Game Design 2 - Theory of Fun

Jay Crossler Senior Software Engineer Serious Games & Game Design Lecture 2 : Course Book Review - Theory of Fun, Player Archetypes

The Theory of Fun Why is work usually not fun?* *at least, for most people

Consider tic-tac-toe
Kids will play it continuously… and always lose
Victory seems just barely outside their grasp
And then… one day, all games become draws
At this point, they don’t enjoy playing it anymore
Did mastery and understanding come so suddenly?
Do they understand it’s a limited game with an optimal strategy?
Or, do they just see a pattern, and not really understand it?
To us, does it matter if it’s a O(n) problem, O(n 2 ), or O(n!)? Then, do we really understand it?

The Problem
Games are very multidimensional
Game Development has mostly been an art, not a science
Not many teachers understand them
Even fewer agree that it’s a valid area of study
No one really understands what makes something fun
And, in the US, video game fun is a $10B/year industry
Even more important, games teach values and problem solving skills, both to children and adults

Why are games not fun?
People quit when it’s too hard to win

Why are games not fun?
People quit when it’s too easy to win

How do we think?
Humans take in vast amounts of information and chunk it into smaller pieces
Humans can see up to 72 frames per second (60 is adequate)
Humans can distinguish millions of colors (women 30% more)
Can recognize image (afterblurs) even at 1/220 th of a second
100M neurons in the retina
The eye processes 10 Million point images/sec
Brain holds about 100M Megabytes
Yet, we are always taking mental shortcuts
Brain only notices √ of what we see (estimated at 2000bits/frame)

MIPS/Megabytes program growth

“ The best programmer is a lazy programmer”
To fight this huge onslaught of data, we chunk and create “icons”
Interface standard – Only give 3-7 options
Most people can only make judgments about 4 things at once

Chunking isn’t always good

Discovering patterns is fun
People dislike chaos, they prefer ordered, chunk able patterns
But there is a thrill of delight when you get it , and discover the pattern

Grokking
“ Grok” – from R. A. Heinlien’s Stranger in a Strange Land
When you understand something so deeply that you become one with it… even love it.
Grokking something is understanding it beyond intuition
Very similar to muscle memory
Brain has three levels of thought
1 – Conscious thought – logical, mathematical, list-based
2 – Intuitive, associative, integrative – chunking, no words
3 – Autonomic nervous system – whole sets of decisions

Practice is building a library of chunked skills and decisions

What is fun?

What are games?
Games are real
They’re just abstracted pictures of reality
A “Magic Circle” of disconnection… a formal system
Their pattern may or may not exist in reality
Games are puzzles to solve
We learn underlying patterns, grok them fully, then file them
Very similar to learning the piano, or learning to drive, or fight
Only real difference is that stakes are usually much lower
Games are concentrated chunks of reality
Abstracted and iconic, already prepared for our brains to use
They are formal systems, and don’t have messy details
Games are very powerful learning tools

Play vs. Game vs. Sport
Iconified representations of human experience that we can practice with and learn patterns from
What’s the difference between a game and a book?
Books offer patterns to the highest level of your brain
Games offer patterns to one level lower
In a book, you can read “weather is important to armies”
In a game, you can get your army beaten and really feel it
You can not practice a pattern or run permutations with a book

Is fun just learning?
Play, Games, Sports
All about recognizing goals and patterns, just usually have different risks and rewards
Why, then, do some people not think learning is fun?

How can a game be fun?
Games are exercise for our brains
As we learn the patterns, more novelty is needed
Practice can keep a game fresh, but soon we’ll grok it
Games are thus disposable, and boredom is inevitable
Formal games are very susceptible to this
They usually don’t have enough variables to be interesting
The pattern is too easily figured out
The more formally constructed a game is, the more limiting it will be
Adding physics, psychology, multiplayer all add variables

Is this fun?

The theory of fun
Fun is about our brain feeling good
Brains release endorphins into our system
Our brains are on drugs all the time
There’s a chemical release when we master a task
Our “moment of triumph” is rewarded by the brain
Notice someone always smiles when they “get it”
Needed for survival of the species
It is the act of solving puzzles that makes a game fun

What is the opposite?

What is boredom, then?
When a game stops teaching us, we feel bored
Boredom is the brain looking for new information
It happens when there are no new patterns to absorb
When a book is dull, it’s failing to show a captivating pattern
Don’t underestimate the brains desire to learn
The brain craves stimuli
Not necessarily new experiences , just new data to make patterns
Experiences force new chunking, and the brain doesn’t like to do more work that it has to (That’s why it chunks in the first place!)

The Theory of Fun in Games
Games must navigate between boredom and overload
Watch out for:
Tic-tac-toe – “Too easy”
Baseball RBI scores for 20 years – “Fun but not worth my time”
Don’t see any patterns – “Too hard”
Patterns shown too slowly – “It’s too repetitive”
Patterns shown too quickly – “It got too hard too fast”
Players mastered the pattern – “I beat it”
Fun is just another word for learning
A successful game is one that teaches everything it has to offer before the player gets bored and stops playing
Is this the same for XML classes, then?

