XIII - Space of possibility and pacing in casual game design

As of recent years video gaming has become less of a foolish past time as the industry has grown, this is most evident in the Nintendo console, the Wii. A lot of its games are party or family based games that are quick to pick up and learn and have multiple challenges within for the player to continue to struggle with.

The reason that the Wii was so immensely successful was that it adopted group based, casual games and started to produce them on a large scale. This attracted not only the younger gamer audience, but people from all age groups who could play these casual games as a social activity because they are simple to play. Key points about why casual games like those on the Wii, or those made by PopCap are below:

·         Casual games 

o   Less Complex controls, gameplay and involvement. Their simplistic nature allows the player to pick up the game on a whim, play for a little while and then stop again. The games can still be complex, but it is a complex interaction of smaller objects that hides the games advanced nature, this will be explained later on.

·         Space of possibility 

o   Relates to player experience, covers all possible actions the player can make, the creation of structure that will play out in unpredictable ways.

·         Pacing

o   Overall rhythm of the game. This is the speed at which different parts of a game are put in motion; it crafts a players experience through MDA via relaxation, tension, repetition. The designer paces the game

There are two arch’s to pacing, the lower arch contains the relevant mechanics to keep a player involved in a game, and the upper arch is how long it takes the player to get bored with the game. The Lower arch is made up of, but not limited to:

·         Tension – The perceived danger, the illusion that your may become the weakest side in the games conflict.

·         Threat – This is when the players react to the power of opposing forces, effecting  the games state.

·         Movement impetus – The want to move forward, pushing the player towards a goal, make the player want to start and continue playing a game.

·          Tempo – The intensity of play, time between each significant decision that the player makes. Too fast can cause  ‘analysis paralysis’ were the player cannot keep up and starts to lose track of what is going on, too slow and the player will get bord.

In a casual game, large game space generates too many patterns of play, the player will be left with not enough time or too much time and the game will stagnate, while also game space that is too small has limited choices and becomes boring. The technique of restring this space, to still have fun in a casual game while giving the game longevity, keeping movement impetus with the player start to finish is key to the game being successful.  

In a casual game, the player does not want to have to remember the last x amount of games to know how to play or what to do, everything can be kept in short term memory,  too much information becomes confusing and too little becomes boring. One way to avoid this situation is to slowly introduce complexity into the game so that the learning curve seems to be a lot smaller. 

In PopCaps ‘Plants vs Zombies’ they do this by limiting the amount of enemy types and methods of which to destroy them slowly giving you more options. By the end of the game you have a pretty big arsenal that would be quite staggering to a new player, its due to a pattern of continuous learning that the player is able to easily absorb all this information and still enjoy the game on a casual basis.  

This topic has showed me how complex a casual game can be if the information is given to the player in small pieces. The patterns that the player plays through to complete a game becoming more intricate as they progress from a small game into a bigger more interesting game are more complicated than I would of first assumed.  

‘;..;’

SM – iHK