Progress as a Resource — Planning Your Game as a Gathering
By: Yvens Serpa
Tags: Agile Methodology, Game Development, Game Design, Project Management, Games

With this theory in mind, the following sections describe 3 scenarios that can be used to understand a game’s progression as a gathering of resources:

A Literal Collection

It is the case when the game’s objective is literally to collect a resource.

In the first Donkey Kong game, the player’s objective is to recover Kong’s bananas stolen by the Kremlings. Every defeated boss, including the last one, drops a massive banana after being defeated. The resource is bananas!

The main objective in Soul Blazer is to free the souls trapped by the evil Deathtoll. Destroying enemies lairs and defeating bosses release souls and recover the world to its former state. In this case, we can see either the souls as the resource or the actual state of the world, returning from a barren wasteland to a populated and happy planet, as the progression resource.

Sid Meyer’s Civilization’s win conditions are also literal collections of strategic resources. For instance, Cultural Victory in Civilization 6 is achieved by collecting more Foreign Tourists than other players have as Domestic Tourists. As you attain the resource (Foreign Tourists), the closer to victory you are.

For Civilization’s Domination Victory, you need to conquer all the Capitals from the other civilizations. Then, the progression resources are the Capitals. Notice that this resource is specific. It does not encompass other cities or structures. Only Capitals count towards the winning condition.

Some games present an inverse take on the collection of resources: destroying them. For instance, in the classic game Space Invader, the player must defeat all enemies to win. The enemies are the progression resources, but, in this case, we start with 100% and win when we reach 0% of them.

Most board games have concrete and tangible resources, and they often have mechanics that allow players to steal or take resources from each other.

The Path as a Resource

In more abstract terms, the game’s journey itself can be understood as the gathering. As the protagonist(s) moves through it, the “path” is collected.

An easy example is the Super Mario World franchise, in which the resource is the distance from Mario (or Luigi) to Princess Peach. The game is based on reaching and saving the princess; therefore, getting to her is our progression.

Some might argue that the winning resource is actually Princess Peach. However, that is not part of a progression since it is a discrete scenario: either you “have” it or not. It is also quite sexist, and we can do better than that.

Another way of seeing the path progressed in the Super Mario games is by the number of levels beaten. However, this approach is not accurate, as you might finish the game without completing all levels. Even reducing this to only mandatory levels would not work, because some games are quite open in this aspect. It might be that only the first and last levels are required, and the rest is dependent on the player’s decision. Thus we lose the sense of progression.

Similarly, in the Castlevania franchise, the journey is our path to Dracula. Our distance measures our progression to the throne room (or whatever room Dracula is hiding this time). Likewise, for saving Princess Peach, defeating Dracula is the game’s main objective, but this action does not measure our progression through the game.

A more interesting example of this approach is racing games. The race itself is the progress. As players race each other, they are competing to consume the path faster. The first player to finish the race wins. In our analogy, our progression resource is the abstract resource of the remaining race left.

As hinted in the previous paragraph, most of the games in this approach have abstract and intangible resources (abstract tangible resources are a paradox). The game never acknowledges them directly, but they affect the gameplay.

No Resources Might Mean No End Goal

Open-ended games are an exception to this approach since they lack an exact final destination. If your game idea does not show any straightforward progression resource, it might fall under this category, and it is crucial to be aware of that. This also applies to Sandbox Games, where players are mostly toying with the game mechanics without a goal in mind.

Still, some of the games in this category might have objectives to be seen as part of completing the game. Stardew Valley is an open-ended RPG game, but the player can consider the game’s achievements or the in-game goals (such as completing the Community Center) as progression resources.

The problem with this approach is that it breaks our initial assumption: that progression resources can be used to plan the game elements and mechanics. If there is no primary goal to be reached, what should guide the overall game design? Indeed, it does not mean you cannot build open-ended games, but that the progression resource approach will probably not be helpful.