Tuesday, 29 November 2011
Friday, 25 November 2011
MUD players
Last we had had to read a Popcap article written by Richard Bartle about MUD (Multi-user dungeon) and how the players of the MUD effect the game.
Bartle first explains to us about the 'stereotypical' MUD players which he dubs them as playing cards.
Achievers- players who create achievements within the game text ( diamonds)
Explorers- Players who explore the game world (spades)
Socializers- players who socialize with other players (hearts)
Killers-the players main reason for player is to impose on other players (club)
These players are not unique to their category, Bartle says that they have to switch between each player type to get what they want.
With Achievers they give challenges to themselves to complete or are interested in doing stuff in the game/to the game. To complete a challenge they would have to explore a certain type of area in the game to receive an item. This also goes for solciolising, by talking to other players they will gain information and discover what other players know, lastly, they would have to become a killer at some point to rid of rival achievers.
Explorers tend to enjoy surprises given to them in games and try to figure how things work. Scoring points is necessary (achievers) to get to other places in the game and by talking to other players they can be informative as a source of a games idea.
As the name suggests Socializers are more interested in the people, the game is only a setting where they all get together. Because socializers are about the the people who are playing it, by achieving points the socializers can access information on other people. Exploring the game world is necessary to understand what everyone else is talking about and becoming a killer can form relationships with other players.
Lastly (and I think the most simple one) we have the Killers, these players feel power with every kill the achieve, but to get powerful they would have to gain XP (achievers) exploring the land allows them to discover new ways to kill people as well as new enemies and (as Bartle says) they only socialize to taunt other players.
Interest Graph
This intereast graph shows how the different MUD players are 'sorted' into sections.
After explaining the MUD players Bartle tells us that a balance is needed with the types of players. If a MUD has a particular large number of the same payers, it could drive away other player, this is also vise-versa as these groups of people rely on each other.
Reading thought the 26 page article I disagreed with most of what Bartle stated, because his article is out dated, in these times his article would be irrelevant, but since he wrote the article when MUD's just came to life, his article could be seen as draft for MUD's for the future. Some of his statements still apply to MUD's now-a-days, like the balancing system of the different players, but by only having four types of players, i think that over the years new player types have been created.
Bartle first explains to us about the 'stereotypical' MUD players which he dubs them as playing cards.
Achievers- players who create achievements within the game text ( diamonds)
Explorers- Players who explore the game world (spades)
Socializers- players who socialize with other players (hearts)
Killers-the players main reason for player is to impose on other players (club)
These players are not unique to their category, Bartle says that they have to switch between each player type to get what they want.
With Achievers they give challenges to themselves to complete or are interested in doing stuff in the game/to the game. To complete a challenge they would have to explore a certain type of area in the game to receive an item. This also goes for solciolising, by talking to other players they will gain information and discover what other players know, lastly, they would have to become a killer at some point to rid of rival achievers.
Explorers tend to enjoy surprises given to them in games and try to figure how things work. Scoring points is necessary (achievers) to get to other places in the game and by talking to other players they can be informative as a source of a games idea.
As the name suggests Socializers are more interested in the people, the game is only a setting where they all get together. Because socializers are about the the people who are playing it, by achieving points the socializers can access information on other people. Exploring the game world is necessary to understand what everyone else is talking about and becoming a killer can form relationships with other players.
Lastly (and I think the most simple one) we have the Killers, these players feel power with every kill the achieve, but to get powerful they would have to gain XP (achievers) exploring the land allows them to discover new ways to kill people as well as new enemies and (as Bartle says) they only socialize to taunt other players.
Interest Graph
This intereast graph shows how the different MUD players are 'sorted' into sections.
After explaining the MUD players Bartle tells us that a balance is needed with the types of players. If a MUD has a particular large number of the same payers, it could drive away other player, this is also vise-versa as these groups of people rely on each other.
Reading thought the 26 page article I disagreed with most of what Bartle stated, because his article is out dated, in these times his article would be irrelevant, but since he wrote the article when MUD's just came to life, his article could be seen as draft for MUD's for the future. Some of his statements still apply to MUD's now-a-days, like the balancing system of the different players, but by only having four types of players, i think that over the years new player types have been created.
