Dev Take Tuesday - NBA Officiating

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.

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.