Game Play Styles

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Game Play Styles

• Structure of Game Play

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Game Play Styles

• Games Have various structures that the user must
  handle
• Common structures appear in many games

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Suggestions?
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Driving Physical skill

• Player must control vehicle/self to win
• Must conform to environment
• Music and Dance games do this
• Fighting game combos
• Jumping in platform games
• Special moves in Skate / Snow Board

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Puzzle - Arrange Geometry

• Some self-contained artifact must be rearranged
  into a solved position
• Sokoban
• Solitaire
• Adventure games

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Dynamic Puzzle

• Some dynamic artifact must be navigated through
• Deadly pendulums swinging!
• Tetris

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Rescue/Collection

• The player has to get something
• Someone needs to be saved from peril
• Defender, Choplifter, Donkey Kong
• Something needs to be collected
• Mario Bros, Sonic, etc
• Diablo, MMORPGs

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Collision Detection

• Shooting
• Player shoots a projectile to make progress
  towards winning
• Direct Attack by self
• Collision Avoidance
• Bullets miss you
• Block punch/kick

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Obstacle Avoidance

• Player must avoid environmental objects/enemies
  to win
• Pac-Man (Inky, Pinky, etc)
• Centipede
• Frogger
• Mario Bros etc etc

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Obstacle Creation

• Player creates or controls environment to
  influence or defeat opponent
• Eg. Light cycles in Tron
• Walls in strategy games
• Go

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Search

• Somethings hidden in the environment
• Key to locked door
• Find best X in Geometric state
• Words in Bookworm
• Rows or columns of like color in Bejeweled

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Material Removal

• Object is to remove opponents pieces
• Examples
• Chess
• Checkers
• War games
• Action games (Space Invaders, Pac-Man, Asteroids)

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Material Creation

• Objects are created by user or game
• May be competing process with Material Removal
• Direct
• Tetris, Go, Othello
• Indirect
• Fortifications (Walls created to direct traffic)
• Economies

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Economic Simulation

• You must set up a flow of material and/or money
• Get the most stuff
• He who dies with the most toys wins!

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Economy Simulation

• Resource gathering
• Gold, Wood, Iron, etc, etc
• Direct
• AOE gatherer units, CC
• Indirect
• Total Annihilation, Kingdoms,

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Economic Simulation

• Buildings
• Create NPCs
• AOE, Warcraft I, Caesar III
• Create/transform materials
• Settlers, Caesar III

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Economic Simulation

• Traffic Flow
• Roads!
• NPC must pass a building for a transaction to
  take place
• Zoo Tycoon, Caesar III
• NPC must stop and deliver/pick something up
• Railroad Tycoon

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Research

• Create a new technology that makes your NPCs
  better
• AOE, Starcraft
• Advance your civilization

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Dialog/Negotiation

• You talk to other players/NPCs
• To learn things
• To gain/lose membership in a gang/guild/club
• To coordinate attack/defense
• Trade
• Read environment for clues
• News clippings

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Artificial Life

• Must grow your creature
• Train it
• Feed it

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Fun

• Flow -- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
• Chapter 3 Enjoyment and the Quality of Life
• Some thoughts on Game Design Andrew Glassner

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What is fun?

• Can you name an experience that was supposed to
  be fun but was not?
• Not supposed to be fun, but was?

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• Is it reasonable to say some software Is fun ?

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• Is it reasonable to say some software Is fun ?

It depends on audience do you have to
learn a new language? Ease of play vs.
Challenge Other experiences Museum
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Not just software alone!

• Software context

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Not just software alone!

• Software context

Depends on mood
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What Mihaly did

• Sociology
• Interviews
• Surveys of peoples attitudes
• Using the beeper -
• Tell me how youre feeling now

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How can you be happy?

