A question I often get asked as a videogame designer is "where do you get your ideas from?”
While there are many equally valid answers to this question, I can say for certain that Minmaxing design variables from other games is definitely one place I get them from. In this article I’ll explain what Minmaxing is, how it differs from the "Min-maxing" some gamers may already be aware of, and how I’ll be using it to shine light on the role cryptocurrencies might have in providing players property rights within their games.
In my last few articles I've been using Atari's Pong as a lens through which to study property rights in videogames. Through that I've shown that Game Design includes designing a game’s Business Model, and I've defined "Value Design" as the catch-all term for the collective set of rules that specifically describe that Business Model.
I'll be sticking with Pong again as I begin to consider the implications of these insights, because its simplicity makes it easier for more people to appreciate the impact that varying any design choices would have on a player's experience. That's going to be particularly important next, because now I want to move from considering Pong as it actually exists to considering hypothetical versions of Pong that do not exist.
Specifically, I want to carry out a few thought experiments by imagining alternative versions of Pong where its Value Design has been altered in various ways by modifying the Value Rules Atari originally chose for it. For anyone unfamiliar with the concept of Value Design in videogames, this would be a good moment to skip back and read my previous article on the topic.
Ultimately my aim is to build a thorough, first-principles understanding of player property rights in videogames, including the methods by which those property rights might be bestowed and protected, and also to investigate the thorny issue of whether cryptocurrencies have any meaningful role to play in that. As my next step towards that goal, I want to consider what the impact of changing Pong's Value Design might have been on its commercial performance in the marketplace.
I want to know if it’s possible to imagine changes to the Value Design of Pong that would have resulted in making it merely another modest commercial success, as its predecessor Computer Space had been in 1971, instead of the breakaway hit it turned out to be. Or, conversely, is it possible Atari were "leaving money on the table" by choosing such a basic Value Design as "Play a game of Pong for 25c"? Are there any changes they could have made that might have multiplied the already huge revenues the game made for the business even further?
And what about now? If Pong was being launched today, could it still compete with such a simple Value Design, or would the modern videogames market no longer accommodate such a straightforward value proposition as "Pay 25c to play a game of Pong"? Would Pong need to be changed to operate commercially in today's much more competitive videogames market?
Over the next few articles I'm going to consider these possibilities in more detail, to tease out further insights about Videogame Value Design, where player property rights or "Play-To-Earn" opportunities could emerge within Pong, and whether there might be practical barriers that crytpocurrency is uniquely required to solve.
That’s where Minmaxing comes in, because it’s a process that will help me figure out what changes might be made to Pong’s Value Design to make it perform better or worse in the market.
Here’s how it works in videogame design, and how it differs from "Min-maxing" in videogame playing:
In the same way that a volume control has a minimum and maximum setting to define the total volume range of a device's audio output, every videogame design variable also has its own minimum and maximum settings to define the total range of its own output.
For example, consider the height Mario jumps in Super Mario Bros. (or the height Miner Willie jumps in Manic Miner if you're more my vintage). That height is a number set in the game's code according to the instructions of the game's designer. The game designer chose that number deliberately, and if they had chosen another number the game of Super Mario Bros. as we know it today would feel very different. It might be better, it might be worse, but that's not important. What matters is to understand it's simply a number whose value can be varied, and is set by a deliberate choice.
Now imagine trying to determine the optimal number for that variable. It could literally be anything, and that can often feel overwhelming; however, there are two values that don't require any choice to be made and can therefore be defined as anchor points to contain the range of possible variation - the Minimum value and the Maximum value. That's where I prefer to start exploring from, because that lets me imagine the effect on a game if I set the variable to either its minimum or maximum extreme, and that then helps to narrow down the potential range of values I need to consider.
In the example above, the Minmax values for a jump variable are zero and infinity, which might not initially seem particularly helpful when it comes to narrowing down a range of values, but by taking a heuristic approach it immediately becomes clear that the most appropriate value for the game is likely to be closer to zero than it is to infinity. So that quickly lets me know where to start searching for an optimal value, and I can then use a binary search process to sequentially eliminate 50% of the potential values with each iteration until an optimal value emerges.
As well as acting as a speed multiplier by narrowing the range of values to be considered, Minmaxing can be used as a powerful creative tool in its own right. That's because forcing ourselves to imagine extreme variation in game design variables can sometimes lead us to imagine entirely new creative possibilities we otherwise wouldn't have conceived. By taking a game we already know well and Minmaxing a variety of variables within each element of its Play, Rules, Product, Value, and Experience designs, it becomes possible to construct a wide array of fresh possibilities.
Not all of them will be good ideas of course, and not all of them will be practical ideas that could be built even if we wanted to, but there will be a subset of ideas within them that contain the seeds of successful new products and possibly even entire genres.
For example, setting a jump height of zero in a platform game would result in a Player Toy that can't jump at all. That implies a game where the player can only descend by dropping from platforms onto lower platforms, and where the ability to gain height within a level is entirely determined by level features themselves, such as elevators, or springs. Likewise, setting a jump height of infinity in a platform game would result in a Player Toy that launches once and then continues an upwards trajectory forever. Applying either of those extremes would lead to a game very different from Super Mario Bros., even though initially at least, only a single variable has changed.
Imagine that effect multiplied by every variable in a game and it becomes apparent just how powerful a creative tool Minmaxing can be.
Minmaxing is the approach I intend to apply to Pong's Value Design to explore the breadth of Business Models it might support and, by implication, where player property rights might begin to emerge.
It's also, literally, where ideas come from.
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