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Micromanagement (computer gaming)
Encyclopedia
In gaming, micromanagement describes minor, detailed gameplay elements that must be manually addressed by the player. It appears in a wide range of games including strategy video game
s, construction and management simulation
s and pet-raising simulations. Micromanagement has been perceived in different ways by game designers and players for many years: some players and designers perceive it as a useful addition to games that adds options and technique to the gameplay, and one that is necessary if the game is to support top-level competitions; and some enjoy opportunities to use tactical skill in combat games; other gamers regard it as an unwelcomed distraction from higher levels of strategic thinking, dislike having to do a lot of detailed work, and some games try to minimize micromanagement in the game interfaces.
, for example to keep lightly armored shooters behind and protected by more heavily armored melee
units; 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 enemy weapons range and then back into combat once the enemy have locked on to another target; using military tactics
such as flanking
and counterattack
s; exploiting nontransitive ("circle of death" or "rock-paper-scissors") power relationships between units; using cheap units to draw the enemy's fire away from more expensive units, gameplay especially typical of games of the real-time tactics
type. Micromanagement is even more necessary for units with special abilities, that can only be used infrequently. "Micromanagement" in this sense is often abbreviated to "micro", which can be used as a noun or a verb.
, normally abbreviated as 'micro' and 'macro' respectively. Macro generally refers to managing large quantities of tasks at the same time. For example, building units from various structures throughout the game while also building more structures, scouting, creating new bases, etc. This is different from micro, which is generally controlling small amounts of units and giving them very specific orders.
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 railroads as fast as possible, and doing this efficiently requires considerable micromanagement of Settler / Engineer units.
, where the player's ability to micromanage is often the only skill being tested by the 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.
by overloading the player with repetitive and mechanical work. 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." Games in which constant micromanagement is needed are often described as "micromanagement hell".
In turn-based games the need for economic micromanagement is generally regarded as a defect in the design, and more recent TBS games have tried to minimize it. 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.
There is controversy between fans of different RTS
games about whether micromanagement is: (a) a skill which involves making 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
. 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 considered important skills. Software has been developed to analyze players' Actions Per Minute
(commonly known as APM). Other games aim for differing levels of micromanagement of different types: for instance, the Relic Entertainment
title Dawn of War 2 minimises economic micromanagement as much as possible, such that there is no base construction, all units are produced from a single source, and resources are accumulated automatically over time by controlling strategic battlefield locations, while on the other hand the game emphasises tactical micromanagement as its primary skill, with combat taking place principally between relatively small squads of highly effective and highly vulnerable units, with victory a function of the rapid deployment of special weapons and tactics in order to counter enemy manoeuvres and inflict maximum damage quickly while avoiding sustaining damage.
Many role-playing games and first-person shooter
s are developing more advanced hotkey
layouts, allowing these genres to develop their own micromanagement skills.
Strategy video game
Strategy video games is a video game genre that emphasizes skillful thinking and planning to achieve victory. They emphasize strategic, tactical, and sometimes logistical challenges. Many games also offer economic challenges and exploration...
s, construction and management simulation
Construction and management simulation
Construction and management simulation is a type of simulation game in which players build, expand or manage fictional communities or projects with limited resources. Strategy video games sometimes incorporate CMS aspects into their game economy, as players must manage resources while expanding...
s and pet-raising simulations. Micromanagement has been perceived in different ways by game designers and players for many years: some players and designers perceive it as a useful addition to games that adds options and technique to the gameplay, and one that is necessary if the game is to support top-level competitions; and some enjoy opportunities to use tactical skill in combat games; other gamers regard it as an unwelcomed distraction from higher levels of strategic thinking, dislike having to do a lot of detailed work, and some games try to minimize micromanagement in the game interfaces.
Micromanagement in strategy games
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 formationsTactical formation
A tactical formation is the arrangement or deployment of moving military forces such as infantry, cavalry, AFVs, military aircraft, or naval vessels...
, for example to keep lightly armored shooters behind and protected by more heavily armored melee
Mêlée
Melee , generally refers to disorganized close combat involving a group of fighters. A melee ensues when groups become locked together in combat with no regard to group tactics or fighting as an organized unit; each participant fights as an individual....
units; 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 enemy weapons range and then back into combat once the enemy have locked on to another target; using military tactics
Military tactics
Military tactics, the science and art of organizing an army or an air force, are the techniques for using weapons or military units in combination for engaging and defeating an enemy in battle. Changes in philosophy and technology over time have been reflected in changes to military tactics. In...
such as flanking
Flanking maneuver
In military tactics, a flanking maneuver, also called a flank attack, is an attack on the sides of an opposing force. If a flanking maneuver succeeds, the opposing force would be surrounded from two or more directions, which significantly reduces the maneuverability of the outflanked force and its...
