Book’s Author: Richard Rouse III
Summarized by Samuel Coelho
5. The Elements of Gameplay
This section discusses what elements in a game make this game great from the author’s viewpoint. Amidst these elements are: non-linearity, modeling reality, unique solutions, and input/output (Sorry for the pic... :P).5.1 Unique Solutions
Games can be viewed as situations in which game players can utilize their own creativity to succeed.
5.1.1 Anticipatory versus Complex Systems
Good designers will try to guess what players are going to attempt to do and make certain their game responds well to those actions.
With a more holistic system for the game, it becomes more like a simulation. The more designers recognize the value of simulations over hard coding and emphasize these complex and interconnected systems in their games, the deeper their games can become.
5.1.2 Emergence
Establishing a game universe that functions in accordance with logical rules players can easily understand and use to their advantage allows those same players to come up with their own solutions to the problems the game presents.
The more complex systems work correctly and concurrently with each other, the more interesting and varied the solutions to situations become.
At the same time, many designers fear players discovering emergent strategies they can use as exploits: tactics that will allow players to finish a game too easily, skipping a lot of the fun. These tactics reveal a shortcut through the game that needs to be fixed.
Though some designers become distressed whenever an unanticipated strategy emerges in their game, it is important to look at the given tactic and determine if it ruins the player’s experience or if it is a technique equally or even more fun than what the designer had planned.
5.2 Non-Linearity
Games are meant to be non-linear works. In the game of chess for example, there are multiple ways to capture the opponent’s king, to move from the game’s predetermined starting state to its conclusion. There are a vast number of different ways to be victorious in chess, and that variety is what keeps the game interesting.
Thus, we want to provide choices for players to make, different paths they can take to get from point A to point B, from the game’s beginning to its end.
The different non-linear components can interact with each other to make the whole far greater than the sum of its parts.
Having multiple solutions to the individual challenges within a game is a big part of non-linearity.
Many adventure games have made the mistake of being overly linear by allowing players access to only one puzzle at a given time.
Giving players a choice of which challenges they take on allows them to exploit their own personal skills to get through the game.
If you want to have multiple solutions or paths, they should all be equally compelling so players will not feel cheated at having picked the much less spectacular path.
Designing numerous obstacles that are different enough to provide variety for players and apply roughly the same challenge is not an easy task. If you have the challenges X, Y, and Z, and Z is significantly easier than X or Y, it is quite likely no one will ever bother with X or Y. In a way, a game with poorly designed choices for players is nearly as linear as a game without any choices at all.
5.2.1 The Purpose of Non-Linearity
All designers should understand that non-linearity is not about having players wander around the game world aimlessly. If the game is non-linear to the point where players have no idea what they are supposed to try to accomplish or how they might go about it, the non-linearity may have gone too far.
Noah Falstein suggested that when non-linearity allows players to tackle a series of problems in whatever order they desire, completing one challenge should make the others easier for players to accomplish. In the case of a collection of puzzles, this can be done by providing players with a hint about the other puzzles once one is completed. In the case of a collection of battles of some sort, this can be done by providing players with additional weaponry with which to survive the other battles.
It is important to always remember that non-linearity is included in the game to provide players some meaningful authorship in the way they play the game.
It’s also important to note that replayability is not the main motivation for including non-linearity in your game designs. The main reason for us to implement non-linearity is to give players a sense of freedom in the game-world, to let players have a unique playing experience, to tell their own story.
5.3 Modeling Reality
The trouble with modeling reality games comes when titles get mired in reality to the point where they come to resemble real life a little more than players want. Games should be modeling life or some aspects of life while leaving out the tedious and boring parts.
Using reality as a basis for your games also has its advantages. Players will understand or at least think that they can understand what they can do to be successful in the game-world.
In Terms of story and setting, placing your game in a real-world setting can be much more meaningful to players, allowing the actions that take place in the game-world to resonate with them more deeply than if your game were set in abstract worlds.
A potential downside to having a realistic world is that, since the game mimics a reality players are familiar with, players will expect certain game-world elements to work in certain ways and will be very quick to notice when something fails to do so.
Players only want more realism if that means that they can do more interesting and fun things, not if it makes their game experience more frustrating.
As a game designer you must strike the balance between reality and abstraction, weighing what your game needs from a gameplay standpoint with what your story and setting require and with what your engine can reasonably handle.
5.4 Teaching the Player
The first few minutes the players will spend with your game will often make the difference between whether they want to continue playing it or not.
If your game is too difficult to get a handle on within the first minute, players are most likely to put it down and try something else.
This does not mean that your game must be dumbed down or simplified, merely that you must introduce the complexity of your game-world gradually through the gameplay instead of through the manual.
