{"id":13411,"date":"2018-02-22T09:01:00","date_gmt":"2018-02-22T09:01:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.gamasutra.com\/view\/news\/314837"},"modified":"2018-02-22T09:01:00","modified_gmt":"2018-02-22T09:01:00","slug":"how-michael-broughs-passion-for-cleaning-up-ideas-to-get-at-the-heart-of-them-beget-cinco-paus","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/2018\/02\/22\/how-michael-broughs-passion-for-cleaning-up-ideas-to-get-at-the-heart-of-them-beget-cinco-paus\/","title":{"rendered":"How Michael Brough’s passion for ‘cleaning up ideas to get at the heart of them’ beget Cinco Paus"},"content":{"rendered":"

Michael<\/a><\/span> Brough<\/a><\/span>‘s games have always been a little different from the norm.<\/p>\n

Focusing on the roguelike genre, he subverts common tropes in ways that are typically unusual but impressive. Some of his biggest hits such as 868-HACK<\/a><\/em> and Imbroglio<\/em><\/a> have gone on to garner numerous award nominations for game design at the IGF.<\/p>\n

In each case, what they lack in looks and presentation, they more than make up for with some neat ideas that you just can’t imagine anyone else pulling off with such aplomb.<\/p>\n

His latest\u00a0release, <\/span>Cinco Paus<\/a><\/em>, is also potentially his most divisive. It’s a mobile game solely available in Portuguese, much to the chagrin of many of its App Store reviewers. However, that’s not the only reason why it’s so interesting.<\/p>\n

Like roguelikes of old, Cinco Paus<\/em> doesn’t explain much. It has you equipping yourself with magical items (five wands), but\u00a0you have no idea what they do until you start using them. It’s an unusual move for a modern game,\u00a0one that calls back to classics like\u00a0Rogue<\/a><\/em> and Castle of the Winds<\/a><\/em>. \u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

In the course of a recent conversation with Gamasutra\u00a0Brough opened up a bit bout his\u00a0approach to game-making\u00a0and shed some light on why, exactly,\u00a0he made such interesting design choices while crafting\u00a0Cinco Paus<\/em>.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Finding inspiration in conversation — and\u00a0Rogue<\/em><\/strong><\/h2>\n

“It came from a conversation with Zach Gage [SpellTower<\/em>, Ridiculous Fishing<\/em>, Sage Solitaire<\/em>] about item identification in roguelikes,” starts Brough. “It got me thinking about how this is usually binary (you find an unknown item, then you find out what it does) and how I could construct something more gradual, where you can have partial information about an item’s effects.”<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
“I get a lot out of cleaning up ideas to get at the heart of them.”<\/span><\/h6>\n<\/blockquote>\n

That’s reflected in Cinco<\/em> Paus<\/em>‘s design. As a player, you’ll only know whether\u00a0a wand can inflict extra damage on a particular creature\u00a0if you zap that creature with it. Otherwise, it’s a mystery of symbols and Portuguese words that won’t make sense to many.<\/span><\/p>\n

However, Brough points out this\u00a0isn’t exactly new;\u00a0it was implemented in the original Rogue<\/em> in the 1980s. As he points out, “there’s this tendency in games to repeat features out of habit.”<\/span><\/p>\n

Rogue\u00a0<\/em>has become something of a touchstone for Brough, and in delving into his feelings on the game it becomes clear how it influenced his latest project. Much as in Rogue<\/em>, nothing in Cinco Paus\u00a0<\/em>is identifiable at first glance — the player only learns what things are by using them.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

“[Not labeling things] adds uncertainty to finding treasure: you don’t just find a new sword with a bigger number on it and so it replaces your old sword,” he explains. “The new one might be worse, it might be cursed and harmful to you, and you don’t know yet so you have to choose whether to stick with the safe-but-weak option or gamble on the unknown.”<\/p>\n

Brough seems to appreciate the way\u00a0this creates tension for players. There’s that constant balancing act\u00a0of wanting to “use your resources in risky situations when you need them most, but also you want to use them in safe situations where you can most deal with unexpected bad effects.”<\/span><\/p>\n

The designer also appreciates how this sense of mystery helps players tell themselves an interesting\u00a0story while playing. “Magic items are mysterious,” he adds. “It’s risky for someone who doesn’t know what they’re doing to try to use them.”\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Building upon earlier design choices<\/strong><\/h2>\n

Referencing his earlier work and conversation with<\/span> Gamasutra about grid layout and size<\/a>, Brough\u00a0says\u00a0he continues to believe that a lot of space “isn’t necessary to create interesting interactions.” In his eyes, it can even get in the way of achieving his aims as a great games designer.<\/p>\n

“I’ve been designing these [kinds of games] for a couple of decades,” he adds.\u00a0“So…I have a lot of intuition for what will work and what won’t.”<\/p>\n

\n
“I’ve become very accustomed to not understanding everything around me, and not needing to, but there are others who still need to work through that process.”<\/span><\/h6>\n<\/blockquote>\n

