Erin Hoffman's Blog - Life, Addictive Game Mechanics, And The Truth Hiding In Bejeweled. The following blog post, unless otherwise noted, was written by a member of Gamasutra’s community. The thoughts and opinions expressed are those of the writer and not Gamasutra or its parent company. One of the occupational hazards of being a game designer is an obligation to play up-and-coming games, both to stay ahead of where the market is moving and to dig for signs of the One True Game Design, aka universal mechanics that move people. Lately there's been a lot of buzz around Bejeweled Blitz, so I dug in for a sample today. Blitz takes the familiar Bejeweled mechanic, itself going back along the Columns lineage in games, and makes you play it fast. They bolt on a bunch of social features -- leaderboards and achievements -- making it massively multiplayer in a lightweight but fun way.
No surprise it's sweeping through facebook, and a good time to be doing so. From a design analysis standpoint, Bejeweled's addictive elements are simple but profound: 1. So I get why it's addictive. What Games Are. If I want to keep people hooked, do I use barbs? I did some consulting for some student-level game developers last year, basically coming up with the core mechanics for a post-apocalyptic browser-based MMORPG. It was awesome. I mean, I'll be absolutely shocked if the project ever gets off the ground and releases something playable, but it was great for me because it offered a chance to take on new kinds of game design challenges and thus grow as a designer. There's a ton of ways in which designing MMORPG mechanics is identical to making a tabletop RPG, and an equal number of areas where the priorities lead you in the exact opposite direction.
Instead, I'm going to give an example of how the challenge of designing a successful community-based game (one that'll shrivel up and die if it can't hold onto its player base while capitalizing on it) quickly steers a designer into ethically dodgy territory. "Interesting! " "Oh, wait," I said to my brother. "Then you've got a lot of money? " ". . .Point. " Then he got an idea. Eesh. Analysis: The Psychology Behind Item Collecting And Achievement Hoarding. [Item-collecting has been a staple of video games for many years. What is it inside gamers' heads that makes us want to accumulate items and chase after Achievements? Gamasutra's Kris Graft speaks with the experts...] You may recall the eccentric Collyer Brothers. Homer and Langley, heirs of one of New York’s oldest families, lived in a Manhattan mansion in the first half of the 1900s.
There, the two became reclusive, boarding up their windows and accumulating over 100 tons of what most would classify as “junk” until the entire house was packed to the ceiling – anything from bundles of newspapers to the chassis of a Model T to 14 full-sized pianos. They were compulsive hoarders, and I think there’s a little bit of Collyer in all of us gamers.
The Obsessive Compulsive Foundation explains that in compulsive hoarders: Sound familiar? But game designers know that it’s pretty damn easy to tap into this deep-rooted need to collect and accumulate. False Sense Of Accomplishment? Features - Addiction and the Structural Characteristics of Massively Multiplayer Online Games. Addiction and the Structural Characteristics of Massively Multiplayer Online Games I recently completed a study at the University of Hawai‘i at Manoa finding that gamers’ activities and preferences within games could be linked to addiction. The study looked at players within massively multiplayer online games, for instance Blizzard’s World of Warcraft or Square Enix’s Final Fantasy XI. The study, which examined in-game behaviors on a number of levels, found that playing with real life friends, side activities like exploration or taking pictures, and membership to social guilds may be related to less harmful play.
On the other hand, stealing from or otherwise manipulating players, along with membership to more goal-oriented “hardcore” raid guilds may be related to addiction. Player versus player activity was related to both less damaging and addictive behaviors on different levels of data analysis. “There are a million little pieces working together in these games. Pleasure Systems in the Brain. ARU home page | ARU Profile | Addiction Primer | Biological Basis | Research Findings University Courses | Opportunities | Research Reports | Feedback From M.A.
Bozarth (1994). Pleasure systems in the brain. In D.M. Warburton (ed.), Pleasure: The politics and the reality (pp. 5-14 + refs). New York: John Wiley & Sons. Michael A. Neurological research has identified a biological mechanism mediating behavior motivated by events commonly associated with pleasure in humans. Motivation & Reward Motivation can be considered under two general rubrics—appetitive and aversive motivation. Behaviorism traditionally rejects the notion that subjective experience has a critical role in determining behavior. In general, events that serve as positive reinforcers produce approach behavior defined as appetitive motivation. A Biological Basis of Appetitive Motivation and Reward Reward Substrate Identified by Electrical Brain Stimulation Reward Substrate Identified by Chemical Brain Stimulation. Define Hard: Six ways to make your MMO difficult. The problem with calling something hard or easy is that it's a subjective opinion.
