Pacing

I have always found very hard to weight the importance of a good pacing within a game. In other forms of entertainment such as shows and movies, pacing is essential; so much, in fact, that whole tools have been developed in order to optimize it and many studies can be found on the subject. However, it doesn't seem to be one of the deciding factors on a game's success, and many examples of top-selling games are totally awful at it. I personally prefer games that don't drag, so I'll devote this article to the study of pacing.

What is pacing?
Pacing is the behavior of a flow of events accross the time frame (in a game's case, a game session, from startup to end). Proper management of pacing keeps players interested, builds the mood, smooths gameplay, and sets the duration of a game in advance. A peculiarity I discovered reading reviews of succesful games with bad pacing is that they tend to polarize players: players who like them do really, really love them; those that do not hate them absolutely. Maybe love is a requirement to enjoy games with this property?

Which aspects affect the pace of a game?
The most relevant aspect, without a doubt, is the number of players. This poses a problem for games that allow a variable number of players, as things that work well for a low number of players might not work so well with more (and vice versa); other relevant aspects include ammount of variables and calculations handled by each player, frequency of corner cases, and the game state favored by the mechanics. Let's see how to address them to obtain a smooth gameplay.

1. Number of players:
Most games are tuned for a certain number of players: playing with less can unbalance the game towards one player if they play different roles, and it also can cause slow-down if the game features:
- collaboration: less players means less resources at start and slower adquisition of resources, so overcoming obstacles as a group will be harder and take longer, moreso if there are restrictions in how/when can players help each other.
- "stallbreakers": If the game expects players to randomly adquire certain objects that are vital to continue playing, cutting players might reduce by a lot the chances to find them early.
An excess of players increases the waiting if the game uses non-simultaneous turns, and also brings trouble if the game features:
- countermeasures: the more players, the more likely one of them will have something to counter the actions of the leading player, stalling the game ad infinitum; This effect (known as "King bashing") is more pronounced if players can constantly refill used resources.
- single elimination: not only it takes longer to finish a game, but also losing players must await more time before the next game starts.
- resource hog: If limited resources must be divided among more people, it might happen that nobody has enough power to overcome the first obstacles, lagging the game start.

PROPOSED SOLUTIONS:
- Narrow the number of players allowed.
- Tune the game for a number between the maximum and the minimum.
- Set different starting setups for different number of players.
- Set different game modes for different number of players.

2. Ammount of Computation required:
A task that can be very time consuming is keeping track of a value, specially if it's the sum of many elements or a function of other values. Halting the game a couple of seconds to perform some basic calculations is not a problem, but when the value has to be recalculated continually every turn the game slogs considerably. One example of such a task is resource management. If goods can only be adquired at certain times, all planning has to be done in advance, and must cover all actions up to the last purchase. In unforgiving games, that can make for very long turns.

PROPOSED SOLUTIONS:
- Avoid having to perform calculations in advance.
- Put a limit in the number of elements to consider in a sum.
- Use only easy to add values like 0, 1, 2, 5, and multiples of 10.
- Avoid complex calculations such as multiplication and conditional bonus.
- Use a more flexible/simple resource management system.
- Minimize the number of resources to track.

3. Rules complexity:
"Rules-heavy" games require a lot of time before startup, and if they are not played frequently, players will have to read the rules every single time. Another issue happens when a game scenario hasn't obvious, clear or intuitive answer, which requires to stop the game to look up the rules to handle it. If the game has many corner cases, it's likely the pace will be broken many times.

PROPOSED SOLUTIONS:
- Streamline rules to cut corner cases.
- Simplify the rulebook, or include a simplified rule set plus a bunch of optional rules.
- Move element-specific rules from the rulebook to these elements.
- Include redundancy and/or reminder text in places that might create doubts or corner cases.
- Distribute between players the task of taking care of certain rules.

4. Favored game state:
Some mechanics and implementations of a mechanic are known to favor hang-ups and stalemates. Knowing about them will help avoiding these common pitfalls:

- Random acquisition of basic resources: If some basic elements of the game are obtained through a random event, players will get stuck from time to time due to pure bad luck.
PROPOSED SOLUTION: Include a non-random method to obtain the resource at startup, or if the player doesn't have any. For example, if a game requires to roll a 6 to get a pawn, it may include a rule to allow player without pawns to get one without rolling.
- Destroying/Spending Resources: Mechanics that destroy/waste multiple basic resources can severely stuck players if those resources don't recover as fast.
PROPOSED SOLUTION: Reduce the quantity of elements implementing the mechanic and limit their effect and/or power. Elements that waste multiple resources should be rare and worthy.
- Defensive Imbalance: If answers are more powerful, abundant and/or efficient than threats (for example, in many versus one scenarios), the use of these actions will be discouraged until enough power to overcome the answers is achieved, which can take a lot of time or even never happen (a stalemate).
PROPOSED SOLUTION: Limit the occurrence of many versus one scenarios, if the problem is mechanical, fix the imbalance in the implementation, add "stallbreakers" for when the game lasts too long.
- Adding costs to Basic resources: The best way to discourage the use of something, is to attach it a cost. That's why the most basic resources of a game tend to be the cheap. Because they are required to advance the game, putting a cost on them tend to create stall situations.
PROPOSED SOLUTION: Include ways to access those resources without a cost. Reduce or remove costs from basic resources. Use a different mechanic.

That was all! I hope this study helps in designing better, smoother games. If you enjoyed it, post your thoughts on the comments.