Hello all! I had a bit of spare time where I wasn’t able to directly access Thrive itself but still could think a bit. I always wanted to create some sort of “Thrive Game Design Philosophy” post, but I never got around to it; and besides, I think experience has benefited me a lot, as well as learning about how things go on the development team.
I have felt more and more strongly that we need to ensure we have some sort of “ideological basis” for a lack of a less politically charged word when it comes to thinking about Thrive, as it helps to make sure people have atleast some pull in the same direction - even if details are rough. In creating a simulation so ambitious, it is not always clear what the direction forward is. Having atleast some guidelines and principles to think about helps define our scope.
So here are some principles I feel as a game designer have been relevant to conceptualizing Thrive. I hope that people agree and it helps members on the team understand better the ideals we have in deciding what goes in the game. If nothing else, it’s a fun read, and might be helpful for future game designers and community members.
I’ll possibly add on to these initial ideals if I think of more. And if other people have
Game Mechanics Should Encourage Realistic Behaviors
The way game mechanics operate and interact should work in a way to incentivize naturalistic behavior from the player - and to a lesser extent, CPU organisms.
This one sounds like a given; of course we want to encourage realistic behavior, we are a simulator! However, even seemingly small design deviations from encouraging naturalistic behavior can have large effects on the experience as a whole. A simulation game ultimately is aiming for a sense of immersion - a feeling in the player where they are placed firmly in the experience we are trying to represent. We want to make sure the player’s mindset and emotional state is where we want it to be at while playing Thrive.
Though this seems insignificant and meta, a player’s mindset is essentially the player’s immersion, and immersion is an immensely desirable state of gameplay. If a player is immersed in the game, they play the way the game is meant to be played, and find that the game is properly doing its job. If a player isn’t immersed in the game, they will find ways to break or cheat the game, disengage, and generally believe that the game isn’t doing its job. Or they might personally take action to correct for the perceived lack of immersion, such as placing rules on themselves.
This is a good example of what breaking immersion does to our poor, well-articulated players: Questions from a Developer/Developers - #12 by DeepSix - Current Game - Thrive Community Forum
Example: Before the current implementation of reproduction - where the organism passively grows - growth was entirely empowered and/or limited by the amount of phosphate or ammonia you gathered. No matter how complex or simple your organism was, if you didn’t find enough ammonia and phosphate, you swam on forever; and if you found a large enough next to your spawn, you immediately entered the editor without testing your organism.
This obviously had detriments beyond just realism - unpredictable life span lengths, gameplay that artificially dragged on, etc. But at a foundational level, the effects of this system on player behavior resulted in undesirable outcomes. In reality, the majority of an organism’s time and effort is spent making sure they have enough to eat; in Thrive, the majority of an organism’s time was spent wandering around, trying to find enough of an abstract material to reproduce.
And for a game which prides itself on customization and accuracy, that had bad down-stream effects. Instead of evolving towards becoming more effective at mastering a niche surrounding a food source, players either had in mind the scramble needed to find a scent of phosphate and ammonia, or the inevitable giant cloud which would send their organism straight to the editor. As such, the game wasn’t really testing how well your organism was finetuned to their environment - the game was testing how good you were at finding clouds, and oftentimes, how lucky you were.
Introducing passive growth helped to encourage naturalistic player behavior. By ensuring a minimum amount of growth, the game helped to provide a baseline for game loop length and ensured the player didn’t have to frantically search for clouds. And by having a cap for how much ammonia and phosphate can be absorbed at a time, players couldn’t just skip to the editor. As such, the editor’s focus went from an incredibly unfocused and unpredictable effort to find essential clouds, to a more focused and consistent attempt to create an organism able to make a niche within a patch. Of course, there are likely to be tweaks needed to ensure that passive growth isn’t a drag at times; but overall, the player experience has been enriched.
So, when you review attributes and systems in Thrive, ask yourself some questions: is this mechanic set up in a way to encourage realistic behavior? Are there certain things pointed out by players which break immersion?
Part and Mechanic Additions Should Start Top-Down, Add Detail When Necessary
Life and evolution is too big. There is absolutely no way we can represent every single evolutionary possibility in Thrive - that was the ultimate problem plaguing Thrive’s early conceptual years. Instead, we should try to represent as much as possible with as little as possible, and add layers of slightly less broad detail until you reach a sufficient cutoff. And that cutoff should be concise - it may leave some broad layers of detail off the table, but there needs to be a stopping point. Because the barrel never ends if you don’t stop it.
There is absolutely no way we can represent every possible microbial diet. We currently do not feature methanogenesis or sulfate reduction in our list of parts for example, which are two very significant groups of prokaryotes. However, we have hydrogen sulfide - another part of the sulfur cycle - and we have photosynthesis, which, although phototrophic, is autotrophic just like the methanogens. So adding sulfate respiration and methanogenesis, while cool, isn’t really necessary. Why? Because we have a comparable evolutionary niche.