It’s important that during the introduction of the game controls players are in a safe environment that engenders learning.
It’s important to reward players even for the simplest of accomplishments. This makes players feel that, indeed, they are on the right track with the game and encourages them to keep playing.
5.4.1 Tutorials
The tutorial levels do one of the things that computers do best: provide an interactive learning experience. These levels tend to lead players by the hand through the game’s mechanics, teaching them what they will need to know bit by bit. Some players, typically females, tend to prefer actually being led through the game for a bit until they get the hang of it, and structured tutorial levels are perfect for this.
The one problem with tutorials is that they are seldom much fun to play, and as a result many players will skip them and head straight for the actual game.
Beyond the learn of controls, there is often little interest in tutorials. There is a feeling among the players that the tutorial level is not part of the “real” game, and many players want to start playing this “real” game as soon as possible.
5.5 Input/Output
Designing input and output systems is an “invisible” art in that the goal of their creation is for them to be transparent to players. This can sometimes lead designers failing to fully consider how to best make the I/O work in their game, a mistake you must avoid if you want your games to be any fun to play.
By the use of the input/output system that you design, players must be able to control and understand the game effortlessly.
5.5.1 Controls and Input
The controls are the player’s interface between the real-world and the game-world. In order for players to experience true immersion in the game they must be able to manipulate the game-world almost as intuitively as they manipulate the real-world. Every time players have to think, “Now, what the button do I have to press to do that?” that immersion is destroyed.
The mouse is an extremely powerful device when used correctly. Its great strength is that it is a control device which most non-gamer computer users are already familiar with.
Whenever an artist suggest to make a button for GUI look a certain way, the designer must consider if the new design takes away from the player’s ability to understand how that button works.
Every time you need to add a new button or key to your game, you must ask yourself if the complexity you have just added to the game’s controls is worth the functionality it enables.
Because of the massive keyboard at their disposal, designers for PC games are not forced to focus on controls of their games in the same way that designers working on a game for consoles do, and think their games might not suffer for it.
One technique that can be used to make your controls intuitive to a variety of playersis is to include multiple ways to achieve the same effect.
There is a lot of room for creativity in game design, but control design is not one of the best areas to exercise your creative urgencies. Your game should be creative in its gameplay, story line, and other content, but not necessarily in its controls. Some of the most successful games have taken control schemes that players are already familiar with from other games and applied them to new and compelling content.
Console games are particularly good at providing uniform control schemes, with fans of games in a particular genre able to pick up and immediately start playing almost any game available in the genre, even if they have never seen it before.
During the course of the development of a game, as you are playing the game over and over again, it is very easy to get accustomed to bad controls. Though the controls may be poorly laid out or counterintuitive, as a game’s designer working on a project for several years, you may have used the controls so much that they become second nature.
Always make sure the default controls are as intuitive as possible, and if it this involves shameless imitation, so be it. Many players never find or use the control configuration screens, either because of the desire to start playing the game immediately or a general lack of savvy with the computer. After you get them so you like them, you must put them in front of players to see how well they work in practice instead of theory.
Particularly in action games, when your controls are perfect, the wall separating players from the game-world will disappear and they will start to feel like they truly are the same game-world character. This is the ultimate sign of an immersive game, and achieving this effect is impossible without strong controls.
5.5.2 Output and Game-World Feedback
While the player’s ability to intuitively control the game-world may be the key to a successful game, outputting that vital information about the game-world to player is just as important.
A good output system for a game is both powerful and intuitive. It allows players to jump right into the game and understand what is happening in the game-world, but it also provides expert players with all the information they need to play the game effectively.
All computer games conceal a certain amount of information from players, and cannot possibly communicate all of the information they have about the game-world to players. But they must communicate what is reasonable and important for players to know, and communicate that data effectively.
Almost all games present players with a view of the game-world as the central part of their output system. Through this view players see the object they are currently controlling and its location and state in the game-world.
Though the designer may also want to include data in heads up display (HUD), communicating it through the game’s primary game-world view makes it that much more transparent and easy for players to understand.
A well-designed graphical HUD in your game will be easier for players to glance at and understand than one that contains a lot of numbers and words. This explains the superiority of the health bar over a health number of percentage.
Certainly, as technology has allowed it, the trend has been to get away from the on-screen HUD’s as much as possible, allowing the game-world view to take over the screen if
The game-world can effectively communicate all of the information the players need to play.
The GUI for your game needs to balance the superiority of t visual representation with the clarity of text, possibly using a combination of both as needed.
Audio cues can provide an excellent supplement to on-screen information, or can work quite effectively as the sole way of communicating critical information.
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