I Have No Words & I Must Design: Toward a Critical Vocabulary for Game
“Almost every game has some degree of puzzle-solving; even a pure military strategy game requires players to, e.g., solve the puzzle of making an optimum attack at this point with these units.”
To some amount, I agree with this comment. In practically every game there is at least some amount of decision making that involves a tactical mind, or as put above, puzzle-solving. As Costikya mentions, even games that don’t have a direct relation of puzzle-solving have a hidden layer of puzzles within them. Until this point I had not really thought about it, but when I think about the majority of the games that I’ve played and still play. There are certain choices you make which are made on information fed to you from the game, which in a way could be seen as a puzzle.
“Some time ago, I was asked to teach a course on “Interactive Games” I’ve heard the term used before, by people who think they’re talking about electronic games – arcade, console, and computer. They aren’t. Every game is interactive; “interactive game” is a redundancy.”
This is something that I’ve actually had to write about before, the common misconception that interactive games have to be in a digital format. Even when you search for definitions on the Internet the results come back all mentioning electronic computer games, which just shows how widespread the misconception is.
To me, the definition of an interactive game is simple, you make a decision and the game responds to it. Costikya uses Monopoly as an example, but I think it can be broken down much more simply. Take any turn-base dice board game, you roll a dice and move your counter along the path of the board, depending on the game, you normally encounter reactions depending on what square you have moved on; To me, this is interaction in its simplest form.
“Every so often, the politically correct attack games as being “competitive” and therefore bad. They have winners. They have losers. This is bad; we’re supposed to nurture and support others. Why can’t we have cooperative games?”
It was difficult to fully quote the point that Costikya was trying to make here. The way I read it is that he is almost mocking the people who see games that are against another person as a bad thing, as there is a winner and a loser. I can understand exactly why and I fully support that it is wrong to see it in such a light. The simple fact is, in life you will win some and you will loose some... So why should it be any different in a game? You could also see it as a character building experience, sooner or later people need to learn that you cannot have everything your way. Having them learn that lesson in a non-dangerous game environment is much better than the alternative.
“The Bloodforge hammer exists solely as an 3D model rendered on the screen as you play EverQuest, and as a set of numerical and logical values used in processing by EverQuest’s game servers. It has no concrete, real-world expression, and no value in any context other than the game of EverQuest. That’s not quite true; I could go to eBay, and auction off the Bloodforge hammer, if I wished, and earn tangible money for it. I have no idea how much, actually, but I’m sure it’s possible; people do frequently auction off characters or possessions or game money from Ultima Online and EverQuest. So one can argue that the Bloodforge hammer has ‘real world meaning,’ since I can transform it to hard US currency.”
This is something that is happening all over the world, it is called Real World Trade or RWT for short. It has been a growing problem for games for a long time, but more recently it has became a fully developed industry. There are companies set up directly to provide players of games with services such as power-leveling, item sales, character sales as well as currency sales all in exchange for real world currency.
Another example, other than EverQuest, would be Runescape. Runescape is a huge MMORPG with over 10,000,000 active accounts and 165,000,000 registered accounts. In the game you level up your character and train your skills by doing things such as kill NPC’s, complete quests, or do specific actions. Last year Jagex, the company that owns Runescape, said that in the previous year of 2010 real world traders were estimated to of earned at least £140,000,000 in illegal power-leveling and sales of items. For a long time Jagex has been against real world trade, not just because it gives players an unfair advantage, but also because normally real world traders obtain the items they sell by hacking and level characters using illegal bots that perform tasks on a player's behalf without them needing to be present.
“It is important, however, to understand how and why game structures do shape player behavior; indeed, understanding this is fundamental to mastering the craft of game design. You cannot simply throw together a bunch of different game elements, and expect them to cohere; you must consciously set out to decide what kind of experiences you want to impart to your players, and create systems that enable those experiences.”
What elements a game contains is incredibly important. Not only does it shape the style and technique that players use and experience while playing the game, it also defines what category of people play the game. A game with complicated puzzle elements wouldn’t always attract the attention of hardcore first person shooter gamers and likewise, hardcore puzzle solver gamers wouldn’t be attracted to bloody, violent, high paced first person shooters
It’s something that will always need careful consideration, even if the game is part of a series... Players will expect tweaks in the game elements to keep them on the edge of their seats. Without putting thought in to it, a game can become dry and unpopular.
“LeBlanc’s fourth category is challenge, which is equivalent to our notion of struggle. As I’ve argued, this is at the heart of any game; you may be able to dispense with fantasy, or narrative, but you cannot dispense with challenge.”
It’s difficult to explain the primitive feelings that a good old struggle invokes on us as humans, It gives us some a sense of accomplishment and pride once we overcome struggles. It makes perfect sense that the same can be said for games. You game can continue without certain aspects, like Costikya says, fantasy or narrative, but once you take away the aspect of challenge, the game in my opinion turns more into a task.
