RimWorld: Contrarian, Ridiculous, and Impossible Game Design Methods

Tynan Sylvester (creator of Rimworld, and author of "Designing Games: A Guide to Engineering Experiences") has some great thoughts on this in the early part of his GDC talk on building a 'story generator' rather than a game. He talks about 'apophenia' - the propensity of players to ascribe narrative meaning to events - and the way in Rimworld they strive to create simulation systems that facilitate that kind of player-provided narrative reasoning. ▶ this video

"Reverse Over Engineering" is a great thing: Will Wright on Designing User Interfaces to Simulation Games (1996) (2023 Video Update): link link DonHopkins on Jan 16, 2020 | parent | context | favorite | on: Reverse engineering course Will Wright defined the "Simulator Effect" as how game players imagine a simulation is vastly more detailed, deep, rich, and complex than it actually is: a magical misunderstanding that you shouldn’t talk them out of. He designs games to run on two computers at once: the electronic one on the player’s desk, running his shallow tame simulation, and the biological one in the player’s head, running their deep wild imagination. "Reverse Over-Engineering" is a desirable outcome of the Simulator Effect: what game players (and game developers trying to clone the game) do when they use their imagination to extrapolate how a game works, and totally overestimate how much work and modeling the simulator is actually doing, because they filled in the gaps with their imagination and preconceptions and assumptions, instead of realizing how many simplifications and shortcuts and illusions it actually used. link >There's a name for what Wright calls "the simulator effect" in the video: apophenia. There's a good GDC video on YouTube where Tynan Sylvester (the creator of RimWorld) talks about using this effect in game design. link >Apophenia (/æpoʊˈfiːniə/) is the tendency to mistakenly perceive connections and meaning between unrelated things. The term (German: Apophänie) was coined by psychiatrist Klaus Conrad in his 1958 publication on the beginning stages of schizophrenia. He defined it as "unmotivated seeing of connections [accompanied by] a specific feeling of abnormal meaningfulness". He described the early stages of delusional thought as self-referential, over-interpretations of actual sensory perceptions, as opposed to hallucinations. RimWorld: Contrarian, Ridiculous, and Impossible Game Design Methods ▶ this video 5 game design tips from Sims creator Will Wright link >Tip 5: On world building. As you know by now, Will's approach to creating games is all about building a coherent and compelling player experience. His games are comprised of layered systems that engage players creatively, and lead to personalized, some times unexpected outcomes. In these types of games, players will often assume that the underlying system is smarter than it actually is. This happens because there's a strong mental model in place, guiding the game design, and enhancing the player's ability to imagine a coherent context that explains all the myriad details and dynamics happening within that game experience. >Now let's apply this to your project: What mental model are you building, and what story are you causing to unfold between your player's ears? And how does the feature set in your game or product support that story? Once you start approaching your product design that way, you'll be set up to get your customers to buy into the microworld that you're building, and start to imagine that it's richer and more detailed than it actually is.

