locus of control in game design and shelled

this is a discussion of why I made some of the design decisions I did in shelled (shelledgame.com for those unfamiliar) specific to intentionally (not arbitrarily) giving or restricting player control based on a balanced view of the psychological principle of locus of control and how that plays into game design to make games fun for everyone.

as shelled nears completion, I've been talking to the devs a little more about the "why" behind certain design considerations. I would have liked to have better explained my reasoning during the course of the game's dev rather then at the end, but in prioritizing, getting it done trumps justifying my requests, and doing things indie means sometimes making such trade offs. I've done my best to keep them wise to my reasoning as much as possible so as not to alienate them from a sense of collaboration rather than mere hierarchical work, but never in depth, and I'm sure it's been sometimes skipped (sorry!). big thanks to them (in particular gary preston) for trusting me and not questioning my choices, while still having dialogue with me about them and giving healthy feedback.

with the game nearly done and time relaxing a bit I have more of an opportunity to explain now and extend that explanation to the gg community for consideration into the design of their own games. I've claimed before to be both passionate about making good games and helping enable good games, so this is a reflection of that. I believe ideas should be freely discussed for the benefit of all, not hoarded for one's sole personal gain. I want to see collective innovation in the community, not just my own.

like many who took some school, I had a psych class, which I loved and never forgot. one of the principles learned from that class has contributed directly to design considerations for shelled, as I will discuss. the aim of this write-up is not to present lofty ideas as though they are novel, or even to present them in any implied professional way. people way smarter then me have studied the relationship of psychology and video games for a long time (long by dot-com time anyway). you can get a phd these days for game related study! there's a whole field of industrial psychology that studies commercial application of psychology such as this, which software companies such as microsoft are just starting to make increasing use of, a trend we would do well not to ignore as games are afterall software. but I'm no industrial psychologist, so don't take this as trying to be something it's not, this is totally off the cuff and specific to design considerations for my game and design style.

further, this is all in theory. I should say that I've never researched or read about this myself outside of that old class, I have zero game industry experience, and I didn't major in psych or even finish college (or even high school for that matter). so take my words with a grain of something, preferably a distilled one in a small glass with some ice as it's a long (but worthy) read. but hey, it's the weekend, what else you got to do?

alright, background and disclaimer done, let's get to it:

locus of control is a psychology concept and it can be measured. if you have an internal locus of control, you are self empowered, and feel that your life is the result of your decisions and that you are in control. if you have an external locus of control, you feel that forces greater than yourself control your destiny (god, government, luck), and that your life is the result of these external forces. there is a range in between and most fall somewhere on that range and not at an extreme.

locus of control has mainly to do with how a person FEELS about their ability and competency to overcome challenges (potent/internal, impotent/external). it has more to do with their SELF-PERCEPTION of competency and power and not their ACTUAL competency and power. which is cool and interesting - you can suck and always fail and still have a high internal locus of control (I lost but it was my fault), or you can kick ass and still have a high external locus of control (I won but it was just luck) - talk about "attitude is everything". neither internal or external is good or bad per se, but high external locus is correlated with higher rates of depression, though correlation does not imply causal of course.

what does this have to do with game design, and more specifically the way shelled was designed?

when you create a game, you are doing more than creating a toy, you are creating a world. a world that like the real one the player will quickly develop feelings, preferences, and judgments about. a world that can empower the player, disempower the player (p0wn3d!), or both simultaneously.

when I took the psychology measure for determining one's personal locus of control, my stats mapped out to nearly pure internal, i.e. self empowerment. which isn't surprising because I do what I want and get what I deserve and hate authority and chance (hmm sounds like a recipe for being indie, eh?). whether this extreme bias in my locus of control (highly internal) is good or bad as a game designer, I'm not sure, aside from that I know I need to shape my game and that external forces won't shape it for me, prompting me to take the reins. but it's how this relates to my preference in games as a PLAYER is what I want to first discuss, because as a designer it's the experience of the player that I'm most interested in. and naturally I'm the first player that I design for, because *I* want to have fun or I wouldn't be interested in making games in the first place.

why is it relevant that my locus is internal? if I have an internal locus of control, as a player I want to be in control. put me in control in your game and I am happy. put me at the mercy of arbitrary forces greater then myself and I am miserable and will hate your game, possibly blacklisting the entire genre. it's that simple.

