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.  

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SM – iHK

XII - Chance Verse Skill

Chance in a game

Most games contain some factors that are random or not repeatable, that is because they are an important aspect to most games. Games with a focus on luck, are easier to approach for casual gamers as they do not have to put as much effort into finding the patterns of skill to the game, in short, it allows a game to be learned a lot faster. 

Even though the game is harder if at all possible to be mastered, so long as the gameplay does not become to overly repetitive or boring to the player, they will continue to play on and try to do as well as possible with their limited control over the game. This is due to the chance to luckily score high even though there is the possibility of playing for an extended period of time and get nothing, there is also the chance to play for a short period of time and get everything all along with minimal effort.

Delay or Prevent solvability 

A game is solvable if the possibility space is known ahead of time and can be exploited. Of course it can built into a game for the illusion of control, you can think that if you do X and then Y you will come the end of the game, but with chance there is the option that you will not get X when you aim for it and thus you must try again. Once a player solves a game, the game loses its uncertain outcome, its struggle. Chance eliminates some of this loss by making each game a different kind of struggle, whether it gets easier or harder the next play through, it is still different to the previous game.

Making game-play competitive for all players

Introducing these random elements into a competitive game, for example Mario Kart and the semi random items you receive, gives every player a chance to win, while also allowing the other players to blame bad luck for losing. Luck in a competitive game adds variety and prevents absolute mastery of the game, you can be perfect at the game, but if luck is you against you then no matter how could you are, you still have that chance of losing. The level of excitement or tension created by chance increases in direct proportion to how much you have riding on the results, since there are unknown elements the decisions become more complicated and compelling to make.

Mechanics of chance

·         Dice

o   Always random, each roll could be anything

o   Probability to a X, not a certainty

·         Cards

o   Set amount of cards in a game

o   Revealing a card effects probability of other cards in the game

o   Probability resets on collection

·         Pseudo-RNG

o   Not true random – factored in by a code, close enough 

·         Hidden info

o   Easy for a player to get confused and frustrated

o   Understand the games mechanics allows a player to attempt to track what is going on – i.e. fog of war, league of legends – not knowing what type of enemy your going up against when choosing your fighter

·         Chance and Skill

o   Measured randomness, nature of random elements are unknown and can be planned by the player. 

Elements of Strategic skill

‘We play games and enjoy the process because we are seeking to master the pattern in the game’ Ralph Koster – A Theory of Fun for Games Design

A good game is a series of interesting decisions, whether you plan on your next or not, you always decide on what to do now, chance decides a lot of your moves but there are always decisions to be made by the player. 

Types of decisions

·         Obvious Decisions

o   Clear choice to make for your benefit

o   Automating obvious decisions give room for the player to make the exciting ones

o   Add tension 2 obvious decisions makes them more interesting

·         Meaningless decisions

o   Usually better to eliminate entirely

o   Narrative with no game change, just story / aesthetic

·         Blind decisions

o   No information to base the choice on

·         Trade-off

o   Choose one or the other, cannot have both

·         Dilemma

o   Always at a loss

o   Only chose which loss is better for you

o   Effect how much of a loss it is 

·         Risk versus reward trade-offs

o   Make small safe moves

§  Low rewards

o   Make risky moves

§  Big rewards

Skill in a game enhances choice by giving the player control over what is happening. It allows the player to gather the information available and then make decisions based on the options available. Random chance can make a game feel unfair and frustrating, or boring as the player has no control over what happens. This is because pure chance doesn't have any interesting decision-making without some form of skill behind the decision.

Mechanics of skill

·         Trade-offs

o   Spend resources wisely

·         Purchase

o   Same as a trade-off

·         Limited abilities

o   One time use only

·         Dynamic abilities

o   Recharge over time

·         Explicit choice

o   Choose one or the other

·         Negotiation

o   Includes meta-game

o   Interaction skills

Overall, I think it is clear that a little bit of both is required for a successful game. An entirely tactical game can be extremely over bearing on a player, limiting its target audience to a select few hard-core gamers, while on the other hand a game based entirely on luck would be unfair to a player and eventually the player would find themselves getting bored and giving up. A good mix of the two makes things a lot more exciting and sustains gameplay over a longer period of time.

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SM – iHK

XI – The Inevitable Post!

Tools for Creating Dramatic game Dynamics

We were recently given the LeBlanc document related to a games Uncertainty and Inevitability. It discusses how drama is a desirable quality of games and how it is a part of a games play content – it is a kind of fun. It also states how we cannot create drama, only the circumstances from which drama will emerge, which I half agree with but only due to the games that are solely based on storylines such as Heavy Rain, which is basically an interactive movie with immense control, similar in fashion to the battle books were you control were your character goes and what items he uses.