What is easy for one person might be hard for someone else. When I was younger, I had a very narrow definition of things I considered to be important attributes. If you were talented in those attributes, I respected you as a peer. As I grew older, and particularly as I began managing employees, I learned that there isn't just one set of skills that are superior to others. People are diverse and can be absolutely brilliant in one area and very obtuse and ignorant in another. As a manager, it became important to recognize these talents in order to set people up for success. Today, I have a different outlook. Some people are mechanical. The result of all this diversity is that there is no universal definition of HARD or EASY. Why is this important for MMOs? Types of Difficulty in MMOs. 5 Creepy Ways Video Games Are Trying to Get You Addicted.
So, the headlines say somebody else has died due to video game addiction. Yes, it's Korea again. What the hell? Look, I'm not saying video games are heroin. I totally get that the victims had other shit going on in their lives. But, half of you reading this know a World of Warcraft addict and experts say video game addiction is a thing.
So here's the big question: Are some games intentionally designed to keep you compulsively playing, even when you're not enjoying it? Oh, hell yes. . #5. If you've ever been addicted to a game or known someone who was, this article is really freaking disturbing. "Each contingency is an arrangement of time, activity, and reward, and there are an infinite number of ways these elements can be combined to produce the pattern of activity you want from your players. " Notice his article does not contain the words "fun" or "enjoyment. " "...at this point, younger gamers will raise their arms above their head, leaving them vulnerable. " So What's The Problem?
#4. . #3. Features - Psychology is Fun. [In this thought-provoking piece, psychology researcher and author Clark takes a look at how psychology and can must be applied to game development, to produce works that engage audiences -- offering up concrete examples of the right techniques.] Gaming's core is fun, and psychology is fun's touchstone. This article restricts itself to psychology's most foundational, most immediately-applicable methods for crafting sticky, captivating experiences. From behaviorism's methods for structuring overpowering rewards, to motivational theories on generating wants and needs, to hybrid theories like flow, it is no longer fiscally responsible for games companies to shun psychology. Let's jump right in. Pleasure first, and then, excuse from pain, shape every move that we will ever make -- so say the behaviorists. It may sound callous, or reductionist, until we realize that the overwhelming majority of life's rewards and punishments are too tiny or timeworn to remember.
Let's talk about sex. Features - Postcard from GDC 2004: 14 Ways of Drawing Players in with an Opening Cinematic. David Freeman, author of Creating Emotion in Games and popular game industry writing consultant, spoke this afternoon about fourteen techniques that a game designer can use to draw players into a game through the use of an opening cinematic. Freeman noted that although pre-rendered opening scenes seem to be on the decline, there will always be a "beginning" to any story, and finding a captivating way to deliver that beginning can be the key to drawing a player into a game.
As he explained the fourteen techniques, Freeman played the opening clips of fourteen movies and television shows, each one demonstrating the principle he was exploring. 1. Flavor Scenes. In this opening, the event may not have a great deal to do with the plot of the movie or game, but serves as a scene-setter and taste of thing to come. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. Features - Improving Player Choices. Because it is simply one of the most powerful aspects of fun in gameplay, we need to look more closely at choice as an aspect of fun. What makes a choice interesting versus uninteresting? How can you design choices that are more interesting than not?
One of the most important aspects of choice is consequence. For a game to engage a player's mind, each choice must alter the course of the game. Remember, the player wants one thing more than anything else, and that is to win. As a designer, this is what you must strive for. If there are decisions in your game that seem "inconsequential" or "minor," you have a problem. But, unless your game is an arcade-style shooter, the decisions you ask your players to make shouldn't all be life and death. In order to create a truly engaging game, you want some peaks and valleys.
Types of decisions It's easy to say that games should have interesting choices, but why is one choice more interesting than another? Decision types Dilemmas Cake-cutting dilemma. Features - Implementing Stories in Massively Multiplayer Games. Why Tell Stories? People like stories; when they play games, part of what they do is play a grown-up version of pretend. When we played as children, we were devising our own stories. Players of massively multiplayer online game, when thrust into a new world, will create their own stories lines. People do this all the time; story is woven into the fabric of our daily lives ("Boy, you should hear what happened to me on my way to work this morning...