concrete examples: I hate the card game war (pick a card, high card wins) and its modern variants in the form of table-top card games ("you gee oh", etc). I hate lotteries and slot machines. I don't like RPG's which is too bad because I like role playing and exploring, but for some reason almost every RPG has the battle mechanics of an ancient dice-rolling schema which essentially reduces the core game mechanic to the card game of war and intrigues me about as much as a cardboard box does. I don't like tycoon or manager type games for the same reason - behind the facade of graphics, it's just a spreadsheet, enough time, and luck. I don't like sports games because it always seems arbitrary whether my receiver catches the ball or it gets intercepted or whatever. and more on that in a minute.

but when I say I don't like these games, I mean that I don't like them to the extreme degree that I swear it is physically painful for my brain to succumb to such random arbitrary rules. I can't get past it - I frickin hate these games on a palpable and visceral level. you should be especially interested in what I have to say if you are a designer of any of those types of games and want to include a broad audience and not just the folks who already like and accept such randomness/genres.

ok, so games heavy on chance are out, I must like games heavy on skill right? like FPS's for example, no better an example of a game heavy on skill then that, right? well no, I don't like FPS's either. why? because when I get fragged I never see it coming, so whether it's from AI or another human it FEELS arbitrary even if it's not. I lack twitch reflexes and the ability to track multiple objects on the screen at once. just like with having my football intercepted in a game - maybe it's my fault he didn't catch it, but because if FEELS random, see you later, next game please, no upped conversion ratio number from me thank you.

let's stop for a second to make this point so it doesn't mess with the greater point of this blog. as a rule (I think it's even one of the big 400), whenever something happens in your game, it has to be justified and explained to the player, otherwise you risk the player feeling that it is arbitrary and either accepting it as "life" (er, "game") or rejecting it as unfair and calling it arbitrary whether it is or not. how they react has to do with their locus of control, but no matter the case, you always have to justify the behavior of the world that you create, as a rule (unless you are intentionally messing with the player, but be careful, that requires great understanding and craft you have to understand and master pre-modern and modern fully before you can go post-modern). so, just be a good game designer and justify everything that happens period. things have to make sense. cause must precede effect and be clear. ok, tangent done.

with that said, when designing your game you get to chose how much of the game is random and arbitrary and how much you allow the player to control. these are relative expressions - ultimately, EVERYTHING about your game is arbitrary, even a seemingly skill-based FPS. for example, the speed you allow the player to move at, the firing rate of the gun, spawn points - all arbitrary. just like the number of squares on a chess board. why eight pawns? why not ten, or six? arbitrary. and chess is arguably a skill based game, like a FPS.

but we're not being that extreme here with definitions. yes, there are always going to be arbitrary rules you impose upon the player. it's what "makes" a game. the question then is how much freedom you give the player after that - again, how much you empower or own them through the skillful use of the *TOOL* of those rules.

let's invent (or perhaps it's already been invented) a variant of chess that is less skill based yet. let's say your opponent gets to pick the next piece you have to move, as long as it is a legal move, even if there is only one place to move that piece and it is towards death. if you have a high internal locus of control, and are used to playing chess and deciding yourself which piece to move, you're gonna feel cheated.

let's take it further and say your opponent gets to not only select which piece you move, but gets to pick where you move it also. now we've gone too far and what's the point in playing - the "game" controls everything (like "the matrix"). now you are too distracted by wanting to overcome the imposed control placed upon you to think about the game itself. you're "out" of the game, aware of its rules to the point of not just distraction but domination - and that's bad if you refuse to submit.

I don't know how much of the population has an internal, neutral, or external locus of control. but consider the wholly different experiences that people with an internal or external locus of control will have with a game that is too heavily internal or external itself:

those with an external locus may look at a game with an external locus and feel right at home. the game afterall supports their cherished worldview that forces beyond their control are controlling things. maybe this is comforting to them, or maybe it's just depressing (if they lose too much, or think it's their fault they suck instead of the game's fault for being the way it is).

those with an internal locus may hate a game with an external locus and will bridle like a wild horse against the constraints placed upon them (like me).

conversely, those with an external locus may feel too overwhelmed by a game with an internal locus - too much freedom! too hard to play! just make me win or lose for me! those with an internal locus will likely feel right at home with a game that allows high control. again, it confirms and reinforces their worldview and is what makes sense to them.

with respect to locus of control, I believe the key to netting the widest audience, providing the best play experience, and perhaps imitating real life the closest is BALANCE. afterall, you need both wind and to know how to sail in real life - luck and skill - just one or the other's no good. special genres or games for certain demographics may not require such strict balance (i.e. casual games are notoriously more random than more hardcore skill based games, and each audience I believe welcomes each end a bit more, respectively), but for general purposes this idea of balance is, at a minimum, my own target to hit with the design of my games.