Tuesday, 15 November 2011
Casual games
' Causal games will be considered the game possibly of pick up and play'
Venturelli states that causal gaming should be made up of short bursts of gameplay but enjoyable in the long run.
As well as that they should have a polished mechanics, interface design, good balancing and close attention to detail.
In his article he gives us different 'ingreadants' that he thinks are important to casual gaming.
Pacing- ' The rhthem of a game. This 'crafts' the players experience to create different emotions. Much like in my older posts, where the designer can't make player feel they way they want them to. They can only use the mechanics of the game to influence the player.
Related concepts within pacing:
-Threat- Where the player feels like they are in a sense of danger
-Tension- perceived danger. the player becomes the weaker side of conflict
-Movement Impetus- The will/ desire of the player to move forward in the game level and not quit
-Tempo-The intensity of the game. The time taken between each decision the player makes. the shorter the tempo, the more erractic the game.
Space of Possibility and Player Exercise:
Venturelli states that causal gaming should be made up of short bursts of gameplay but enjoyable in the long run.
As well as that they should have a polished mechanics, interface design, good balancing and close attention to detail.
In his article he gives us different 'ingreadants' that he thinks are important to casual gaming.
Pacing- ' The rhthem of a game. This 'crafts' the players experience to create different emotions. Much like in my older posts, where the designer can't make player feel they way they want them to. They can only use the mechanics of the game to influence the player.
Related concepts within pacing:
-Threat- Where the player feels like they are in a sense of danger
-Tension- perceived danger. the player becomes the weaker side of conflict
-Movement Impetus- The will/ desire of the player to move forward in the game level and not quit
-Tempo-The intensity of the game. The time taken between each decision the player makes. the shorter the tempo, the more erractic the game.
Space of Possibility and Player Exercise:
Venturelli states that when we all play games, we sub-consionsly looking for a pattern. When there are no more patterns to figure out there essentially is no more 'fun' in the casual games.
He uses the example of nouts and crosses, becasuse there is such a small area to play on, the game possibility outcome is very low and so you can easily get board, where as chess is quite the oppersite, there is not pattern (unless both players are using staragies). Another one would be connect four, you could essentially call it a much larger version of nout's and crosses, but because it has a larger player space, both players have the large choice to use which ever space they want.
Venturelli then says that is the player is forced to take an action that doesn't let them asset every other possible outcome, it could leave the player feeling like they have missed something out in the game, leaving then to get angry, so instead of forcing them to take an action, just limit the game space they are in. By limiting the space of possibility, which altogether limits the game Pattern, this makes the game clearer to the player. If in one level you have to compete a certain mission, and to complete that mission you have to obtain a certain item, and to get it you have to talk to a person who lives somewhere far away and the only way to get there is a griffin. With all this going on in one level (in ca casual game) it would easily confuse the player, ad Venturelli said
'Casual games are meant to be fast and Organic'
To back up his statement he says that in each level, instead of adding or subtracting certain mechanics, you should replace. by replacing you would have a much smoother and related level to the one before.
Venturelli studies the casual games of 'peggle' and 'Plants Vs Zombies' he states how they use the same ingredients in each game to make is casual. In both games they have a level one which is pretty much impossible to lose at, these levels slowly introduce the players into the game with out a mass instruction tutorial, after each level it gets consecutively harder, and you get more weapons the higher the level.
Because of these ingredients they create a perceivable pattern of continuous play meaning that in games once you realize a pattern and master it, in the next level there is still a pattern, which could be the same but with replaced mechanics, which could include new weapons, new enemies, life points. With these changes to the mechanics it makes the player want to complete the pattern/level essentially making them play longer.
From reading Venturelli article i wonder is all arcade games are causal games, they have a certain level which introduces you to the game mechanics, they are normally fast when you play and it defiantly has the perceivable pattern of continuous learning as it always manage's to make me pay £1 to play the game again
Wednesday, 9 November 2011
Why Chance and Skill is an Important Component in Games
The question we had to answer this week was how chance and skill is important to a game and how the games designers use the skill and chance tool to their advantage.
