CHAPTER 9 GAMEPLAY

Nate Cutler

MAKING GAMES FUN

Designer’s primary goal is to entertain, through gameplay

Without gameplay entertainment can be fun but not a game

Entertainment has many avenues besides fun

So how do we provide fun?

EXECUTION MATTERS MORE THAN INNOVATION

What makes a game boring or frustrating most of the time is not a bad idea but bad execution

A lot of a designer’s job is just avoiding the things that reduce fun: Avoiding Elementary Errors: Bad programming,

music, art, UI, game design (glitches)

Tuning and Polishing: paying attention to detail

Imaginative Variations of the game’s premise: take the basics and construct an enjoyable experience 34:30

True design Innovation: original idea and subsequent creative decisions

Once a game is fun the smallest change could take it away and you can’t get it back

FINDING THE FUN FACTOR

There is no formula to create fun games but there are principles: Gameplay Comes First: before graphics or

story a game has to be made to give the player fun things to do

Get a feature right or leave it out: Better to ship with a missing feature rather than a broken one. Broken implies incompetence and destroys fun. Big Rigs

Design around the player: You must examine every decision from the player’s view

Know your target audience: Easier to provide for a niche market when you know what they want than a broad one.

FINDING THE FUN FACTOR CONT.

Abstract or Automate parts of the simulation that aren’t fun: Some players don’t want to change the tires on their car, some do, provide 2 modes

THE HIERARCHY OF CHALLENGES

In all but the smallest games the player faces multiple challenges

Completing the mission requires completing the sub mission

At the lowest level they want to defeat the immediate challenge Ex: Beat this enemy to get the key

that unlocks the chest to get the equipment that lets you get to the boss

The lowest level is known as atomic challenges

INFORMING THE PLAYER ABOUT CHALLENGES

Normally the player is informed of challenges called explicit challenges

Others are left to discover themselves, called implicit challenges

Most of the time the players knows the topmost and bottommost levels of the hierarchy

The overall goal of the game or level, and how to meet the atomic challenges

Most of the time this is done through tutorial levels

You can add more challenges in between (plot twists) but don’t do it too many times or you could piss off your player

INTERMEDIATE CHALLENGES

Most of the time these are explicit, if you tell them what to do all the time it doesn’t feel like a game

For most games these challenges are only to meet all the lower level ones If all enemies are beaten and all obstacles

passed the level is finished Reward Victory no matter how the player does it,

if there are multiple ways of beating something don’t only test the ones you’ve thought of

SIMULTANEOUS ATOMIC CHALLENGES

Instead of only worrying about the challenge you’re on in the hierarchy you can face the player with multiple challenges at the same time

These divide attention, doesn’t really work in a turn based game but for bullet death game it creates stress

SKILL STRESS AND ABSOLUTE DIFFICULTY

You want to control the absolute difficulty of challenges which is determined by intrinsic skill and stress

INTRINSIC SKILL

The level of skill required to beat a challenge if you give the player an unlimited amount of time

You can figure this out by taking out time and seeing how long it takes An archer aiming at a target Sudoku puzzles Trivia game

Some games require 0 intrinsic skill and are pure reflex

Whack-A-mole

STRESS

Measures how a player perceives the effect of time pressure

Shorter the time, greater the stress If you were given infinite time to place the

next tetris piece it wouldn’t be very difficult There is no realistic time limit on golf but it’s

very difficult

ABSOLUTE DIFFICULTY Refers to intrinsic skill and stress together When you’re deciding on difficulty think

about both

Teenagers and young adults handle stress better than children or adults because of better vision and motor skills

If a challenge requires more skill give them more time, less skill, less time.