You must continuously make these decisions when you consider adding new parts and mechanics. Looking at methanogenesis specifically, I personally wouldn’t be opposed to its implementation. But is it something that our programmers should go out of their way to implement, considering all our other needed features? Probably not. As said above we are already representing autotrophic gameplay through the inclusion of photosynthesis. Adding methanogenesis, though slightly different in habitual range and tendencies, wouldn’t add something that substantially differs from photosynthesis - and if any autotrophic strategy should be represented, I’d rather choose photosynthesis for its striking atmosphere-changing nature as opposed to methanogenesis.
And you must apply this line of thinking to most biological phenomena. What layers of detail are needed for a planet generator in the Microbe Stage, considering how abstract patches are at this microscopic scale? What selection of parts will be available in the macroscopic stages to not bog down the player with very specific parts, but still offer a pretty wide selection of items to become a lot of things within reasonable limits?
An example of where this line of thinking can take you is the thread focused on Early Macroscopic Editor principles – first by defining a relatively broad set of rules for editors, and second by breaking down phylums by their distinguishing features: Macroscopic Editor, Progression, and Principles
This is perhaps the most consistently challenging and difficult aspect of designing concepts for Thrive to contend with, and yet it is something that is part of every concept. It is something that you should train your mind towards.
If Stuck Between Realism and Fun, Choose Fun
TJWhale, the game-design lead before Buckly, has a lasting legacy in starting Thrive’s march towards becoming a game. They had a simple idea: Thrive should, most importantly, be fun.
The constraint behind all Thrive concepts is whether or not the concept is biologically feasible. There are many traditional and tested game mechanics and tropes which will never be present in Thrive - power-ups, unrealistic abilities, miniature volcanoes in the Microbe Stage, and more.
This does make designing Thrive a bit of a challenge; we are trying to be as realistic of a simulator as possible. But this does not mean we are completely forbidden from creating abstract gameplay representations of biological phenomena. There are certain features and concepts which, though not necessarily implemented as realistically as possible, are a good representation of existing phenomena while simultaneously being fun. Cells don’t necessarily “sprint”, but various micro-organisms demonstrate remarkable speed when they perceive danger, and introducing variability in movement during gameplay spices up gameplay to be more than just pointing your mouse and pressing W. If an aspect of Thrive can be improved by gamifying things a bit, then that improvement should be a given.
Oftentimes, if a traditional game design element is desired and identified as improving Thrive’s gameplay, there is a way of intertwining said element with a realistic biological phenomena. Altering toxin behavior can result in more engaging projectile gameplay. We can introduce discounts for MP by introducing lateral genetic transfer and introducing limitations which reflect said biological phenomena.
Realism should ultimately mean two things: certain things are not okay, but those not-okay things can sometimes be represented in a way that is okay. Figure out the tradeoff between gamification and realism, check with a theorist, see if the concept is well-received by the development team, and march on towards making Thrive a fun game.
We Are An Evolution Simulator, Not a Life Simulator
Sometimes, failed concepts attempt to be too tailored towards representing a very specific aspect of an organism’s life cycle. As an evolution simulator, we must make sure to be primarily focused on features and mechanics which reflect evolutionary pressures, not life-cycle pressures. We will oftentimes include life-cycle pressures, such as predation, the search for food, competition for mates, etc. since these dynamics influence evolution, but they are not our ultimate focus.
Many games which have rough overlaps with Thrive are simulators/games which feature animals - several games exist in this niche, but the Isle is oftentimes seen as the staple for this genre. Sometimes, these games can serve as inspiration; for example, The Isle has several mechanics which incentivize its players to behave in a realistic manner.
However, these games are ultimately focused on the lives of an individual organism, not on evolution. This distinction can be to our benefit, but also brings up design questions. For example, players immersed in The Isle praise the realism and stakes behind the growth mechanic - it forces the players to be risk-averse, and makes The Isle more than a simple brawling game. And the developers accentuate this by making the mechanics for different organisms more in depth. However, it can oftentimes be a turn off for players who aren’t so impressed; the time investment is too much, players too often want to be a carnivore, unbalanced ecosystems, a lot of down-time, etc.
Thrive is able to avoid some of these issues; life cycles will be more short, meaning less of a chance for down time and less of a time-investment. We are more justified in making the life of an average Thrive organism more action-packed (within reason) since a life cycle in Thrive is meant more to be a test of evolutionary fitness for a build rather than an actual life cycle.
However, in order to have a proper evolutionary simulator, we also will miss out on some of the highlights of The Isle’s gameplay experience. Thrive’s mechanics likely won’t be as tailored and in-depth as The Isle, and will need to be more generalist to cater towards more options. For example, the entire life cycle of an organism, from birth to elder, is beyond the scope of Thrive’s ambitions; it’s just impossible to fully accommodate all possible forms of life. Perhaps we could include explicit phases for organisms, such as arthropods; but continuous growth is an impossibility.
