Chapter 13: Gameplay Mustafa Haddara & Domenic DiPasquale - - PDF document

Chapter 13: Gameplay

Mustafa Haddara & Domenic DiPasquale

Gameplay, pt 1

Mustafa Haddara

Table of Contents

‒ How we make games fun ‒ gameplay ideas ‒ hierarchy of challenges ‒ skills/stress/difficulty ‒ types of challenges ‒ actions ‒ saving

Making Games Fun

‒ Primary goal of game is not to provide fun ‒ Entertainment ‒ Allows for emotional, thought-provoking, enlightening entertainment ‒ Most games go straight for fun

So many other reactions to entice from a player fear, horror, courage, sadness, confusion, enlightenment, amusement, etc. resident evil (fear) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EBzjqvIBg2s&spfreload=10 7: 35 brothers https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=auQPyP-aynk&spfreload=10 6:50 first, 9: 15 for second part

Execution and Innovation

‒ Innovation has very little to do with fun ‒ Most things that are un-fun come from poor execution ‒ Making a fun game is as easy as avoiding the things that reduce fun

up next: how the different aspects of game design contribute to fun

‒ Bad programming, bad music, bad sound, bad UI, bad design ‒ Breaks immersion, disrupts player concentration, ruins the fun ‒ Damages studio reputation

Avoid Elementary Errors

Avoid Elementary Errors

Tuning and Polish

‒ Requires attention to detail

Tuning and Polish

link: https://youtu.be/ZKD5eOIXY08

Game’s Premise

Take the basic premise and extrapolate that into an enjoyable experience

Design Innovation

‒ Roughly 5% of the game’s fun

Luck, magic, and stardust

‒ Your game can be mechanically perfect and still not be fun ‒ It’s missing a small, unpredictable, unnamable element ‒ If you have it, be careful not to change too much and therefore lose it

Luck, magic, and stardust

December 2009

Luck, magic, and stardust

April 2009

The Fun Factor

‒ No formula for fun ‒ Set of principles:

○ Gameplay comes first ○ Get a feature right or cut it ○ Player-centrism ○ Know your target audience ○ Automate the unfun ○ Be true to your vision ○ Harmony, elegance, and beauty

Gameplay is King

‒ Aiming for fun, so make fun things

Nintendo’s core principle Too many games are non-fun because the graphics or story are more developed than the mechanics

Absence is Superior to Mediocrity

‒ Worse to ship a game with a broken or bad feature than to ship the game with a missing feature

Missing -> looks like conscious design decision Can also spur innovation Broken -> tells players that you are incompetent

Absence is Superior to Mediocrity

Missing -> looks like conscious design decision Can also spur innovation Broken -> tells players that you are incompetent

Design for the Player

‒ Every decision should be examined from the player’s perspective ‒ Know your target audience

○ Make the game for them ○ Hard to design something that everyone loves, so aim for one specific niche instead

We can summarize the book with this slide Also know your target audience

Abstract Away the UnFun

‒ Leave out the parts that are not fun ‒ Fun depends on target audience

Still need to keep target audience in mind can include two modes, if you have the time+resources for it

Be True to Your Vision

‒ Don’t make compromises for the sake of attracting a larger market

Tension between what your audience says it wants and what you want to deliver Also marketing/business constraints etc Market research http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2011-09-19-deus-ex-boss-battles-outsourced

Harmony, Elegance, and Beauty

‒ This isn’t critical to a fun game, but it helps

Hierarchy of Challenges

‒ Overarching structure of a game ‒ Atomic challenges make up larger challenges, larger challenges make up levels, levels make up the game ‒ Player focuses most on atomic challenges ‒ Diagram from textbook

Explicit and Implicit Challenges

‒ Any challenges you tell the player about are explicit challenges.

○ In general, the atomic actions and the top-most level of actions tend to be explicit. ○ The victory conditions should always be explicit.

‒ Any challenges the player has to figure out for themselves are implicit challenges.

Tutorial levels teach the player how to overcome atomic challenges Implicit challenges may be solved in various ways, this is GOOD. eg. Portal

Explicit and Implicit Challenges

Overcoming Challenges

‒ A common structure in many games is the simplest:

• vercome all atomic challenges in sequence in order to
• vercome the intermediate challenge

‒ More interesting is allowing the player multiple ways to win

○ Meeting different intermediate challenges in different orders

‒ Simultaneous atomic challenges makes the game more stressful

Example of simultaneous atomic challenges: SimCity. City needs support to police and hospitals and power and water and etc. The more different levels of challenge the player will have to think about at once— especially if she can’t simply achieve the higher ones by addressing the lower ones in sequence—the more complex and mentally challenging the game will be—which may

• r may not be fun for a particular audience.

