Events-to-Gameplay ratio in Sim games

[dizzcity]

Hi guys,

Since I haven't been working on any VNs recently, I've started thinking about design theory for VN/sim games again. This time, I'm wondering what the ideal events-to-gameplay ratio for stat-raising sim games should be. By stat-raising sim games, I'm referring to games like Cute Knight, Idolcraft, Re:Alistair, Princess Maker, Flower Shop, Summer Session, etc. Games in which you raise stats in order to achieve a particular ending after a fixed period of time. (As opposed to the more mainstream "sim" games like The Sims, city-building games, football-team-management games, or vehicle-driving sims).

Generally, the sim games I've seen have three sorts of happenings in them. These are what I call Work Events, Story Events, and Special Events. Work events are the most common - they form the everyday, stat-raising gameplay that you do for most of the sim. Choosing to work at a particular job to earn money, or going to classes to raise your intelligence... these are Work Events. Nothing significant happens to the story or characters, beyond the changing of a few numbers in the stats, skills or money. Now in some work events, the results may be slightly random (so it's possible to be less or more successful), but it doesn't affect the main story either way. Story Events are occurences in which something happens which can be said to propel the characters forward through some sort of story or narrative plot. Meeting a rival character, or having a dialogue with a love interest by going to a particular place - these are story events. They often (but not always) also change some statistics. Special Events are extended versions of Story Events that act as significant milestones in the gameplay or story. They are often indicated by getting an unique Event CG or achievement trophy of some sort. Festivals in Princess Maker, for example, or a very important date in the romancing of a character. Special Events are usually unique occurences that only happen once in the game.

In sim games Work Events exist to provide a regular base from which the story events and special events can arise and become more special because they are relatively rarer, so act as psychological rewards to the player. If you remove the work events, it essentially turns into a VN, interspersing regular story events with occasional Special Event CGs. There, the story events are the regular base, so they are not considered rewards... only the Special Events are psychological rewards. So you have only base (Story) + reward (Special). For sim games, it's base (Work) + mini reward (Story) + major reward (Special).

The classic problem here is that of balancing the amounts of the three types of events to create the maximum enjoyment. Some people may like the gameplay more, others may like a story more. Furthermore, on the first few playthroughs, story and special events may seem exciting, but after you've seen them all, maximising what you can get from the gameplay and work events is probably all that is left to enjoy. So, what do you think is the ideal ratio between Work Events, Story Events and Special Events?

To give some (free-to-play) examples:

Idolcraft's Work Events were the sending of the idols for training courses, talking to them in their rooms and recording for CD/DVDs. Story Events occurred when one of the girls went missing, or came to you for advice, or you had a visitor in the office, or you bought something off the mysterious stranger. Special Events were the unique events faced by each girl, like Sachie's dog episode, Bunny's drunkenness, Chisato and Erina's stalkers or Monique's fan problem, as well as the dorm mystery. In a typical game playthrough, which covered 2.5 months day-by-day, it looked like you would experience approximately 10 Special Events, 20 Story Events, and about 120-160 Work Events. So the ratio was 1 Special : 2 Story : 16 Work. Or to put it another way... after about 8 repetitive tasks of normal gameplay (3 days), a story event would happen, and after about 16 repetitive tasks, a special event would occur. However, what is interesting about Idolcraft is that the Special Events are all front-loaded - most of them occur within the first month, while the story and work events take prominence in the second half of the game.

For Re: Alistair, the Work Events were the things you could do at break or at home, the story events were when Merui logged into Rivenwell or met the guys in the corridor or during break, and the Special Events were the story sequences marked by the CGs. I count approximately 10 Special Events (including the endings), 6 story events (for a typical playthrough), and about 60 Work Events. So the ratio was 2 Special : 1 Story : 10 Work. And these were more evenly spread out throughout the game... it was regular in the sense that you had to work for significant amounts of time before the story would progress. However, I didn't experience the same sort of forward momentum in Re:Alistair that I did in Idolcraft... possibly because the relatively few Story events but abundant Special Events made it feel more like an all-or-nothing affair. Do boring work for a while, then get a really big reward and jump forward in the story, as opposed to getting rewarded with little bits of story every other day or so. But this could be a taste issue, so that's why I want to ask the rest of you.


What do you think the ideal ratio should be? And do you think structuring the game to allow different ratios at different times (eg. more Special Events at the beginning, less at the end) may prove to be beneficial, or not make a difference? Any suggestions also on how to keep the game fresh and interesting even after the nth-playthrough? Or will just structuring it well be enough?

