Pareto for Games

Can you sell 80% as many copies, with only 20% as much game?

This guy looks exactly what I’d imagine an 1870s italian economist would look like.

An idea that has become increasingly important in Agile software development is the Pareto Principle. This is an idea first noticed by Italian economist Vilfredo Pareto, which roughly states that for many things, 80% of the value comes from 20% of the effort.

When creating software, this idea motivates incremental development. Start making the thing that is the most valuable, and after you’ve made about 20% of your final product, you’ll find that you are achieving about 80% of its value. But, can this be turned towards games?

This isn’t a new idea. People have written about the concept a fair amount. The idea of prototyping a game, testing whether it’s fun, and then building on it, is already pretty well known in game development. But, games seem to succeed when they are polished. Nintendo, as an example, has made a name for itself making games that are polished beyond belief, where every interaction is dialled into its funnest element. They have made a name for themselves specifically by avoiding the Pareto principle, and putting a huge amount of fine detail and polish into their games.

So — if there are companies out there that are succeeding openly in the face of Pareto, are there companies who are succeeding with only the first 20%? Well, that’s a hard question to answer. How can you say that the parts of the game that you trimmed were the “extra 80%”? In particular, how can I answer that question, as somebody outside of your company?

In an attempt to figure out whether we can apply the Pareto principle, I’ve devised a little experiment. I’m going to outline it here, in the hopes that I can call a hypothesis, and see whether the data will validate it.

Super Mario Bros.

The most iconic game ever?

Everybody knows Super Mario Bros. Released in 1985, it is a gaming icon. But, that’s not to say that it isn’t a game without fat. The game has water levels (which would have to be designed and implemented completely separately to the rest of the game). It has enemies which are only seen in 1–2 levels. It has all kinds of things which need to be designed, programmed, and implemented, only to appear once or twice.

The question is — are these the things that make it long lasting, or are they wasted effort? Do these one-and-done kind of ideas give a game enough variety to justify their investment?

This is what I’m trying to answer. I’m going to be rebuilding the first four levels of Super Mario Bros. in Unity. As I do this, I’m going to break down every feature, enemy and powerup into distinct components which can be turned on or off. I’m going to record exactly how much time it takes to build each one. And then, I’m going to get a lot of people to play the game, with random elements turned on or off.

By doing this, I hope to get a good idea for how satisfied people are, playing Super Mario Bros. with different features enabled. As an example, if building an Invincibility Star takes 2 hours of development time, but only improves overall enjoyment of the game by 2%, maybe we can say that it’s not worth it.

Work in progress Goomba development

Using Super Mario Bros. as an example, I hope to get some hard data on “amount of fun” vs time investment, and use this to answer the question of whether we can apply the Pareto Principle to game development.

Stay tuned, because I’m going to need a lot of people to playtest.