For more… buy the course book “ Theory of Fun ”, by Raph Koster

Are grokers experts?
1. Experts notice features and meaningful patterns of information that are not noticed by novices.
2. Experts have acquired a great deal of content knowledge that is organized in ways that reflect a deep understanding of their subject matter.
3. Experts' knowledge cannot be reduced to sets of isolated facts or propositions but, instead, reflects contexts of applicability: that is, the knowledge is "conditionalized" on a set of circumstances.
4. Experts are able to flexibly retrieve important aspects of their knowledge with little attentional effort.
5. Though experts know their disciplines thoroughly, this does not guarantee that they are able to teach others.
6. Experts have varying levels of flexibility in their approach to new situations.

Player Archetypes Why do people play games so differently? also An introduction to Massively Multiplayer Games

How people choose games

Bartle Personality Types
♦ Achiever
Players give themselves game-related goals, then vigorously set out to achieve them. Build cities, accumulate treasure.
♥ Socializer
Use communication facilities for role-playing or to converse and interact with others.
♠ Explorer
Try to find out as much as possible about the game. Search areas and mechanics, fight every monster, do every quest.
♣ Imposer (Killer)
Provide game tools to cause distress on others. Usually involves applying a powerful sword to another players head.

Bartle Personality Types
♦ Achievers Say:
"I'm busy." "Sure, I'll help you. What do I get?" "So how do YOU kill the dragon, then?" "Only 4211 points to go!"
♥ Socializers Say:
"Hi!" "Yeah, well, I'm having trouble with my boyfriend." "What happened? I missed it, I was talking."
♠ Explorers Say:
"Hmm..." "You mean you don't know the shortest route from <obscure room 1> to <2>?" "I haven't tried that, what's it do?"
♣ Killers Say:
"Ha!" "Coward!" "Die!" "Die! Die! Die!" "N00b!"

Massively Multiplayer Online Games (MMOs)
Are MMOs:
Games? Like chess, tennis, D&D? Yes - to achievers.
Pastimes? Like reading, gardening, cooking? Yes - to explorers.
Sports? Like huntin', shooting, fishin'? Yes - to killers.
Entertainments? Like nightclubs, TV, concerts? Yes - to socialisers.

People play what is familiar

MMO Demographics Source: The Daedelus project
In MMOs:
Average age is 26
50% work full time
25% are teenagers
36% are married
22% have children
60% have played more than 10 hours continuously
20% play with a romantic partner
28% play with a family member
MMO players spend an average of 22 hours/week playing
Americans spend an average of 24 hours/week watching TV

Time spent “in game”
Given a hypothetical pool of 1000 players:
840 would be male
160 would be female
Of the 840 male players:
193 would be playing a female
647 would be playing a male
Of the 160 female players:
5 would be playing a male
155 would be playing a female
In other words:
About 1 out of every 2 female characters is played by a man
About 1 out of every 100 male characters is played by a woman

Occupational Status

Profession Types, Life Lessons

Activity Matrix
People’s interests can be broken down into 12 main categories

Activity Matrix
These types-of interests correspond highly to categories of game-player

What do players want?
Players want a Challenge
Players want to Socialize
Players want a dynamic Solitaire experience
Players want bragging rights
Players want an emotional experience
Players want to fantasize

What do players expect?
Players expect:
A consistent world (one that they can chunk and grok)
A world with understandable bounds
Reasonable solutions should work
Direction towards success… goals
Accomplishment of tasks incrementally… subgoals
Immersion
… to fail
… a fair chance
… not to need to repeat themselves
… never to be hopelessly stuck
… to do, not to watch

How do you satisfy people?
Use Interface conventions
Let them rely on their existing knowledge
A familiar topic helps people get right into the game
Give a lot of positive feedback early in the game
Give them the idea they’re on the right track
Everything they do, the computer acknowledges it, recognizes it, and thinks it’s really cool
Prototype!
In 2 years of development, 1.25 of it is for playing/testing
Balance so that it’s not boring/too hard is crucial

“ Subgames” can meet the needs of different personalities
In Sid Meyer’s Pirates , you have subgames for:
Sword-fights
Navigating your ship
Raiding a town
In Sid Meier’s Civilization , subgames are integrated :
Military system
Economic Stock Market system
Production systems ..all of these are intertwined
“ Do I invent a new chariot, or give the people that stadium?”
Scale: Starting small with one settler, building an empire
Started with Will Wright’s Sim City
Notice that in some games, there are no goals – you infer what they should be from real life

Classic arcade game traits
Single Screen Play .. Easy for old graphics cards
Infinite Play .. Keep putting in quarters
Multiple Lives .. Make you think you have a chance
Scoring/High scores .. Players want bragging rights
Easy-to-learn gameplay
No Story

Classic arcade games
Input
How responsive do you want to be to the users inputs?
Interconnectedness
Keep everything in theme with related metaphors
Escalating Tension
Building speed, with temporary periods of relief
Player Focus
Keep their attention concentrated on one spot
Minimize the superfluous distractions

The point?
Game designers now either build a game completely targeted to one or two personality type
Mortal Kombat (Killer)
Doom (Explorer, Killer)
The Sims (Socializer, Achiever)
Or, they build games aimed at balancing across each
Star Wars Galaxies
Professions for: Dancer, Chef, Image Designer, Architect, Droid Engineer, Pistoleer, Bounty Hunter, Commando, etc.
World of Warcraft
Each class has parts which satisfy desires of each personality archetype

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Game Design 2 - Theory of Fun

by Jay Crossler

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