Will Wright credits Jay Forrester for inspiring him to simulate a city on the computer: link >How did the leap from Raid's world editor, to SimCity with its urban design theories, happen? >WW: First, it was just a toy for me. I was just making my editor more and more elaborate. I thought it would be cool to have the world come to life. So I started researching books on urban dynamics, and traffic, and things like that. I came across the work of Jay Forrester, who was kind of the father of system dynamics. He was actually one of the first people I found that actually simulated a city on a computer. Except in his simulation, there was no map; it was just numbers. It was like population level, number of jobs -- it was kind of a spreadsheet model. >So I took his approach to it, and then applied a lot of the cellular automata stuff that I had learned earlier, and get these emergent dynamics that he wasn't getting in his model. I found when I was reading all these theories about urban dynamics and city behavior, that when I had a toy simulated version on the computer, it made the subject much more interesting than reading a book -- because I could go to my computer model and start experimenting. >That just bought the whole subject to life for me and then, more and more, I started thinking, "Other people might enjoy this." But even then I never thought SimCity would have a broad appeal. I thought it might appeal to a few architects and city planner types, but not average people. But Will's goal was to make a game that was fun to play, not to accurately simulate reality or make predictions. Intentionally inspiring magical systems thinking for entertainment, education, and storytelling! Chaim Gingold's SimCity Reverse Diagrams: link >These reverse diagrams map and translate the rules of a complex simulation program into a form that is more easily digested, embedded, disseminated, and and discussed (Latour 1986). >The technique is inspired by the game designer Stone Librande’s one page game design documents (Librande 2010). >If we merge the reverse diagram with an interactive approach—e.g. Bret Victor’s Nile Visualization (Victor 2013), such diagrams could be used generatively, to describe programs, and interactively, to allow rich introspection and manipulation of software. Will Wright on Designing User Interfaces to Simulation Games (1996) (2023 Video Update): link link >Some muckety-muck architecture magazine was interviewing Will Wright about SimCity, and they asked him a question something like “which ontological urban paradigm most influenced your design of the simulator, the Exo-Hamiltonian Pattern Language Movement, or the Intra-Urban Deconstructionist Sub-Culture Hypothesis?” He replied, “I just kind of optimized for game play.” link >DonHopkins on Jan 16, 2020 | parent | context | favorite | on: Reverse engineering course Will Wright defined the "Simulator Effect" as how game players imagine a simulation is vastly more detailed, deep, rich, and complex than it actually is: a magical misunderstanding that you shouldn’t talk them out of. He designs games to run on two computers at once: the electronic one on the player’s desk, running his shallow tame simulation, and the biological one in the player’s head, running their deep wild imagination. "Reverse Over-Engineering" is a desirable outcome of the Simulator Effect: what game players (and game developers trying to clone the game) do when they use their imagination to extrapolate how a game works, and totally overestimate how much work and modeling the simulator is actually doing, because they filled in the gaps with their imagination and preconception

link >Everyone notices the obvious built-in political bias, whatever that is. But everyone sees it from a different perspective, so nobody agrees what its real political agenda actually is. I don’t think it’s all that important, since SimCity’s political agenda pales in comparison to the political agenda in the eye of the beholder. >Some muckety-muck architecture magazine was interviewing Will Wright about SimCity, and they asked him a question something like “which ontological urban paradigm most influenced your design of the simulator, the Exo-Hamiltonian Pattern Language Movement, or the Intra-Urban Deconstructionist Sub-Culture Hypothesis?” He replied, “I just kind of optimized for game play.” link DonHopkins on Jan 16, 2020 | parent | context | favorite | on: Reverse engineering course Will Wright defined the "Simulator Effect" as how game players imagine a simulation is vastly more detailed, deep, rich, and complex than it actually is: a magical misunderstanding that you shouldn’t talk them out of. He designs games to run on two computers at once: the electronic one on the player’s desk, running his shallow tame simulation, and the biological one in the player’s head, running their deep wild imagination. "Reverse Over-Engineering" is a desirable outcome of the Simulator Effect: what game players (and game developers trying to clone the game) do when they use their imagination to extrapolate how a game works, and totally