Conclusions

More thought went into Excalibur than into any other game I have created. While its interpersonal aspect was completely new and quite innovative, the true achievement of the design lay in the tight integration of multiple subgames. The player had to juggle economic factors, diplomacy, military strategy, tactics, and the loyalties of his underlings. Before Excalibur, computer games were single-task challenges that required intense concentration on small, specific problems. Excalibur required much more in the way of global thinking, of integrating a large number of disparate variables into one's thinking. This gave the game a "symphonic" quality the achievement of which is the most esoteric challenge of game design.

Most games feel rather like rock songs: a simple melody, some harmony, and a great, pounding, primitive beat. As games have grown larger and more complex, most have simply grown obese, like some ghastly imaginary rock song that goes on and on repetitively for two hours. The same chords, the same melody, the same beat, all pound away at the player with machine-like repetitiveness. A better way to grow a game is to build it like a symphony with several movements, each different melodically, yet conceptually integrated. Many thousands of great songs have been written, but the list of great symphonies has only a few score entries, because that magical symphonic quality is so much harder to attain.

LESSON 46

To design a symphonic game, you must broadly educate yourself.

I maintain that Excalibur was the first game possessing some symphonic quality. There have been more since then: Certainly Civilization is strong in its symphonic quality. All in all, however, the games industry has done poorly in this regard, probably because symphonic quality is so difficult to attain. It requires above all a generalist world view, not the specialist approach that the industry has concentrated on recently. Sid Meier had to bring together concepts from half a dozen fields in order to create Civilization. I also had to bring to bear a wide array of knowledge to create Excalibur. Not many games people put themselves through the rigors of a broad education.