A few days ago I posted here about the Machine Guarding technique. I talked about how this idea from industrial manufacturing helped our team solve one of the game’s peristent annoyances, and how it was a huge win that had no meaningful downside. It’s as close to “strictly better” an improvement as you can get.

Which was why it was surprising how most of the team was strongly opposed to the idea at the time.

Part 1 – Loss of Agency

When I proposed that solution, most of the team was concerned that we were removing an option from players. “What if they want to end their turn without using the power wheel? Your change makes that impossible. We’ll be losing depth and denying players agency.”

I was surprised, but I shouldn’t have been. Humans have a natural cognitive bias to preserving options. Losing options restricts our freedom, so imagining that loss feels bad. Even if the option is completely irrelevant, meaning you’ll never choose it in practice, people are reluctant to lose out.

This often hits designers hard when considering simplifications to their game, because they know the option currently exists… But when players show up, they don’t know that there used to be a way to end your turn without taking an action on the power wheel. They just accept it as one of the natural rules of the game. You can’t skip drawing a card at the start of your turn, you can’t skip using the power wheel either. Same as in chess, you’ve got to make a move. That’s part of the strategy.

I made these points to little effect. Finally, I figured out a solution. I said, “Okay, for the next 2 weeks post in the team chat every time you intentionally end your turn without using the power wheel. Let’s see how common this is.”

Not a single person posted. In fact, people later admitted that they’d never run into that situation at any point in playing the game to date. Faeria’s power wheel was highly flexible, you had 7 options to choose from, so the chances of all of them being undersirable at once were incredibly small.

Part 2 – Change the Power?

Then another counter-argument came up. I’d later learn this is a common, well-intentioned, and usually wrong response to this kind of problem too. “Well, if players are forgetting to use it – the real problem is that the god power isn’t exciting enough yet. Let’s make it more powerful.”

First off, making the god power more powerful would have big ripple effects in the rest of the game so it’s already a high risk change. Second, if players DID still forget it would feel even worse when they did because they’re losing out on more power.

Third…. Imagine if you told someone trying to add machine guarding to a dangerous machine, “Well maybe workers just don’t value keeping their hands enough yet to be careful with them. What can we do to improve our workers’ value perception of keeping their hands?”

Humans forget to signal a turn and get people killed in traffic. I’m allergic to cheese and sometimes I forget to ask for “no cheese” on a doordash order despite it meaning I’ll waste all the money on that meal – and maybe accidentally eat some first. I definitely value staying out of the hospital.

Forgetting about something doesn’t mean we need to make it more important – it’s hard to get more important than “stay alive”. Usually we forget things because we are humans, and humans get distracted. Humans make mistakes.

Because this argument only came later, after people realized they weren’t intentionally skipping the power wheel, I think it had more to do with wanting to find a new rationalization for preserving the irrelevant option to skip your use.

It’s important to recognize when this is happening, because if people are trying to rationalize a feeling responding to their current argument just shifts the problem – you’re not addressing the core feeling. Untangling one argument just makes them come up with a new one, because their gut feelings are still looking for a satisfying expression. It’s also important to try and recongize this in yourself. It’s a very easy trap to fall into.

However, the Faeria team was awesome. People eventually ended up agreeing that the change would be a net win. It worked great.

There’s lots of ways to create depth. If this isn’t the skill we want to test, just fix the problem.

– Dan Felder