overestimate how much work and modeling the simulator is actually doing, because they filled in the gaps with their imagination and preconceptions and assumptions, instead of realizing how many simplifications and shortcuts and illusions it actually used. link >There's a name for what Wright calls "the simulator effect" in the video: apophenia. There's a good GDC video on YouTube where Tynan Sylvester (the creator of RimWorld) talks about using this effect in game design. link >Apophenia (/æpoʊˈfiːniə/) is the tendency to mistakenly perceive connections and meaning between unrelated things. The term (German: Apophänie) was coined by psychiatrist Klaus Conrad in his 1958 publication on the beginning stages of schizophrenia. He defined it as "unmotivated seeing of connections [accompanied by] a specific feeling of abnormal meaningfulness". He described the early stages of delusional thought as self-referential, over-interpretations of actual sensory perceptions, as opposed to hallucinations. RimWorld: Contrarian, Ridiculous, and Impossible Game Design Methods ▶ this video 5 game design tips from Sims creator Will Wright link >Tip 5: On world building. As you know by now, Will's approach to creating games is all about building a coherent and compelling player experience. His games are comprised of layered systems that engage players creatively, and lead to personalized, some times unexpected outcomes. In these types of games, players will often assume that the underlying system is smarter than it actually is. This happens because there's a strong mental model in place, guiding the game design, and enhancing the player's ability to imagine a coherent context that explains all the myriad details and dynamics happening within that game experience. >Now let's apply this to your project: What mental model are you building, and what story are you causing to unfold between your player's ears? And how does the feature set in your game or product support that story? Once you start approaching your product design that way, you'll be set up to get your customers to buy into the microworld that you're building, and start to imagine that it's richer and more detailed tha

Trying to simulate every microscopic detail doesn't necessarily translate to a fun game (or even a realistic simulation). After working with Will on SimCity and The Sims, I've written about what he calls "the simulator effect" aka apophenia (delusional thought as self-referential, over-interpretations of actual sensory perceptions, as opposed to hallucinations), and what I call "Reverse Over-Engineering": link DonHopkins on Jan 16, 2020 | parent | context | favorite | on: Reverse engineering course Will Wright defined the "Simulator Effect" as how game players imagine a simulation is vastly more detailed, deep, rich, and complex than it actually is: a magical misunderstanding that you shouldn’t talk them out of. He designs games to run on two computers at once: the electronic one on the player’s desk, running his shallow tame simulation, and the biological one in the player’s head, running their deep wild imagination. "Reverse Over-Engineering" is a desirable outcome of the Simulator Effect: what game players (and game developers trying to clone the game) do when they use their imagination to extrapolate how a game works, and totally overestimate how much work and modeling the simulator is actually doing, because they filled in the gaps with their imagination and preconceptions and assumptions, instead of realizing how many simplifications and shortcuts and illusions it actually used. link >There's a name for what Wright calls "the simulator effect" in the video: apophenia. There's a good GDC video on YouTube where Tynan Sylvester (the creator of RimWorld) talks about using this effect in game design. link >Apophenia (/æpoʊˈfiːniə/) is the tendency to mistakenly perceive connections and meaning between unrelated things. The term (German: Apophänie) was coined by psychiatrist Klaus Conrad in his 1958 publication on the beginning stages of schizophrenia. He defined it as "unmotivated seeing of connections [accompanied by] a specific feeling of abnormal meaningfulness". He described the early stages of delusional thought as self-referential, over-interpretations of actual sensory perceptions, as opposed to hallucinations. RimWorld: Contrarian, Ridiculous, and Impossible Game Design Methods ▶ this video 5 game design tips from Sims creator Will Wright link >Tip 5: On world building. As you know by now, Will's approach to creating games is all about building a coherent and compelling player experience. His games are comprised of layered systems that engage players creatively, and lead to personalized, some times unexpected outcomes. In these types of games, players will often assume that the underlying system is smarter than it actually is. This happens because there's a strong mental model in place, guiding the game design, and enhancing the player's ability to imagine a coherent context that explains all the myriad details and dynamics happening within that game experience. >Now let's apply this to your project: What mental model are you building, and what story are you causing to unfold between your player's ears? And how does the feature set in your game or product support that story? Once you start approaching your product design that way, you'll be set up to get your customers to buy into the microworld that you're building, and start to imagine that it's richer and more detailed than it actually is. link DonHopkins on June 16, 2024 | parent | context | favorite | on: Building SimCity: How to put the world in a machin... Here is Will Wright's talk "Interfacing to Microworlds" from April 26 1996, which he presented to Terry Winnograd's user interface class at Stanford. I sat in on the talk, asked questions, took notes, and

