No, this won’t be a rant about my team—the Utah Jazz—playing
James Harden and the Rockets. I’ll exercise some control here. But I want to
explore one particular call that happened when the Jazz closed out their first
round opponents, the Thunder. Star player Paul George, not having a particularly
good game up until that point, leaned into Jazz defender Rudy Gobert as he took
the final shot of the game, trying to force a foul call. Had he not leaned into
the defender, there would not have been any contact. In the past few years, the
NBA cracked down on these attempts to draw fouls, and according to official
review the no-call in the Jazz/Thunder game was correct. Yet it still caused
quite a bit of a stir among basketball fans and, of course, Thunder fans
especially. Why? Consistency.
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| Image from NBA.com |
Even though the call was correct according to the rules of
the game, that call isn’t made correctly every game. So even when confronted
with the information that the officials were right, fans and players still felt
cheated because they recalled the times when the rule in question wasn’t
upheld. Other calls, such as charging, have rules so opaque to the majority of
fans that the referees are bound to seem inconsistent no matter what they do.
If the fans or players can’t see the nuances of a rule, then even correct usage
of the rule will appear erratic.
Game design is about making rules for players, and I feel
that the ire caused by NBA officiating shows how important clarity is for game
design. Obviously, inconsistent rules in your game will always be frustrating
and should thus be avoided. But what game designers really have to look out for
are any rules that are technically constant in their design, but appear fickle
to the player. For example, as much as I love Civ 6, I’m still occasionally
frustrated when a unit appears to be in range to attack, but can’t. There’s
almost certainly a reason why the unit cannot attack, but I don’t understand
it, leading to momentary exasperation. This is why clarity is one of our design
pillars at Rob the Sky Games: we don’t want to frustrate the players that
breathe life into our games.