" "That guy at the check out stand; what a jerk! " "What is with Jennifer today? ") You're already telling a story, whether you meant to or not. "Montage is based on what is known as the ‘Kulishev Effect' -- this early Russian film-maker played with his footage, gluing together man's face and then a shot of a plate with food, or the same face and then a shot of naked girl.... The current state of MMOG stories… Story = change due to conflict. That is pretty much a universal definition of what story is. Features - Interview: Evolution and Risk: CCP on the Freedoms of EVE Online. Icelandic developers CCP are based in the northernmost capital city in the world; tiny, friendly Reykjvik, with its black mountains, expensive beer and icy seas.
It's a geologically dramatic backdrop for a community whose continued success is doing much to redefine the landscape of MMOs. This is not a project that has relied on predefined templates for its success, and CCP are forthright in their opinions as to the significance of the directions their project has taken. Now independent and publishing online, CCP are writing their own future with the beautiful and foreboding EVE Online - a game whose beauty, like Iceland itself, is something of an acquired taste. Answering our many questions on the growth of the iconoclastic space RPG was Nathan Richardsson, who left Iceland Telecom, the company that handles CCP's server hosting and customer support, to become senior producer on the EVE project in early 2004. We fully understand the reason behind sharding, instancing and the PvE focus.
GDC 10: Theme is Not Meaning- Destructoid. Soren Johnson spent five years working on the Civilization series for Firaxis, eventually landing the job of lead designer for Civilization IV. He also did work on Spore, amongst many other things. He also gave the keynote address of the 2010 Serious Games Summit. Johnson's talk, "Theme is Not Meaning," opened with a simple question: who decides the meaning of a game? The designer, or the player? Hit the jump for the answer to that question, and a summary of Johnson's keynote.
It's the player. The designer might want a mechanic or a story to mean one thing, but the player is the one intimately dealing with that game, and so his decision as to what the overall theme is will always be the correct one. When comparing a game's theme versus a game's mechanics, though, what defines that game's ultimate meaning? So, thinking about theme, which is the true successor to Warcraft: World of Warcraft, or Starcraft? The actual mechanics, however, don't jibe with this. But can games be scholarship? Dramatic Play: The Near-Future of Interactive Narrative – The Narrative Design Explorer™ What is the future of video games? This is a large, if not insurmountable question, especially when considering the increasing diversification of styles within the medium. ‘Indie’, ‘casual’, ‘core’, ‘mature’; the labels continue to proliferate, identifying specialized niches of styles, however real or unreal, within the larger ‘video game’.
Forming at present is a new niche, one that threatens to pull away from the classic play centric design paradigm. It’s forming in the cubicles over at Visceral, down at the newly acquired Bioware, up at Ubisoft and out east at Studio 38. Figure 1: Interactive Narrative Design Many are aiming with different titles and terms, but the goal is the same – to transplant the player into the video game by all means of his visual and aural faculties; into a believable drama where he is actor, this is dramatic play; Interactive Drama that utilizes interaction rather than description to tell a story. The Player as Reader Figure 2: Classical Dramatic Theory. Masters of Narrative Design 9™: Chris Crawford – The Narrative Design Explorer™
Chris Crawford - Author, Teacher, and Interactive Narrative Designer This is an ongoing NDE series featuring interviews with Masters of Narrative Design™. While ‘narrative design’ is not a term in common usage, the design of story experiences is nothing new. As game developers are increasingly looking to create meaningful interactive narrative experiences, looking at the lessons learned by these masters becomes increasingly valuable. Today’s master is the Moses of game design himself, Chris Crawford. Chris began the renaissance we all now exist in with the likes of Alan Kay. He taught himself how to program and brought the legend of Atari to life. Stephen E. Chris Crawford: I tend to think of myself more as the soldier who falls on the barbed wire so the others can climb over his body. We’ll get more into your selfless nobility later, you are currently Owner of Storytron can you explain what you do there? CC: We have built an entire development environment for interactive storytelling.
Features - Dramatic Play. Features - Heavy Dreams: Pushing Interactive Narrative. Features - The Designer's Notebook: Dramatic Novelty in Games and Stories. Features - The Designer's Notebook: Three Problems for Interactive Storytellers. Features - The Designer's Notebook: Sandbox Storytelling. Altug Isigan's Blog - Combining Reward Structures With Narrative Bits.
GDC Europe: To Succeed In Free-To-Play, 'Exploit Human Weaknesses' VGS 09: Game Designers - Everything You Know Is Wrong. Timothy Ryan's Blog - MMO Balancing Techniques. Features - The Designer's Notebook: Selling Hate and Humiliation. Joshua McDonald's Blog - Standard MMO Character Roles: The Good and the Bad.
Features - Boss Battle Design and Structure. Features - MMO Class Design: Up With Hybrids! An Economic Argument. Features - Rethinking the Trinity of MMO Design.