Games and Learning

Simulating the behavior of large crowds poses unique programming challenges, writes Borut Pfeifer.

Borut Pfeifer is a developer with a problem.

Having completed the recently released game “Skulls of Shogun,” Pfeifer returned to a project he had started in 2009 — a role-player game based in Iran during the election protests of that year. That’s not the problem, though. The challenge he has been grappling with is how to develop, script and program large-scale simulations, especially those that include crowds.

Pfeifer has been working through the development challenge and sharing what he has learned in a series of posts on his site, Plush Apocalypse, and  Gamasutra.

Based on his blogs, we contacted him about what he is learning through this project and why he is publishing the R&D process for his game.

Can you tell us what sparked your decision to write the series?

Borut Pfeifer: After finishing Skulls of the Shogun, my next project is simulation heavy. It’s a cross-genre RPG that relies a lot on crowd simulation, set during the election protests in Tehran in 2009.

I wanted to codify the best practices I’ve learned over my career to help define how I should best move forward on the project. This includes both things I’ve seen done well, but more often than not, things I’ve seen gone wrong. When you run into production issues you may not have the people able to alter course during that game’s development, or the issues only become obvious once you’re done. At that point you can only theorize as to why and what could have fixed the error.

It would seem this is an effort to draft some best practices around large-scale simulations. Are there specific problems you were hoping to avoid or learn from?

Borut Pfeifer: I’m definitely trying to build all these lessons and theories into something usable for myself and others. A lot of production issues tend to arise from the order in which you build things. More linear games, content-driven games, have slowly resolved this by figuring the best order to build the game to reduce risk. Simulation-driven games have a very different, counter-intuitive production order to them.

You mentioned that you were working on a sort-of serious game that sought to develop a simulation based on the Iranian protests in 2009. How is this process similar to the fantasy strategy work you did on the recent game Skulls of the Shogun?

Borut Pfeifer: Well, the similarities are more in the techniques used to build both games. Both games are systems heavy. Skulls of the Shogun uses its systems to open up strategic possibilities for the players. The game systems have to connect in interesting ways that provide players with meaningful choices.

And similarly with my current project, the game’s systems have to work together to create dramatic situations. These could be challenges for the player to overcome, or somehow impact their play. Balancing of the number of systems the player has to interact with, how deeply they connect to create emergent possibilities, and finding those connections involves the same creative processes on both games.

How is it different?

Borut Pfeifer: My goal in building the mechanics and systems of the game is that they deeply relate to the themes of the game. That aspect is pretty challenging, and requires a lot of creative introspection – you don’t always understand the themes you want to convey well into the development of a game.

With Skulls of the Shogun, while the systems are designed to create dramatic strategy match ups, that’s not relevant to the story of the game, and those systems aren’t meant to create a specific emotional experience tied to that. Now I’m trying to interweave a lot more together, not just from a narrative perspective, but how each layer of mechanics works with every other one.

You mentioned you were returning to games more in the Serious Games vein. Why is that?

Borut Pfeifer: I’m not personally interested in capital S, capital G, Serious Games. They, either by stereotype or in reality, are more involved with things like military training or in the case of political games, didacticism.

I’m still primarily motivated by making entertainment. But entertainment that is geared for adults, people who are interested in the world around them, who might be just as likely to watch a foreign film versus the latest blockbuster. As game playing audiences grow older and become more diverse, I think (or hope) more and more people would like to play these kinds of games that deal with complex, real world themes.

However I also happen to think making a game as a piece of entertainment first is the most effective way to use them to convey a theme or message. Conveying anything is best done when keeping in mind pacing and drama.

Also, changing someone’s mind about something or effectively educating them is less about telling them static pieces of information and a didactic point of view. It’s more about asking questions and encouraging people to explore to find their own answers. Both of these goals I often find to be at odds with the approach many Serious Games take.

Are there any special considerations you make if your game is inspired by real events?

Borut Pfeifer: You absolutely have to treat the history, the people involved, everything, with respect as an artist. By that I mean extensive research and taking the time to capture at least some of the real-world complexity.

Games can explore aspects of the human condition that are difficult in other artistic media. By putting people in roles and giving them the choices those roles have, games can create empathy in a more powerful, systemic, way than just watching a character on a film screen. You can understand *why* people in different situations choose to act in certain ways.

When dealing with real world events, I think you have a responsibility to attempt to do that. Even if you fail, if you’re not even trying maybe games are not the best medium to explore those ideas.