Keep your Gaming Loops hydrated and healthy (also talking Degenerate Game States)
Definitions in game design can be tricky, because they can err on the side of limitation to a degree that, at least, might lose sight of a bigger picture ...
What is good game design? At its core it is when the intended basic gaming loop of a game actually happens at the table AND is productive in a way that invites repetition. Once a loop runs, you will find that players instinctively look for what we literally call “loopholes” (a term that predates gaming as we know it for centuries, actually1).
So in a sense a gaming loop might end up having an expiration date where it works for a bit and then someone clever comes along and finds an exploit. If that produces a negative “degenerate game state”, your design has a problem that needs addressing.
You will find a great definition of what a degenerate game state in a fantastic essay written by Skeleton Code Machine and it goes like this:
A degenerate strategy or degenerate game state is therefore one in which the game, while following its own rules, collapses into a simpler form that is qualitatively different from the original.
Check that essay out, if you haven’t already. It’s a good read and it touches on several points I’m aiming to make here.
A deeper understanding of the “Game Loop”.
We have established that the loops you design for a game are what carries it. “Loops” are very abstract underlying structures of a gaming system that are repeated over and over throughout the game. With board games you’ll most likely be aware of such a loop, with computer or role-playing games you’ll have to take a closer look to make the loop or loops out that run a game.
Take Parcheesi, for instance: you roll a die, you move if you can, you put other players back to their starting points, if you can. Next player does the same. There’s your game loop. Winner is whoever managed to get all their playing pieces into their safe zone. It ends the game and with that the repetition. Resolving the loop is the condition of the game.
Or take Mau Mau. Draw a card, play a card if you can, if the card has special rules, apply them. Next player does the same. That’s the core loop, but the special rules add additional little game loops. They also repeat the same way every time they are played. It may lose you a card or change colors, but it is always the same type of card activating the same special rule. Winner is who got rid of all cards first. This, again, shuts down all the loops.
In both cases, ending the loops will generate losers as well.
And now we extrapolate.
Doesn’t matter how complex a game gets, a designer would have to take care to keep their loops tight in all dimensions of the game. One reason is The Magical Number Seven (+/- 2), which is, for instance, the number of rules that we can keep track of in our heads.
That’s a bit of a simplification, because it is about short term memory and stimuli, which might be novel stimuli. A character sheet would expand on that, a rule book might compensate some of that, the GM could help resolving stimuli, and so on … The number seven (five to nine) is a rule of thumb that is useful where the limit for rules is before you overwhelm a player. Especially a new player, for instance. It’d discourage a player. The other side of this is that anything below five might be experienced as too easy. In both cases a game will produce degenerate states. Too easy will result in lots of hand-waving, too complex will force people either to find shortcuts to simplify or to collapse the loop by missing crucial details to resolve it as intended.
So there is a sweet spot, where something around seven elements resolve towards a satisfying way and get repeated over and over, with the stimuli allowing (or needing, even) context specific evaluation that propels the game.
Take, for instance, combat. How many elements would a combat have, how many stimuli?
Elements first:
Number of Combatants - That’s already tricky, but shows how “too many” already necessitates altering the rules. Skirmish or below can well be done within what most rpg provide. Mass combat will always need other solutions. But in a rpg, a player has a character and a number of opponents that need immediate attention. Beyond that, it can be tricky, but that is part of the fun, because that’s where tactics come in. And what are tactics but an attempt to reduce a number of elements towards something beneficial?
Combatants Health Status - You already see where this is headed. Of course it is connected to nr. 1, but it also brings its own dynamics. Something to keep an eye on when death is a possibility. And, of course, highly important when depleting a combatant’s health reduces the number of elements one has to handle. The cognitive load is, again, reduced by the fact that each player stems a portion of this, with anything beyond that being allowed as fog of war.
Combat Prowess - Combat is not only about how all involved are faring in regards of health, but also about all imaginable ways how to fight. Close combat or ranged, long weapons and short weapons, number of attacks … all of those things carry more or less importance in a fight. Players need to know what they got and what they are faced with, position themselves accordingly and keep track of changes. Also: tactics again.