Absolute Difficulty

‒ Mainly discussed in chapter 15 ‒ Two factors determine difficulty: skill required and stress induced ‒ Difference stems out of time available to the player

Intrinsic Skill

‒ The level of skill required to overcome the challenge if the player had infinite amount of time

Intrinsic Skill

infinite time, this is easy

Stress

‒ Difficulty added due to time limit ‒ Shorter time limit means higher difficulty

raises adrenaline, increases heart, requires faster movement chapter 16 - vary pacing

‒ Combination of intrinsic skill and stress

Absolute Difficulty

Audiences and Difficulty

‒ Consider your audience and what they want to get from the game

○ Teenagers and young adults tend to have the best vision and motor skills; they handle stress better than children or older adults

‒ When allowing the player to determine difficulty level, consider an inverse relationship between skill level and stress

Actions

‒ Action: event that occurs in the game world due to player input

○ Verbs

If a player presses a button on the controller to hit a pool ball with a cue, striking the ball with the cue is an action If the ball hits a second ball, striking that second ball isn’t an action, but a consequence Important to define these actions early in development

Actions

Hierarchy of Actions

‒ Challenges are described in a hierarchy because the player will think of them as a step-by-step process ‒ Actions remain relatively the same throughout the game ‒ Tutorials will often teach in terms of actions

Actions for Gameplay

‒ Most actions gameplay related ‒ Can be extremely simple or extremely complex ‒ Interaction model determines types of actions available ‒ Usually far fewer actions than challenges; players must determine correct order to combine actions to overcome challenges

Less actions -> less ui also less teaching (tutorial) also less animations (cheaper)

Defining Actions

• 1. What is our player going to do?
• 2. Consider challenges in main game mode
• 3. Consider intermediate and high level challenges
• 4. Any extraneous actions for other functions

1. consider each gameplay mode a. some actions may relate to challenges, others may simply fit the role 2. how will player address each atomic challenge? a. individual actions or small combinations of actions b. game designers should spend most of their time defining and refining the way actions overcome atomic challenges; the player spends the majority of their time doing this 3. Do you need more actions? or can these challenges be solved with the existing actions? 4. actions that may need to be included to fit the role, etc.

Non-Gameplay Actions

‒ Unstructured play ‒ Creation and self-expression ‒ Socialization ‒ Participation in a story ‒ Controlling game software

Unstructured Play

Creation and Self Expression

juiced 2

Socialization

Participating in Story

Controlling Game Software

Questions?

Gameplay, pt 2

Domenic DiPasquale

Commonly Used Challenges

‒ Focuses on lower-level challenges, many of which would be classified as atomic challenges ‒ Be creative with which and how many challenges you intend to incorporate in your game, just make sure it works overall ‒ Challenges influence gameplay, adjusting difficulties of each challenge is important ‒ Will discuss ten Commonly Used Challenges

Commonly Used Challenges

‒ Physical Coordination Challenges

○ Tests physical abilities (Hand-Eye Skills) ○ Increasing time, decreases difficulty ○ Five Subcategories ■ Speed and Reaction Time ■ Accuracy and Precision ■ Intuitive Understanding of Physics ■ Timing and Rhythm ■ Combination Moves

Commonly Used Challenges

‒ Physical Coordination Challenges

○ Speed and Reaction Time ■ Tests abilities to input rapid actions (Tetris/Team Fortress 2)

Commonly Used Challenges

‒ Physical Coordination Challenges

○ Accuracy and Precision ■ Tests abilities to navigate (Motor/Combat Skills) ■ Challenge can be, but not always time related ■ Increasing accuracy required increases difficulty

Commonly Used Challenges

‒ Physical Coordination Challenges

○ Intuitive Understanding of Physics ■ Tests abilities to learn virtual response to physical input without understanding of advanced calculus (Projectile Motion in Golf) ■ First, virtual physics needs to be consistent (Distance/Height of Player’s Jump) ■ Second, simplify physical model of world (Realistic Inertia/Motion in Sports Games)

