being chased by a guy and I run into a locked door and now I have to pick the lock but the
guy’s behind me trying to shoot me and I finally get through the locked door just as I’m
about to die but, oh my god, there are enemies in here so I jump in the water and try to
swim away but...”Just these little sequences that were not scripted or planned out in
any way, they were just players in the space improvising. And so inThief, though obvi-
ously it was a much more focused game, we wanted to keep that sense of do whatever
you want to do and do it however you want to do it so you can kill people or not, you can
try to evade them or take them out, you can use your gear to sneak around or you can go
straight in the front. We very consciously wanted to maximize the players’ ability to do
it their own way.
It’s interesting that the systems approach to game design is more rare in the
industry. Among its supporters, such as yourself, it seems so clearly the right
way to go, yet so few games actually use it.
I think you can point to some examples in the industry.GTAis very systems-based in
some ways, so I think there are a couple of examples of people doing systems-based
work.
But they’re still definitely in the minority.
Oh, I agree. I think there’s a couple of things. One, I think it’s just generally harder to
do, which makes it a risk. I also think it’s easy in systems-based games to get distracted
by the big things and just build something that’s confusing or obscure. And certainly
our games, I’m proud of them all, but I think there are times we overdid things, in some
sense. And also, I think one of the problems with systems-based gaming in general is
it’s easy to get games that feel very flat. It’s very hard to moderate the emotional curve
of a systems-based game. We did not do that nearly as well as we should have partially
because I think we weren’t looking at it that way enough.
What do you mean by moderate the emotional curve?
You know the beauty of a systems-based game is the player can take it as they want.
The beauty of a purely scripted,Medal of Honor-style roller coaster is that you’re guar-
anteed players are going to have this intense experience and then they’re going to have
a little bit of rest and then something really cool is going to happen visually and then
there’s going to be a challenge. You can build more tension and an emotional arc. In the
stupidest sense, you can build more of a random reinforcement schedule for the player
that gets them hooked and makes them feel that they’re getting this tense entertain-
ment experience. And I think in systems-based games it’s easy to end up with a lot of
systems that are kind of interesting but a little cold or a little flat. It’s easy to end up
playing a game that doesn’t have that many highs or lows.
When you get the memorable moment in a systems-based game it’s usually much
more powerful, because it’s something that you did on your own. I think players really
do remember things that they did more than they remember things that we write. I
think when you talk to players about their game experience, the things they remember
are mostly the clever thing they did or the cool way they approached a problem or the
amazing thing that they didn’t think was going to work but that they pulled out at the
522 Chapter 26: Interview: Doug Church