• Make external conditions match goals
• eg. kill the jerks
• or
• Change your experience of external conditions
• Even of house is safe, may still worry
• Make goals match external conditions

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Happiness

• Money cant buy happiness
• eg. Unhappy rock stars
• Real happiness
• What happens to us
• How we feel about ourselves

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Pleasure

• Expectations have been met
• Too high Hype about experience
• Low expectations Random video rental

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Pleasure

• Expectations have been met
• Too high Hype about experience
• Low expectations Random video rental

Star Wars I II
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Enjoyment

• Forward motion, sense of accomplishment
• Game with matched opponent
• Too easy or too hard is no fun!

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Characteristics of Flow

• Have chance of completing the task
• Able to concentrate
• Clear goals
• Immediate feedback
• Deep but effortless involvement
• Exercise control

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Flow

• A challenging activity that requires skill
• Hunting dog story
• Dog runs in circles, owner tries to catch dog
• Dog runs tighter circle when master is tired
• Dog tunes the challenge!

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Control

• Paradoxical Cant be too afraid of failure
• Rock climbers minimize risk
• More than just being in control
• Exercising control
• Illusion of Control
• Anorexia
• Gamblers figure out chance events

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Addiction

• Lose ability to control own choices
• Have you ever been addicted to a game?
• What was going on in your life at the time?
• Was it you, or the game?

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Flow

• Concern for self disappears
• Returns after experience is over
• Sense of time duration is altered

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Flow

• Concern for self disappears
• Returns after experience is over
• Sense of time duration is altered

you notice youre hungry
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Success

• Creates order in consciousness and strengthens
  the structure of the self

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Success

• Creates order in consciousness and strengthens
  the structure of the self

Transition from Beginner to Reasonably Skilled
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Why do games stop being fun?
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Why do games stop being fun?
Stagnation Obsolescence (new game improves on
old) Plateau in skills Pacing or difficulty Why
return to a game Nostalgia Forgetting the bad
things Taking a break to think offline
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Design to Achieve Flow

• Pace difficulty
• Allow control
• Dont make things too hard
• Dont make things too easy

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Glassner

• Avoid
• Making it easy to cheat
• People will always exploit bugs
• Flight sim
• Multiplayer sim
• etc. etc.

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Repetition

• Make it easy for users to repeat things
• Interactivity ! Participation
• The raw count of mouse clicks is not a good
  measure of quality!
• Not all actions taken by the user are desirable.
  Has to be fun.

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Detail

• Too much detail
• Required actions overly detailed
• Eg. Potions in Ultima Online
• Under-detailed
• Don't take control away from the user
• "A game should offer the fastest and easiest
  possible way to do everything unless there is
  some entertaining or informative reason to
  prevent it."

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Deception

• Faulty scuba gauge

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Deception

• Faulty scuba gauge

Only discover by death Too severe, plus save
game often is the simple, tedious solution
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Large-Scale Randomness
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Multiple-Choice Conversations
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Multiple-Choice Conversations
Probably OK between Non-Player Characters Should
have a realistic memory
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Agency

• "Don't trick players into providing a personality
  description."

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Agency

• "Don't trick players into providing a personality
  description."

This is reasonable for Role-Playing Games The
conflict is over first person vs. third person
play Information about the character is
important Cant play a role without knowing what
the role is
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Choices

• Label them well
• Dont keep them guessing

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Complexity

• Need to have picked up pencil 100 turns ago
• Brick example need to click on 100 bricks to
  find the right one

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Paste-On Interaction

• Design the game and the UI together

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Character Control

• Don't take control of the user's character
• Avoid cut scenes in which your character does
  something stupid

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Character Control

• Don't take control of the user's character
• Avoid cut scenes in which your character does
  something stupid

Can use them as a reward Must have a plot
requirement Problem is primarily with first
person agency
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Interactive Fiction

• Respect for the player.
• Player's time will never be wasted
• Dont insult or deny her individuality,
  intelligence, or creativity
• The player will always be engaged in fun or
  interesting events
• passively
• interacting with them