Strategies

What this element is

Strategies are the approaches players can apply to progress or win — the space of viable ways to succeed. Every game draws a line around that space: some approaches work, some are optimal, some are quietly impossible.

Why it carries values

What a game allows and encourages players to do in order to succeed functions as a tacit statement about what it values. Decide what's allowed, what's optimal and what's discouraged, and you've decided what players learn, feel and care about. A strategy that pays off reinforces a value; an exploit that pays off undermines one. In serious games the strategy space is also a claim about the real world: this is what being good at the real thing looks like.

Patterns from practice

Realistic

Training games commonly demand strategies that mirror real-world best practice. In the learner driver game, players must brake at stop signs exactly as they would in a real car. In the medical VR games, "the strategy is following a structured clinical approach. Which they should already know, I mean, we're not teaching that approach. We're facilitating them to practice that approach" (P1). Fidelity and procedural correctness are the core values — the game is a rehearsal space for an approach that already exists.

The environmental awareness games push realism into the underlying model: "We will set up the simulation based on a real world analog, and try and match the inputs in the game to inputs in the real world, and outputs of the game to outputs of the real world" (P7). Strategy is deliberately secondary to the integrity of the model — the designer is "not too worried about strategy" as long as there are no "gamebreaking exploits that are interfering with the core message" (P7). Closing off exploits sends its own message: real-world brilliance isn't hacking the system, it's understanding and enacting appropriate practice. Note what's sacrificed — creativity and optimisation take a back seat to the "core messages", such as "the best ways to reduce co2 in a city" (P7).

Physical

In the physiotherapy games, strategies are grounded in players' bodies, so the design necessarily encodes values about effort, control and accessibility. The optimal strategy is clear: "one of the best ways to play the game is to be very balanced and stay in the middle... if you stay balanced, and with bent knees, and you have good strength and control, it's quicker to change direction" (P2). But that optimal posture is also "physically difficult, physically fatiguing and challenging" (P2) — and viable strategies "depend a little bit on your physical ability" (P2).

That tension forces an explicit values choice. If the game rewards only the most demanding physical strategy, it values performance and efficiency over inclusivity and sustainability. Calibrating controls, thresholds and rewards so that less demanding strategies remain viable is how fairness and individualisation get negotiated — the strategy space becomes the message about which forms of physical engagement are desirable, acceptable or discouraged.

Adaptive

The team-building workshops sit in a third category: strategies that are social and self-regulated. Players choose their own approach depending on the outcome they want — share something personal to get deeply involved, or give a brief response and pass the conversation along if they'd rather not be the centre of attention. The facilitator values exactly this: players get control over how much they share. The whole setup is built around consent, respect for people's space and making sure everyone feels included. No one is forced into discomfort to "win", and the focus is on getting everyone involved rather than squeezing out the best results — autonomy and psychological safety over performance.

Questions to ask your team

1. What's the optimal strategy in our game — and is it also the behaviour we want in the real world?
2. Can a player succeed by exploiting the system? If so, what does that teach them about the domain?
3. Does our best strategy demand abilities (physical, cognitive, social) that some of our audience don't have? Is a less demanding strategy still viable?
4. Are we teaching an approach, or facilitating practice of one players already know? Which does the client think we're doing?
5. Can players opt for a low-exposure strategy — participating without performing — and still get value?
6. Where realism forbids creative strategies, is that a deliberate value choice or just a default?
7. If we watched ten players succeed, would we endorse every path they took?