The Domino Effect

How and why games are built from such fragile webs.

- Xalavier Nelson Jr

The ‘domino effect’ is a term introduced to me by Bill Gardner, lead designer of BioShock and BioShock Infinite, to describe an intriguing aspect of game development. It’s a term for the pitfalls of the iterative nature of game making, and the fact that the further along you are in development, the more likely it is that changing even a small aspect of a game can break massive sections of the entire project.

David Pittman, cofounder of Minor Key Games and creator of indie immersive sims Eldritch and Neon Struct, explains why: “A mechanic in isolation may look simple, but the intersection of mechanics creates a complex system of dependencies. That’s usually a good thing for systemic games; it provides the player with a coherent simulation that enables them to plan, act, and react. But complex systems can also be the source of many bugs and delays, as the combinatorial interactions of systems are difficult to predict.”