The personal blog of game designer, programmer and Cand. Scient. Informatics, Jimmy Marcus Larsen. Currently working as a game designer at Cego ApS.
March 27, 2008 at 21:53
In many games (good games too) a lot of the interaction is in essence trivial. The player keeps repeating actions that has long lost their ability to challenge or excite, because they are needed to succeed at higher level goals. Level grinding in World of Warcraft comes to mind as an obvious example, but lots of games include a layer of trivial interactions that the player must suffer through before the real fun begins.
In many cases, trivial interaction is hard to avoid and not necessarily unwanted, depending on which kind of player you are. Especially achievers, as in Richard Bartle’s player types, might like trivial interactions if they result in a higher score or level. With other player types, removing trivial interactions can shift the focus toward more interesting parts of the game.
I have two examples of well done removal of trivial interactions. The first and well know example is EVE: Online, where level grinding is replaced with an automated leveling system. This allow the explorer type players to do what they love, and what EVE: Online is build for - exploring the vast galaxy and the enormous ship configuration system. My second example is a casual game called Bingo75 - a pretty straight forward multiplayer bingo game created where I work, but before I arrived there. The ingenious part is the removal of player controlled number marking (for those who pay to play it). This is instead done automatically, resulting in a game with close to zero player-game interaction. The game just plays by itself. This might seem really stupid at first, but with the socializer player type in mind, this removal of trivial interaction enables them to do what they love the most - use the in-game chat.
With social gaming on the rise, socializers is becoming an increasingly prevalent player type which we should cater for. Other players might not like it, but putting part of the game on auto pilot is often an effective way to do so.
March 15, 2008 at 15:52
Not all casual gamers are the same. Some play to win and achieve a rank. Some play to explore the possibilities of the game. Some use play as a way to connect to other people. There are even those who are just playing to relax - this post is about them.
If a game is about challenge and skill development, then it requires player effort before it delivers any kind of emotional impact. This is the traditional view on games; that they should be challenging and reward efforts to achieve or explore. Problem is, that challenge is tiring - not relaxing. To get around this, and make a game relaxing, the game should not only reward efforts to achieve or explore, but also simply any effort at all - each player input should be immediately rewarded. Deliver lots of output for any little input, and do not punish the player for not thinking about her input. Games like Chuzzle and Balloon Buster 2 are quite good at this, in some of their game modes; almost all input leads to an obvious, but not complexity changing, change in game state and lots of small, happy explosions - both on the screen and inside the player.
It is like doodling on a piece of paper - goalless, mindless and random, but full of small, happy details which is really the only reward these players need. Some call these games zen games - I think doodle games is a more fitting name.
March 13, 2008 at 12:17
The blog software has been updated to the latest WordPress release. I had to change the design a bit, but luckily I like it better now. In the progress I saw how awful my old css layout is. I’m sure it must be written by someone else… When I get the time I should really start from scratch. It’s almost amazing that the site passes W3C validation.
I also changed the site name to better reflect what I’m mostly writing about - game design.
March 8, 2008 at 23:41
At the recently held Danish National Championship in Retro Gaming video recordings of different players playing the same level in two games were created. Inspired by the Averaging Gradius experiment, I have taken these recordings and combined them into two video clips showing how differently players are able to complete a level.
The first game is R-Type, with four different players:
What I think is most obvious in this clip, is how little difference there is between the players’ paths through the level. This is likely due to the static and narrow level architecture, which effectively guides the movement along a single path. Enemies are also taken down in almost the same sequence. I believe this can be attributed to the fact that enemies appear one at a time, which creates a natural kill sequence.
In terms of skill, one of the players seems slightly less adept against the end boss, but all players use the same strategy; two charged shots kills the boss. This is likely because the players saw each other play, and hence learned from each other.
The second game is DonPachi, with two players:
The reason for using only two players in the video, is that the secondary scroll direction is too dominant making it hard to separate the movement of more than two players. R-Type has a secondary scroll direction too, but it is rather weak and doesn’t clutter up the video too much. In any case, the idea is not to provide statistically relevant data - just to explore the use of this video technique.
What I think is most interesting in the DonPachi video, is that the difference between the movement paths seems slightly higher than in R-Type, and on several occasions the enemies are taken down in different sequences. This can be explained by the total lack of level architecture - the players can fly anywhere they want. Also, some enemies appear simultaneously at different sides of the screen giving the players more ways to approach the challenge.
The most important difference between the two games, besides their scroll direction, is their challenge frequency and amplitude. This could probably be counted and calculated, but just by looking at the videos it is obvious that the players has a lot more to see to in DonPachi - it is called a manic bullet hell shooter for a reason. While these challenges are small and quick, there are many of them and also a lot of ways to overcome them. The players are given more room for creativity in DonPachi, which also explains the slightly higher difference in movement paths.
Conclusion
While there are many flaws in this experiment, it does show that overlaying video clips to average the gameplay of different players can grant some interesting results. First, it becomes very easy to compare how different players play through a level. As I see it, a high difference is good, because it shows that the game allows for several ways to play. Second, when used on two games in the same genre the differences between them seems to stand out very clear.
What these videos doesn’t show, is how the players learn to play the game. These recordings are from players who has already learned to play the game - they all play through the level without loosing. It does show that they have learned to play in different ways, but how they reached their current skill level is not seen in the videos.
In the end, I believe this technique is most useful for observing the amount of different ways to play. That is, observing gameplay depth.
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