we've looked at some examples of mostly-internal or mostly-external games, but here's some examples of blended variations that are very successful. they BOTH own AND empower the player often at the same time.

tetris is a great example of this. the tetris gods give or deny you the piece you need, BUT ON THE OTHER HAND, what you do with the pieces you're given counts. you can't rely on just luck ("c'mon big long piece! ... yesssss!"), but no matter how skilled you are you can still get unlucky and top out early, or place a piece badly due to high (arbitrary) game speed. I believe this balance is one of the things that makes Tetris so popular and addictive, whether it was considered and realized when the game was first designed or not.

another example is with regard to level design. if you make linear levels (the L word being the industry's newest F word) you are imposing a design on the player, possibly alienating those who want more control. but completely open-ended design (all the rage since GTA3) I believe is not good either if there's not enough structure for those who won't know what to do. the balance (which GTA gets right with its open ended + structured mission mix) is to have both linear and open ended design say, a main route through a level (which requires no luck and no skill to find), but also a few side mini-quest routes or alternate routes (which requires both skill AND luck to find).

another example is the RPG phantasy star online, one of the few RPG's I've thoroughly enjoyed. when you get hit, YES it is a dice rolling to determine how much damage you take, BUT the game is realtime not turn based, and you're on a real playfield and you're the idiot that decided to stand there right in front of the enemy to get hit in the first place, so it's your fault (or at least they do a good job of making it FEEL like your fault). if you don't want to get hit, don't stand so close. again, a nice blend of chance and skill. internals are empowered, externals aren't overwhelmed by too much control. even in attacking - you don't select the word "attack" and wait for the dice to roll. there is motor control and timing required to hit enemies, but when you do hit them the points of damage is randomly varied. again a nice balance for both attacking and defending, the core play of the game. of course leave it to sega to get it right (long live the queen!).

another example: I don't eschew all gambling games, just lotteries and slot machines - poker is by contrast fun (I'm thinking 5 card draw, I don't know variants) because although there's some chance in what cards you're dealt (a metaphor but here literal!), you get to decide what cards to keep and ditch and what score type you are aiming for. even so, games that have used this sort of "card dealing" to give me say random game pieces or powerups have felt arbitrarily dealt to me and I hated them, depending on the importance of those pieces to the game's core play. poker is established so I accept the random dealing, I've played poker since I was a kid. your game is not so you have to make me buy in to accepting that kind of power lorded over me FIRST, otherwise it's just painfully transparently arbitrary design and see ya later gator!

there's actually two things involved with giving the player control. one is actual control, the other is just the illusion of that. with poker, you could just be a human calculator and punch through the odds in your head and always come to the same most efficient and probable conclusion, thereby robbing you of your creative decision, but what fun would that be? you could also figure out the next plot point of most hollywood films during the movie, but again what fun is that except being clever, so instead you shut up and buy into it and pretend to be dumb and watch and act surprised when the dame double crosses the guy (they always do). but the "making me buy into it" part still has to be good enough to make me do it. if it's cheesy, or as is more frequently the case just COMPLETELY ABSENT, then as a player with a strong internal locus, there's poor chance I'll accept it.

I'm more interested in giving the player actual control than the illusion, as illusions can be dispelled over time and as they require the player to buy into them in the first place, they create too great a risk for an initial entry point for player rejection. the player can also wise up over time and pull back the curtain revealing the cheap trick and feel cheated.

to solidify all this into something more concrete (and indie no less), let me give actual examples from shelled of design forks in the road and how and why they were traversed the way they were with respect to player locus.

like in mini-golf, shelled has a shot power meter. over time we have slowed this meter down, down, down. when it was going fast, it was too hard to stop it at a specific spot, and where you stopped it felt too random/external for my internal/self-empowered liking. now conversely, we once tried a shot power meter that DOESN'T GO UP AT ALL and allowed the player to pick the EXACT shot power they wanted. this turned out to be as bad as a shot power meter that was too random! counterintuitive? you bet. why did it suck? well we gave the player too much control (like the matrix 1.0!) and left nothing to a little bit of random chance, nothing to the imagination you could say. the game was too literal. there was nothing left TO control, nothing to tame. now, when you stop the shot power meter where you want it, it's like you own that shot power meter, it is your bitch, your tamed lion, and it feels good. your success feels like you earned it, and your screw up feels like your fault. it is fun to control the chaos - but not too much chaos, and not too much control.