There are also certain features that a developer or player might feel is necessary for a proper evolutionary simulator, but most likely aren’t. The population chart in a patch might look a bit odd without the familiar predator-prey population swings, but in a large enough time horizon, such oscillations are miniscule. For certain macroscopic environmental disasters, such as volcanic eruptions and meteor strikes, our interest is in representing the effects on the environment and resource availability rather than what the volcanic eruption or meteor strike actually looks like.
Lesson: If you are struggling to translate a biological or ecological phenomenon into gameplay, simplify it. Think about what actually matters to the evolution of a species. Is it the phenomenon itself, or the effects of the phenomenon?
“Fixing” An Issue Is Solved 90% of the Time by Tweaks, 10% by Additions
If you feel that Thrive is missing something, you might feel tempted to conceptualize a completely new system representing a biological phenomenon not yet included. However, much more often than not, a small tweak to an existing system likely could create a larger improvement to the gameplay experience as opposed to a completely new system.
With game design, an immensely deep puddle is much more desirable than a puddle deep ocean. The foundational mechanics of Thrive as of now are largely implemented - it is very unlikely that the gameplay loop of Thrive’s Microbe Stage will experience the introduction of a completely new experience defining feature. No matter what changes are introduced, Thrive’s biological changes will most likely follow the existing structure: visit the editor, spend points, use abilities in the environment, make sure you find enough food to survive until maturity, reproduce, editor, repeat.
If there is something wrong with the mechanics central to this pattern, then adding a completely new feature wouldn’t vastly change the state of things; instead, changes are necessary to the central mechanics. As previously mentioned, changing the way ammonia and phosphate behaved - a relatively “minor” tweak compared to, say, introducing a complete life cycle overhaul - did much more to change the gameplay than most hypothetical concept changes.
Though following this principle does raise the bar for introducing new mechanics, it doesn’t necessarily mean inaction; Thrive still can be much more fun, and thus, it is very likely that we must approach polish with an open-mind to small changes to gameplay experiences.
Evolution on Earth is the Benchmark, Not All of Evolution’s Possibilities
Sometimes, you will come across concepts which may cause you to question underlying assumptions of life on Earth. In other words, considering alien life might cause a sort of paralysis in decision-making. This this system too Earth-centric? Am I cutting off too many possibilities which we cannot anticipate?
Ultimately, the vast majority of players are using Earth as a basis for expectations and desires. The event most asked about by the community is the Great Oxygenation of Earth’s Atmosphere. Players oftentimes pine for a point in Thrive’s gameplay experience which resembles the Cambrian Explosion. Players oftentimes think of organisms which resemble organisms currently alive, or extinct. Dare I say that the significant majority of players are essentially looking for an interactive evolutionary history of Earth with the possibility of twists and turns.
This also extends to what players expect of auto-evo and other players. Players will appreciate moments where they see life act bizarre: perhaps an organism finds an interesting behavior that we don’t really see on Earth, or adapts weirdly to a certain strategy. But for the average member of our playerbase - who in all likelihood is at least partially interested in paleontology, biology, and Earth’s history - they ironically might be more impressed by seeing LAWK behavior.
Part of this goes to what @Thim pointed out in his Miche write-up. Thrive is meant to be a personification of what we currently know about evolution. What would be a potentially insightful deviation in an actual evolution simulation found in academia could easily be dismissed as a quirk in Thrive by us developers. Similarly, the average player will not be looking for the next big discovery in Thrive; for all intents and purposes, they might perceive an earth-shaking discovery that somehow manifests itself in Thrive as a bug. How are they supposed to know what is actually alien when the developers themselves are calibrating auto-evo towards what we see on Earth?
An anecdote: when I look through the Discord or community forums and players describe their creations or other organisms, their mind paints a familiar scene from these alien creatures. A cluster of toxin bacteria which chases the player? Pack behavior, similar to social mammals! An organism which doesn’t move? Algae! A pilus on the rear? A defensive mechanism, like an ankylosaur! Small microbes which dart around phosphate and ammonia? Detritivores! Players even apply advanced social behaviors they find on Earth to microbes.
Ultimately, the benchmark in the mind of a player is Earth. They will understand behavior in the context of organisms on Earth; what is alien is simply something that is not found on Earth. Therefore, worrying too much about “not Earth” is a fruitless endeavor. It is nice to be open-minded, but in moments of paralysis, just go with what you see on Earth. Thrive’s scope and focus is already large enough if we limit ourselves to things we see in life as we know it. There will naturally be changes to organism behavior if the planet generator is made to be customizable – for example, if it is made so that microbial composition more significantly interacts with the environment, life will naturally look different across more alien Thrivian conditions.
