The Market - Designing Games - page 257

Deus Ex offers many different types of value. A player looking for a cy-
berpunk conspiracy plot, reactive story, dark, atmospheric world, or deep
philosophical themes will be well served by this game. The game also
offers stealth gameplay, first-person combat, and RPG character progres-
sion, but not to as high a level.
But a value curve of just one game isn't very useful. Value curves are
tools for comparison. This means plotting several games on the same
curve. Here's the graph with BioShock added:
Now we can see exactly which values are unique to each game, which
ones overlap, and which ones are best served by each product. Both games
offer stealth gameplay, but a committed stealth fan will get more out of
Deus Ex , since its stealth systems are deeper and better-balanced. However,
Deus Ex is first-person combat is weaker than that of BioShock , so a com-
mitted shooter player will prefer BioShock .
We also find some values that are completely absent in one game or
the other. There is no cyberpunk conspiracy plot at all in BioShock . And the
Big Daddy/Little Sister ecology and art deco world aren't part of Deus Ex .
To do a broader market analysis on a new game, we would conduct this
exercise with every similar game on the market. The final graph might
have five or six games on it, each dominating some values and missing
others. Such an analysis provides clarity by showing us the values in our
game that actually matter.