thing: Meaning.
Think of 'meaning' as sorta the moral or value you're trying to get across. Often you probably won't have any explicit moral or value in mind (especially in the context of a Starcraft map), but whether you're aware of it or not, any 'created situation' you're going to make will nonetheless have one (even if the moral IS no moral at all!) It's the very aspect of your creation's 'balance tension' itself that is both the medium that defines it and a part of its definition. The objective process of engineering your 'created situations' will form and are given form by its meaning, just as the strokes and colors on a canvas will form and are given form by the overall picture they create. And just the same as an artist could paint something really well that no one likes or cares about, one can also invest countless hours into the creation of a Starcraft map that a player would pass over for a game of Sunken D instead. It all comes together together, or not at all.
So how does one control 'meaning'? How do you 'change' your players with your creation, in other words? The answer is simple: You push them. The very aforementioned 'balance tension' I've been rambling about. It doesn't take masterful execution or countless hours of invested time and energy. It takes just a little bit of awareness of the tension effects created out of elements coming together, and a strong goal in mind with what to direct those effects towards. It doesn't have to be anything in particular. A TV advertisement may leave an impression while doing little more than selling a brand of diapers or car insurance that you may never care about. Remember: It's the players' own vanity that compels them to interpret their own meaning from the ultimate design you've created. You have only to choose what that is.
Post has been edited 2 time(s), last time on Oct 27 2009, 9:24 pm by Tuxedo-Templar.
None.
