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Game design is simple

raphkoster.com

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Re: Game design is simple

#181

Post by Raph_Koster »

ninkendo wrote: post #178
Raph_Koster wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're not stupid -- they're feedback. You get them as a reward for having done something, usually. But they are also not gameplay, obviously. https://www.raphkoster.com/2012/01/20/narrative-is-not-a-gam... https://www.raphkoster.com/2012/01/26/narrative-isnt-usually... ...and maybe https://www.raphkoster.com/2013/03/13/why-are-qtes-so-popula... since you dislike QTE's. :)

I would be fine if cutscenes were feedback, or reward for gameplay. But that doesn’t explain games where as soon as you start it up for the first time, there’s a minimum of 20 minutes of (often unskippable) cutscenes before you can even control a character. Or cutscenes at the beginning of a level/mission where you kinda have to watch it to know what’s going on at all, but they’re like 10 minutes long, so you’re gonn…

This goes back to the motivations thing. For those who are motivated by narrative stuff, that opening works well. It sets up uncertainties and ambiguities that engage curiosity and prediction.

But you don't like those sorts of problems as much (or don't want them in that moment). Which is fine. No game works for everyone the same way.

(There is also an offhand remark in the article about gamemakers being failed moviemakers... ;) )

Re: Game design is simple

#182

Post by Raph_Koster »

tgv wrote: post #177
Raph_Koster wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. As the article says, "People will be willing to go along with pretty simple and pretty familiar problems as long as the feedback is great." 2. For arbitrary n x m boards, Candy Crush (and Bejeweled, it's predecessor), has been shown to be NP-complete. That means as a general class of problem, it's officially hard. This is why I said that "A lot of very good problems seem stupidly simple, but have depths to them."…

Sorry, but that's a bit of hyperbole. Candy Crush may be NP complete (in some sense), but that doesn't make it hard to play.

"Hard to play" has almost nothing to do with "the underlying game system is Hard in a complexity sense." And both are somewhat orthogonal to the complaint about "adding more stuff" -- doing so may make something more complicated, but that doesn't mean it becomes more complex mathematically.

Adding more stuff in general may very well make something harder to play, but it has more to do with how many of the added things are simultaneously visible. We can go back to the old 7+/-2 rules of thumb on that one.

Candy Crush is Hard in a math sense. So are Battleship, Minesweeper, Pipes, Othello... they are all easy to play. They are fun because they are Hard in a math sense.

Dark Souls is not hard in a math sense, meaning it is not formally complex. It is hard to play mostly because it is a reaction and timing game that presents very difficult challenges, and the ambiguity comes from mastering signals and reactions.

Civilization is complicated, and almost certainly Hard in a math sense. But it has solid onboarding and is not that hard to play.

Dwarf Fortress is complex AND complicated, and has no onboarding, and a ton of stuff in it, and is both Hard and hard. DF is built out of a ton of separate Hard game atoms.

Re: Game design is simple

#183

Post by Raph_Koster »

class4behavior wrote: post #92

Tell me why all MMOs are crap or just fail and as a result turned into a gambling institution.

Towards the end of the article, I say this: "If you just make the same game, the one you know how to make, the players get bored because it’s nothing but problems they have seen before and already have their answers to. Sometimes, they get so bored that an entire genre dies." -- the last phrase links to a video about how MMOs are dead. :D

Re: Game design is simple

#184

Post by Raph_Koster »

random9749832 wrote: post #142
teamonkey wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What part of human psychology is being exploited here outside of progression from solving the puzzle which you would naturally always have? This and the other scenarios you mention are deliberately created to make the player have fun. They are all engineered to manipulate the player’s emotions, the intention is to trigger dopamine and other neurological reactions. As I said, that doesn’t have to be a bad thing! You…

The difference I am highlighting isn't that it is wrong to think about how to make your game "fun" but the perspective you are thinking about it from. You can try to treat creating fun using a scientific or neurological framework or you can think about it from a more artistic standpoint. When Shenmue chose to make you start doing forklifting (and while I can't prove it) I am sure this was more of a artistic decision…

https://www.raphkoster.com/2008/07/09/a-game-designers-core-...

which leads to

https://www.raphkoster.com/2014/01/15/a-vision-exercise/

and its critique counterpart:

https://www.raphkoster.com/2014/01/06/how-i-analyze-a-game/

and crucially, the observation in here that you can start with either end -- the experience you want or the systems -- but you gotta make them meet in the middle.

These days, game design is generally taught as "decide on your experience, and fit systems into that." But I favor being open to starting from either end, and also in general think that focusing so strongly on the experience has a LOT of dev pitfalls:"

https://www.raphkoster.com/games/presentations/rules-of-the-...

Lastly -- starting at this end is just as artistic as starting from a chord progression, a cool synth sound, a color palette, or a piece of wood with interesting grain. Just as with any other craft-centric view on things, it's fine to start at a formal or an experiential end -- both are artistic.

FWIW, I have an MFA. :)

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