The Power & Danger of Heuristics
Last month I wrote an article on cuteness vs complexity – and whether and when pairing cute illustration with complex gameplay works.
It got me thinking about the rules of thumb or heuristics we apply more generally to our designs. To what extent do heuristics help us, and when are we handicapping ourselves?
What is a Heuristic?
Heuristics are mental shortcuts or rules of thumb we apply to reduce the cognitive load of decision making.
They apply to all aspects of life, and we use them constantly.
Think back to when you got dressed this morning. You paired pants with a t-shirt, with socks, with deodorant (?), with underpants, with a sweater. You didn’t expend mental energy to know that the sweater goes over the t-shirt, or the pants go over the underpants, or that if you don’t wear socks you might get a blister.
Whales Destroying the World (and causing one heck of a traffic jam)
How will you get home from work today? Maybe you take the freeway because it’s generally faster. It isn’t always faster – but rather than expend mental energy and time researching today’s traffic you’ll apply a heuristic.
Our minds just don’t have the operating capacity to re-assess every new piece of information, and every decision. Instead, we create shortcuts. If we didn’t, our species would have died out tens of millions of years ago.
Heuristics & Gaming
My critical introduction to heuristics was through the competitive Magic: The Gathering scene. I’d heard the term before, but the concept was really driven home by Luis Scott Vargas (LSV), and Marshal Sutcliff on Episode 335 of the Limited Resources podcast.
In our first playthroughs of a game a large portion of our cognitive load is occupied by understanding and executing the rules. As we internalize the rules, we free up higher level thinking for strategy.
As we execute basic strategy, we develop heuristics that allow us to streamline the process and focus on deeper strategic questions.
In Eclipse Second Dawn you explore early, in Magic the Gathering you play your instants on their end step, in GO you learn common patterns, and in Poker you start continuation betting your draws.
A very unrealistic image of Eclipse Second Dawn gameplay
The process is iterative, and as we improve, we develop more and more heuristics that allow us to operate on a higher level.
But we don’t begin to master a game until we start to learn when to break our heuristics.
The point of heuristics is that they are usually correct. Which is a world away from always correct. An over-reliance on heuristics can therefore hold us back from true mastery.
Heuristics & Game Design
This brings us full circle. A heuristic I’d seen on design forums is that cute art direction should not be paired with complex games – or else you risk alienating your players. While a useful rule of thumb – I thought that the conception was wrong frequently enough that I wrote an article about it.
Heuristics are double edged swords – while they greatly improve our ability to create great things and streamline our process - relying on a heuristic when it isn’t appropriate is dangerous.
I reached out to the design community for their favorite heuristics. These are great starting points for taking our designs to the next level, but they are also great places to examine our designs and see if maybe, just maybe, we have a project that needs to break the rules.
Here are some of my favorites:
“Shorter is always better” - Seppy (Fight in a Box Games)
“If a more complicated mechanic leads to the more or less same conclusion as a simpler one, use the simpler one (even if it means a little more randomness/less control/less strategy involved).” - Jindřich Pavlásek (Bossin’ Space, Whales Destroying the World, Balada)
“If a choice is always obvious, it shouldn't be a choice” - Reddit user tim_p
“Choices should be decisively meaningful, but in general the margin by which the best choice is the best should be small” - Chris Backe
“Give players 2-3 tough choices per turn/action” - Al Leduc (Cupcake Empire, FrankenDie)
“If the playtester wants to do it and it breaks your rules, you should change your rules” - Reddit user holodeckdate
“Output must always be disproportionate to input, favoring the output.” - Justin Leingang
“The fun thing should be the thing that makes you win” - Reddit user themissinglint
What are your go to game design heuristics?
