![]() You can’t simulate everything, so part of designing a game is deciding where to draw the line. Other games skip over needless complexity by abstracting it away. I know, right? So I’m wondering why did you put warehouses and trucks in the game, Sparky? If we’re both bored, then who is this for? Game designer: But Shamus! I don’t want to write an AI to run warehouses and hire truck drivers. So it would make sense to have me focus my creativity and natural curiosity on interesting decisions and leave the routine stuff to an AI. I’m supposedly the president, and I’m also the only real human being in the entire enterprise. But that guy has a boring job, which is why I’m paying him to do it rather than doing it myself. It would be reasonable to assume that somewhere in my company is some middle-manager in charge of running warehouses and hiring trucks. You could remove all of these intermediate layers without losing anything in terms of business decisions. No trade-off between low short-term gains and larger long-term payoffs. My problem with the system is that none of these layers offer the player any real gameplay. Go play a dumbed-down mobile game if you want to play “baby’s first capitalism”. Why can’t I just click on the factory, choose a supplier, and have the raw materials deposited at my factory?īut Shamus! That’s not how things work in THE REAL WORLD! This game is trying to teach you about supply systems. My problem is that we have so many layers of complexity that exist for no reason. Complicated games need to have complicated tutorials. My gripe here isn’t that the game is too hard or that the tutorial is bad. I wouldn't mind all this complexity if there was some depth to go along with it. So then I use the keyboard shortcut designed to solve problems like this, which is Alt-F4. The tutorial is broken and my game is soft-locked. (A “real world” where my factory workers can’t move furniture next door.) So I demolish the old building and discover I don’t have enough money to build a new one. Of course, in the REAL WORLD you can’t get your money back if you demolish an already-completed building, and this game is all about the REAL WORLD. So I need to tear down my warehouse and build it father away. So I try to hire a truck to move the stuff next door, but the tutorial won’t let me create a route that short. I check, and discover that putting the two buildings next door to each other doesn’t work. Sometime later in the tutorial process, I realize that I don’t have any furniture available to sell. Thinking I’m being clever, I build the warehouse right next to the factory so I won’t need trucks to transport the furniture around. ![]() ![]() Now the tutorial tells me to build a warehouse to hold the output. I can’t see any way to sell or even throw away the Wood Planks, so I need to build another entire warehouse and do the whole supply chain again, but with the right part this time. ![]() So now my warehouse is full of wood I can’t use. Looking at my holdings now, I see I bought “Wood Planks” when the tutorial told me to buy “Treated Wood Panels”. Then I assign the factory a single blueprint. I have to build a warehouse, then buy some raw materials, then hire a truck to bring the materials to the warehouse. I’m about fifteen minutes into the tutorial, which has me creating a single product. I can’t remember which games I’ve played or how they all worked, but here is a rough approximation of my experience: I think my problem with these games is that they too often feature complexity without the depth to back it up. And if my Factorio problem is any indication, I have a weird obsession with logistics. On paper, it seems like this stuff should be right up my alley. These games are popular – Capitalism in particular has a reputation as a legendary title from the 90s – but they’ve never clicked for me. I’ve never gotten very far with any of them, but I keep trying anyway. I’m not sure where the genre borders are, and I don’t know where you draw the line between “Production Business” type games and “Transport and Logistics” type games. Then some various $noun Tycoon games in the aughts and teens. The first was when I played the original Capitalism (1995) sometime in the late 90s. I’ve had a few run-ins with this genre over the years.
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