Drew’s Out of Office — Mar 15, 2024 — Oath Breaker
With video games having traditionally been “recession proof” the same cannot be said for the FTP (free to play) and mobile spaces. After all, there hasn’t been a recession since those games came about
Games I’m Playing — Actuarially — Sometimes there’s groundswell around a game and it begs to be played. This is doubly true when the game is mysterious, indie, and has a word that catches the ear like “poker.” Being a middling lifelong poker player, the vague notion of some new variation was enough to get me to go all in without any additional knowledge of what “new version” meant. Balatro is a name that probably has meaning but I’m too lazy or just didn’t care enough to investigate. I did, however, care enough to play the game… and play I did
Balatro is a single player roguelike card game. The player must beat certain blinds (scores) to advance by playing standard poker hands. The game is segmented into rounds where players draw 8 cards. Each round has a fixed number of hands and discards to beat the blind (bosses have specific rules). When the player succeeds, they earn money and progress to the next round. In between rounds the player can shop and modify their deck buying: Jokers, Celestial, Arcana, Vouchers, Spectral, and Standard. That is where the similarities to poker end and the true game begins, like one just ascended into the world of office politics. Prior to this it was just solitary poker, which is to say “sad.” All of the modifiers provide the player a varying degree of value/effectiveness: Jokers provide specific modifiers/multipliers to hand types, suits, specific cards, etc (a solid set can be game changing); Celestials are consumables that raise the point value/multiplier of a specific hand; Arcana allows players to alter specific cards to different states with varied effects; Vouchers change the game rules, i.e. number of cards drawn; Spectrals create crazy rules; finally, Standard packs add more regular cards to the base deck, which changes the odds of drawing a specific suit/card. Which of these modifiers shows up in the shop is in the hands of the RNG (Random Number Generator) gods. Additionally, “Boss” fights are at the end of each round and in addition to having the biggest blind, they also come with a random debuff, like clubs don’t score this round. In a recent run the set of collected Jokers counted all cards as face cards and gave me multipliers for played facecards, but the boss in the 17th round had a random rule that said, “facecards don’t count”. That led to an attempt at an entire deck redesign and ended with an unsatisfying end of the run
There’s no story in Balatro but there is some great tongue/cheek humor, specifically around the design of the joker cards. For example, there is a joker that boosts the score of any 10 or 4 cards that are played… the picture on the card is a walkie talkie… There’s lots of little details like that which are great. The music, however, is maddening and listening to it will cause a loss of bodily functions after an extended period of time
There is some clear skill in Balatro, as with any roguelike, and the key is to build a strategy off of the variables present. For Balatro this is largely determined by which jokers happen to show up and which ones the player decides to buy in conjunction with the other modifiers. Skipping blinds provides bonuses on subsequent rounds, but has the disadvantage of losing out on the earnings from that round. But with 150 jokers, the RNG randomness makes the game unruly at times. Additionally, it can be frustrating and feels like the game is pushing a player to min/max every hand played and requires a spreadsheet to understand (“let’s see, straights are at 5x multiplier and only require 4 cards, but 3 of the 4s in the deck have been upgraded to 5s now, and there are no more hearts in the deck”). It is also so random it can sap the player from feeling smart, which is contrary to another roguelike, Slay the Spire. In STS the player chooses a class and that limits the overall cards that are presented to that class. Therefore picking and building a deck around cards gives way to a plan and flow. Balatro lacks this. Ultimately, perhaps the familiarity of poker is the problem in Balatro. It sets expectations around a well defined game, but doesn’t deliver. It’s not a bad game, by any stretch, but much like office politics Balatro can feel just baffling and like a giant waste of time
Op-Ed — Bottom Line — Nearly a hundred years ago the collapse of the gilded age gave way to The Great Depression which ran through the 30s until the mechanization of WWII brought mass work back to the breadlines. In the period following the war, American corporations were living by a different code. There was a sense of importance and responsibility to the employee. Iconic titans of industry flourished with rules put in place and saw booms in the manufacturing and innovation of post war America
