FUNDAMENTALS OF GAME DESIGN, SECOND EDITION

Future (Science Fiction) Settings

Science fiction (SF) settings remain popular and allow a lot of scope for invention, but unless you have a compelling world to present, you run the risk that your fan­tasy will not capture the public's imagination. It's easier to base them on a success­ful license (Star Wars, Star Trek, Alien, and so on) than to carve out a new universe for yourself. StarCraft managed it, but not everybody is so fortunate.

From a design standpoint, the danger with science fiction games is that it is easy to add fantastic components that magically solve problems—a consistent weakness of the Star Trek stories, in which the chief engineer is always reversing the phase

inducers or inducing the phase reversers to get our heroes out of a jam. If you really want to make a self-consistent SF universe, you'll have to think hard about its tech­nology. Alternatively, you can go for humor and make a game like Strange Adventures in Infinite Space, a combination strategy/spaceship simulator full of goofy weapons and odd features that aren't meant to be taken seriously.

Terminology also presents a problem in science fiction settings. Because the weap­ons and units don't really exist, the player doesn't have any idea what they can do. No one can tell from the names alone whether a plasma rifle is more or less power­ful than a photon blaster. This is one of the very few weaknesses in Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri: The player either spends a lot of time looking things up in reference books or learns by trial and error. When players encounter an unfamiliar weapon for the first time, it's a good idea to indicate its power or value by some visual sign. In fact, this advice applies to just about any game world that you can't be sure the player knows much about.

Future settings have the same scale problems as modern battlefields. StarCraft han­dles this by simply stating that flying vehicles are only about five times as fast as foot infantry; if the foot soldiers walk at 3 miles an hour, the jet fighters fly at 15! It is grossly unrealistic, but it works. The aircraft are still the fastest vehicles in the game, so their role as hit-and-run units remains consistent even though they are slower than they realistically should be.

Fantasy Settings

The major distinction between science fiction worlds and fantasy worlds is that the former characterize their imaginary weapons as technological while the latter characterize them as magical. Fantasy worlds, often set in a quasi-medieval envi­ronment, also tend to place more emphasis on close-range and hand-to-hand combat (swords and arrows, not cruise missiles) and to eschew vehicles such as air­planes and tanks. Fantasy combat should not resemble modern combat too closely; that's not what the players want. The Warcraft series is by far the most successful group of strategy games set in a fantasy world, and well worth studying. But it would be nice to see a lot more games set in worlds other than northern European mythology. Skip the elves and trolls and look to the folk tales of India, Africa, the Americas, and Australasia for inspiration.