-CHANCE- 'If a game is easily solvable it loses the game aspect'
Just like Leblac, Braithwiate and Schreiber (Will be calling these two B&S from now on) dissects the two tools and shows us whats inside each tool that we can specifically use to make a game more interesting to the player.
First off with chance, we have Competitive, which I think is one of the most important of all others. The competitive allows less experienced players a higher chance of winning thus making the players more interested in the game. I have sometimes wondered to myself, when playing chess if i should just throw a dice for an instant win... maybe those times when I have stormed off and knocked the board over may not have occurred if a 'bit' of chance was introduced.
With chess I have seen many upon many different types of strategies to win a game, but with Variety a strategy would be useless if a game doesn't allow you to carry it out, either because the dice didn't roll on the number you want, or the dealer didn't give you a picture card. With variety, it forces the players to think outside their strategy box, by not going with their usual way of play, variety increase's the experience for the player as well as their knowledge of the game. From variety you get Enhancing Decision Making
'Essence of most games is the decisions that the player makes.'
I totally think this statement is true, because variety makes you change your strategy plan, you have to make the important decision that can either help you or destroy you in a game. Like in a 4 way Yu-Gi-Oh game, you can help the player who is at the disadvantage (Low on Life points) by attacking the opponent who is killing them, this could gain the confidence of the disadvantage player, who can help but you give the other player a reason for them to kill you. From experience I tend not to be the nice guy since it always back fires and I generally get ambushed. with this tool, it makes the player more drawn into the game by making them think hard about the decision they are about to make and weighting up the consequences of their decisions.
Our last dissected tool from chance and luck is Dramatic Moments. I wouldn't say that this is a tool, I would say it is a dynamic of a game. Say you have plan to build a mass load of hotel's on Mayfair, you have just the right amount of money, you know that players are close enough to soon land on them and you have a slight feeling that the next chance card is going to say Advance to Mayfair, but what is holding you back? The dice are. You have to roll a 5 to land on either Park Lane. You roll, and from the moment the dice leave your hand to the moment they land on a number, that is where the Dramatic moment is taking place.
Now that B&S have taught us what is inside chance, they now move onto the Mechanics of them. The most obvious one being Dice. We all know that dice are random, but the more die you add to your collection teh more it reduces the randomness since getting two six's is much more easier then getting four six's. Dice also have a cashing out system, which is a blessing in some case's, sometimes you need to get 2 double six's in a row to win the game, lucky for us previous rolls don't effect future ones.
Another common mechanic is Cards. These are more versatile then dice, but because you have a set amount of card's in a deck, the probability lowers with each card drawn. e.g if you were playing the exciting game of 'The guy who picks the highest card wins, and ace of spades is the highest' if the opponent picks a king of spades, its doesn't take a genius to work out that you will probably lose.
Surprise surprise, we have a reference to MDA, in this case it's called Hidden Information. Thou it does sound like Fog of war, it has a very different impact. with Hidden information you have the information , you just don't know which information is correct, so what do you do? you ask random questions to the the right one, Guess Who? is based on this mechanic. Using Hidden information in video games can be a dangerous choice, because if they want to deploy a strategy and a random element which you don't know is about to happen stops them from making a move, it would leave the player annoyed. Just like in FF-XIII where the main character has a special sword which greatly helps you kill a monster, but there is no way of making it help you, the sword's special only happens at random times, for me this made the game very repetitive and annoying.
Children and Gambling Games.
At first I wondered why B&S focused on the two games, but when I had finished reading the section I didn't realize that they both have the same technique used in them to attract players.
