Dungeon Keeper's failures, and why justifying the stamina system only makes it worse

I’ve mostly stayed out of the debate about the new mobile version of Dungeon Keeper, in part because it’s not really related to Asia, and in part because other reviewers have been doing a pretty great job of conveying my own feelings on the subject. But the criticism has apparently gotten loud enough that one of the game’s senior producers felt compelled to respond. The full interview is worth a read, but what jumped out at me was this:

It’s important to emphasize that we designed a game that is built around the typical mobile play patterns. This means Dungeon Keeper is meant to be played on the go multiple times a day with a few minutes here or there. This way of playing allows fans to naturally progress as a free player.

This is an argument that I heard a lot in the wake of my post about hating stamina systems, and indeed it’s one argument Daylight Studios CEO Don Sim made in his response to that piece. There are variations, but the basic thrust is that stamina systems are good because they’re designed to be played in short bursts, which is what mobile gamers want. Right?

Short-burst gaming?

I don’t know. I’m sure there’s some chart somewhere that shows that on average, mobile gamers spend 3.79 minutes per mobile gaming session. And yes, people often do like playing a quick round of a mobile game while they’re, for example, waiting five or ten minutes for the bus. But people also love mobile gaming on their 45-minute subway commute, or during the half-hour wait at the doctor’s office. Personally, I play mobile games that I like for long periods at one clip on the weekends sometimes—I like to put on a TV show in the background, boot up a simple mobile game, and shut my brain off for a while. My average mobile gaming session is probably pretty short, but that’s because I try a lot of terrible mobile games that I quit and delete within a few minutes. I’m sure many other gamers are the same way.

Moreover, I deeply dislike the idea of game designers deciding for me how I should play the game. To a certain extent, every game does this in that there are rules in any game that can’t be broken (without hacking it). But at least the good ones don’t try to schedule your life for you. If I want to binge-play GTA V for six hours, I can. If I want to play Skyrim entirely in 5-minute bursts, nothing’s stopping me. If I want to play Jetpack Joyride for a full hour straight, I do.

And guess what? I don’t get bored or stop playing it because it’s a good game. The best way to keep players from “burning out” on your game isn’t to set up restrictive walls to tell them when they can and can’t play, it’s to design a really fun game. If you look at the most popular mobile games of all time—the ones that people have been playing for years (Angry Birds, Doodle Jump, PvZ, Fruit Ninja, etc.)—they’re all pretty simple. They all can be played in short bursts. How do the developers of those games keep players from burning out on them? They don’t. They just make good games and trust that gamers can figure out how to have fun with them on their own.

Making excuses or just being condescending?

At the end of the day, I think the “optimized for short-burst gaming” argument in favor of stamina systems is just an excuse, a cover for the uglier truth that the stamina system is the ultimate in-app purchase: one that you can never truly own. But if “short-burst optimization” really is the reason behind the stamina system in games like Dungeon Keeper, to my mind that just makes it even more offensive. It means that the developers don’t trust you to make your own decisions about when and how you want to play your games. Honestly, I prefer developers greedily grabbing at my wallet to them treating me like a five-year-old who can’t be trusted to control his own game experience.

But, like I said, I don’t buy that “short-burst optimization” is the real reason for many of these stamina systems anyway. I just played a little bit of the new Dungeon Keeper game, and within three minutes it had suggested I purchase some gems and made me sit through several countdown timers, including a 60-second one. Is that really designed to cater to “typical mobile play patterns”? Does EA really expect people to play a strategy game in 2-minute increments throughout the day? Does this kind of design do anything to improve the game at all for the player?

The answer to all these questions is “No.” Not coincidentally, “no” is also the answer to the question “Should I play the new Dungeon Keeper game?”

But Dungeon Keeper is just a symbol, just the latest and highest-profile of many games that take this approach. I’ve made peace with the fact that stamina systems are going to be in some mobile games; I hate it but I accept that it’s the truth. But if you’re going to so annoyingly attempt to pick my pocket with a stamina system, at least have the common courtesy to admit it rather than trying to pretend that it’s for my own good, or that it somehow improves the game experience by catering to a ‘mobile play-style.’ Fuck off with that corporate nonsense. I’m an adult; I can figure out how long to play my games for on my own.

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