Aesthetic Model: Encompass our understanding of what drama is and how it occurs.
Dramatic Arc: Central conflict of narrative, creates tension that accumulates as story builds to a climax and then dissipates as conflict is resolved

What is dramatic tension? 

Dramatic tension is the level of emotional investment in the story’s conflict, the sense of apprehension and urgency with which we await the story’s outcome. It gives the story a sense of wholeness, that it is a complete work with a start, middle and end. All drama originates from conflict – in one form or another, in a game the conflict comes from the contest around which the game is built. For example, a story driven game has its drama in the character arcs, a FPS game has drama on its inherent conflict, kill or be killed etc. Dramatic tension is the product of:

•   Uncertainty: The sense that the outcome of the contest is still unknown, any player can still win or lose.
• Inevitability: The sense that the contest is moving forward towards a resolution, the outcome is imminent.

Without uncertainty, the outcome of the game becomes a forgone conclusion and the players become spectators.
Without inevitability the outcome of the conflict seems distant and players are given little incentive to invest their emotions in the contest.

Over the course of the game we expect the inevitability to increase and the uncertainty to decrease, the climax of the game happens at the moment of realisation, when the outcome is clear

Dramatic uncertainty is needed to create and on-going sense that the game is  a close contest and yet undecided,  uncertainty and inevitability are caused by different systems and mechanics such as a negative feed system which is used to decrease the gap between the leading players and the players that are falling behind.

However they can cause a game to stagnate as they remove inevitability, and so enter the positive feedback system which gives players in the lead an advantage, adding to the obvious outcome of the game and also ensures that the game does not take too long and keeps the players from losing interest.

There are two methods of applying these feedback systems;

• Force - Manipulating the state of the contest itself
•  Illusion - The game seems closer than it actually is

Pseudo Feedback, illusion and dramatic uncertainty 

It seems as though there is a negative feedback system in play, but in fact there is not. It is just the illusion of one, they can be implemented in many ways and here are a few of them listed in the document:

• Escalation: Score changes more dramatically the longer the game has been running, an example of this would be in Tetris, the longer you play the more points you get per line.

• Hidden Energy: creates dramatic uncertainty by manipulating players understanding of the score. It is easy to think of this as a starting resource, or a special item that can be used at any point in the game, using it early on can give that player the lead and it can seem as though they are doing better than the other, but factoring in the hidden energy the score is relatively equal.

• Fog of War: This is about the control of information. You cannot be sure of how well you are doing in comparison to the opponent until you discover what they have been doing under the fog of war. It keeps the score unknown, or repeatedly hides the score slowly adding more and more information until the climax is imminent.

• Decelerator: This is when the score gets slowed down, at one section it progresses slowly and once you are past that it continues as normal. It creates the illusion that the players are close, but whoever reaches the slow section first will also more than likely leave it first as well and then the score will return to its original form.

Dramatic Inevitability – Force

The largest classification of inevitability is the Ticking Clock under which everything else derives. It is the countdown that you see in every game, it can be the health bars in a fighting game, the resources and amount of units in an RTS game, the amount of pickups in a FPS game or a literal clock in any type of game. It measures a player’s progress through the game and gives a sense of how far the end might be, it is a matter of the player’s perception. 

Resolution

In this documents final pages it states how tension cannot rise forever, it needs to drop to give the player a sense of closure on the game, it needs to reach the climax, then change direction and fade away. Sometimes the resolution can occur in the meta-game, but there is still a resolution.

This was an interesting read, it gave insight into how we should plan the methods of progress through a game, it is hard to remember at times that these also apply to solo games against the computer. A lot of these topics will be used later in my computer games design course and also in my own personal projects.

SM – iHK

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X - MDA

MDA: A Formal Approach to Game Design and Game Research

In this document, I discovered the MDA, which stands for Mechanics Dynamics and Aesthetics. The idea is that it will bridge the gap between game design, development, criticism and research while also improving the iterative processes, making it easier to break down, analyse and redesign a broad class of different game designs and classes. 

Mechanics: The components of the game, the rules that the game state must adhere to
Dynamics: What happens when you interact with the game
Aesthetics: How the player feels, emotional interaction with the game

Lens / Layer Each of these can be thought of as a lens, a layer that is separate, but is linked to the others. As you look through one lens to another, you see how its attributes affect all of the other layers.

Although MDA is a great method of game design, it was noted in the document that games are unpredictable as they are consumables. Every game is eventually discarded; it is when that is the issue. It is up to the designer to give the player as much as possible to consume from the game to keep them wanting more from it.

