When we first started designing our new game, Potato Pirates: Enter the Spudnet, a question often popped out every now and then: Are board games like Snakes and Ladders considered a game? Half of our team feels that a game that involves zero decision-making might as well be a storybook, yet the other half argues that what makes an activity a game is the fun it can provide. Undeniably, both sides have their merits but we will leave the definition of a game as a topic for another day. In this post, I would like to talk about the side involving decision-making in games and our thought process when it came to designing what a player can do.

In games that involve decision-making, there are choices that are given (by us, the designers) and decisions to be made (by players) at every stage of the game. Be it to move a ship left or right, to choose a special power, or to negotiate a deal— such choices are given in multiple stages of our game. But what exactly makes that part of the game fun? What makes a choice interesting or boring? How would we design such choices? My answer is to look at the triviality (or rather non-triviality) of the decisions. The crux is that for the decision-making to be interesting, decisions should not be trivial.

Here are my top 5 considerations when it comes to designing player choice in your game:

1. The impact of the choices

Surprise surprise, the door is locked so pushing or pulling didn’t matter, you are still locked out of the building. 

When it comes to designing your player choice, each decision your player makes needs to have some form of influence on the outcome of the game. It does not necessarily need to be immediate or in a physical form (like currency/powerup) but it should be apparent to the player in some form eventually. Otherwise, the player would feel that their decision didn’t matter and as a result, feel less invested and lose interest in the game.

2. The opportunity cost incurred choosing that choice

Choices matter to us only because we lose something choosing another. This is what we refer to as an opportunity cost. With opportunity costs attached to each choice, we can create dilemmas which engage the players by asking them to weigh the choices.

One classic example that is often used in other games is the Prisoner’s Dilemma. Bear with me if you saw this before but I will give a brief description to those who have yet to see this. 

In this scenario, we have two prisoners, A and B. Both of them are taken into separate rooms with no means of communication between them, for interrogation. If one testifies and betrays the other, the testifier gets off free while the other suffers a heavier penalty. If both stay silent, they both only serve 1 year. If both testify, they both get a heavy sentence of 2 years

From our point of view, the best outcome would be for A and B to keep silent. Both prisoners will serve 1 year and only a total of 2 years will be lost. In reality, when personal gain outweighs the collective good, it’s not that simple. Say, A chooses to stay silent but deep in his mind, this doubt surfaces. What happens if B betrays me? Wouldn’t I have to spend an additional 2 years?! If A was rational, the more logical choice would be to betray because of the possible reward of getting off free or the less heavy punishment of only spending 2 years. But what if B was a loyal friend to A, and doing so will destroy their 10-year friendship? Would that change A’s decision?

3. The amount of information given to make that choice and the weight-risk ratio

In the previous point, we mentioned creating dilemmas but we forgot to mention one important detail. The prisoners’ dilemma will only happen if the prisoners were told about the years they would serve in each scenario. If the investigators simply demanded that they testify. Prisoner A probably wouldn’t testify since he does not know what he can potentially gain or lose. Without knowledge pertaining to the choices, those choices lose their consequences and impact. Another example would be if the player does not know what money does, spending it now or saving it for later doesn’t really matter, because to him, both choices are equally unclear.

At the same time, having too much information is not necessarily good. Back to the prisoners, if A had perfect knowledge of what B is going to do (maybe with a mind-reading device), there would be a clear and obvious choice to take no matter what B does. If B chooses to betray, the best outcome rationally for A is to betray too. If B chooses not to, the choice that gives the most benefits for A is to betray B.

The golden question…. how to get rid of all those apples afterwards...  

4. The amount and diversity of choices given

Imagine that you are really hungry and there is only one restaurant nearby. There are only two dishes you can order. There isn’t much choice to make, is there? If you didn’t like the two the restaurant had to offer, it feels bad to fork out money for something you don’t really want but you are forced to have anyways (or you can starve, which is technically a valid option). Giving too little choice limits the fun a player can have.