and counterattack
Counterattack
A counterattack is a tactic used in response against an attack. The term originates in military strategy. The general objective is to negate or thwart the advantage gained by the enemy in attack and the specific objectives are usually to regain lost ground or to destroy attacking enemy units.It is...
s; exploiting nontransitive ("circle of death" or "rock-paper-scissors") power relationships between units; using cheap units to draw the enemy's fire away from more expensive units, gameplay especially typical of games of the real-time tactics
Real-time tactics
Real-time tactics or RTT is a subgenre of tactical wargames played in real-time simulating the considerations and circumstances of operational warfare and military tactics...
type. Micromanagement is even more necessary for units with special abilities, that can only be used infrequently. "Micromanagement" in this sense is often abbreviated to "micro", which can be used as a noun or a verb.
Micromanagement versus Macromanagement
There is sometimes confusion regarding the difference between micromanagement and macromanagementMacromanagement
Macromanagement is the act of leading decision makers or managing the managers. Macromanagement is a close concept to the economic concept of mechanism design....
, normally abbreviated as 'micro' and 'macro' respectively. Macro generally refers to managing large quantities of tasks at the same time. For example, building units from various structures throughout the game while also building more structures, scouting, creating new bases, etc. This is different from micro, which is generally controlling small amounts of units and giving them very specific orders.
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 strategyReal-time strategy
Real-time strategy is a sub-genre of strategy video game which does not progress incrementally in turns. Brett Sperry is credited with coining the term to market Dune II....
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
Sid Meier
Sidney K. "Sid" Meier is a Canadian programmer and designer of several popular computer strategy games, most notably Civilization. He has won accolades for his contributions to the computer games industry...
's Civilization
Civilization (computer game)
Sid Meier's Civilization is a turn-based strategy "4X"-type strategy video game created by Sid Meier and Bruce Shelley for MicroProse in 1991. The game's objective is to "Build an empire to stand the test of time": it begins in 4000 BC and the players attempt to expand and develop their empires...
series, it may be important for either economic or military reasons to build railroads as fast as possible, and doing this efficiently requires considerable micromanagement of Settler / Engineer units.
Twitch-based micromanagement
Other types of games are based entirely on micromanagement, such as pet-raising simulations and games like Cake ManiaCake Mania
Cake Mania is a name and also a series of cooking and time management video games developed and published by Sandlot Games in 2006. The Wii version is known as Cake Mania: In the Mix!- Plot :...
, where the player's ability to micromanage is often the only skill being tested by the game.
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 gameCity-building game
City-building games are a genre of strategy computer game where players act as the overall planner and leader of a city, looking down on it from above, and being responsible for its growth and management...
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.
Controversy about micromanagement in games
Micromanagement can divert the player's attention from grand strategyGrand strategy
Grand strategy comprises the "purposeful employment of all instruments of power available to a security community". Military historian B. H. Liddell Hart says about grand strategy:...
by overloading the player with repetitive and mechanical work. Some commentators think that "Strategy is irrelevant in today’s real-time strategy
Real-time strategy
Real-time strategy is a sub-genre of strategy video game which does not progress incrementally in turns. Brett Sperry is credited with coining the term to market Dune II....
games when you’re playing against a fourteen-year-old who can click twice as fast as you." Games in which constant micromanagement is needed are often described as "micromanagement hell".
In turn-based games the need for economic micromanagement is generally regarded as a defect in the design, and more recent TBS games have tried to minimize it. But hands-on tactical combat is a feature of many turn-based games (e.g. Master of Orion II
Master of Orion II
Master of Orion II: Battle at Antares is a 4X turn-based strategy game set in space, designed by Steve Barcia and Ken Burd, and developed by Simtex, who developed its predecessor Master of Orion. The PC version of the game was published by Microprose in 1996, while the Apple Macintosh version was...
, Space Empires III
Space Empires III
__FORCETOC__Space Empires III is a turn-based 4X space strategy game published by Malfador Machinations in 1997, and is the third game in its Space Empires series.Despite its age the developers still offer it for sale online....
, Heroes of Might and Magic III), and reviewers complained about the difficulty of controlling combat in Master of Orion 3.
There is controversy between fans of different RTS
Real-time strategy
Real-time strategy is a sub-genre of strategy video game which does not progress incrementally in turns. Brett Sperry is credited with coining the term to market Dune II....
games about whether micromanagement is: (a) a skill which involves making 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
Grand strategy
Grand strategy comprises the "purposeful employment of all instruments of power available to a security community". Military historian B. H. Liddell Hart says about grand strategy:...
