Since Game Dev, Forensics, Math and stuff, I've been thinking about what makes up a game's design...
So, what is in game design?
There seems to be some established ideas that make up a game and these are the focus of most of the reading I’ve been doing around the subject and it essentially boils down to having fun - and anything and everything that influences it. I will try to formalise these set ideas later but for now I’d like to explore the concepts as they appear to me.
I think also, that anything that makes a player play longer is tapping into the right stuff. You might call this sensation an ‘addiction’ factor but when you think about it, you’re normally addicted to something because it pleases you or is necessary for you in some respect. A lot of this comes down to the player, the person who’s decided to buy your game and spend some of their time not making money or doing anything else but spending time for themselves. Its perhaps selfish but let’s make no mistake, its to entertain and for self-enjoyment. Nothing wrong with that, but let’s not forget this.
It's interesting to think how perhaps games might provide more than pure unadulterated enjoyment, like say teaching you about strategy and morals and perhaps leadership and commitments. These perhaps are things that games could be more than just about a casual, temporary and disposable enjoyment high called fun.
When I think about the games that I enjoyed the most, it was the sense of being in control and responsible for that control I think I enjoyed the most. In this way, I enjoyed real-time strategy games the most. The likes of Warcraft, Red Alert, Dune and StarCraft.
For instance, if you’re in control of an army and it's up to you to lead them to victory, you take it seriously. Why? Because I think you enjoy a newfound sense - of duty, but more than this, you want that duty, you’re engaged in this new idea that you’ve not practised sensing before. It pleases you.
Perhaps it is because you’ve not been a team captain before or been the alpha male or maybe it's just that you relish being in this now newfound position that you’ve not been in before and it's now so stimulating to be in it. That is a pleasing situation.
You might say that this is what fun is.
Shooting bad guys or zombies is not about being susceptible to gun violence or breeding the next pro-violence youth, its about providing a new experience, that which can inform the youth perhaps – leaving the gun-play in the virtual world because it becomes obvious that in the virtual world, you are a different person, which is why you are there in the first place and that outside the game, you’re not a rock ’n roll, gun touting madman(and there are police and jails on the outside to remind us that this is the case).
That’s an experience you can have in the game so you don’t need to try and have it outside the game. In CBT ie Cognitive behavioural techniques, you are put in a position to experience something so that you can learn more about it. I feel this is the same with gaming worlds and gaming situations. Anyway, many will disagree with me but whatever.
In this way, providing new experiences to players is important. The other thing I think about when I play a game is the satisfaction I get while in-game. This is one level up from the satisfaction of a new experience, this is the satisfaction of something happening in the game – interactivity and feedback i.e. the way it happens. I’ve read that they call these game mechanisms. I think having a cool weapon animation is cool, I like the way when the player runs, he’s weapon ways in front of him, or how a player can slip of a ledge but by default catch the ledge before plundering to his demise ideas – all satisfying, all game mechanism.
In Doom, the way the shotgun reloads with that pleasing ‘chuck-chuck’ while in time with the animation of the cartridges being reloaded by the player, it offers a pleasing experience perhaps because it’s almost real or because it’s been thought about by the developers and you appreciate that thinking. This might even touch on the subject of game-play, the way in which the developers have thought about how the characters move, how they do what they do and the smart ways in which you think they do it – all products of prior- thinking and you can appreciate that. Maybe that’s what gameplay is, the execution of thoughtfulness in the game.
Same goes for storylines, in-depth well thought out storylines are much more interesting and appreciated than those so thinly smeared you can hardly taste them.
So, it helps to suspend this reality(now, outside the game) and allows you to be morphed and immersed into a new one. It's not about the violence, it's about the feedback and control that makes you want to see “what’s more, I like this let’s see what else there is?”. Some might even call that adventure.
Ultimately the game is there is please the player - its entertainment so anything from pleasing graphics to pleasing music all the way to how the character moves is a contributing factor to ‘pleasing’ the player. So, in this way, I think being pleased is fun and it is the key in may respects, in whichever way you can deliver it to the player within the game.