Cheers,
-Dizzy-

[Chansel]

You know, I've been asking myself the exact same thing lately.
And I'm afraid I haven't found a real answer yet. But what intrigues me is that you're only looking at the number of events, while I was thinking more in game play time. So, here's what I've come up with:

Say, for every 2 minutes of Work (using your terms here), there should be 1 Story event. Something like that. Now I know that two minutes sounds like a very short time, but think about it. How long does it take you to press a button and read one sentence describing what the clicked button did? Twenty seconds? And that's implying you're reading rather slowly. So after having done that (clicking buttons and reading what they did) for a while, it'll get boring. Which means it's time for an event.

What I'm really having trouble with though, is how many Special events I should include. And exactly how 'special' the Special events should be to please the players. To me it sounds logical to have 1 Special for every 2 or 3 Story (depending on how big the game is going to be). Now, since I said that I want 1 Story for every 2 minutes of Work, that means 1 Special for every 4-6 minutes of Work. (I'm not counting how long the Story events take here, because that differs per event.)

So, in short:
1 Special : 2-3 Story : 4-6 minutes of Work

But in reality, I don't think there is such a thing as an ideal ratio. Some people can get obsessed with stat raising and get annoyed when that is interrupted with an event. While others just want to read what happens next and flinch when the stat-raising screen pops up again.

As for the structure, I personally think it's best to balance it out. Have Special events at (somewhat) regular intervals during the game. If it's only in the beginning, then the player would get disappointed because nothing happens after that. If it's only in the end, I doubt the player would even reach the end out of boredom. And if it's only in the middle, then both the beginning and the end are kinda 'meh'. Which is never a good thing. But, this is from the point of view of someone who likes story-events. It might be completely different for the stats-obsessed person I mentioned before.

To make a game re-playable means you have to include different paths. Or well, that's what I think. No one wants to play through the game again if the only difference they'd get is one or two different lines. They want to see things from a different perspective. Learn what that guy thought when his best friend died instead of listen to said best friend's girlfriend crying. They want to know what would happen if they took a job as a waitress instead of as a tutor. Or what would happen if they raise stamina to the full instead of charisma.
Basically, everything that you can put 'instead of' in between makes for a good nth-playthrough.

Anyway, those were my two cents
Xx

Edit:
Take note that each raising sim has a different stat-raising mechanic. So my minutes rule might not apply at all if raising a stat means more than just clicking one button...

[Jake]

I'd say it depends a lot on how much fun the 'work' parts are, and not nearly so much on ratios or regularity or anything like that.

For example, while I was playing Re:Alistair I got the distinct impression that the stats weren't actually affecting the story at all, and I didn't have any particular known goals, so I didn't find the 'work' parts fun at all*... and as a result, it felt to me like the story/special-event stuff happened far too infrequently, because I spent a lot of my time with the game thinking "yeah, this little interstitial segment is cute and all, but I've already seen it fifteen times, when does something happen?".

On the other hand, Magical Boutique probably actually had fewer and less-frequent story events/special events, but because the 'work' part of the game was engaging enough to be a game in its own right - there was the constant need to balance multiple tasks, manage resources and so on to make sure you had enough potions to satisfy demand, didn't run out of storage space and made an overall profit - I didn't actually notice the relative lack of story.

If I were to use these two data points to draw a conclusion just based on number of 'work' events compared to 'story' or 'special' events, the obvious conclusion would have been that I would have enjoyed Re:Alistair more if it had more work and less story... but in fact, the reverse is true.

Fundamentally (if you'll excuse the pun) when I'm playing a game, I want to have fun. And if I'm not having fun for long stretches of time, then there's something wrong - why are those sections even in the game to begin with?





* Reading the walkthrough later, it seems like this was more to do with presentation and feedback rather than mechanics, but that can wait until I have the time to write proper feedback in that thread.

[papillon]

Generally, the sim games I've seen have three sorts of happenings in them. These are what I call Work Events, Story Events, and Special Events.

I'd also add Flavor events. These are minor little things that can happen during work that don't actually propel you through a story arc but exist solely to make the work less boring. There are tons of these in Cute Knight Kingdom. They might adjust a stat by a point or two or even give you a free item, but for the most part they're completely irrelevant.

While I don't have any strict guidelines for this, my thinking was largely that in that game "story" events are likely to unfold slowly over time, especially since the triggers for storyline events are complicated and highly mysterious to the new player, but the player would be annoyed if they kept doing a job repeatedly and nothing happened.

In a game where your range of options is not quite so wide, you can better predict when the player will stumble over the story and might not have any use for flavor. Flavor can be confusing if the player thinks it's more important than it actually is.