Second Wind [Intro Music] When I was in high school my statistics teacher
had a mental breakdown and disappeared without warning. I completed the course the year before,
so I was asked to help her students prepare for their midterms–It's not like there were many
options in such short notice. To their credit, my peers were more than capable of extrapolating
numbers from data, plugging them into formulas, and spewing out new numbers, but they didn't
understand them. They could find the distributions and standard deviations, but when asked to
interpret their results in plain english they went blank. To them, the numbers were meaningless. “The
numbers were meaningless.” The thought echoed once more when Nick, fed up with the visual clutter
in Suicide Squad, turned off the damage numbers. And yet again when Jeremy Smith of Smithy Games
responded to a tweet. “I don't know why so many people like to see swarms of numbers that mean
nothing while playing a game.” Do they though? I kinda like numbers, not to the point of pulling
out a calculator but enough to fill out a napkin, so I’m not sure if games are showing more numbers
than before or if it’s just the game feature whinge of the year. Perhaps there is truth to the
matter and developers have lost the plot, filling your screen with numbers out of sheer assumption
that our rat brains want to see numbers go brrrrr. Let's discuss the
design principles behind numbers. I feel I’d be browsing for a while in search
of a video game that uses numbers in a truly meaningless way–aside from Frog Fractions. In fact
I believe numbers make games more accessible. You point a gun at an enemy, shoot center mass, and
when the number 80 pops up you know without a shadow of a doubt that you’ve hit something. I’m
29 this year, a first person shooting geriatric, and I find myself warming up to gun games
that show damage numbers. I used to prefer the “hardcore” or “barebones” shooters that left
you wondering if the pixel you sniped from 300 meters out was a person or a rock. My tired eyes
will take Fortnite and Apex Legends over PUBG now. But numbers aren’t just helpful to those who
are hard of hearing, hard of seeing, or have a hard time denying they don’t have it anymore. They
knock down language barriers. Virtually everyone can identify the Hindu-Arabic numerals; it's the
closest thing we have to a universal language. Let’s playback that scenario from before. You
point a gun at an enemy, shoot center mass, and when the number 80 pops up you know without
a shadow of a doubt that you’ve hit something and you know, regardless of primary language, that
you did 80 of something, presumably damage. Shoot at its head, “120” pops up. You now learned
headshots do more damage. Shoot at its toes, “8.” This is the developer telling you toe
shots aren’t a proper course of action. An enemy steps closer. You tag ‘em in the head.
Where you were expecting “120” to appear is now “140”. You shoot an enemy further off in the
distance. Click him right in the head, a tiny “100” appears. Without a word or tutorial, you now
know headshots do more damage than body shots, toe shots are a waste of time, and distance is also
taken into account. No translation is necessary. But we can do more than that. Because distance is accounted for... you need a better way to differentiate between
a headshot from afar and a body shot up close. Color the headshots red, leave the body shots
white, and fill the toe shots in gray to really create a distaste for them. If you want to
include different weapon damage then add in some more colors. Blue for ice. Orange for fire.
Bluish orange if you want to encourage players to mix and match elements. Critical hits that pop
up big and yellow. Little daggers to indicate shots to the back. You name it. But now let’s
imagine that the base health of all enemies is 2. Everything goes down in one shot regardless
of what you’re using, where you’re standing, or if you hit them in the blasted toes. Being
shown all these numbers makes me anticipate a grander system at play waiting for me to sink
my teeth into it, but when there’s nothing but But a pocket of air, feels
like I got mathematically catfished. The numbers then- are meaningless, even worse, they’re creating
visual noise and clutter obscuring your vision and filling your brain with useless data. Noise
is a natural byproduct of using damage number systems and that is where I believe the system can
go wrong. When implementing a number system you have to think, is what I am communicating
to the player worth the noise it creates? That can vary depending on the game and the gamer.
Street Fighter and many other pvp games go for the time and place approach. As in, there is a better
time and place to show you all of the numbers than while you are playing. The health bars don’t
even have numbers on them. You’re shown a timer, special meter, and combos. When you’re not in
matches, you can take the red pill and head into training mode where you can see beyond the matrix.