In 1981 Reginald H. Jones, then CEO of GE, made a surprise announcement by naming Jack Welch his successor. But while Jack was expected to continue the GE legacy, he had a different plan that would dramatically change corporate governance and Wall Street expectations. You see GE had been providing secure employment with good pay for its workers while spending almost 100 years inventing some of the most impactful products in history (incandescent lightbulb, X-ray machine, vacuum tube, TV, first Nuclear Power Plant, laser light, etc). Welch set GE on a bold new trajectory. He believed the only goal of a company was to make money for shareholders and focus on short term quarterly goals rather than the long term (at the time, Wall Street was aghast at such a thing). He spent the 80s selling off or closing any arm of GE that wasn’t 1st or 2nd in a given market whether it was profitable or not and eliminating thousands of jobs in the process gutting thriving towns across America; he led the “campaign against loyalty” where he believed no employee should be loyal to a company and companies shouldn’t provide a secure job for life and began cutting 10% of the workforce annually; he cut R&D as it didn’t fit quarterly revenue goals; and he turned one of the US’ biggest manufacturers into a financial services company. All of this boosted short term earnings and GE consistently beat quarterly Wall Street numbers, making it a darling. If numbers were not where he wanted businesses would be closed or sold and layoffs would happen to boost profits. He spent the next 20+ years dismantling an engine of American innovation and had the bonus effect of outsourcing, putting lots of people out of work, encouraging political battles (if jobs are in jeopardy, people will fight), and completely reshaping the expectations of Wall Street and CEOs. All this while he was greatly increasing his own personal wealth. Welch was hailed for changing the goals of American businesses as he ushered in a world of extreme wealth
The layoffs in games have shaken an industry where passionate and dedicated people work tirelessly to make amazing experiences. These are people that crunched to get games done at great sacrifice to their families, friends, and themselves. But it’s not only the ones that were let go that have suffered. The morale of those who remain has been broken and people are scared. Why? Because a greedy man decided he was going to break a system so a few people could make money and we all silently agreed it was a good idea? It’s unacceptable that the industry is here and that these practices are followed. Studios close and go out of business and that’s natural, but the industry survived 2008 with nary a scratch, yet here we are in a post pandemic world with record low unemployment watching a bunch of layoffs when both top and bottom line revenues have been increasing. If Embracer (see last newsletter) or Unity reports layoffs, that’s obvious. This is also true for the Activision/MS merger. However, Sony was not. When Sony’s President, Totoki-san was asked about Playstation profitability he said, “the Playstation business is profitable, but not profitable enough.” Layoffs don’t fix that problem, they undermine confidence
The layoffs are the standard Welchian tactic of boosting quarterly revenue to appease investors, except that’s not accurate. It’s an accounting trick and a despicable one at that. This has been the norm since the days of Welch and it needs to end. We need a restructure of corporate governance to represent the fiduciary goals that followed The Great Depression to the late 70s which set a company’s financial responsibilities in this order: 1) customers; 2) employees; 3) social good; 4) shareholders (don’t take my word for it, read here)
Outside of games this MO created the entire Silicon Valley house of cards business model whereby companies create products that get a lot of users but take data to monetize, algorithmically push extreme content to engage, and have, in turn, cracked the fabric of society all while chasing quarterly profits by giving things away for free (also, “users’’ is a disgusting word for players, gamers, or customers). This model is bad for business, society, and it’s hurt gaming as tech expectations have been conflated with entertainment
We need leaders to stand up, like Nintendo, and refuse. Too many people work too damn hard to make great games and it’s shameful to fire them in the name of quarterly profits. We need investment back in the companies with long term vision over short term profit motives. We need R&D. I propose companies return to their fiduciary duties to customers by making great games and setting aside ~10–20% of their total budgets to new game ideas led by devs, not business; to employees by letting them know they’re valued through pay, benefits, and the security of knowing the industry doesn’t placate the musings of a greedy financial system; to the greater good of society by making people feel connected through gaming of all types; and finally to shareholders who will be glad to hold stock in a company that’s more concerned with its long term heath than boosting quarterly profits
Oh, in case you’re wondering where GE went when Jack’s acolyte took over… it crashed, hard. Two other Welch acolytes have/do run Boeing (Jim McNerney and David Calhoun). The former oversaw the degradation in Boeing’s quality and MAX8 crashes, the latter is currently managing a door blowing off the MAX9 jet and now the 787 debacle
Paid games were recession proof, but it looks as though ftp and mobile are not. Thanks Jack, but I guess Ricky Bobby’s dad said it best