another example. before tank movement code was working - which was for the majority of the game's development, as the game's focus was on firing and not moving - you were a sitting duck. tanks would fire at you and you could do nothing but take the shots. and it sucked. the game owned you. why'd I get hit so quickly this time, but not last time? why are they picking on me? no control. well now throw in the ability to move as enemy shots draw too close for comfort and you've empowered the user. even if you do get hit it doesn't feel random - afterall, you chose to land in that spot, or you chose to fire instead of move. that the game slows this process down (literally as well as metaphorically through a kind of vague slow-turtle conceptual association) makes the reward/punishment of the player's decisions' to move or fire more transparent for the player to see.

but again, like precise control over the shot above, over-empowering here was just as bad. there's a dev cheat code that allows unlimited tank movement instead of being able to move for just a bit, then stopping, then moving again etc. and guess what? yes, like the shot power meter having too much control, unlimited tank movement was too much control, and the game was less fun. again, there lacked any arbitrary "sorry pal but that's life" randomness to fight against, almost as though the randomness/unfairness of life is itself another opponent to wage against. instead, you fly for 10 seconds and then you have to land. sorry pal, 10 seconds is all you get. want to complain? don't blame me, blame the turtle engineers who designed your crappy tank that keeps overheating. must be a domestic.

more shelled examples of this concept:

the physics for tanks flying through the air was initially too "sloshy." it felt too random, too arbitrary having so much momentum to fight against to move around. but no momentum (straight movements based on keystrokes) -- meaning full control -- would be worse: boring as hell. and boring as hell is the ultimate kiss of death. so we toned it down but not too much and found a nice middle ground. it might still be a little too hard yet but the beta will reveal if that's the case. it feels good ATM.

the first point scoring system for shelled used kills. kill a tank, get a kill point. but it was too random, you'd work on a tank then someone else would kill them, or they'd kill themselves, or you'd get lucky and get that finishing point. sure experienced players could track in their heads or via an OSD of enemy life and go for the ones with the least, and that could be a tactic. but is the average casual player (essentially my target player) going to think to do that? not likely. which would result in a seemingly arbitrary scoring system. instead, you are now rewarded for points when you hit, based on damage, with a small bonus for kills. the player is empowered, but there's still a touch of luck involved via a kill bonus.

again in the too much control dept, the entire previous game (ala IGC05 version) was based on letting the player create custom games (see previous blog for details). here my own personal strong internal locus was perhaps most evident, to my detriment. I want control, so naturally gave the player control. but few players have as biased a strong internal locus as me. so now, instead of letting the player create a custom game based on a huge assortment of options, levels are locked down: 3 rounds, 3 minutes each, winner based on points, canned levels. now if I had only one menu button ("Start Game!") and it picked a random level, random point goal, random everything, again that extreme degree of arbitrariness would be just as bad as the total control of custom games.

there are other examples in shelled, but I believe by now I've driven the point home.

as a final speculation, I would estimate that most game devs have a slightly more internal locus, and that the general population has more of an external locus compared to most game devs. pure speculation, I say this because most game devs are self-empowered enough to control computers to create games in the first place, and because most of the general population believes in religion, government, "experts", and other similarly arbitrary things that put an all powerful other in control of them. I am certain that locus of control changes across cultures and age/class/political demographics too, so there's a lot of meat on this subject if you dig deeper.

so that's my piece on player control with respect to locus. for me and my design philosophy, balance is the key. I would like more control, but too much is bad. I hate too much randomness, but some is good. too pure a skill game is sure to polarize players as much as too pure a chance game. hit the right spot between and you are much more likely to attract both players who seek control but will accept chance, AND players afraid of too much control but who still want to drive.

if you're a designer/producer, I'd highly encourage you to take the psychology measure to find where your own locus is at and reflect on how the bias of that is affecting your games' designs. then think about how you are balancing internal/external in your game, and how you WANT it to be balanced in the end. yet another exercise is to play games (i.e GG channel games that can be easily discussed) and as you play them analyze how, where, in what ways, and to what degrees the game empowers you or owns you, how you feel about it, and if it "works" or not and why.

this isn't tripe floaty theory here, this is practical stuff you can dig in to and use right now to create better more considered game design to attract the most players and provide the most fun. it's also the best leverage we have as indies because good design is free as cheap and the best area we can compete in against the bigger production values of bigger companies. that said, there's also no "right" way to make a game.

word.