Earlier I wrote about the "Simulator Effect" aka "apophenia", and "Reverse Over Engineering": link DonHopkins on Jan 16, 2020 | parent | context | favorite | on: Reverse engineering course Will Wright defined the "Simulator Effect" as how game players imagine a simulation is vastly more detailed, deep, rich, and complex than it actually is: a magical misunderstanding that you shouldn’t talk them out of. He designs games to run on two computers at once: the electronic one on the player’s desk, running his shallow tame simulation, and the biological one in the player’s head, running their deep wild imagination. "Reverse Over-Engineering" is a desirable outcome of the Simulator Effect: what game players (and game developers trying to clone the game) do when they use their imagination to extrapolate how a game works, and totally overestimate how much work and modeling the simulator is actually doing, because they filled in the gaps with their imagination and preconceptions and assumptions, instead of realizing how many simplifications and shortcuts and illusions it actually used. link >There's a name for what Wright calls "the simulator effect" in the video: apophenia. There's a good GDC video on YouTube where Tynan Sylvester (the creator of RimWorld) talks about using this effect in game design. link >Apophenia (/æpoʊˈfiːniə/) is the tendency to mistakenly perceive connections and meaning between unrelated things. The term (German: Apophänie) was coined by psychiatrist Klaus Conrad in his 1958 publication on the beginning stages of schizophrenia. He defined it as "unmotivated seeing of connections [accompanied by] a specific feeling of abnormal meaningfulness". He described the early stages of delusional thought as self-referential, over-interpretations of actual sensory perceptions, as opposed to hallucinations. RimWorld: Contrarian, Ridiculous, and Impossible Game Design Methods ▶ this video 5 game design tips from Sims creator Will Wright link >Tip 5: On world building. As you know by now, Will's approach to creating games is all about building a coherent and compelling player experience. His games are comprised of layered systems that engage players creatively, and lead to personalized, some times unexpected outcomes. In these types of games, players will often assume that the underlying system is smarter than it actually is. This happens because there's a strong mental model in place, guiding the game design, and enhancing the player's ability to imagine a coherent context that explains all the myriad details and dynamics happening within that game experience. >Now let's apply this to your project: What mental model are you building, and what story are you causing to unfold between your player's ears? And how does the feature set in your game or product support that story? Once you start approaching your product design that way, you'll be set up to get your customers to buy into the microworld that you're building, and start to imagine that it's richer and more detailed than it actually is. Also: Will Wright on Designing User Interfaces to Simulation Games (1996) (2023 Video Update) link

You can check out the original SimCity Classic source code here, which I cleaned up, refactored and renamed for consistency and readability, documented, and translated to C++, but it still retains the original behavior and intent: link This is also an earlier version which that code was derived from, that I started from the Mac version, ported to Unix, cleaned up and translated old C and 68k assembly to ANSI C, and made a user interface with the TCL/Tk scripting language and X11 GUI toolkit: link The one little "modernization" I made to the simulation was to copy the radar dish tile animation from the airport, and make it individually placeable as a "high speed network connection" that let people telecommute from home without generating traffic and pollution. That was a tip of the hat to John Gauge's "Net Day", a mid-90's internet craze of hooking schools up to the net. link Chaim Gingold mentions the function s_traf.c/FindPTele in his SimCity Reverse Diagrams animation characters atlas of tiles, under "Telecommunications" -- /* look for telecommunication on edges of zone */ -- if there is a telecommunication dish adjacent to a residential zone, then its residents can telecommute without driving around