Now, imagine that you made the (sad) choice of the two and the next thing that comes is not the food but a question of which sauce would you like out of their 108 homemade sauces. It’s not just that. What awaits you is not the food but a 1000-question survey, of what side dish would you like, what drink would you want, etc. Eventually, you (or the player) gives up and takes the most convenient choice, which trivializes the whole decision-making process.

5. The rationality of players

So what do we do now after all these points to consider? The next decision one should make is to use what to document your player choices. One of the most popular support tools out there would be a Decision Tree to help you visualize and map out those player choices/actions.

The above diagram shows a simplified overview of a basic RPG game, the player fights monsters, restocks in the shop and fights again. 

 Here’s a general guide on how to build a basic decision tree:

1. Start off with the scenarios in your game and put them in boxes

2. Colour the scenarios which require decision-making

3. For those decision-making scenarios, create outgoing arrows for each decision your player can make

4. Link those arrows to their resulting scenario boxes. 

5. If the decision indirectly impacts another scenario, link its direct result to the scenario it indirectly impacts with a dotted line

Like all things on the internet, there are many variations of decision trees out there and this is just one of the many. You can use this guide as it is but it is usually better if you adjust it accordingly to fit your game. The general idea of it all is for you to organize and visualize the entire structure of your game. It should display which outcome does each decision lead to or influence, which decisions are critical and which are repetitive (aka the game’s core gameplay loop and hence should be optimized). 

In our upcoming game, Potato Pirates: Enter the Spudnet, we went through many iterations to improve the core gameplay loop. One of the initial ideas had the player choose between collecting money or cards every turn. Money and power cards help players advance their winning condition. So this is how it is like:

• Either the player chooses to have fewer cards but more money to use their cards

• Or the player chooses to have more money to use their cards but fewer cards to use

• The opportunity cost of each choice is somewhat clear and balanced. Choosing to get cards would mean having less money, vice versa
• The amount and diversity of choice may be little but the cards (and their various effects) adds onto the “Choose cards or money” to become “Choose to activate this or that effect or money”
• The impact, however, is not immediate. Taking cards doesn’t allow you to use them immediately. You need to have money. Taking money doesn’t allow you to do anything (since you don’t have cards)
• The amount of information given is sufficient but the deal-breaker lies in this area. There is always a clear optimal path. Take cards, then take money to fuel those cards. Having either one is pointless but having cards first to use (and deny others from having those cards) is logically better than having money but be unable to plan how to utilize it.
• We assumed that our playtesters will play logically. Most did but there were a few outliers who just kept taking money. God knows why.

Out of the 5 considerations listed above, we only achieved 2 so this iteration was scrapped and we repeated this design process until it led us to the final product today. If you like potatoes and board games, come take a look at our new board-game, Potato Pirates: Enter the Spudnet!

Have you ever wondered what it'd be like to be best buddies with the King of Pirates?

Well, Potato King VII here would like to be your friend, too - so, on his behalf to all potential new friendships out there, we've compiled together 5 Reasons to be Potato King's BFF.

He's like that super adorable friend everyone can't help but compliment - you know, the kind where everyone just goes "Oh man how are you so cute?" However, Potato King's cuteness is highly contagious, so that means you're cute by association - isn't that awesome?

He's gone to the furthest reaches of the seven seas, and has lots of stories to tell you about his travels...assuming he can actually remember them. However, he'll never forget to bring you souvenirs and trinkets from his travels!

Are you the kind who's constantly tripping over your own feet or falling up (or down) stairs? No worries! You'll have a partner in crime - err, we mean - solidarity! Potato King's clumsiness is legendary, and chances are, if you're his friend, you'll look like a graceful swan beside him. After all, it takes talent for a potato to stub their ^potatoes, considering they don't actually have any.

You may have never used the words “potatoes”, “programming” and “piracy” in the same sentence, but that's about to change.

Remember the times before iPhones and iPads? When we would gather with friends to play sports, enjoy games and or just chill out together? Potato Pirates is trying to bring back that social element for computer science. Doesn't matter if you're a kid, parent or an educator.

