The Devil's Plan
Lessons for designers from the Netflix series
My family has been enjoying the new Netflix series “The Devil’s Plan”. My daughter has declared it the best reality show she’s ever seen.
While I wouldn’t go that far, I do think it is definitely worth watching, particularly for game designers.
Premise
In The Devil’s Plan, twelve people are confined to a Big Brother-style house for a week and forced to play… board games. There’s not a physical or dexterity challenge to be seen. The players are hyped up as being pretty smart. There’s a doctor, a lawyer, a science you-tuber, and a professional poker player. But even when they introduce the famous actors, including one we recognized from Crash Landing on You(!), they take pains to point out that he has an engineering degree.
The point being - these people came to play.
The Basics
At the start of the game players are given a single Point token. Those are earned and lost in games and can be freely traded between players. If you ever have zero Points though, you are eliminated. Pack up your suitcase and head home.
Players alternate between playing a competitive game - where they can gain or lose Points, and a prize round, where all players cooperate to add money to the eventual prize pool.
At the end of the week the two players with the most Points advance to a final game where the winner gets the entire prize pool.
The games themselves were developed exclusively for the show. It has been fascinating to see how the designers formulated the games, how the players try to subvert them, and which games work well and which don’t.
Here are some of my take aways.
Rules Explanations
The first game is called “Virus” and is a Hidden Role game. At the start of each game, the announcer explains the game to the players - and the viewers.
The explanation for Virus takes seven minutes - I timed it.
Seven minutes is not that long for a rules teach. In fact, I would hazard a guess that if I told you I could teach a game in seven minutes you’d be very happy about that.
However, in the context of a television show, it feels really, really long. People are not conditioned to hearing rules explanations of a game of that complexity in a show. Think about a show like The Price is Right, where they explain the rules for each minigame in less than a minute.
And even though the rules explanation feels long, it also feels rushed. They hit every rule just one time, and then move on. They never circle back to earlier information. It’s a lot to take in when you can’t pause or ask questions. As a rules teacher I stop to make sure everyone was on board before moving ahead. They don’t do that here.
After the rules explanation you can see that all the players have printouts of the rules that they can refer to. And they have time before the game starts to digest it - an hour in the case of Virus. The viewers don’t get that luxury - they are just tossed into it.
I think the producers are aware of the complexity issue. For some of the games, where feasible, they play a practice round - for the players as well as the audience. And there are ‘dealers’ stationed around the play area who can answer rules questions.
So two take-aways here:
Rules are more complex than you realize.
The complexity of your game needs to take into consideration the context in which it is played. There are many elements to that context, some of which we take into consideration (theme, duration, or artwork, for example). But we also need to consider the environment. Is it being played in a noisy environment? Library? Train? On TV? All of these impact how your game will be received and should guide its design.
Spectator-Friendly Games
I have become a little obsessed with the question of what characteristics of a game make it entertaining to watch. Some of the games in The Devil’s Plan are more successful than others in this regard. It’s a really fascinating case study when viewed through this lens.
I will probably do a GameTek on it in the future, so I will only touch on a few ideas here.
Hidden information: Is it more interesting to watch a hidden role game being played when you know who the players are, or when you don’t? Poker didn’t take off until spectators could see players’ hole cards (using table-based cameras). Is this always the case? Or is it more interesting to guess along with the players?
I think (and I could be very wrong about this) that the spectators at least need to have access to some hidden information, to understand and connect with some of the players. However, there are sports like football and baseball where spectators don’t have any hidden info (the play or pitch call, for example).
Play-Along: Is a game better for spectators when you can play along? Most game shows try to emphasize that - Jeopardy and Wheel of Fortune being two prime examples.
Most sports also have some element of ‘play-at-home’ where you can yell at your TV about whether a two-point conversion should be attempted, whether that base steal was a good idea or not, or whether that player should have taken the open three.
But some sports, particularly many Olympic sports, don’t have this same engagement. Watching the 100m dash is thrilling, but not because you second guess any decisions. Admittedly though, there are techniques to get you more invested in things like races, from human interest stories to introduce the competitors, to gambling on a horse race.
The games in The Devil’s Plan are a bit of a mixed bag for spectators. Sometimes this is due to the design of the game (like their version of a Roll & Move), but sometimes due to the editing - like in a few memory games where the players see what they are memorizing for much longer than the viewers. I did find myself enjoying these play-at-home games a bit more, but I think that part of that is just because I’m conditioned to watching those types of games on TV.
Announcing: With more complex games it can be difficult for viewers to understand the full context of what is happening, what the options are, and why certain decisions are being made. Announcers help spectators with games, and most events use them to engage viewers.
Most of the time in The Devil’s Plan the editors let the action unfold without commentary. However occasionally an announcer comes on to explain why a certain curious move was made, or whether something was a mistake. It’s a bit jarring just because it’s so infrequent, and I find it interesting to ponder what about those points in the game made them feel that it was important to introduce commentary at that point.
‘First Time Playthrough’ Effect
While some of the games in The Devil’s Plan are repeated over multiple rounds, most are just played a single time. As I’m sure you’ve seen in your own gaming experience, there can be a big gulf between what you think the game is going to be like from hearing the rules, and what actually turns out to be critical.
Sometimes that gap can be fascinating as a player, and sometimes it can be frustrating, particularly games that front-load critical decision making. Sometimes it’s just really hard to see that a particular combo is going to be dominant, or that some obscure rule is going to have a huge impact.
There’s a lot of that in the Devil’s Plan, which is particularly impactful as the players only have one shot at most of the games. They do not get to learn from experience. They have whatever time they are given before the game starts to plan their strategy.
In this particular case, I think the producers (and game designers) are deliberately making some key factors in the game a bit harder to suss out, as a way of adding another layer of game-playing skill to the proceedings. But as a designer of everyday games, is this a desirable feature?
More to Come
I have a lot more thoughts about The Devil’s Plan, particularly diving into details of some specific games. And they hit all the key game mechanisms, including Hidden Role, Roll & Move, Memory, Tile Laying, Auction, Wagering, and more. But I will leave that for future newsletters. Hopefully this has piqued your interest enough to check it out.
Board Game Design Lab Appearance
I was very pleased to be invited to join Gabe Barret on the Board Game Design Lab show. It was great to talk about some of my favorite GameTek segments!
The Universe Explained with a Cookie
My next book The Universe Explained with a Cookie is releasing in six months, on April 30th 2024! It explains advanced science concepts like Dark Matter, Quantum Mechanics, and Embryonic Development with… cookies!
Now is a great time to preorder it, if you haven’t. Preorders are available through all major booksellers and are critical to building early momentum and signaling to the publisher that they should put more sales and marketing effort into a title.
Thanks so much for your support!
Geoff
I loved the Devil's Plan! Great to see it covered here