Perspective As a designer, it is natural to work through a game starting with the mechanics, getting the core gameplay working, after which you move onto and then finally you work on aesthetics, the visual and emotional output of the game. However it is also useful to look at it the other way around, the player will notice the aesthetics before anything else, getting them involved from the very beginning is very important and is something a games designer should always be aware of.

 

Describing words - Advanced Edition! It is no longer acceptable in the games community to only say a game is fun, or has good character design. To people in the design community, the terminology of describing game aesthetics is rapidly growing. This is a list of LeBlanc’s main aesthetic traits a game can contain, but there are still more that can be added to this list;

• Sensation (Sense Pleasure)
• Fantasy (Make-believe)
• Narrative (Drama)
• Challenge (Obstacle Course)
• Fellowship (Social Framework)
• Discovery (Exploring Uncharted Territory)
• Expression (Self Discovery)
• Submission (Pastime)

These are some examples given in the MDA document:

1.  Charades: Fellowship, Expression, Challenge.
2. Quake: Challenge, Sensation, Competition, Fantasy.
3. The Sims: Discovery, Fantasy, Expression, Narrative.
4. Final Fantasy: Fantasy, Narrative, Expression, Discovery, Challenge, Submission.

Aesthetic Models From these terms we can now start to evaluate games, tally up all of the aesthetical output into a chart and work backwards through the dynamics and mechanics to get a full understanding of what went into the game and hopefully what made them successful or unsuccessful. This style of analysing games will have a major impact on our own understanding of what makes a game successful and should shape how we design our own games.

Player type looking at an aesthetic model you can build a chart of what type of player you are aiming for. Taking target audience into consideration it is a lot easier to build a MDA structure that will be a success. You can look at players in many different ways, but knowing whether you want your game to be focused on competitive or cooperative, social or a solo game then you will need to build the correct MDA into your game for those players to want to play the game.

Reading this document has helped me to think about games design in a different way. Before I thought as a player, aesthetics first, I would think, if I played this game I want to see X first and although I don’t think that is an incorrect way to look at it, it is definitely not the only way to look at it, and both are required before any major work can commence.
Even though the document had quite a few awkward words that needed some Google’ing, I found it a very good read and recommend it as a great way of analysing games. 

SM - iHK

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IX Zotero - Bibliography creation

I have recently tried to get my brain around using a Firefox extension called Zotero, it basically lets me save a book of a site like amazon, and it gathers all the relevant bibliography information. I attempted to just do a little research and see how it works; these are the results that i got that are relevant to my course:

Busby, J., Parrish, Z. & Wilson, J., 2009. Mastering Unreal Technology: v. 1: Introduction to Level Design with Unreal Engine 3: A Beginner’s Guide to Level Design in Unreal Engine 3 1st ed., Sams.

Autodesk, 2009. Autodesk 3ds Max 2010 Foundation for Games, Focal Press. 

Susaeta, H. et al., 2010. From MMORPG to a Classroom Multiplayer Presential Role Playing Game. Journal of Educational Technology & Society, 13(3), pp.257-269.

Schrader, P. & McCreery, M., 2008. The acquisition of skill and expertise in massively multiplayer online games. Educational Technology Research & Development, 56(5/6), pp.557-574.

I find this programe extreamly over complicated, or perhaps its just the way that the ui is setup, from the way that me and my peers have been talking - everyone seems to dislike this piece of software, not because it isnt very good, but because it has a very long winded way of doing things.

Although, however complicated it is, i think it is going to be extreamly useful in the future when i am required to build a bibliography of my own, even with the awkward learning curve it will save me a lot of time stumbling in the dark.

VIII Games Britannica - Ancient games

Recently watched an interesting show titled Games Britannica which looked through the ages at some ancient games. It talked about how some games had already existed before the roman conquests showing how Britain was already quite developed, however these games were not for fun or amusement, they were generally played by fortune tellers and druids to predict future events.

A pre roman game was found, without rules among various different surgical items of the time, showing it was a learned man, with some form of medical experiences. It is thought that the man was a druid who practiced fortune telling, the two sides of the board were used perhaps to predict the outcome of battles or things of such nature. However it is all speculation without the rules, but it more than likely had some abstract more than life meaning.

There are also remains of marks people had carved into the stone of medieval churches, while they were waiting they used these carvings to play games and pass the time trying to get through that human only trait of boredom.

There are many examples of where other ancient games came from and how they have evolved to this day and age, however the only one that stood out to me, was a game named The Game of Gospels. This is a very tactical game, which is the reason it stands out to me, the general play method is that one player is light, the other is dark, the dark player’s counters surround the light players, the objective for the light is to get his king counter to any corner of the game board, which represented a saint. The aim of the dark colour was to stop him. This was a war game, and thus each counter represented soldiers, either protecting their king or trying to stop the king, you could remove your opposition by getting 2 of your counters either side of theirs. 

