About the author: Han Wei, a senior engineer at Tencent Interactive Entertainment, is currently developing innovative games in the Next Product Center.

Business strategy gameplay has always been my favorite gameplay, so I would like to share some thoughts on it.

The first question to ask is, what is the basic model of business strategy gameplay? Personally, I believe that business strategy gameplay contains three elements: optional growth paths, resources, and victory conditions.

To give an example to illustrate these three elements, suppose we design a game with the following rules:

Players need to collect as much food as possible within 7 days. There are two ways to collect food. One is hunting, and you can get 2 pieces of food every day. The other is farming, which can increase one field per day, and each field can increase the output of one food per day in the future.

So for "optional growth paths", "hunting" and "farming" are two paths that can be chosen. Players have 7 days and can only do one thing every day. This time is resources. The victory condition is the amount of food accumulated at the end.

So how do these three elements make games fun? The first source of fun is:

The joy of thinking and reasoning

Take the above design as an example. This is a typical choice between "fast break" and "accumulation". Players must be aware of the difference between the two choices in order to find the correct "growth path".

From the two rules mentioned above, analyzed in terms of functions, the function of hunting is y = 2*x, and the function of farming is y = x*(x+1)/2.

Why is the function of farming like this? Because the output of farming is: y = 1+2+3+4+…+x. According to the solution given by Gauss, the formula is the above.

From the graph, we can find that after the third day, the output of farming has exceeded that of hunting. Therefore, if the victory condition of the game is to give more than 3 days, then you should decisively choose farming, otherwise you should hunt. If players can discover this pattern and use it to win, they will feel happy. This is also called the fun of finding the optimal solution.

Of course, today's strategy games may not be that simple. There is often not only one growth path, and resource allocation cannot only be allocated to one path. However, no matter how complex the design is, it can be broken down into multiple growth path formulas for analysis. However, it may be a bit cumbersome to express it using mathematical formulas.

Although we can design very complex growth paths, if it is a fixed path, it will be easily defeated by players using "strategies", making it no longer fun. Are there other ways to change these "fixed growth" paths? ? The answer is yes, it is to use randomness.

Continuing with the above example, one of the simplest methods is to add random variables to farming and hunting. For example, hunting harvest is randomly obtained from 2 to 4, while farming harvest may change by 0.5 to 2 times every day ( Weather effects), formula:

Hunting: y = 2 * x * r (r is a random number, range: 1-2)

Farming: y = x*(x+1)*r/2 (random range of r: 0.5~2)

The above formula is only a rough simulation of the overall probability. In fact, if the probability changes on a daily basis, it may not be expressed by such a simple formula. But you can guess what you get: This random performance provides some fun in the process, but it often does not determine the final result, because the result of random 2 – 4 is 3. In the long run, the formula is actually y = 3*x.

So random variables in general processes don't provide enough fun. Another idea is to change some external constraint environments. In the above example, we can randomly generate the player's living environment so that the total space for farming and hunting is limited. For example, sometimes, after the game starts, the player discovers this place. The land can only be planted with 2 fields at most, so even after knowing the above formula, he still has to consider whether to farm or hunt.

The use of random variables to change the constraints here is actually a game between players and random variables. In addition to happening between people and random numbers, this kind of game can also happen between players and players. This brings about the second pleasure of strategy games:

The fun of gaming

In our games, whether it is PVP or PVE, the competition for limited resources creates a game. In the above example, at the beginning, the only type of resource was time, which is a resource that cannot be occupied and contested. Once there is occupation and competition for land, there is room for gaming. For example, if two players compete, as long as one player farms, the other player cannot farm the same land. This will make it fun for the players to guess the opponent's strategy. Of course, the easiest thing is probably "blind guessing". The fun of this game is similar to "scissors, hammer, paper". However, strategy games are often not satisfied with providing "blind guesses", but will provide some other basis for "guessing" in the game. For example, at the beginning, each player can randomly draw an ability. This ability may be: "Farming income +5%" or "Hunting income +5%". Then the player can guess the opponent through the opponent's actions. Abilities that may be drawn, and strategies to deal with them.

In more complex games, there may be more than two players in the game. In addition to competing for limited resources, they can also cooperate, such as trading: If we divide the output from food into "grain" and "meat" Category", and the victory conditions will also change accordingly. For example, if you need to have two kinds of food at the same time, then there will be a need for transactions.

Cooperation and competition can provide very rich game fun when choosing growth paths and more than 2 participants. There is such a typical design in the classic board game "Catan".

So, can we make strategy games more fun by just designing complex growth paths, adding random events that constantly appear in the game, and game space? In theory it is possible, but there is another interesting part of the strategy game, which is:

the joy of imagery

As we just said, for a strategy game, if we try to just let players explore the "formula" through constant attempts, the process may become long and boring. But if our formula is derived from some basic concepts in life, such as farming and hunting I just mentioned, then players may be able to directly "understand" the formula through perceptual understanding or some knowledge from other places. This kind of fun of using "outside the game" information to understand the formula will give people a special pleasure. For example, "Age of Discovery 2" (Glory) integrates geographical knowledge into the game, so that players will feel quite happy because they can use real-world geographical knowledge. This is also an important way for games to entertain and educate.

Games like "Civilization" integrate various cultural and historical images of human development into a management category. Although these formulas are definitely completely different from the real situation of history, these images, as players, During the game, the way the growth value is expressed will also provide very good help. But there is an anti-pattern here. If you design an interstellar immigration game, and the players happen to be not interested in science fiction themes, they may not be able to accept your design and give up. Therefore, the theme of strategy games is also very limited by the knowledge level of the target players.

Every wonder in Civilization is a numerical result.

In summary, strategic management gameplay is a gradually unfolding path of choice. Players need to choose an optimal path to obtain "numerical results" based on existing information and guessing what may happen in the future. After several stages, when the resources are exhausted (turns and time are also resources), the "numerical results" will be calculated to determine whether the victory conditions are met.

resource

A space that players can use, allocate, and choose, such as action rounds, money, materials, etc.

Resources will eventually be converted into "results" by a certain "path" or discarded

path

A space for players to choose, such as production methods, construction space, purchasable items, etc.

The path is constantly changing with the game process. It can change randomly or be changed by player behavior. Players need to estimate the path situation.

condition

Various factors that affect the use of paths, such as critical hit rate, number of props that can be purchased, land on which houses can be built, etc.

Conditions are often combined with paths. It can be said that paths are formulas and conditions are parameters.