Special Abilities (optional) - Add magic and wonders or high tech to this, and things will be more and more interesting. Not all games have this and complexity in these cases is more on the variety side of things than anything creating combat altering base lines. If present, however, they will need addressing, as they’ll come with limits, conditions and dangers. If the enemy has a wizard, that fucker has to go fast.
The Combat Arena (optional) - There may be an emphasis on the terrain a fight is placed at. Adding elements like that changes focus to movement, positioning and obstacles, for instance. Most rpg will have at least simple rules to address how weather might alter combat and so on, but there is a broad spectrum of possibilities, massively altering how a game plays, if applied (miniatures, battle maps and so on).
The above can be a lot already, which is why elements need to be grouped (as was already becoming obvious). If a game designer manages to group all the elements properly, it will not be overwhelming (ideally), or maybe only in the beginning. However, the other important aspect regarding the number of elements in a fight is how long it will take to resolve it. Even grouped properly, fights with lots of elements will take a long time. It’s a specific kind of fun, naturally, but something to keep in mind nonetheless.
Now stimuli.
Now it gets a bit trickier. “Stimuli” in this sense, are the number of impulses that need attention as the elements above start interacting. That’s where you have to hit the right number. It is also where a gaming loop is the most obvious, because what carries a complex game element like combat, is structure (if you want more than just resolving it with one roll, that is).
The basic structure to herd your stimuli usually is:
Combat
Round
Segments
Combat is that specific time in the game when physical conflict is unavoidable and people try to kill each other. At that point, the specific elements for a combat encounter are summoned (as far as the players are aware, of course). The playing field for that very individual situation are determined and shared. Rules can add a lot of depth here, but usually the number of elements should be around seven without producing any problems. Especially if the GM does their job and weaves them into every round and segment (if there is rain, the players are reminded of the fact that there is rain, and so on). But rules will do some heavy lifting, too. Which brings us to the first simplification.
Rounds are what makes a more complex approach to combat possible, because they portion and ritualize a combat encounter. If a process is always the same, it will be seen as one element and all a player has to do is reacting to their position within that element: Order of combat is established and you roll the dice when it’s your turn, either when attacking or when being attacked. Rounds, in that sense, group and organize the number of stimuli a player would have to address at any given time during an encounter. That organizing and grouping will provide very few stimuli itself. It is the rhythm of the encounter. It is the loop, actually. The meat of it should be one level of detail deeper.
Segments are where most stimuli should be produced, because this is where it gets interesting. It’s where tension is produced and kept. How fast a player is, is a stimulus, the results of their die rolls are stimuli that need immediate attention like resulting in more rolls or damage to note down and keep track of. Additionally you would want to keep an eye on how the other players are changing the situation. are they successful in reducing threats? do they need help? Are they able to help you? All that good stuff. And the first set of elements might change as well. Is an alarm bringing reinforcements? Is maybe one of the enemy combatants way more capable (or lucky!) than they have any right to be? Casting and other special abilities happen in segments and might alter a fight significantly, adding stimuli (more or less, depending on crunch).
You get the picture and I think it is obvious at that point how much game design and care can go into each and every one of these aspects. How many, which specifically and in which pattern you array the stimuli that make a game is the core question every game needs answered. We often get away with “just” using what is established at working, and fair enough, but looking under the hood and understanding what really makes a game tick has its own benefits, of course.
And with role-playing games, there is more to know, because while combat is a gaming loop that defines one important aspect of a game, there are many more loops that make a rpg.
Combat, actually, addresses all we need to know about the rest of the loops a session might need. Complexity is here what determines the rhythm. The less important something is deemed as part of the game, the less focus or attention it deserves in regards of stimuli produced by rules. Which means, every game has a hierarchy of loops that start with something that can just be established by talking about it and end with whatever deserves the most attention in a game. Usually that is combat, but it could be any other set of interesting elements. Driving could have a high focus, for instance, but even sailing a boat or domain management are great candidates for crunch.
That being said, role-playing games usually also have a meta dimension that needs attention as well: you’ll want to play not only more than once, but a consecutive number of times that might even add up to years. That’s at least the original assumption: you need gaming loops that span several sessions. The most obvious one is that characters have levels and gain experience to advance.
