Hi, this is Mark Brown with Game Maker's Toolkit, a series on video game design.
So there's this bit in Uncharted 3 where Nathan Drake is about to jump between two ships,
and he says...
NATHAN DRAKE: Okay, there's the ladder. Only got one shot at this.
Which might make you think that you will only get, you know, one shot at this.
But if you do mess it up and jump to your death, then - this being a video game and
everything - you'll respawn right back here and it's about 10 seconds until Drake is back
to saying...
NATHAN DRAKE: Only gonna get one shot at this.
Video games aren't always that good at raising the stakes, are they?
Which is perhaps why there are so few truly great heist games, especially in single player.
Because how can you have a game about pulling off a big, high-stakes heist if you know that
getting spotted or killed by a security guard will just whizz you back to the last checkpoint?
Enter: The Swindle.
This is a game where you genuinely feel the pressure. And you know that screwing up will
be a big set back, so the stakes feel pretty damn high.
But there's more to a heist than just tension. You also need to make the robber get greedy,
to take more than they should and put themselves in risky situations. Because that's where
the best stories come from. And The Swindle nails this, too.
So let's break it down and figure out exactly how this game encourages you to become a master thief.
The Swindle is a side-scrolling platformer, with lightweight stealth mechanics. Which
means whacking enemies in the back of the head, rewiring mines, sneaking past security cameras,
and hacking into terminals.
In each randomly generated stage you'll try to pinch as much cash as possible, before
choosing to exit the level.
Money earned in a successful run will let you buy advanced
abilities like triple jumps, bombs, quieter movement, and a greater field of vision. Plus,
you must buy access to later levels - including the final caper. The swindle.
There are two secret ingredients, though, which encourage you to ignore the tiny scraps
of cash - and go for the really big scores.
For starters, there's a 100 day limit. Every burglary, successful or otherwise, is counted
as one day. And if you haven't finished the final mission in 100 days, it's game over.
And then there are the bonuses. Getting every scrap of cash in the building, without being
seen, gives you a ghost bonus. And making off with most of the money makes your burglar's
experience go up. Keep them alive long enough and you'll earn huge bonuses for every successful
heist.
These two systems make you feel the pressure, because if you mess up and fail a level - which
is pretty easy when you get killed in one hit - you'll get zero money, and you'll have
to play as a new thief, which means you'll have to start building up experience points
from scratch.
But they also pressure you into taking more money, and taking big risks. You'll want to make every day
count by getting as much money as possible, and you'll want to get the XP and ghost bonuses.
And that's smart, because the game
is at its best when it puts you in those dangerous situations.
There are essentially three potential outcomes when you take a big risk. You could pull off
the impossible, and make off with the cash like a ninja thief. Which is a pretty good experience.
You could mess it up and trip an alarm, but still make it out the level - sirens wailing
in the background. That's also a good experience.
Or you could fail completely, and lose the money. Which isn't so great, but it might
actually work out in the long run.
Each failure makes puts you further and further behind the 100 day deadline, which raises
the tension even higher, which encourages you to get even more greedy, and take even
more risks - which could lead to more failure, or it could lead to one of those epic heist
stories.
It's also important that failure isn't too punitive. There are other games that are about
preparing for one final mission, like space survival game FTL, and cyberpunk spy thriller
Invisible Inc. but screwing up in those games is either game over, or it really puts you on
the back foot.
The Swindle is purposefully a little more lenient, I think, which gives you the encouragement
to take those risks. You can even retry the final caper if you mess it up, though you
must quickly raise the £400,00 fee to retry the level. Which, yes, you guessed it, leads
to you taking on more risky heists.
Basically, The Swindle is a brilliant example of using game design to encourage a certain
type of behavior in a player.
Because without that 100 day deadline, and the other systems, you'd have a very different
relationship with the game. And we know this for a fact.
I spoke to The Swindle's designer, Dan Marshall who told me that at one point in development
there was no 100 day limit. But he showed this early build to a journalist who figured
out that it was much safer to steal a few quid, exit the level, and repeat this process
thousands of times, than risk the big scores.
And I don't blame the journalist - this is a well documented phenomenon in game design
called the dominant strategy. If a player finds a loophole in a system that they can
exploit for an easy win, they will almost always opt to use it, over and over again,
regardless of how tedious it is.
So it's not enough to just hope that your players will do what would be most fun - in
this case, risk everything for a big score. Without proper motivation or reward, players
might never see your game in the way you intend it.
As a designer, it's your job to put in the right pressure points and manufacture the
right systems to encourage the player behave in a certain way. In The Swindle that's the
difference between feeling like you're nicking a chocolate bar, and feeling like you're pulling
off the heist of the century.
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