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Strategy games are a real cause for game design woes. In this article I'll be talking specifically about the subset of strategy games where you control multiple units, and the positioning of allied and enemy units is crucial to strategic success or failure. This is a relatively broad category, and can include games such as Frozen Synapse, Starcraft 2, Advance Wars, and Final Fantasy Tactics.

Even more specifically, I would like to talk about the concept of fog of war in such games. Fog of war, defined simply, means that you can only see what your units can see. Alternatively, other games allow you to see everything on the field regardless of proximal allied units.

Many games have fog of war (Starcraft 2), many lack it (Final Fantasy Tactics), and some switch back and forth between levels or modes with and without it (Advance Wars, Frozen Synapse). Is fog of war useful for creating more strategic depth, or does it add needless frustration and force the player to resort to trial and error tactics? The answer is: it depends.

An insightful thesis, I know. The plan here is to outline when fog of war works, when it doesn't work, and why.

Whether it's good or bad, fog of war changes the way you have to play the game. It completely alters what viable strategies look like. For example, in Starcraft 2, high-level play revolves around scouting what your opponent is doing and reacting to his actions. If you can't see his base, you don't know what to prepare for, and it's mostly a guessing game. If you have a scout out, skilled opponents will actually delay buildings until the scout is dealt with, so that they can continue to hide their plans. Scouting is a key strategic focus.

If you could see the entire map at all times, these kinds of tactical plays would be removed. It would change the focus of the game from scouting and reaction and strategic choice to simple manipulation and action speed. That is not to say that micro-manipulation is unimportant in Starcraft 2 as it stands, but simply that it is not the only thing to consider. Starcraft 2 is a game where fog of war increases strategic depth.

Advance Wars is a good example of a game where fog of war decreases strategic depth. In order to fully understand why, we must first examine the main source of enjoyment that comes from strategy games in the first place. A good strategy game is one in which you can analyze the position you're in and come to a reasonable conclusion about an optimal or at least adequate play that will increase your position and thus your chances of winning.

In Starcraft 2, very often the best play involves scouting your opponent for information in order to guide your subsequent plays. As such, information is only partially hidden in Starcraft 2. You can uncover any hidden information through the course of well-rounded play. With no adequate scouting units in Advance Wars, the same kind of intelligent play is not encouraged. Information in fog of war levels is completely hidden, with the only possibly way of uncovering it being to incur substantial loss.

There is once level in particular I remember in Advance Wars that was a great example of fog of war ill at work. The enemy had hidden artillery across a narrow bridge. There was an alternate way around, but it was long and would require many turns to traverse. Since the level had a time limit, the obvious choice was to attempt to cross the bridge. Unfortunately, that only ended in your entire army getting obliterated by the artillery. You lost the battle, but now you knew for next time that there is artillery there.

That is horrendous design for a strategy game. In this case, playing based on the best information available in-game isn't enough to make an informed decision. If you make your decisions based on the construction of the level (which is what strategy games are intended to have you do), it leads you into the same trap again and again. You have to play with additional information only learned through failure to have a chance at success. It's spitting in the face of the core of what strategy games should be.

I am not saying Advance Wars is a bad game; it's enjoyable and the levels without fog of war are very fun and strategically deep. Imagine the same level described above without fog of war. You know the artillery is there all along, and you can formulate a plan to cross the bridge if that's still how you want to approach it. You will sustain losses, but they are calculated losses rather than arbitrary losses, and the possible strategic choices are increased.

What it comes down to is this simple concept. If the fog of war completely hides information from the players, it's probably a bad design choice. If players can only compensate for the fog of war through trial and error, it is removing strategy elements from the game and replacing them with thoughtless repetition. Only if the fog of war increases strategic options should it be employed. Fog of war should not be treated as a tool to increase challenge, but rather a tool to increase options.

Addicting Games

I think the topic of what makes a game "addicting" is extremely interesting. It is an important aspect of game design, but one that some professional game designers seem to be completely unaware of. Replayability is just as important in some games, especially competitive games, as any other aspect of the game. A mediocre game can be made an incredible classic by virtue of its replayability alone.

Zynga is a company that gets it. I can't say I am terribly familiar with many Zynga games, but from what little I know, they stick very closely to the tenet that I am about to reveal. Addicting games offer something very, very simple: perpetual progress.

I am not going to suggest that Progress Wars is the game to end all games, and that anyone who begins playing it is going to have a sudden dearth of will to ever play another game again. I'm just going to use it as the most bare-bones example of my core point. You will gain a level in Progress Wars. You will be tempted to gain another level in Progress Wars. But it's nothing more than a crappy button. That's the whole site. You click a button, and you gain levels. You're not going to spend more than a few minutes playing it, but if you're like me, clicking the close button on that tab is one of the hardest things you're going to do today. You don't want to lose your progress. You want to keep going. It doesn't matter if you already know what's next, you just want to get there so you can feel like you've accomplished something.

The most addicting games really just come down to being clones of Progress Wars. They add tons of bells and whistles (and gameplay, I guess) so that you don't realize that you're really just playing Progress Wars. It's all just smoke and mirrors sugar-coating the same core concept. It's not a bad thing; I get sucked into these games all the time, even knowing all about this. In fact, I specifically seek out these kinds of games, because they are fun.

Here, I want to bring up a game that I consider to be a masterpiece of multiplayer gaming design: Modern Warfare 2.

Every single positive action you take in a multiplayer game of Modern Warfare 2 gets you points. You get points for killing someone, points for capturing an objective, bonus points for kill streaks and multikills and special kills, etc. You are constantly getting points in that game. But beyond Progress Wars-style points just for the sake of points, Modern Warfare 2 uses the points as a means to a broader incentive. Your points dictate your level, and your level dictates what items you can use in game. If you want a better gun, you better keep playing and accruing points so that you can unlock it.

But the game doesn't even stop there. Your gun comes bare-bones. You don't want a bare-bones gun, do you? You want to dual-wield, or have extended magazines, or have a better scope, or make your bullets go through the damn wall and kill enemies who can't even see you. If you want that, you need to use the gun. You get gun-specific points for performing actions with the gun that unlock more and more possible customizations for your gun. They even add aesthetic customizations that require a ridiculous number of difficult-to-get points, just so you have a really long-term goal to strive for.

You get to define perks, such as infinite sprinting, faster reloading, etc. These, too, have points associated with them. If you use your perk enough, you unlock a super version of the perk that does something even better than the original version.

You get titles and icons for performing specific actions within the game. Some of them come with perks or guns or levels, but others come with difficult and impressive feats. You can show off your titles and your level and your guns and your add-ons to the people you play with. There is always something new to unlock, and something new to strive for. And just when you get it all, you have the option to start over. You can un-unlock everything in the game and start clean from level 1 with only the basic items.

And people do that all the time. Unlocking things is fun. It's way more fun than having things. You always want something new, and something better than what you have. And, as Modern Warfare 2 proves, people are willing to give away everything they have already earned just for the shot of earning it again. It's like crack.

Even if you're getting crushed in a game of Modern Warfare 2, you can get a few kills, which gets a few hundred points, and you're that much closer unlocking your BFG of choice. You get rewarded even when you are losing, and that keeps people playing for a very, very long time.

This is the future of multiplayer gaming. This is the reason that I could not get into competitive Starcraft 2. It is not enough any more to merely be a compelling strategy game. Playing is not worth the risk of time wasted if you lose. I want to feel like I have accomplished something no matter what the outcome. I don't want to spend up to an hour of my time playing a game where I lose and that's the end and I have nothing to show for it, and neither does the majority of gamers.

If you are always making progress, there is always a reason to play.