The “how” is here at least what determines the flavor of a game, but can also be a huge draw for repeated play. Take D&D, for instance. The meta game loop of D&D could be described as:
Explore - Challenge - Overcome - Advance - Repeat
xp, generally speaking, are for overcoming the challenges you find while exploring. But D&D goes deeper, as we know. The specific motivations to advance are combat and treasure, so that’s where the main focus of the game is. Treasure is hidden in complex and compact puzzle boxes called “dungeons”, and combat, as established above, is the most complex and detailed challenge the game offers.
It’s also where the focus can be shifted. Imagine a game where the exploration part is about actually mapping an area and combat is replaced with diplomacy. It is the same loop, with a shifted focus that demands different rules, of course. It will also alter the gaming experience significantly.
But the dangers of altering those very core aspects should be obvious, too. Because if the rules don’t support the intended style of play, you’ll end up with a degenerate game loop again. Players simply go where the focus is in the rules. It could also be problematic to choose motivations that aren’t that interesting. Exploration is something that is deeply entrenched in our psychology. Same goes for conflict. You’d need to be very aware of the implications of playing around with these two.
And there’s one last difficulty to address: advancement, especially over lots of levels, needs special care or the game will end in another degenerate state where overwhelming complexity will hinder or even end campaigns.
Fireball is a simplifier.
I witnessed a game once where a high level AD&D 2e character duked it out with a high level NPC. It was a slog. The GM and the player had fun, for sure, but if you are part of the group, waiting for the game to move on, you’d better bring the patience for it.
D&D 3e is another (in)famous example, because the game notably wasn’t built for high level play. Feats alone would be so out of control, the necessity of detail for NPCs would be so atrocious, that it just wouldn’t happen if a GM were to prepare it. Good example of how corporate greed altered a core game loop to sell product, which ended up producing degenerate game states where the game was so broken, that people just didn’t bother anymore.
A degenerate game loop can end games by producing a lack of interest instead of just simplification within what the game provides. Because so deep in the core of what makes the game tick, the simplification might just be to switch to a game that does it better.
To avoid all this, advancement needs to be scaled, organized and framed properly.
If a game provides a huge power curve, like AD&D, for instance, advancement will benefit hugely from being structured beyond levels. Traditionally, you’d have to add something like domain rules (stage 2 of advancement after adventuring) and rules for legendary play, with the possibility of becoming immortals or gods (stage 3).
That’s brutally difficult, of course, as it will not only shift the game significantly in tone (you are no adventurers anymore, you are kings now), but also brings the danger of just adding complexity. And we know what that leads to. As a matter of fact, it is the reason that many a campaign never went beyond “stage 1”, the adventuring part.
But we can see how they tried to counteract parts of that. Rules for mass combat are one thing, domain rules are usually trivial or gear the work load towards the GM. But the heavy lifting would be done by “magic” (which has always been a sleight of hand to avoid structural complexity, btw).
A powerful fireball is, in that sense, a simplifier the game needs in order to reduce elements to something manageable.
So, what’s a healthy and hydrated game loop, then?
“Healthy and hydrated” means that its elements are annotated precisely and that it stays within the five to nine stimuli while being geared towards optimal engagement. Degenerate game states are a sign that your game loop has a cold and might need some form of correction.
Engagement is always the stress test of a game loop’s endurance, because the wrong kind of repetition will also produce a degenerate game state. When players start avoiding or short-cutting core loops, the design is lacking.
Rules, in that context, are the programming language that accentuates the hierarchy of needs and focus a designer has decided on. A collection of loops that orchestrate the symphony that is the gaming experience.
All the elements need to work together and a big part of game design is finding out (or knowing) what works and what doesn’t. It’s actually quite funny when players find a loophole. At least when it happens during play-testing. The finished product should be stable enough, however, to give gamemasters all they need to make the fixes themselves.
Funny how language works: the loop in loophole was describing the slit in castle walls and they’d borrowed it from Middle Dutch. As so often, the English language took the foreign word and added the translation (“loop-hole” actually means “hole-hole”).
The word “loop” as we know and use it (describing a circle of sorts) comes from “leap”, as in “running leaps” and also describes a noose.
What started as two words written the same way, but meaning something different (homonyms), ended up complimenting each other in a way that no one thinks about castle walls when seeing the word “loophole”, but rather assumes that someone found an escape from a loop with the meaning of a closed system.