Game Dev — Say Yes — A mantra back at 2K Marin was “we love verbs.” This was a shorthand for talking about what players can do in a game, as each player action is a verb. While I never cared much for that saying as it felt inelegant and a bit obtuse, “say yes to the player” always felt like a better and more concise statement
If we break any game down to its simplest state, it would be a list of decisions a player can make. In poker, depending on the game type (and there are lots), a player can: draw, bet, check, raise, call, and fold (also “bluff,” but that action is not public). Individually, these actions aren’t particularly interesting; what makes them interesting is how they interact with each other, affect other players and follow the rules of the game. It’s a game of odds and risk taking. All versions of the game always have hidden information, thereby enabling the aforementioned bluff. The actions a player takes create the core gameplay loop:
Look at hand (including all community cards)
Develop strategy (assess odds, read other players)
Choose action (draw, bet, check, raise, call, fold)
Repeat
It’s a simple loop where all the actions a player can take, aside from “fold” support the custom player strategy. Mixing the actions is what allows players to be creative and make other players believe they have a certain hand, whether they do or not. What makes it exciting is that players are wagering money (without stakes, it’s not an interesting game). That’s the game
While video games are typically thematically distant from poker, the core tenet of complementary actions is the same. Games that are able to mix those actions giving players the freedom to express themselves in the game are among some of the best ever made. These are two examples of “saying yes to the player,” one from the past and one recent. Nearly 20 years ago Valve released Half-Life 2, a game which revolutionized the FPS and was responsible for lots of us sweaty nerds installing Steam for the first time (yours truly included). HL2 introduced the gravity gun which let the player pull objects toward them and fire them away. What could be pulled/fired was learned through trial/error. This was extremely fulfilling as not only could it be used to solve puzzles but it provided creative solutions in combat. The player could pull enemies or bodies toward them and then launch them at others. It didn’t stop there, however, as the player could pull objects just the same. Want to see if a toilet can be hurled at an enemy? Welp, it can, and there’s even an achievement and t-shirt for it. The freedom with this device made it multipurpose, silly, and effective. In Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom the player gains an ability that can fuse items in the world together. This can be used to create/modify weapons, modes of transport, artful sculptures that have no effect on the game but are great. Seriously, some of these creations are bonkers and it’s worth remembering they are not part of the standard game and just the result of a cool mechanic and creative player. Rather than restrict this ability to certain things, Z:TotK essentially allows it to be done with everything. I.e. Nintendo gave the player a cool ability and let them use it anywhere they wanted
Some of the same devs above also have failed to say “yes.” Valve’s Portal was revolutionary with the ability to shoot portals on walls to solve puzzles. It was also restrictive as too much freedom would have made some puzzles too easy/hard to solve. The gripe here is with Portal 2, a game loved by many. Portal 2 introduced 3 gels the player could shoot that would change surfaces. Propulsion gel could be used on the floor to cause player speed to increase greatly when they were in contact, Repulsion gel caused the player or objects to bounce, and Conversion gel turned any surface into one where portals could be placed (there were 3 other gels but they were cut from the final game). While these were expertly implemented and fit right in with the core use of the Portal Gun to solve puzzles, they showed up late in the game and were only usable in a section. It was as if Valve gave the player a toy and then immediately took it away. So a game that had an inventive loop, outstanding story, and flawless writing/acting the gels were the only substantially new gameplay element and they were extremely limited. It would seem that there wasn’t enough time. There are many examples where players get tools in games but their use is extremely limited. This becomes frustrating when butting up against some arbitrary barrier and thinking, “why can’t this grenade launcher just blow a hole through that door?”
Saying yes to the player creates exceptional gameplay experiences and gives players the freedom to be creative in how they interact with the game. It brings bafflingly exceptional worlds like Baldur’s Gate 3, which somehow incorporates the loose rules of tabletop Dungeons and Dragons into a game that lets players do what they want. Deus Ex/Thief, BioShock, and the games of Arkane Studios all put player expression at the center of design. Obviously games need rules/boundaries. It’s saying yes within those confines that allow player creativity and enrich the overall experience, and that’s precisely what the best ones do
NOTE: Each game above could have been further broken down to each individual gameplay element, but that would have taken quite a bit more writing. Perhaps an individual breakdown of some will happen in the future