Chapter 9 gameplay

1. Chapter 9 gameplay Nate Cutler

2. 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?

3. 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)

4. 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

5. 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.

6. 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

7. 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

9. 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

10. 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

12. 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

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

14. 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

15. 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

16. 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.