You are shown damage numbers, button presses, and even frame data. The best players spend
as much time training and studying frames as they do playing matches against other people,
because numbers are knowledge and knowledge is power in a discipline known as Theory Crafting. Always make them plus. Don't do that.
This is minus two. Minus one. This is plus. ... you know,
for months and months and months and everybody out there
makes some noise for AngryBird. Your first Street Fighter 6 Evo Champion. Theory Crafting sounds like nerds optimizing the fun out of video games, but mathing the systems is
considered part of the fun in competitive circles, especially any game with an esport
scene like CS:GO, League of Legends, or what have you. However, theory crafting is more
commonly used as a way to get more variety from a game. If you've ever played a game with gear and
ability management like an RPG, a looter shooter, or a roguelike and looked for synergies and themes
to do silly builds, then you’re essentially theory crafting. Your teacher was right, algebra
does come in handy in the real world. Just don't tell him you were using
it for butt slam only runs on Elden Ring. But not every game needs or even wants their depth
to come from pencil pushing and spreadsheets. Doom offers a diegetic approach because Doom Guy only
does two things: Rip and Tear–neither of those are math. The intended experience is unstoppable
forward momentum, so all you need to worry your little demon slayer head over is health, shield,
bullets, and the distance to the next bar fight. Dead Space gives you even fewer numbers which
adds to the uncertainty and suspense of being a janitor trying to survive an alien invasion
with only a nail gun. But you still see your ammo count. Surely it would up the ante if
you didn't know how many bullets were left, and I'm sure the developers thought of that.
Not having enough information can feel scary, but having no information at all, while creating
less clutter, risks your game being too obtuse for a player. It's why the roguelike genre
gets the reputation of feeling too random. You have to go to their wiki or dig into the files
to find the procedural generation algorithms, loot tables, and unspoken mechanics. Some of
them flat out refuse to give you any numbers and settle for phrases like “do more
damage” or “increase movement speed”. I don't know why rogues feel as if they’ve
adopted this quirky tradition of secrecy. Maybe it's a hassle to go back and tweak the
numbers during balance updates. I love the genre and feel like it doesn’t do itself any
favors by playing coy with its information. It’s the same feeling I get when I see gear score.
I see it as an attempt to streamline the process for those who are not as math inclined– you
know, English majors. It’s the game going, “Don’t worry doll. You don’t have to pull
out a pen for this. Just pick the biggest number. Because that's the problem with
incremental upgrade systems giving you items that are only +5% better than before.
There’s no incentive to start playing with the numbers until the numbers settle. Is
it meaningless? It certainly feels meaningless in the early and mid game. No one can know
until they get to the end game content of Suicide Squad if the numbers are redundant or
overkill, and most people won’t wait long until they pass judgement. Unfortunately, we’ve been
burned by too many games that feel they’re all number and no substance to the point where
numbers are becoming a turn off on sight. There is one final way to bypass this through aesthetic,
but we get enough complaints of games going for the comic booky cell-shaded vibe people refer to
as Borderlands Graphics. Ideally, I’d like it if games with numbers did a better job of making
moment to moment math feel meaningful like in Brotato or Loop Hero. Two games that are fun to
graph out from beginning, middle and end. Whether you're a novice or
someone who takes it more serious. If a game doesn’t want to overload its players during
gameplay, perhaps consider a separate section specifically for numbersexuals. I’m telling you,
a good training mode gets my pistons firing as if If I got free DLC, and if a game really
doesn't want to emphasize its internal logic then perhaps consider forgoing the numbers entirely. I've made the case that
numbers are always meaningful. Except in frog fractions. But players won't always
understand how meaningful they are. And if that's not the point of
your game, then maybe it's not worth it. Or, you can always just let a player
tweak the numbers being displayed in the settings. In which case, this Cold Take could’ve been an email, but
you can’t attach a stiff drink to an email.