Commonly Used Challenges

‒ Physical Coordination Challenges

○ Intuitive Understanding of Physics

Commonly Used Challenges

‒ Physical Coordination Challenges

○ Timing and Rhythm ■ Tests abilities to perform actions at the right time (Dodgeball/dodging vs DDR/dancing)

Commonly Used Challenges

‒ Physical Coordination Challenges

○ Combination Moves ■ Tests abilities to remember action sequence with perfect timing (SS Bros) ■ Decreasing actions required decreases difficulty

Commonly Used Challenges

‒ Logic and Mathematical Challenges

○ Logic test abilities to solve puzzles with precise deduction from reliable data (basis for strategy thinking) ○ Mathematics test abilities to reason from probability from non-reliable data (chance/explicit vs numeric relations/implicit) ○ Two Subcategories ■ Formal Logic Puzzles ■ Mathematical Challenges

Commonly Used Challenges

‒ Logic and Mathematical Challenges

○ Formal Logic Puzzles ■ Contains/explains everything needed to solve the puzzle ■ Presents objects that have specific configuration ■ Increasing number of objects increases difficulty ■ Increasing number of solutions decreases difficulty ■ Logical abilities vary between players, avoid time limits because they may make challenge impossible for certain players ■ Design Rule: Avoid Trial-and-Error Solutions

Commonly Used Challenges

‒ Logic and Mathematical Challenges

○ Formal Logic Puzzles

Commonly Used Challenges

‒ Logic and Mathematical Challenges

○ Mathematical Challenges ■ Contains elements of chance or require educated guesses from situations with imperfect knowledge ■ Make clever mathematics-based puzzles, avoid disguised math drills

Commonly Used Challenges

‒ Races and Time Pressure

○ Tests abilities to accomplish the challenge before someone else does (Car Race/Building Race) ○ Can be combined with fighting and many other challenges ○ Time pressure discourages strategy, encourages direct solutions ○ Time pressure increases stress, situationally for better or worse ○ When adjusting time pressure, balancing absolute difficulty requires also adjusting intrinsic skill

Commonly Used Challenges

‒ Races and Time Pressure

Commonly Used Challenges

‒ Factual Knowledge Challenges

○ Tests knowledge of factual information from real world (Trivia/Quiz) ○ The actual knowledge is the solution to the challenge ○ Avoid small obscure facts that few would know, it’s not fair and detracts from full immersion ○ Design Rule: Make it clear when Factual Knowledge is required

Commonly Used Challenges

‒ Memory Challenges

○ Tests abilities to recall past objects/events seen or heard in the game ○ Implementing time limits discourages player from taking notes ○ Increasing time limits decreases difficulty

Commonly Used Challenges

‒ Pattern Recognition Challenges

○ Tests abilities to spot visible or audible patterns, or patterns of change and behaviour (Object Layout/Enemy AI) ○ Increasing complexity (length/simplicity/obviousness) of pattern, increases difficulty (Boss AI)

Commonly Used Challenges

‒ Exploration Challenges

○ Tests ability to search and explore unknown areas of the game ○ Avoid exploration without challenging (Sightseeing) ○ Six Subcategories ■ Spatial Awareness Challenges ■ Locked Doors ■ Traps ■ Mazes and Illogical Spaces ■ Teleporters ■ Finding Hidden Objects

Commonly Used Challenges

‒ Exploration Challenges

○ Spatial Awareness Challenges ■ Requires player to learn way around unfamiliar, complicated spaces ■ Visual aesthetics, unfamiliar architecture and ambiguity of navigational orientation influence difficulty (007 Goldeneye) ■ Giving access to a map decreases difficulty, while not including the players real-time location increases difficulty

Commonly Used Challenges

‒ Exploration Challenges

○ Spatial Awareness Challenges

Commonly Used Challenges

‒ Exploration Challenges

○ Locked Doors ■ Generic term for any obstacle preventing progression in game ■ Challenge is the method required to disable obstacle, be creative ■ Avoid using unmarked, random switches and/or placing them far from the door (Doom)

Commonly Used Challenges

‒ Exploration Challenges

○ Traps ■ Device that harms player’s avatar when triggered, discouraging previous action that triggered the trap (Possible Damage/Death) ■ Can appear in a variety of forms

• Can only be triggered once, harmless after
• Can be triggered multiple times (requires certain rearming time)
• Can be triggered by different conditions (metal detector)

■ Can be disarmed or avoided ■ Becomes trial and error if too many hidden or unavoidable traps