For example, If you are tasked to travel from point A to B in a simple path with no obstacles in a game, the sense of the accomplishment at the end of the task is pretty minute. However once you put in obstacles that challenge the player in a variety of ways it adds a whole new dynamic to the game.
“And as I’ve said, you need to tune the challenge – quite likely during testing, rather than at the spec level – to avoid making the game either too easy or too hard.”
Following on from the previous comment, although challenge is required in a game, it cannot be too hard or too easy. The problem is, to some a challenge is easy while the same challenge to others can prove hard. Take the single player mode in Battlefield: Bad Company 2, it has 3 difficulty settings easy, medium and hard. It is not uncommon for single player games to have settings similar to this, sometimes giving the players 5-6 options, not just the 3.
Having difficulty settings allows players to set the game level to something they feel is suitable, perhaps even putting them slightly out of their comfort zone just to keep them on edge and improve their skills.
“Good visuals provide one form of sensory pleasure; we like pretty games. Audio is important. For some games, tactile pleasure is important, too; sometimes a game’s controls just feel right.”
I couldn’t agree any more with this. Game can have absolutely little to no storyline yet still be hugely successful. Take Angry Birds for example, all you know is that some funny little green pigs have stolen your eggs and you need to get them back... That's it, there is no more to it! The game play itself is even more simple... Drag your finger and release to fire one of your birds, aim to kill the green pigs. Yet because it is dressed up with an almost joyful visual graphics, has a very catch audio track and has incredibly simple controls it is a major hit and made over $10,000,000 in just 12 months!
Of course it is rare to find such a break in the market, but it is possible. I am not saying that a story line is not important. However, you can have a game with practically no storyline that is still successful but it is nearly impossible to have make a successful game that has a massive storyline and poor visual and audio as well as bad controls. In my opinion I think that the storyline only makes up only around 40% of the games successfulness.
“Even so little a thing as allowing a choice of character name can give people a modest means of selfexpression. Or as another example, Dark Ages of Camelot lets people buy dyes, to change the color of the clothing and armor they wear – something that has no game effect, and costs ingame money, but gives people a means of self expression. And they use it, too – they willingly spend money they could spend actually improving their character’s weapons or armor, on something so trivial as virtual fashion.”
Here is something I actually experience on a daily basis so it is something that I completely agree with. Currently I am one of the moderators for a company called Gameforge, a major German browser based company. I moderator and maintain their game forums for a game called Ikariam (Without going in to too much detail, Ikariam is a stat building game where players build up their own empires, wage wars and pillage barbarians as well as each other), which is home to over 82,000 active users.
What relates to this subject, is that I maintain the suggestions section where players can make their own suggestion for the game. Every week I process dozens of suggestions from players and there are always new suggestions about being able to customise how the game looks for them personally.
In Ikariam players already have the ability to decide what buildings to build, where to build them, what government they want to play with, what units are in their army, how big their army is... I could go in, but my point is there is a lot of customization; players accounts always differ from each other. However, it is not enough! Players always want new ways to customize their towns, not just in how they perform but also just for pure aesthetic pleasure.
A good example would be the buildings that they can build. In their cities they have 10 free building slots to build their buildings in. Once you build a building, you can upgrade it using resources you gather. The problem is that when you want to move the building you need to destroy it, which only gives you a fraction of what you spend to build it up. Why would players want to move it then? Moving buildings to different slots give no advantage in the game, they do the same job in slot 1 as they do in slot 4... The reason, is aesthetics. Players want their empires to look pretty and organised, not a jumble of buildings shoved in together. With that said, some players don’t care what their towns look like as long as it is efficient.
“Ask yourself: How does the player interact with the game? Are those interactions meaningful? Is the process of interaction itself enjoyable – or tedious, and if so, how could it be made it less so?”
Although this isn’t exactly Costikya making a point, it is something that I’ve picked to response do as I can see the reasons as to why he is asking these questions.
In the MMORPG’s that I've played (Runescape, Dragon Age, World of Warcraft) there has always been a certain side of the game where you need to complete tasks over and over again to achieve a goal. Commonly called “Grinding”, it is when you complete a small task repetitively to achieve a bigger goal. For example, in World of Warcraft to make money you have certain skills, such as fishing. You can fish a variety of fish in the game and sell them on the auction house to players for money. A common technique for earning high amounts of money is to empty out your inventory slots and fish hundreds if not thousands of fish to sell on the auction for a large amount of money.
It is a very tedious task and can get pretty boring, but Blizzard (the creators of World of Warcraft) have tried to keep it interesting. They do this in many different ways, from adding enemies that will attack you while you fish to having pools of water with unique fish in the enemy factions part of the map. Several times while I was grinding I’ve had confrontations with opposing faction members. Most the time they just want to do the same as you, fish. Every now and again you get the occasional /spit or even a /wave but like I said, most the time they are just there to grind as well. However, what keeps it interesting is that every now and again you get players who are there for the sole purpose of killing you. This is a distraction from the tedious task making it more entertaining.
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