The whole concept of Ghost Master was to allow the player the experience of *leading a team*. The haunters make their own tactical decisions, you make the strategic decisions. The low level work is all done for you (although you can set orders if you want more influence).

I guess if I had the perspective I had now I’d have realised this was a dangerous move for a commercial game. But, I do believe we succeeded in most of the design goals for the game, and it’s certainly not like other games that are out there.

It’s tough to go against player expectations, though. The hardcore gamer community, as Patrick alludes, want the precision and detailed control in sufficient numbers to make it a problem if you choose not to deliver it.

All the more reason to find ways to explode the market. If there’s one thing we really need, it’s ways to get games into the hands of players who enjoy them without having to go through the conventional hardcore gamers first. It’s a tough goal to achieve without a big marketing spend.

I also want to fervently agree that ‘God game’ is a bit of a misnomer – almost everything we’ve seen so far gives the player the capabilities of a powerful wizard. Nothing has really quite managed the experience of being a God of even Olympian influence, let alone a god of Brahmanic or Yahwehian proportions. If only Spore were top down instead of bottom up. :)

Take care!

Majesty is a great example of a hands-off game – one that put you in a world and then gave you very little direct control over the things going on it. It is the ultimate detached-ruler RTS.

In many ways, it is more similar to a city builder like Caesar or Zeus. It really is a kingdom simulator.

As fondly remembered as Majesty is by many gamers, though, the fact is no one has picked up the cudgel for RTS that let you act as a theater commander more than a shepherd. You can see the successors to CnC, StarCraft, AoE, Myth, etc. but where are the Majesty followers?

However, if the interface is designed so that you order and they respond in their own way, then that establishes something different. You expect that the units will follow, so long as you are a good leader. Or perhaps you can discipline willful units into submission. The more you bend them to your will, or the more they trust you, the more likely they are to follow your orders (and perhaps the better or worse they will perform).

Further down the scale would be something like Majesty (http://www.majestyquest.com/) where you have influential control, managerial control, but no direct control of any units. You can set things to do, goals and incentives, but the units drive themselves. You can’t stop them from being stupid and getting themselves killed, but you can control what types of units you recruit and sometimes provide magical support.

The interface often determines how much control the user expects. If you give them a reason to believe something will work, they will expect it to work that way all the time. If you take the control away later, then the user will be confused about why. If you want certain agents in your game to be able to act on their own, you have to establish their independence early on and then hold them to a consistency. If you want the user to reclaim control, then it should be done in a way that makes sense in the context of the game (fire your advisors for insubordination, then the next ones will be more wary – but, perhaps, less helpful). If you break context, you takes something away from the game.