Commonly Used Challenges

‒ Exploration Challenges

○ Traps

Commonly Used Challenges

‒ Exploration Challenges

○ Mazes and Illogical Spaces ■ Mazes are areas in which every place looks alike (Mostly)

• Challenge is solving the organization of the maze using clues with logic and/or

pattern-recognition

• Becomes trial and error without sufficient clues

■ Illogical spaces are areas in which places do not have reasonable relations to other places (North of A is B, but South of B is C)

• Requires map versus common sense
• Difficult to implement in 3D engines, requires detailed explanation

Commonly Used Challenges

‒ Exploration Challenges

○ Mazes and Illogical Spaces

Commonly Used Challenges

‒ Exploration Challenges

○ Teleporters ■ Mechanism that suddenly transports the player to someplace else (Portal) ■ Hidden or One-Way teleporters make exploration difficult ■ Making teleporters predictable and reversible decreases difficulty ■ Can also be used as the challenge and/or visible, optional feature

Commonly Used Challenges

‒ Exploration Challenges

○ Teleporters

Commonly Used Challenges

‒ Exploration Challenges

○ Finding Hidden Objects ■ Finding the hidden object, either requiring exploration of less

• bvious and/or dangerous areas

■ 2-Dimensional, point and click versions may require time limit ■ Easter eggs are specialized variants, can be items or hidden regions/game features, which are not necessary to win the game

• Avoid easter eggs that oppose the game’s rating, results in legal actions

Commonly Used Challenges

‒ Exploration Challenges

○ Finding Hidden Objects

Commonly Used Challenges

‒ Conflict

○ Tests ability to overcome direct opposition of forces (Human/AI) ○ Three adjustable factors ■ Scale of Action (Individuals/Armies) ■ Speed of Conflict (Turn Based/Real-Time Action) ■ Complexity of Victory Conditions (Survival/Goals and Subgoals)

Commonly Used Challenges

‒ Conflict

○ Six Subcategories ■ Strategy ■ Tactics ■ Logistics ■ Survival and Reduction of Enemy Forces ■ Defending Vulnerable Items or Units ■ Stealth

Commonly Used Challenges

‒ Conflict

○ Strategy ■ Requires player to situationally analyze the game and devise a plan of action (Chess) ■ Pure Strategy has perfect information which contains no element

• f chance or hidden information, requires systematic reasoning

■ Applied Strategy hides information and includes elements of chance, requires guesswork and weighing probabilities ■ Applied Strategy is less difficult than Pure Strategy, attracts broader audience

Commonly Used Challenges

‒ Conflict

○ Strategy

Commonly Used Challenges

‒ Conflict

○ Tactics ■ Involves executing a plan, accomplishing goals, or responding to unexpected events/conditions (New Information/Bad Luck) ■ Can be purely tactical without strategy (Hidden Surroundings)

Commonly Used Challenges

‒ Conflict

○ Logistics ■ Involves the choices regarding building, replenishing and supporting resources (Factories/Ammunition/Inventory) ■ Seen as a boring distraction versus combat gameplay ■ Important to balance difficulty of player’s logistical choices, difficulty effects time devoted to logistical choice

Commonly Used Challenges

‒ Conflict

○ Logistics

Commonly Used Challenges

‒ Conflict

○ Survival and Reduction of Enemy Forces ■ Survival requires the player to preserve the effective life/lives of the player/controlled units (Health) ■ Does not have to be victory condition, but is necessary to win ■ Sometimes implies reduction of enemy forces

Commonly Used Challenges

‒ Conflict

○ Survival and Reduction of Enemy Forces

Commonly Used Challenges

‒ Conflict

○ Defending Vulnerable Items or Units ■ Involves defending other units or items that are incapable of defending themselves. (King in Chess) ■ Must know capabilities and vulnerabilities of the entity ■ Must be prepared to sacrifice for the entity

Commonly Used Challenges

‒ Conflict

○ Defending Vulnerable Items or Units

Commonly Used Challenges

‒ Conflict

○ Stealth ■ Involves moving undetected and avoiding discovery or combat (Mario Party) ■ Difficult to implement, AI has access to complete state of game world, must restrict and limit AI’s knowledge and attention

