Game Design
Erin Hoffman's Blog - Life, Addictive Game Mechanics, And The Truth Hiding In Bejeweled
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.
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.
Analysis: The Psychology Behind Item Collecting And Achievement Hoarding
<a href="http://adserver.adtechus.com/adlink/3.0/5242.1/2382763/0/0/ADTECH;alias=Gamasutra_Console_PC_IMU1_300x250;loc=300;key='+adkeys+';grp='+adrand+'" target="_blank"><img src="http://adserver.adtechus.com/adserv/3.0/5242.1/2382763/0/0/ADTECH;alias=Gamasutra_Console_PC_IMU1_300x250;loc=300;key='+adkeys+';grp='+adrand+'" border="0" width="0" height="0"></a> [ 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.
Features - 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.
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.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.
Define Hard: Six ways to make your MMO difficult
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 .
5 Creepy Ways Video Games Are Trying to Get You Addicted
Tips on Developing an MMO Economy, Part I
Glow effects simulate the characteristics of a lens that suffers from light bleeding due to a high dynamic range. In photography, most cameras are set to use an average metering algorithm. The camera will analyze the frame and take the average exposure as the midpoint. Anything outside the camera... Read more » When light bounces off a surface, it contributes to the amount of ambient lighting, or environment lighting we see.
[ 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. <a href="http://adserver.adtechus.com/adlink/3.0/5242.1/2382763/0/0/ADTECH;loc=300;key='+adkeys+';grp='+adrand+'" target="_blank"><img src="http://adserver.adtechus.com/adserv/3.0/5242.1/2382763/0/0/ADTECH;loc=300;key='+adkeys+';grp='+adrand+'" border="0" width="0" height="0"></a>
Features - Psychology is Fun
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. <a href="http://adserver.adtechus.com/adlink/3.0/5242.1/2382763/0/0/ADTECH;loc=300;key='+adkeys+';grp='+adrand+'" target="_blank"><img src="http://adserver.adtechus.com/adserv/3.0/5242.1/2382763/0/0/ADTECH;loc=300;key='+adkeys+';grp='+adrand+'" border="0" width="0" height="0"></a> 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.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?
Features - Improving Player Choices
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..."
Features - Implementing Stories in Massively Multiplayer Games
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.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?