Game Play

1. Game Play Grant Custard 2 x 50 min periods SE 3GB3 – Game Design Reference: Fundamentals of Game Design, Chapter 9 Gameplay

2. Agenda • Intro – Making Games Fun • Hierarchy of Challenges • Skill, Stress and Absolute Difficulty • Commonly Used Challenges • Actions • Saving the Game

3. Intro – Making Games Fun • Execution Over Innovation • Avoid elementary errors • Tuning and polishing • Imaginative variations • True design innovation • A small bit of magic

4. Intro – Making Games Fun • Finding the Fun Factor • Design around the player • Know your target audience • Abstract or Automate parts that are not fun • Be true to your vision • Strive for harmony, elegance, and beauty

5. Agenda • Intro – Making Games Fun • Hierarchy of Challenges • Skill, Stress and Absolute Difficulty • Commonly Used Challenges • Actions • Saving the Game

6. Challenge Definitions • Mission: events that make up the ultimate goal, complete the game. • Sub-Mission: events that make up each mission. • Atomic Challenges: are the lowest-level challenges in a game. i.e. jump the over the hole or defeat the enemy.

7. A Possible Challenge Hierarchy

8. Informing the Player about Challenges • Explicit Challenges: challenges that are directly given to the player. • i.e. through the story the player is told to complete the given challenge. • Implicit Challenges: challenges that require the player to discover them on their own. • Possibilities include discovery through subtle hints or the players curiosity. • i.e. Elder Scrolls VI: Oblivion

9. Intermediate Challenges • Are normally left as implicit. • Design Rule: Reward Victory No Matter How the Player Achieves It.

10. Simultaneous Atomic Challenges • One way to increase the difficulty is to force the player to overcome many atomic challenges at once. • i.e. fighting many enemies at once. • Case Study: Cousins’s Hierarchy

11. Agenda • Intro – Making Games Fun • Hierarchy of Challenges • Skill, Stress and Absolute Difficulty • Commonly Used Challenges • Actions • Saving the Game

12. Definitions • Intrinsic Skill: the level of skill required to surmount the challenge. • Stress: the effect of time pressure on the player. • Absolute Difficulty: the combination of intrinsic skill and stress, making the overall difficulty level.

13. Intrinsic Skill verse Stress Tetris Hockey Simulator Real Hockey Tetris Real Hockey Hockey Simulator Racing Simulator Racing Simulator

14. Agenda • Intro – Making Games Fun • Hierarchy of Challenges • Skill, Stress and Absolute Difficulty • Commonly Used Challenges • Actions • Saving the Game

15. Commonly Used Challenges • Physical Coordination • Logic and Mathematical • Races and Time Pressure • Factual Knowledge • Memory • Pattern Recognition • Exploration • Conflict • Economic • Conceptual Reasoning and Lateral Thinking

16. Physical Coordination • Difficulty mostly based on time stress. • Sub-Categories: • Speed and Reaction Time • Accuracy and Precision • Intuitive Understanding of Physics • Timing and Rhythm • Combination Moves • Examples: • Tetris, Need for Speed, World of Goo, Guitar Hero, Street Fighter

17. Logic and Mathematical • Difficulty mostly based on intrinsic skill • Design Rule: Avoid Trial and Error Solutions. • Sub-Categories: • Formal Logic Puzzles • Mathematical Challenges • Examples: • Rubik’s Cube, Poker, Hearts

18. Races and Time Pressure • Difficulty mostly based on time stress. • To keep Absolute Difficulty constant, scale the required skill and stress. • Examples: • Call of Duty + time pressure = running with machine gun • Need for Speed

19. Factual Knowledge • Difficulty mostly based on the players and the topics. • Answers to the questions do not have to be present in the game. • Examples: • Trivial Pursuit, Buzz, Scene It

20. Memory • Difficulty mostly based on how long there is to memorize, the amount to memorize and when it must be recalled. • Design Rule: Make it Clear when Factual Knowledge is Required • Examples: • Brain Age, Big Brain Academy, Corridors

21. Pattern Recognition • Difficulty mostly based on the how long, intricate and subtle the pattern is • Examples: • Bio Shock enemies are weak against specific strategies. • Bejewelled

22. Exploration • Must have other challenges or it will only be sightseeing. • Sub-Categories: • Spatial Awareness Challenges • Locked Doors • Traps • Mazes and Illogical Spaces • Teleporters • Finding Hidden Objects • Examples: • Decent, Zelda, Prince of Persia, PacMan, Portal, Gears of War COG tags

23. Conflict • Conflict versus Conflict of Interest • Sub-Categories: • Strategy • Tactics • Logistics • Survival and Reduction of Enemy Forces • Defending Vulnerable Items or Units • Stealth • Examples: • Starcraft, Rainbow Six, Civilization, Age of Empires, Fable, Metal Gear Solid

24. Economic • Difficulty can be altered by varying the amount of resources available • Sub-Categories: • Accumulation Resources • Achieving Balance • Caring for Living Things • Examples: • Monopoly, Settlers of Catan, Spore

25. Conceptual Reasoning and Lateral Thinking • Difficulty mostly based on intrinsic skill • Require knowledge from outside the domain of the challenge • Sub-Categories: • Conceptual Reasoning • Lateral Thinking • Examples: • Assassins Creed 16’s Puzzles, Escape from Monkey Island

26. Agenda • Intro – Making Games Fun • Hierarchy of Challenges • Skill, Stress and Absolute Difficulty • Commonly Used Challenges • Saving the Game • Actions

27. Reasons for Saving a Game • Allowing the Player to Leave the Game and Return to it Later. • Letting the Player Recover from Disastrous Mistakes. • Encouraging the Player to Explore Alternate Strategies.

28. Consequences for Immersion and Storytelling • Being able to save and re-load a game is unrealistic, this harms the player’s immersion. • Being able to reload a game can also destroy the stories dramatic tension.

29. Ways of Saving a Game • Passwords • Save to a File or Save Slot • Quick-Save • Automatic Save and Checkpoints

30. To Save or Not to Save • Design Rule: Allow the Player to Save and Reload the Game. • Players buy games to play them the way that makes them “feel good”.

31. Agenda • Intro – Making Games Fun • Hierarchy of Challenges • Skill, Stress and Absolute Difficulty • Commonly Used Challenges • Saving the Game • Actions

32. Actions • Actions are the events that occur in the game world caused directly by the user interface. • Actions are the verbs of a game. • i.e. I shoot, I jump, I use …. • An action hierarchy is not useful to the player or the game designer.

33. Actions for Gameplay • Actions that are intended to meet the challenges within the game. • There may require many actions to complete a challenge. • The user interface has limited space and therefore only limited actions can be available to the user.

34. Defining Your Actions • What actions should be available to the user? • Much effort should be put into defining and refining how the actions available overcome atomic challenges. • Should any actions be available that do not solve challenges?

35. Actions that Serve Other Functions • Sub-categories: • Unstructured Play • Actions for Creation and Self-expression • Actions for Socialization • Actions to Participate in the Story • Actions to Control the Game Software

36. Character Action Exercise • You want to design the actions for game with the following description: • Player Avatar is a Soldier • Game is 3rd Person • Game is an action-adventure • Target audience are males age 18 to 35 • Setting is WWII 1939 to 1945

37. Summary

38. Questions or Discussion