I really admire how these people made their own games to pass the time; it shows how anybody can make a good successful game. These people did it without any other games to draw ideas from, it would have been a lot harder for them and they already had good functional games, even if they were used for other means. The first episode is interesting and the next instalment of the show moves further along the timeline discussing newer British games, when I get around to watching the rest of the series I will be sure to keep this blog up to date with its various topics.

SM – iHK

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VII – Gamasutra ^,^

This article by Doug Church is about how game design has been trailing behind in its evolution, which he believes is due to its lack of a common language to be employed when analysing games. In his article titled Gamasutra, he states how “the primary inhibitor of evolution is the lack of a common vocabulary”, their needs to be a shared language of games design that can be applied to any game of any genre. 

Specific genres are still coming along in leaps and bounds, but it gets stuck there, the new design techniques and styles don’t get transferred across the full field of games design and this led Church to develop the idea of FADT – Formal Abstract Design Tools. He believes that we can pick apart games, get down to the core reason of what was good / successful and what was bad / failing and that knowledge can be applied to future games design and allow better, greater games to be developed, he also makes a note to say that although some tools / features that are successful in one game, may not be so great in another. 

He lists a few tools that are common in most games, however there are many more that are not included and that as time progresses the list of tools will increase. Controls are a major tool that shapes gameplay; he states how you can play one game with one set of controls and another, similar game with a completely different set of controls. It’s these controls that shapes player behaviour in a game, once they gradually get to understand the games consistent controls, they will start to develop their own game play styles, experiment and take risks with the games physics and laws, planning on how to reach the next area for example. 

These controls involve the player in the game world, providing just a few actions in a game like Mario and giving them a lot of opportunities to use these abilities causes the player to start and understand the mechanics that makes up the game. Once they are involved in the game world they can take attempt to take control over their own path and play with how to get from one point to another. It’s when they start to experiment that the games mechanics need to be in top shape so that it can anticipate all of the player’s actions and have the character and world respond in a way that is cannon. Even if it all plays out and the player fails in whatever task they were performing, let’s say it was jumping from one tree to another, they will understand why it failed and may attempt again, however if they failed because the next tree wasn’t climbable then it won’t fit into the game state, the illusion of realism that the game was aiming for has been vanquished and the player will feel lost and confused. This ends in the player getting frustrated at the game and possibly having then quit. 

Perceivable consequences can make or a break a game. A game reacts based on your actions and input and moreover, you understand why it reacts the way it does. The player can take a chance, take the left or right road can be totally random, only to find that they took the wrong path and are now dead. This can leave the player frustrated as, how could they have known on a random decision? But in that form of free roaming game, it is that element of surprise and not knowing that can make a game great, but they draw heavily from storyline which is another tool that defines a game.

Story can often take a lot of control away from a game if it is incorporated too heavily. To compensate for this, the player is given more control over small areas of a game. Any fan of the traditional RPG genre will usually enjoy the task of going through the games set paths and getting to the end of the story, as that is one of the most thrilling parts of the game. It’s an interactive story that you control, even though control is limited. The work around for this limitation is to make each area of the game a game in its own right, such as the item system becoming a collection system, the cut scenes becoming interactive, etc.

Story has a massive effect on a game; it’s hard to play any game without a theme and story behind it. Even generic sport games are based on real life which has its own unique story to it. Intention and perceivable consequences can often take a backseat with a heavily scripted and story driven storyline, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. In recent open world sand box games, the same situation of going left or right is still in the game, and you have to guess which is the best, but you have that other option to explore the game world provided for you and finding that hidden manuscript that details the movements of a gang or rogues so you know that they are down that right path. This can add a huge sense of realism to the game, the option to research everything and go into every situation totally prepared or take to the unknown – the faster path to just complete the storyline with a harder path set before. Giving that option, the player can use intention to choose their own path through the storyline of the game.

Intention is another tool that Church talks about. The player will have some means by which to complete the tasks set before him, planning ahead with the intent of being able to pass any future obstacles with ease, moving forward with a purpose. Accumulating goals is a great away to give the player an option on how to move ahead, planning ahead on how to accomplish each goal. 

There are many other tools which Church doesn’t go into great detail about, such as cooperation, conflict and confusion, but the three big ones he talks about is intention, consequence and story. They are involved I would say most if not all games of the past decade and are only going to be so much more over used now that the topic of games design is being more precisely researched with more and more people discussing the topic.

SM – iHK

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