And what of the choice to have the game entirely in Portuguese?<\/span><\/p>\n

“I’m living here and trying to learn the language…on a whim I decided to do some work in the language too,” Brough explains. “The game could have simply had no text at all, but this gives it a bit of local character and gives me an excuse to practice while I’m also working.”<\/span><\/p>\n

In the past, Brough considered making a game in an invented language, but Cinco Paus<\/em> “was always going to be either text-free or Portuguese.” He appreciates that\u00a0using a real language is pretty different from a bespoke one, as it ensures there are plenty of people who can still read it. More interestingly though, as Brough points out, a lot of people get “riled up” by such a seemingly trivial decision.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/span><\/p>\n

“Make a game with no text or just symbols and you’ll get praised for the sense of wonderful mystery; make a game in a real language other than English and some people get very upset,” he explains. That’s clear for anyone to see if you consult forum threads or App Store reviews – many players are frustrated by the language choice, and having to work through the process of learning how everything works.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Pursuing a more non-violent path<\/strong><\/h2>\n

And Cinco Paus<\/em>, like so\u00a0many roguelikes, is at its core an experience of working through things. Player\u00a0progression — through a dungeon, through items of power, and through their own understanding of the game’s systems — is a key piece of\u00a0Rogue<\/em>‘s design, something Brough\u00a0says he’s painfully aware of.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

“There are often a lot of progression arcs overlapping each other [in roguelikes],” he explains. “And it’s messy.”<\/span><\/p>\n

For Brough, it seems much of his game design work comes down to\u00a0tidying up that mess and polishing up a single facet of a game (usually\u00a0Rogue<\/em>) so that it really shines.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
“I make these games with killing, but I’m uncomfortable enough with this that I…try to avoid making killing things the main goal.”<\/span><\/h6>\n<\/blockquote>\n

“Learning to identify magic items, the progression of collecting more and better items…gaining experience as you kill enemies…going down stairs to levels with stronger enemies but richer treasure…learning new spells…how many of these do we really need?”\u00a0Brough asks. “I get a lot out of cleaning up ideas to get at the heart of them,”\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

At its core,\u00a0Cinco Paus\u00a0<\/em>is a game about finding mysterious items and figuring out how they work by pointing them at something (most often, monstrous enemies) and pulling the trigger.\u00a0Brough\u00a0seems uncomfortable about the sort of magical mayhem this often entails; he appreciates the way games are often criticized for their depictions of violence, and calls on fellow developers to\u00a0“keep asking… [and] challenging these defaults.”<\/span><\/p>\n

However, as fellow designers may appreciate,\u00a0“Designing games is hard;\u00a0you can throw in a lot of interactions but somehow they have to actually work together, so we often end up using crude simplifications to make this process easier,” says Brough. “Rather than a realistic network of different groups with different goals and motivations, maybe we just have two sides: you and the enemy with no common interests.”<\/span><\/p>\n

For Brough, the convenience of simplified conflict in game design\u00a0outweighs — but does not eliminate — the discomfort of creating something which sometimes requires players to kill other creatures in order to learn how a given wand works.<\/span><\/p>\n

“When I’ve tried to go down the more complex path, modeling a rich ecosystem with varied non-violent interactions…it gets messy and complicated and it doesn’t usually get anywhere,” he admits.\u00a0“So I make these games with killing, but I’m uncomfortable enough with this that I…try to avoid making killing things the main goal.”<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/span><\/p>\n

Brough’s earlier game\u00a0<\/em>Zaga-33<\/p>\n

He cites his 2012 game\u00a0Zaga-33<\/a><\/em>\u00a0as “very crude in a lot of ways”, but still to date the\u00a0work\u00a0where he’s “best expressed this”. In\u00a0Zaga<\/em>,\u00a0every time the player fights\u00a0a hostile creature they’re\u00a0guaranteed to lose at least one hit point without gaining anything like treasure or experience in exchange. Thus,\u00a0it’s a game which tells players the best way to succeed is to avoid conflict altogether.<\/p>\n

“Cinco Paus<\/em> is following that same model,” Brough explains. “But\u00a0it’s less ideologically pure. Often it’s worth trying to kill something at least to gain information.”<\/span><\/p>\n

In this fashion, Brough’s latest game asks players to take the video game conceit\u00a0of “kill enemy to gain experience” quite literally. It’s not the first game to do so, but it may be the most\u00a0finely-honed examination of the “unidentified item” mechanic in game design to date. The fact that Brough\u00a0wrote it in a language other than his native tongue, and seems to have no interest in providing translated versions, is just icing on the cake.<\/span><\/p>\n

“As someone who grew up in a multicultural environment and who has now had the opportunity to travel, I’ve become very accustomed to not understanding everything around me, and not needing to,” adds Brough. “but there are others who still need to work through that process.”<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Michael Brough‘s games have always been a little different from the norm. Focusing on the roguelike genre, he subverts common tropes in ways that are typically unusual but impressive. Some of his biggest hits such as 868-HACK and Imbroglio have gone on to garner numerous award nominations for game design at the IGF. In each […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":13412,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13411","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13411","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13411"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13411\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13412"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13411"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13411"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13411"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}