Bart Simon, Senior Game Designer at Blue Fang Games, answers a few questions about what makes a good "tycoon" game.
What are you responsible for?
Simon: Artificial Intelligence Design, Implementation of Guest AI, miscellaneous gameplay systems.
How’s a day in your life?
Simon: Stay up too late playing games. Wake up too early in order to make games. Annoy my kid for a little bit. Skip breakfast. Pick up Alex, the lead artist and my neighbor. Drive 10 minutes to work, unless there is traffic.
Go through e-mail, respond to important game design questions; laugh at some of the ridiculous stuff the other devs send around. Send out a few funnies of my own, or act a little cranky if I woke up on the wrong side of bed.
Work on either specification documents, implementation of various game features, or reviewing other people's specification. Meet with the creative minds behind the game to make sure we're not only making a great game, but also to make sure we're all making the same great game.
Walk down and have a quick lunch at the cafeteria. Try to choose something that won't send me to the hospital (harder than you think at our café). If possible, eat outside.
Back to work on more systems (and to test Zoo Tycoon 2). If a development milestone is just around the corner it can mean some very late nights. If not, we try to put in a productive day and then play a few multiplayer games before its time to go home.
Go back home, but (unfortunately?) game design is a 24-hour job. The whole way home and all through the night I'm still kicking around ideas in my head, wondering if they'll make the game better (or worse).
Eat dinner with the family. Watch the Red Sox. Stay up too late playing games ....
Why have "tycoon" games become so popular?
Simon: Obviously the tycoon genre has become very popular over the last few years. Some people would trace their origins back to the early "god" games—like Populous, and even Sim City to some extent. The hallmark of these games is that they provide the player with very real objectives: make oodles of money, build a bustling metropolis, create a vibrant and healthy zoo, convert the masses, etc. However, to meet these objectives the games only furnish you with an "abstract" toolset. These toolsets typically give you indirect control over the game world, not direct control.
In Zoo Tycoon 2, you want to attract lots of guests to your zoo and make as much money from them as possible. To do this you have to adopt animals, put them in suitable enclosures, and make sure they are nourished and happy. You also must make sure that guests have access to structures that allow them to meet their own diverse needs.
Note that you don't directly control the guests, and you can't simply dip your hands into their wallets and extract money. Instead the game provides you with an indirect method of getting their money: animals and zoo infrastructure. It is this indirect control scheme that makes the game such an interesting experience. Of course within each one of the categories there are various elements you can tweak in order to optimize your zoo. For example you can change the prices of food at buildings, you can provide animals with objects that guests enjoy seeing them use, you can make efficient path networks that give your guests the least resistance possible when they try to meet a need, you can go clean your animals to make them look good, etc. (actually lots of etc.).
What makes a good tycoon game?
Simon: This is a really tough question. I'd argue that the best tycoon games are those that are accessible and compelling for a number of different audiences. One famous definition of good "gameplay" is that it provides the user with interesting decisions .The tough part about embedding these decisions in your game is that one person's fun and interesting decision might be another person's worst nightmare. Examples of interesting decisions in games range from "how many units will you throw at the enemy" to "how much will you charge for a cup of coffee" to "which barrel can I hide behind?" This brings us to Zoo Tycoon 2…
By and large, our philosophy for Zoo Tycoon 2 is to try to embed interesting decisions for as many audiences as possible. Additionally, we've tried to design the game so that you aren't forced to make decisions you that you don't find fun. It's very hard to make a game that uses this sort of a methodology while still managing to be a cohesive, intuitive, and "deep" product—but I'm very proud of the effort we've made, and I think that fans of the franchise will be thrilled that they get to play the game the way they want to play it. Examples of decisions that you can make in our game range from choosing to take pictures of animals, to undertaking special challenges, to tweaking prices of objects, to fine-tuning habitats so they are as entertaining and as educational as possible. Each of these can help you make more money (and get access to more "stuff"), but you get to choose which ones you'll exploit and which ones you'll ignore. For those people who think that just being "creative" is an interesting decision in and of itself, we have entire game modes that allow you to do just that.