2323: Gateway Games

There’s a good piece in the latest newsletter from Glixel, the upcoming new website that my brother’s working on in collaboration with the folks at Rolling Stone. The article focuses on Blizzard’s approach to game design, and how they rarely do anything completely new, and instead take an established formula that is often regarded as impenetrably complex or difficult to get into (especially once a community has been established) and make it accessible to the masses.

This isn’t a matter of “dumbing down”, though. No, it’s rather intelligent game design: it strips out the complicated things that more “hardcore” games have in them as a means for players to show their skills, and instead focuses on the core experience, creating an “easy to learn, hard to master” kind of situation.

The most recent example of this is, of course, Overwatch, which takes the basic formula set in something like Team Fortress 2, strips out all the complicated bits that have been bolted on to that game over the years, and makes an enjoyably easy to get into but tactically rich multiplayer shooter that pretty much anyone can enjoy. But Blizzard’s past work fits this mould, too, with perhaps their most famous work being World of Warcraft, which successfully made massively multiplayer online RPGs — traditionally not particularly user-friendly experiences — accessible and enjoyable to the masses.

It’s not just Blizzard that does this, of course. There’s great value in producing solid “gateway games” to particular genres, as they provide a means for people to learn about potentially new favourite styles of game without getting bogged down in complicated rulesets and techniques. Hopping genres from multiplayer shooters to dungeon crawler RPGs, Experience Inc’s Demon Gaze provided an excellent jumping-on point for me to learn how these traditionally challenging, complex games worked, and built up my confidence to tackle the significantly more complicated, difficult and long Dungeon Travelers 2. Elsewhere, Codemasters’ GRID series strikes an excellent balance between arcade-style handling and the greater realism of more “sim”-like racing games such as Gran Turismo and the early Forza games. Cave’s Deathsmiles is a good introduction to bullet hell shooters. Dead or Alive 5 is a good game to learn about one-on-one fighting games, particularly with its excellent tutorials and practice modes.

Board games do this, too. Some of the most popular and well-respected board games out there are “gateway games” to more complex experiences. Ticket to Ride, for example, teaches players about dice-free mechanics, set collecting and strategic unit placement without overcomplicating things with unnecessary rules. The Settlers of Catan is a great introduction to “building” games where you have to manage resources in order to construct various things. And deckbuilding games like Ascension and Star Realms can lead naturally into more customisable card games such as Android: Netrunner, Magic: The Gathering and suchlike.

Some people never move beyond these gateway experiences, and that’s absolutely fine. To be perfectly honest, I think I’m most comfortable with the simpler end of the spectrum when it comes to board games in particular, and I’m definitely digging the simplicity of Overwatch, as recent posts have doubtless made clear. What’s important about these experiences, though, is that they’re inclusive, allowing more people to enjoy hobbies traditionally thought as complex and difficult to get into than ever before. And having more people to play with is pretty much always a very good thing indeed.