Potato Pirates is a game that’s perfect for classrooms, family nights, and even game night with friends over a drink (or ten).

Why Potato Pirates?

There's an obvious increase in students' learning through digital devices. At the same time, we hear complaints from parents and teachers about the adverse effects of screen time and they are craving for offline platforms that are educational yet engaging for kids.

Moreover, the challenge with teaching computer science is that many parents did not learn such things in school so when their kids ask them for help, they are quite clueless on how to even guide them. This causes a lack of continuity in a kid’s learning journey and makes it tough to sustain their enthusiasm in coding.

Computer Science is tough! We know this. It’s been etched into the recesses of our minds. But why though?

Learning to code is like learning a new language — except that this language is built upon cryptic symbols and mathematical jargon! Although there are certain overlaps, it’s not really the same.

Nonetheless, in every language there are certain nuances which require a thorough level of familiarity to grasp. This is what we call syntax — the arrangement of words to make up well-constructed sentences. It’s no different in programming.

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 Syntax is also one of the main reasons computational thinking concepts seem abstract and tough to grasp. That’s because most of your effort is spent debugging; trying to find the missing semicolon or parenthesis which is causing your program to crash.

I once spent 6 hours fixing a program that had crashed because I had accidentally uncommented a line. True story.

PYTHON: for i in range(11): print(“The number is %s” %(i))

JAVA: for(int i=0; i<11; i++){ System.out.println(“The number is:”+ i); }

PHP: for ($i = 0; $i <= 10; $i++) { echo "The number is: $i
";}

For non-programmers, these 3 for loops look terrifying. There’s good news though. The logic governing all these statements is universal. All 3 of these statements accomplish the same thing: counting up from 1 to 10.

Wait…Instead of overwhelming people with these alien looking symbols, what if we could just present the underlying, fundamental concept of loops, without all the mumbo jumbo?

Precisely!

Potato Pirates is a secret weapon to tackle these challenges.

Through Potato Pirates, parents get to be involved in their child’s education and it provides them with an engaging medium where they can learn with their child. 

It promotes social interaction among kids and adults while encouraging peer learning. No Wi-Fi, no computers, no electricity — but, you still can learn coding. Totally accessible to all!

Potato Pirates removes all syntax and provides a visual reference to these overarching, fundamental concepts. It’s completely language-agnostic. This means anyone can move to any language of their choice after learning to play Potato Pirates.

For anyone who has ever made the effort to learn something new, you’d know that the first step is always the most challenging.

Programming is a very esoteric experience where one only interacts with a machine. And most of the time the machine doesn’t do what you want it to.

Despite having great communities like freeCodeCamp and Stack Overflow, we still end up without having anyone to turn to, especially when we’re just starting out.

With Potato Pirates, we’re trying to make this first step easier by removing computers and introducing social interaction; so that you don’t end up like this guy:

10 hours of programming in 30 minutes? C'mon!

It’s quite miraculous how much content we’ve managed to cover with Potato Pirates by staying clear of syntax. In a regular CS101 setting, there’s no way that you’d cover concepts like nested loops and running loops within a conditional (if-else) statement in your first 30 minutes of class.

We’ve actually had to remove a lot of what we incorporated in previous prototypes of the game. We did not want to cram too many concepts at the expense of game mechanics.

Does it actually work?

This was the big question we asked ourselves while developing the game. We spent almost 18 months perfecting Potato Pirates.

At each stage, the focus was always on:

Testing, testing and more testing

In fact, we wrote a separate Medium article to document our journey and highlight our development strategy. Schools and parents all around the world use Potato Pirates to introduce Computer Science with ease and success. In our Potato Pirates workshops, we put the participants through a short assessment, both before and after playing Potato Pirates to assess how much they had learned. This practice continues till today. 

Here's what our data shows:

Two years on, we've now launched our second game, Potato Pirates: Enter The Spudnet to a very warm reception on Kickstarter. Pre-orders for the Kickstarter edition are still open, I'd personally like to recommend the Potato Pirates bundle!