Do video game developers intend to program a game to be played at a high level?

This question gave me a happy.

The answer is it depends. Some developers aren’t giving any thought to it, because they aren’t envisioning their games being played at a competitive level. Blizzard is certainly not in that genre. They know their games will be played at a competitive level. In some countries now, games like WoW are televised as a competitive sprot. And despite the best efforts of the developers, players sometimes outsmart them and the game has to evolve to suit the way play of it evolves.

The next line of game consoles, I heard is supposed to be entirely 3D. So the interactive gameplay will allow you to learn more about the game you are playing, almost forcing you to learn at a different level, because you are actually in that different world when you are playing.

It really depends, but I will say that my non-electronic gaming has helped me with my math skills and that gaming in general has made me learn a bit about making spreadsheets.

I don’t think they set out to make games complicated. I think they set out to make good games that are balanced. Blizzard makes extremely polished, extremely well-balanced games that people want to play enough to develop those formulas and reverse-engineer the game to break it down to the math involved. If Blizzard was focused on making the game complex but not making it good, then no one would care enough to put forth the effort to break down the game. So really it’s about being good, not complex or at a high level.

@StellarAirman

Seconding this, kind of. They’re not really developing games for the competitive crowd only. They want everyone on board (and they want to make money).

If a metagame evolves (which it will, if the game is good and a lot of people play), it’s a metagame that the devs probably weren’t able to anticipate. Hence updates, patches, nerfing, etc. that occur in persistent online games like WoW and Guild Wars.

But good developers will make games with depth, which depth will kind of automatically allow for the evolution of high-level play. IMO a good multiplayer video game must possess this quality.

There are exceptions in which games are developed with a focus on multiplayer and competition. I’m thinking mainly of Quake and all its off-shoots and even the later Counter-Strike series, which seems to have just become the competitive complement to Half-Life.

So I guess what I’m saying is that devs, if they know what they’re doing, will generally try to make a game that offers all these possibilities – enjoyment for the casual and for the competitive player.

StellarAirman has it mostly right. The reason StarCraft is still played today at such a high level is that it’s probably the best balanced strategy that’s ever been made.

Blizzard know that if they make their games well balanced then people will want to play them. They of course provide content for the high level players in World of Warcraft, because people at lower levels have to have something to aspire to, the people at higher levels have to have something to play. Having a mix of content keeps a wide audience interested, so yes, in a way they want their game to be played at a high level, since it also breeds interest in the game.

Personally, I always felt that Warzone 2100 was/is far superior to Starcraft. I tried SC and lost interest in less than a week. Considering how I normally like RTS games, that should tell you something.

@jerv it only tells me that you prefer warzone 2100 over starcraft

@warribbons Heh. Let me rephrase; I have yet to find a strategy game (RTS or turn-based, like Battle for Wesnoth) that I have enjoyed less than Starcraft. I have found many, many games with more depth, but most of them lack Blizzard’s marketing.

@jerv With respect, that’s not really relevant to the question. I never said that Starcraft was a “good” or “bad” game overall, I said that the balance was good. Game balance is one of the most important factors in competitive gaming since without it there will always be “cheap” or guaranteed ways to win, which obviously does not lend itself well to competition.

@WhatEvil Regarding relevance, that is why I whispered those comments. Then again, being a question asked in the Social section loosens up the rules of relevance here on Fluther, especially when the OP ends with the word “discuss”.

I agree that game balance is important in competitive gaming, but I also believe that a certain degree of depth is required to avoid the development on “no-fail” strategies and that Starcraft lacks a certain amount of depth, thus making it more a competition of who has more actions per minute than who has the best strategy, and I could measure actions per minute with a stopwatch without needing a computer running a game.

Maybe the reason for our divide is that we have different ideas of “competitive”. I like my gaming to rely more on out-thinking the opposition than merely out-pacing them, If I wanted a battle of reflexes then there are games like Street Fighter and Gran Turismo though I still find the real-world equivalents MMA fighting and FIA racing superior there.

To me, gaming is more about strategy than reflexes. And strategy requires options; the more options you have, the deeper a strategy you can play, the more ways your opponent can come up with to counter you, and thus the more truly competitive it is, at least to my mind. I feel that Starcraft is too limited for that. If you want to make it all about who is faster, join the track team. I personally find the turn-based tabletop game Car Wars to be more competitive.

You are free to disagree, but I doubt you can change my mind.

@Jerv Fair enough about the whispering thing… I’m fairly new to this site so I don’t really know the usual etiquette around here.

There really is a great deal of depth in Starcraft. The 3 playable races are really very different in their mechanics and there is a huge amount of discussion about build orders, tactics, counters, tech switching. Actions per minute and “microing” (that is micromanaging unit actions) do come into it, but they are nowhere near the whole story. You only need to search “Starcraft build order” and look at some of the discussion you uncover. The “build order” (that is to say the order in which you build your structures and units at the start of the game) is important because it sets you up for the rest of the game and is purely rooted in strategy. There is also a consensus among StarCraft players that no 1 of the 3 races is “better” than any of the others, despite being so different.

Of particular note is this page: http://lbrandy.com/blog/2010/11/using-genetic-algorithms-to-find-starcraft-2-build-orders/ which talks of using a genetic algorithm (there is a brief explanation of what genetic algorithms are in the page) to find a counterintuitive and very strong build order for SC2 (which is largely the same game as SC1, as I understand it).

The very fact that a genetic algorithm could discover a previously unseen and strong strategy for a game like this speaks volumes about the complexity of the game.

@WhatEvil I have seen (and participated in) similar discussions regarding other games. There is no single correct answer to which AADA Class 5 car is best and there are effectively infinite “factions”, so I am used to a different sort of complexity as well as some heavy math trying to find more optimal ways of doing things, hence my preference for rate-of-fire over one-shot power (usually resulting in better damage/time).

Starcraft may be deep, but I’ve seen far deeper. It may be complex in the absolute, but it’s still relatively simple.

As for games in general, companies go for what sells, and you rarely see competitions for obscure games. Games that are too complex or too unbalanced don’t become popular enough to have World Championship tournaments. But you can’t really plan on success either; it happens or it doesn’t and the market is too unpredictable and fickle to really have any control over that.