You can probably get more formal about this, and deconstruct the elements of fun and pleasing and for one, that might be a useful way to go about trying to ensure you’re representing as much as you can in a new game when thinking about designing one.
Sure there is more to it than this, a game can be pleasing because of the rules, the limitations and the strategy. Probably a lot more too. There is a lot that makes up a game, including the graphics, physics and enemy behaviours and AI. All these things to me seem to be rooted as a derivative of pleasure or having fun.
Backgrounds, stories, artwork, gameplay and how games deliver their experience through their characters and in-play delivery such as rules, objectives all contribute to a pleasing experience.
Well-thought-out aspects of the game are pleasing.
So, in summary, I think I can best put it this way: Please the player and spend some time thinking about how to do that. Anything else will either annoy the player or have him reaching for the T.V remote.
Some texts I've read include these elements:
- Having the player feel good about their own choices and being able to allow for multiple, non-trivial choices.
This one is quite interesting because there are so many aspects that you can please a player. You can appeal to their choices, their bravery, their ability and skill and even their emotions or strategies. But essentially these are all incarnations of making the player feel good about himself and the situation he puts himself into or you allow him to put himself into.
And the last bit is also key, allowing the player to represent himself as best as possible in the game, giving and allowing him to make the choices that he feels pleases him. If that means making it possible to colour in his boots, or grow his muscles or change his appearance, attitude or whatever in a way that more-closely puts himself or the person he wants to be in the game - be it real or pseudo, so be it.
In Morris and Rollings' Game Architecture and Design, this is represented as allowing the player to make and have interesting choices
Another interesting concept that touches on ways to please a player, is asking questions about what kinds of stuff pleases players in general. In the book x, it talks about human tendencies and instincts and that some instincts are inherently pleasing and thus should be capitalised on in games. These include the instinct to collect things and to complete things, protecting others, say those more vulnerable such as small children and woman (if you’re a man), the inherent fear that humans have of nature and I think inevitable the unknown, and our need for shelter. Another was inquisitiveness.
Manipulating these aspects and others could radically help you attract players by appealing to these types of things. There are no doubt countless others too.
- Interaction
I think this is about seeing your choices come to fruition, the feedback of it is how the game portrays it visually on-screen. So, Interaction and feedback is an important way of pleasing the player, or at least getting him/her involved or reacting to that feedback.
Another aspect it maintaining attention in a game is not distracting the player in the game from a pleasing experience, not annoying the player and maintaining a level of interest or fun. Perhaps this that what fun is, the maintenance of pleasure.
Here are some other keywords that come to mind from recent reading:
- Variety - keep things new ie make new experiences
- Encourage drive and exploration
- Involve the player, make him or her care about what’s happening in the game
- Drama and dramatics has many elements in composing an enrapturing experience
- Make it worth the players while to spend more time and more time
- Reward the player, provide progressively challenging levels and ideas
- Research what target market your game seeks to provide pleasure to incl. demographics
- You need to be different and have unique selling points to distinguish your game from everyone else’s.
There are some other things like how the game's interface is laid out and how if it contributes to the game in intuitive ways is more useful than just showing scores and health.
There seems to be a lot that can make or break a game and perhaps being cognizant of what they are is a useful approach, but doing too dogmatic might be limiting if you lose sight of the things peripheral that makes things fun and discount them altogether.
When I started writing this, I began thinking that you could be scientific about it, define all the elements of fun and be done with it. The more I think about it the more I realise that it is possible – you just need to focus on the things that support the player's pleasure sensors.
Coming up with that list of things is less scientific however and depends on how you determine what fun comprises of. And I think that like most things, anything you try to do, is possible if you put your heart and soul into it. Be that coming up with a scientific way to define happiness, game concepts etc.
Game design in general seems to me to be a constant narrative and reflection, an ever-growing discovery and thought process into what ways that might please the player.