Blackwake: Designing for Cooperation
Ever since we were very young, my brother and I have been inseparable. Our mutual introversion meant that we spent most of our childhoods playing with each other and we have become and remained close as a result. Even after we grew out of the imaginary games of our youth, we continued to play video games with each other frequently, up to and including the present day.
Unfortunately, the demands of college means that I can no longer play games with the frequency that I once did. As such, it is not easy for me to learn new games at the same rate as my brother, who is only a freshman in high school. Therefore any game that we play together must be either a game I learned before college or one that is not difficult to learn.
That is the reason that I began playing the game Blackwake with my brother. Among other positive qualities, it is an easy game to learn (almost anyone can learn it in less than a day, and ten minutes might suffice for an experienced gamer), a fact which may at some point merit its own blog post. However, for this post, I want to talk about another aspect of Blackwake: the brilliant way that it is designed to ensure cooperation.
Blackwake is a simple game about the Golden Age of Piracy. Players take on the role of sailors either on a pirate ship or in the Royal Navy and must operate the ship under the direction of their captain (a role to which one of the players is elected) and sink opposing player-controlled ships to win the game. The nature of sailing ships, of course, requires that all of the crewmen cooperate in order to keep the ship afloat and fighting: some load, aim, and fire the guns, others repair holes and pump out water, etc.
Unfortunately, in a video game, it is generally difficult to incentivize players to perform relatively uninteresting actions (like pumping out water) when other, more heroic and interesting options (such as firing cannons) exist. Everyone wants to be the MVP who fires a decisive shot and sinks the enemy ship, but everyone vying to be the hero works to the detriment of the crew. The question, then, is how to make sure that players do not feel cheated out of a fun or rewarding experience while still performing menial yet necessary tasks.
The innovative solutions which Blackwake uses comes from its cosmetics system. Unlike other games, in which cosmetic options for the player character are unlocked by purchasing them, in Blackwake a leveling up and experience system unlocks additional hats, uniforms, and the like for players to wear. The developers of the game took advantage of this to solve their cooperation problem by assigning high experience point values to less interesting tasks. While one can gain a good number of experience points by reloading and firing cannons, for example, it is faster to gain experience by completing tasks such as locating enemy ships with a spyglass or repairing holes. This means that players who want a cool hat for their character (which is most of the playing community) are heavily incentivized to perform team-oriented actions, which in turn improves everyone's play experience by preventing selfish playstyles. It is this innovative design feature that makes the game the fun casual multiplayer game that it is.
Unfortunately, the demands of college means that I can no longer play games with the frequency that I once did. As such, it is not easy for me to learn new games at the same rate as my brother, who is only a freshman in high school. Therefore any game that we play together must be either a game I learned before college or one that is not difficult to learn.
Blackwake is a simple game about the Golden Age of Piracy. Players take on the role of sailors either on a pirate ship or in the Royal Navy and must operate the ship under the direction of their captain (a role to which one of the players is elected) and sink opposing player-controlled ships to win the game. The nature of sailing ships, of course, requires that all of the crewmen cooperate in order to keep the ship afloat and fighting: some load, aim, and fire the guns, others repair holes and pump out water, etc.
Unfortunately, in a video game, it is generally difficult to incentivize players to perform relatively uninteresting actions (like pumping out water) when other, more heroic and interesting options (such as firing cannons) exist. Everyone wants to be the MVP who fires a decisive shot and sinks the enemy ship, but everyone vying to be the hero works to the detriment of the crew. The question, then, is how to make sure that players do not feel cheated out of a fun or rewarding experience while still performing menial yet necessary tasks.
The innovative solutions which Blackwake uses comes from its cosmetics system. Unlike other games, in which cosmetic options for the player character are unlocked by purchasing them, in Blackwake a leveling up and experience system unlocks additional hats, uniforms, and the like for players to wear. The developers of the game took advantage of this to solve their cooperation problem by assigning high experience point values to less interesting tasks. While one can gain a good number of experience points by reloading and firing cannons, for example, it is faster to gain experience by completing tasks such as locating enemy ships with a spyglass or repairing holes. This means that players who want a cool hat for their character (which is most of the playing community) are heavily incentivized to perform team-oriented actions, which in turn improves everyone's play experience by preventing selfish playstyles. It is this innovative design feature that makes the game the fun casual multiplayer game that it is.
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