. As a result RTS games vary widely from e.g. Total Annihilation
Total Annihilation
Total Annihilation is a real-time strategy video game created by Cavedog Entertainment, a sub-division of Humongous Entertainment, and released on September 30, 1997 by GT Interactive for Microsoft Windows and Mac OS. It was the first RTS game to feature 3D units and terrain...
, which eliminates most economic micromanagement and reduces tactical micromanagement, to StarCraft
StarCraft
StarCraft is a military science fiction real-time strategy video game developed by Blizzard Entertainment. The first game of the StarCraft series was released for Microsoft Windows on 31 March 1998. With more than 11 million copies sold worldwide as of February 2009, it is one of the best-selling...
, in which both economic and tactical micromanagement are considered important skills. Software has been developed to analyze players' Actions Per Minute
Actions per minute
Actions Per Minute, commonly abbreviated as APM, is a term used in the real time strategy field of cybersport which refers to the total number of actions that a player can perform in a minute....
(commonly known as APM). Other games aim for differing levels of micromanagement of different types: for instance, the Relic Entertainment
Relic Entertainment
Relic Entertainment is a Canadian game development company that specializes in 3D real-time strategy games and has released a number of unique PC games. Relic specializes in creative, visually appealing, and combat intense RTS games.-History:...
title Dawn of War 2 minimises economic micromanagement as much as possible, such that there is no base construction, all units are produced from a single source, and resources are accumulated automatically over time by controlling strategic battlefield locations, while on the other hand the game emphasises tactical micromanagement as its primary skill, with combat taking place principally between relatively small squads of highly effective and highly vulnerable units, with victory a function of the rapid deployment of special weapons and tactics in order to counter enemy manoeuvres and inflict maximum damage quickly while avoiding sustaining damage.
Many role-playing games and first-person shooter
First-person shooter
First-person shooter is a video game genre that centers the gameplay on gun and projectile weapon-based combat through first-person perspective; i.e., the player experiences the action through the eyes of a protagonist. Generally speaking, the first-person shooter shares common traits with other...
s are developing more advanced hotkey
Keyboard shortcut
In computing, a keyboard shortcut is a finite set of one or more keys that invoke a software or operating system operation when triggered by the user. A meaning of term "keyboard shortcut" can vary depending on software manufacturer...
layouts, allowing these genres to develop their own micromanagement skills.
Micromanagement in popular culture
- The popular Internet-distributed mockumentaryMockumentaryA mockumentary , is a type of film or television show in which fictitious events are presented in documentary format. These productions are often used to analyze or comment on current events and issues by using a fictitious setting, or to parody the documentary form itself...
series Pure PwnagePure PwnagePure Pwnage was an Internet-distributed, mockumentary series from ROFLMAO Productions. The fictional series purports to chronicle the life and adventures of Jeremy , a Canadian and self-proclaimed "pro gamer"...
coined the term "über-micro", a term describing unusually superior levels of micromanagement. In one episode, it was claimed that micromanagement was discovered in "The Battle of 1974". - In South KoreaSouth KoreaThe Republic of Korea , , is a sovereign state in East Asia, located on the southern portion of the Korean Peninsula. It is neighbored by the People's Republic of China to the west, Japan to the east, North Korea to the north, and the East China Sea and Republic of China to the south...
, the real-time strategy game StarCraftStarCraftStarCraft is a military science fiction real-time strategy video game developed by Blizzard Entertainment. The first game of the StarCraft series was released for Microsoft Windows on 31 March 1998. With more than 11 million copies sold worldwide as of February 2009, it is one of the best-selling...
is highly popular as a professional sport. The need to micromanage efficiently and multitask under pressure are regarded as features that make it suitable for top-level competitions. The game is broadcast on Korean national television, showing professional players' micromanagement skills.
See also
- Actions per minuteActions per minuteActions Per Minute, commonly abbreviated as APM, is a term used in the real time strategy field of cybersport which refers to the total number of actions that a player can perform in a minute....
- MicromanagementMicromanagementIn business management, micromanagement is a management style where a manager closely observes or controls the work of her or his subordinates or employees...
- MacromanagementMacromanagementMacromanagement is the act of leading decision makers or managing the managers. Macromanagement is a close concept to the economic concept of mechanism design....
- Real-time strategyReal-time strategyReal-time strategy is a sub-genre of strategy video game which does not progress incrementally in turns. Brett Sperry is credited with coining the term to market Dune II....
- Real-time tacticsReal-time tacticsReal-time tactics or RTT is a subgenre of tactical wargames played in real-time simulating the considerations and circumstances of operational warfare and military tactics...
- Turn-based strategyTurn-based strategyA turn-based strategy game is a strategy game where players take turns when playing...