Commonly Used Challenges

‒ Conflict

○ Stealth

Commonly Used Challenges

‒ Economic Challenges

○ Tests abilities to manage own economy, where resources move either physically from place to place or conceptually from owner to owner ○ Resources can be any quantifiable substance that can be created, moved, stored, earned, exchanged or destroyed (Health/Ammo) ○ Decreasing availability of resource, increasing difficulty ○ Atomic challenges appear similar to overall goal of game ○ Three Subcategories ■ Accumulating Resources ■ Achieving Balance ■ Caring for Living Things

Commonly Used Challenges

‒ Economic Challenges

○ Accumulating Resources ■ Challenges player to accumulate something: wealth, points or anything deemed valuable (Money in Monopoly)

Commonly Used Challenges

‒ Economic Challenges

○ Achieving Balance ■ Challenges player to manage all resources (The Settlers)

Commonly Used Challenges

‒ Economic Challenges

○ Caring for Living Things ■ Challenges player to meet the needs and possibly improve the development of a certain person/creature using limited resources (The Sims)

Commonly Used Challenges

‒ Conceptual Reasoning and Lateral Thinking Puzzles

○ Tests ability to solve puzzles that require extrinsic knowledge, which is knowledge from outside the domain of the challenge itself ○ Different from Formal Logic Puzzles, yet may still require the use of logical thinking ○ Two Subcategories ■ Conceptual Reasoning ■ Lateral Thinking

Commonly Used Challenges

‒ Conceptual Reasoning and Lateral Thinking Puzzles

○ Conceptual Reasoning ■ Requires player to use reasoning power and knowledge of the puzzle’s subject matter (LA Noire/Human Motivations) ■ Designing offers a lot of scope, hard work creating challenges

Commonly Used Challenges

‒ Conceptual Reasoning and Lateral Thinking Puzzles

○ Lateral Thinking ■ Challenges player to think of alternative solutions ■ Similar to Conceptual Reasoning puzzles, but the most

• bvious/probable solution is incorrect/unavailable

■ Unexpected solutions by relying on real-world experience ■ Avoid making solution too obscure or relying on information that goes beyond common knowledge ■ Increasing the amount of hints/clues, decreases difficulty ■ @0:00 - 1:14 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Ag0PtH3g-s

Saving the Game

‒ Takes a snapshot of a game world and all it’s important particulars at a given instant and stores them away so the player can load the same data later, return to that instant, and play the game from that point ‒ Technologically easy, essential for testing/debugging ‒ Past hardware limited capabilities of content saved

Saving the Game

‒ Reasons for Saving a Game

○ Allowing the player to leave the game and return to it later ■ 40+ hours of content with no break ○ Letting the player recover from disastrous mistakes ■ Avatar dies or impossible to win ○ Encouraging the player to explore alternate strategies ■ Learning results of different approaches

Saving the Game

‒ Consequences for Immersion and Storytelling

○ The act of saving takes place outside the game world ○ Repeating the past, ruins illusion of permanent death, acknowledges the unreality of the game world ○ Altering the future, loses the consequences of actions, reduces or destroys dramatic tension, ruins branching storylines

Saving the Game

‒ Ways of Saving a Game

○ Level Access Codes (Passwords) ■ Allows player to enter a code in the main menu to restart the corresponding level ■ Advantageous for devices with no memory ○ Save to a File or Save Slot ■ Allows player to interrupt play and save the current state to one of a series of save slots/files ■ Most harmful to immersion, UI looks like OS file management tool

Saving the Game

‒ Ways of Saving a Game

○ Quick-Save ■ Allows player to press a single button to save mid gameplay ■ Sacrifices flexibility to retain immersion and speed ○ Automatic Save and Checkpoints ■ Allows player to automatically save when exiting or reaching a checkpoint ■ Least harmful to immersion, sacrifices control of saving, relies on frequency of previous exit/checkpoint

Saving the Game

‒ Ways of Saving a Game

○ Mistakes of Quick-Save and Automatic Saving/Checkpoints ■ Allow player to save after tuning features ■ Allow player to choose from multiple save points or make sure last save point is safe and still has chance of success ■ Allow player to save before critical moments (Big Decisions/Boss) ■ Allow player to save after long non interactive content (Dialogue)

Saving the Game

‒ To Save or Not to Save

○ Argument against saving attempts to avoid trial and error ○ Arguments for saving outweigh the disadvantages ○ Reloading the game is a choice of the player, not the fault of the game designer or the story ○ Preventing the player from saving adds difficulty without adding fun, this is lazy and not player-centric game design ○ Design Rule: Allow the Player to Save and Reload the Game ○ @1:50 - 2:35 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aGlVtNXLMmA