In the very, very distant past, the text “Deterministic vs Stochastic: Benchmarking for Games from a Design Perspective Pt. 1” was written. Those were other times, when we still believed that there was life outside our homes and that the Pandemic would soon end.
For those who opened this text, I strongly advise you to go after the first one first here. If you’ve read it, reread it. If you haven’t read it, have a good read.
Now let’s pick up where we left off…
The concept of Stochastic, as mentioned in the last text, defines systems with known initial conditions and clear rules, but which generate unpredictable results based on small variations that accumulate over time.
This concept, brought to the Gaming Industry and Benchmarkings, is also related to the way we look at our games and how we set benchmarks for them.
If it’s not about the macroscopic and clearly defined features of your game; if it is not because of Tags, Aesthetics, Technology and specific Mechanics and Systems that you can more clearly understand the potential of your product, then what should this be done through?
Here we have a beaten and debated concept several times, with several different names, but which I like to call “Experience Proposal”. In short, what are you delivering to your Player in terms of interaction. How do you want him to feel? How will you evoke certain feelings? How will you suppress so many others? How are you going to build a Flux State?
Performing your Benchmarking through an Experience Proposal Analysis is a more assertive method to truly understand who your competitors are and what they are bringing to the table in terms of satisfaction for your Players.
At the same time, it is also a more complex method to be carried out. Instead of working only with Data and a Quantitative and Referential approach, an Experience Proposal Analysis uses this first part as a sieve, but applies the human factor and the understanding of Design to compensate for the gaps left by the numbers and bring your result closer to the feasible.
Instead of a pure analytical experiment, where you run the risk of deeply failing your predictions thanks to a series of unconsidered variables that are difficult to express through algorithms and formulas, what you have is a weighting factor that balances these results , allied to the created Business Intelligence.
Read all our Games Design Posts
Want a practical example? Let’s go.
Suppose you want to develop a Tactics. Your references are Final Fantasy Tactics, Fell Seal and Shadowrun Returns, for example. Very well. Now you need to understand if all your references are valid Benchmarkings. Let’s ignore for the moment that they have totally different platforms and release periods and just focus on what each of them delivers to their players.
Final Fantasy Tactics is a JRPG by definition. This implies a linear narrative where you follow your character’s journey, much more than you are responsible for creating it.
At the same time, it’s a game that offers several strategic options while maintaining its balance, but it allows exploration of the game system to create characters far more powerful than the average.
Don’t think too much about the End Game idea for FFT either, it doesn’t work for that and anyone who’s played the game knows that the game’s core idea only offers true value up to the credits.
Fell Seal is a “Spiritual Successor” of FFT, which should put him very close to his predecessor’s Experience Proposal, but that’s not exactly what happens. Its balance is much more rigid, keeping enemies close to the player’s power for much longer, in addition to having options that can mess with its fundamental rules at various levels. This creates a sense of greater emergency, threat and risk to game decisions.
Although it also tells a very clear story, the degree of customization and the possibility to create multiple characters offers a deeper immersion and roleplaying factor than FFT.
Finally, what Fell Seal offers in terms of class customization is something unique, allowing for a level of variability and strategic composition that manages to be even denser than Final Fantasy Tactics.
Shadowrun Returns is part of a totally different school of Tactics. It is a Western game, based on a Western IP and concepts that strongly resonate with this audience.
For starters, he embraces the proposal of being an RPG with a lot more will, branching his narrative and allowing interactions with NPCs and the world in a way that neither FFT nor Fell Seal come close to doing.
Furthermore, the relationship that the Player creates with their Shadowrunner is much more individual, the result of a basic yet effective customization system, a progression based on significant choices that affect interaction in combat and out of it.
While the other two games focus their Tactics aspect on a wide variety of abilities and the possibility of exploring a Power Creep, Shadowrun Returns focuses on a variety of strategic options, which is different.
Position of Characters, interactions with the scenario and the result of limited choices for improvements come together to create situations where the Player is unlikely to have an advantage over his opponents if he does not know how to read the environment around him (or has interacted differently ten minutes before with an NPC who will totally change the course of the battle).
What does this summary about the three games mean? Well, first you would find the three together in common Tag searches. RPG, Tactics, Character Customization, Fantasy, these and a few more are applicable to all three cases, even though they are essentially different games.
Okay now what does this mean to you? That it’s important to understand exactly where on the spectrum you are in order to be able to do a thorough analysis, comparing more than what your game is, but what it delivers to the Player and how your competitors deliver something similar.
Is your Tactics a game with deep JRPG features? Do you intend to offer a sense of agency and importance to your Players through a linear narrative or branch out the possibilities that he can influence the world? Do you intend to attract your Players through a characteristic aesthetic that will immerse them in a specific universe?
Each answer will narrow and throw your product to some point on the spectrum. More than that, they will open up ramifications that you didn’t initially think about, but that should be considered.
Want to make a Tactics that delivers a deep strategic experience along with a branching and immersive Cyberpunk narrative? Great, Shadowrun Returns is actually extremely strong Benchmarking, but you’ll probably find greater synergy with games like Deus Ex than Final Fantasy Tactics.
This is because the experience you are trying to present can also be found in a Deus Ex of life, as even being an FPS, there are a variety of strategies that can be built to solve each situation, as well as a potential for immersion and branching narrative that is classic for this type of theme.
Meanwhile, Final Fantasy delivers a structure that, at first glance, looks the same, when in fact it’s quite different in the way your Tactics works and has absolutely nothing to do with how you seek to work the narrative.
Read all our Industry Posts
What remains of the lesson in these cases is the recommendation to do a Benchmarking that is deeper than a pure data analysis based on Tags. Playing the reference games and performing the Experience Proposal Analysis seeking to understand which other products have synergy with yours will help to shorten the distance between absurd predictions and realistic results.
Of course, there’s a lot more involved. There are other parameters to work with and build a complete Benchmarking, as well as additional care when doing an Experience Proposal Analysis, especially as this involves a deep understanding of the project design and a certain detachment.
The bottom line of the opera, in addition to the whole metaphor about Deterministic vs Stochastic, is that you must actually understand what your game is about, not what it looks like. Obviously the first impression counts, but the second, third and fourth will dictate how it will behave in a longer queue, how it will be received by critics and how the fandom will react to the product over time, things that will impact directly in the studio itself and in the health of your business.