generating traffic and pollution. I turned that off for the OLPC release, though. link Chaim Gingold has analyzed the code and visually documented how it works, in his beautiful "SimCity Reverse Diagrams": link >SimCity reverse diagrams: Chaim Gingold (2016). >These reverse diagrams map and translate the rules of a complex simulation program into a form that is more easily digested, embedded, disseminated, and and discussed (Latour 1986). >The technique is inspired by the game designer Stone Librande’s one page game design documents (Librande 2010). If we merge the reverse diagram with an interactive approach—e.g. Bret Victor’s Nile Visualization (Victor 2013), such diagrams could be used generatively, to describe programs, and interactively, to allow rich introspection and manipulation of software. >Latour, Bruno (1986). “Visualization and cognition”. In: Knowledge and Society 6 (1986), pp. 1– 40. Librande, Stone (2010). “One-Page Designs”. Game Developers Conference. 2010. Victor, Bret (2013). “Media for Thinking the Unthinkable”. MIT Media Lab, Apr. 4, 2013. Earlier I wrote about the "Simulator Effect" aka "apophenia", and "Reverse Over Engineering": link DonHopkins on Jan 16, 2020 | parent | context | favorite | on: Reverse engineering course Will Wright defined the "Simulator Effect" as how game players imagine a simulation is vastly more detailed, deep, rich, and complex than it actually is: a magical misunderstanding that you shouldn’t talk them out of. He designs games to run on two computers at once: the electronic one on the player’s desk, running his shallow tame simulation, and the biological one in the player’s head, running their deep wild imagination. "Reverse Over-Engineering" is a desirable outcome of the Simulator Effect: what game players (and game developers trying to clone the game) do when they use their imagination to extrapolate how a game works, and totally overestimate how much work and modeling the simulator is actually doing, because they filled in the gaps with their imagination and preconceptions and assumptions, instead of realizing how many simplifications and shortcuts and illusions it actually used. link >There's a name for what Wright calls "the simulator effect" in the video: apophenia. There'

Will Wright defined the "Simulator Effect" as how game players imagine a simulation is vastly more detailed, deep, rich, and complex than it actually is: a magical misunderstanding that you shouldn’t talk them out of. He designs games to run on two computers at once: the electronic one on the player’s desk, running his shallow tame simulation, and the biological one in the player’s head, running their deep wild imagination. "Reverse Over-Engineering" is a desirable outcome of the Simulator Effect: what game players (and game developers trying to clone the game) do when they use their imagination to extrapolate how a game works, and totally overestimate how much work and modeling the simulator is actually doing, because they filled in the gaps with their imagination and preconceptions and assumptions, instead of realizing how many simplifications and shortcuts and illusions it actually used. link >There's a name for what Wright calls "the simulator effect" in the video: apophenia. There's a good GDC video on YouTube where Tynan Sylvester (the creator of RimWorld) talks about using this effect in game design. link >Apophenia (/æpoʊˈfiːniə/) is the tendency to mistakenly perceive connections and meaning between unrelated things. The term (German: Apophänie) was coined by psychiatrist Klaus Conrad in his 1958 publication on the beginning stages of schizophrenia. He defined it as "unmotivated seeing of connections [accompanied by] a specific feeling of abnormal meaningfulness". He described the early stages of delusional thought as self-referential, over-interpretations of actual sensory perceptions, as opposed to hallucinations. RimWorld: Contrarian, Ridiculous, and Impossible Game Design Methods ▶ this video 5 game design tips from Sims creator Will Wright link >Tip 5: On world building. As you know by now, Will's approach to creating games is all about building a coherent and compelling player experience. His games are comprised of layered systems that engage players creatively, and lead to personalized, some times unexpected outcomes. In these types of games, players will often assume that the underlying system is smarter than it actually is. This happens because there's a strong mental model in place, guiding the game design, and enhancing the player's ability to imagine a coherent context that explains all the myriad details and dynamics happening within that game experience. >Now let's apply this to your project: What mental model are you building, and what story are you causing to unfold between your player's ears? And how does the feature set in your game or product support that story? Once you start approaching your product design that way, you'll be set up to get your customers to buy into the microworld that you're building, and start to imagine that it's richer and more detailed than it actually is.