C HAPTER 9 GAMEPLAY Nate Cutler

M AKING 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?

E XECUTION 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)

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

F INDING T HE 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.

F INDING T HE FUN FACTOR C ONT. 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

T HE 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

I NFORMING THE P LAYER 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

I NTERMEDIATE C HALLENGES 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

S IMULTANEOUS A TOMIC 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

S KILL STRESS AND ABSOLUTE DIFFICULTY You want to control the absolute difficulty of challenges which is determined by intrinsic skill and stress

I NTRINSIC 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

S TRESS 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

A BSOLUTE 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.