Why is nuclear war bad?

Itch seems to want me to write a long-form devblog related to how I design game mechanics, so here we go.

 I knew going into development that I wanted to make a political strategy game. Personally though, I find the minutia of politics to be quite dull when applied to most issues; farming subsidies aren’t particularly interesting to most people in the real world.

But, what if you only had enough food to feed 10% of the population? Then farming subsidies would become rather interesting indeed. Hence, I set the game after a nuclear war: the main issue facing humanity after total nuclear war would not be firestorms or radiation, but hunger as the economy falls apart.

The next question of course, is how to let the player interact with faming subsidies mechanically: the simplest thing I can think of is to have a button the player can press, which gives you a pop up saying ‘’Well done! You have farming subsidies.’’.

But, upon seeing such a button, why would a player press it at all? Perhaps instead they will stare at the screen, pondering other things. That won't do, so we should preface the button with a ‘’stakes’’ popup: if you don’t get subsidies, the farms will go out of business, and everyone will starve!

So the player, aware of the gravity of the situation, eagerly presses the button.

Now, though the congratulatory popup they receive may stimulate certain happy brain chemicals (as the more predatory mobile games show), once the rush fades, the emptiness that fills our waking lives may soon return.

So how do we stimulate the player further? Well, what if, rather than one button to raise farming subsidies, we gave them two: one to raise, and one to lower?

Then the player has to ask; given the dire state of the farming industry laid out in the ‘’stakes’’, why would I want to reduce subsidies? Perhaps, if the player raises subsidies and does not lower them, a new popup will appear, informing the player that the government has spent all its cash on subsidies, and is now bankrupt.

This is known as a ‘’challenge’’. The player might go to bed that night, furiously contemplating whether they should  raise or lower subsides. Should they succeed to rescue the farmers, civilisation and the government budget all at once, after many failed attempts, they are likely to feel a deep sense of accomplishment.

But then, alas, after a longer time, the sense of accomplishment will fade, and the emptiness may creep back.

But what if we made our challenges in game reflect challenges in real life? What if, through some quantity of pressing buttons, the player must experience some aspect of what it is like to pass a law in the real world? This is known as a ‘’theme’’.

Subconsciously, the ‘’theme’’ will seep into the player, infecting their brain. Later, as the rush from the reward and the accomplishment of the challenge have both faded, the ex-player may see on the news that the government has cut farming subsidies, and impoverished some farmers.

‘’How evil!’’ the ex-player thinks. But then! ‘’Wait a second, I cut subsidies, and I’m not evil. I felt like it was the best of bad options, and I worked really hard to do my best. Are they evil, or are they like me? Maybe they’re not evil. Or maybe they are evil, and so am I!’’. Thus, the ex-player has gained new questions to ask about the world, which will last far longer than an endorphin rush or sense of accomplishment.

So, I follow this chain of logic whenever I expand my game:

1: What are the stakes, the story that tells us why we matter?

2: What is the challenge that makes us feel like we are doing things that matter? 

3: What does my choice of challenge say about the real world, that the player might think about long after they forget about the rest of the game? Why is nuclear war bad?

If I don’t have a clear answer to any of these three, then I continue tinkering with a mechanic until I do.

Many thanks for reading! I doubt this has been helpful, but hopefully it has been interesting.