Micromanagement (gameplay)

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In gaming, micromanagement describes small, detailed gameplay elements that must be manually addressed by the player. It appears in a wide range of games including strategy video games, construction and management simulations and pet-raising simulations. Micromanagement has been a controversial aspect of game design for many years: some gamers regard it as an unwelcome distraction from higher levels of strategic thinking, and some games try to minimize it; some players and designers treat it as an important skill, and one that is necessary if the game is to support top-level competitions; and some enjoy opportunities to use tactical skill in combat but dislike having to to a lot of detailed work when managing their economies.

[edit] Micromanagement in strategy games

In Starcraft the Templar is a spellcaster which needs micromanagement. Here its Psionic Storm (the "lightning") devastates enemy worker units in a large area.

[edit] Combat

Detailed management of units in combat aims to maximize damage given to enemy units and minimize damage to the player's units. For standard combat units the most common techniques are: grouping units into formations, for example to keep lightly-armored archers behind and protected by more heavily-armored melee units;^[1][2] concentrating the fire of all ranged units on one target and then a second, etc., to destroy threats as fast as possible; withdrawing seriously damaged units from combat, if repairing / healing them is cheaper than replacing them; "dancing" units that have taken some damage out of range and then back into combat once the enemy have locked on to another target; using military tactics such as flanking and counterattacks; exploiting Rock-Paper-Scissors relationships between units; using cheap units to draw the enemy's fire away from more expensive units . Micromanagement is even more necessary for units which can cast spells or have other special abilities which can only be used infrequently. "Micromanagement" in this sense is often abbreviated to "micro", which can be used as a noun or a verb.

Master of Orion's main screen. The panel on the right shows the sliders that control how resources are allocated by the colony which the player has most recently clicked.

[edit] Economic micromanagement

The range of possible economic micromanagement techniques is much wider than for combat, because strategy games' economies work in so many different ways. If the game uses "worker" units to gather resources and / or build things (a common technique in real-time strategy games), one must make sure none are idle and that they are doing the right things, and must avoid letting enemy raiders destroy them (as is happening in the Starcraft image above). In some turn-based games one tells colonies what percentages of their efforts to put into various activities such as industrial growth, research, and building defenses or combat units; as colonies grow or the strategic situation changes, one has to check and adjust these ratios. In Sid Meier's Civilization series, it may be important for either economic or military reasons to build raildroads as fast as possible, and doing this efficiently requires considerable micromanagement of Settler / Engineer units.^[3]

[edit] Twitch-based micromanagement

Other types of games are based entirely on micromanagement, such as pet-raising simulations and games like Cake Mania, where the player's ability to micromanage is often the only skill being tested by the game.

[edit] Policy-based micromanagement

Some games are designed in such a way that players must constantly set or check strategic parameters to ensure that operations are proceeding smoothly and efficiently. A typical city-building game or 4X game, for example, requires the player to regulate taxation and production levels in order to keep their industries and commerce flowing. The amount of detail that goes into a simulation like this may necessitate spending a disproportionate amount of time in adjusting relatively minor parameters in order to achieve maximum efficiency.

[edit] Controversy about micromanagement in games

Micromanagement can divert the player's attention from grand strategy by overloading the player with repetitive and mechanical work.^[4] In turn-based games this is boring and tiring. Some commentators think that "Strategy is irrelevant in today’s real-time strategy games when you’re playing against a fourteen-year-old who can click twice as fast as you."^[3] Games in which constant micromanagement is needed are often described as "micromanagement hell".^[5][6][7]

In turn-based games the need for economic micromanagement is generally regarded as a defect in the design,^[3] and more recent TBS game have tried to minimise it.^[5][4][8] But hands-on tactical combat is a feature of many turn-based games (e.g. Master of Orion II, Space Empires III, Heroes of Might and Magic III), and reviewers complained about the difficulty of controlling combat in Master of Orion 3.^[9]

There is controversy between fans of different RTS games about whether micromanagement is: (a) a skill which involves taking decisions quickly while under pressure; or (b) a chore which degenerates into a "clickfest" where a player who is faster with the mouse usually beats a player who is better at grand strategy.^[10][11] As a result RTS games vary widely from e.g. Total Annihilation, which eliminates most economic micromanagement and reduces tactical micromanagement, to Starcraft, in which both economic and tactical micromanagement are important and software has been developed to analyze players' Actions Per Minute (commonly known as APM).^[12][13]

Many role-playing games and first-person shooters are developing more advanced hotkey layouts, allowing these genres to develop their own micromanagement skills.

[edit] Micromanagement in popular culture

• The popular Internet-distributed mockumentary series Pure Pwnage coined the term "über-micro", a term describing unusually superior levels of micromanagement. The series interviewed several girls asking if they'd rather date a guy with lots of money or über-micro.^[14]
• In South Korea, the real-time strategy game StarCraft is highly popular as a professional sport.^[6] The need to micromanage efficiently and multitask under pressure are regarded as features that make it suitable for top-level competitions.^[15] The game is broadcast on Korean national television, showing professional players' micromanagement skills.^[16]

[edit] References

[edit] See also

• Real-time strategy
• Turn-based strategy