With Children Games the designers mainly (if not only) use chance and luck, since children are not the best at playing skilled games. I have noticed that when children play games you can tell that they think it is a skill of their for rolling three six's consecutively, by saying words before they throw the dice, or throwing them in a certain way (without looking like they are cheating)
Of course in Gambling throwing the dice in a certain way would lead to you being thrown out of a casino. With gambling the excitement is not only winning the game, but the physical aspect of gaining money out of luck. Though the cleverness used in gambling is the rather large amount of choice you get when playing, in roulette its your decision to place as much chips on a number, if your decision to fold or bluff at poker, it's your decision to twist or stick. With the amount of choice in a game who wouldn't think that they were in control? But it is just a use of illusion, making the player think that they have a certain 'vibe' going on.
-CHANCE- 'If a game is easily solvable it loses the game aspect'
Just like Leblac, Braithwiate and Schreiber (Will be calling these two B&S from now on) dissects the two tools and shows us whats inside each tool that we can specifically use to make a game more interesting to the player.
First off with chance, we have Competitive, which I think is one of the most important of all others. The competitive allows less experienced players a higher chance of winning thus making the players more interested in the game. I have sometimes wondered to myself, when playing chess if i should just throw a dice for an instant win... maybe those times when I have stormed off and knocked the board over may not have occurred if a 'bit' of chance was introduced.
With chess I have seen many upon many different types of strategies to win a game, but with Variety a strategy would be useless if a game doesn't allow you to carry it out, either because the dice didn't roll on the number you want, or the dealer didn't give you a picture card. With variety, it forces the players to think outside their strategy box, by not going with their usual way of play, variety increase's the experience for the player as well as their knowledge of the game. From variety you get Enhancing Decision Making
'Essence of most games is the decisions that the player makes.'
I totally think this statement is true, because variety makes you change your strategy plan, you have to make the important decision that can either help you or destroy you in a game. Like in a 4 way Yu-Gi-Oh game, you can help the player who is at the disadvantage (Low on Life points) by attacking the opponent who is killing them, this could gain the confidence of the disadvantage player, who can help but you give the other player a reason for them to kill you. From experience I tend not to be the nice guy since it always back fires and I generally get ambushed. with this tool, it makes the player more drawn into the game by making them think hard about the decision they are about to make and weighting up the consequences of their decisions.
Our last dissected tool from chance and luck is Dramatic Moments. I wouldn't say that this is a tool, I would say it is a dynamic of a game. Say you have plan to build a mass load of hotel's on Mayfair, you have just the right amount of money, you know that players are close enough to soon land on them and you have a slight feeling that the next chance card is going to say Advance to Mayfair, but what is holding you back? The dice are. You have to roll a 5 to land on either Park Lane. You roll, and from the moment the dice leave your hand to the moment they land on a number, that is where the Dramatic moment is taking place.
Now that B&S have taught us what is inside chance, they now move onto the Mechanics of them. The most obvious one being Dice. We all know that dice are random, but the more die you add to your collection teh more it reduces the randomness since getting two six's is much more easier then getting four six's. Dice also have a cashing out system, which is a blessing in some case's, sometimes you need to get 2 double six's in a row to win the game, lucky for us previous rolls don't effect future ones.
Another common mechanic is Cards. These are more versatile then dice, but because you have a set amount of card's in a deck, the probability lowers with each card drawn. e.g if you were playing the exciting game of 'The guy who picks the highest card wins, and ace of spades is the highest' if the opponent picks a king of spades, its doesn't take a genius to work out that you will probably lose.
Surprise surprise, we have a reference to MDA, in this case it's called Hidden Information. Thou it does sound like Fog of war, it has a very different impact. with Hidden information you have the information , you just don't know which information is correct, so what do you do? you ask random questions to the the right one, Guess Who? is based on this mechanic. Using Hidden information in video games can be a dangerous choice, because if they want to deploy a strategy and a random element which you don't know is about to happen stops them from making a move, it would leave the player annoyed. Just like in FF-XIII where the main character has a special sword which greatly helps you kill a monster, but there is no way of making it help you, the sword's special only happens at random times, for me this made the game very repetitive and annoying.
Children and Gambling Games.
At first I wondered why B&S focused on the two games, but when I had finished reading the section I didn't realize that they both have the same technique used in them to attract players.
With Children Games the designers mainly (if not only) use chance and luck, since children are not the best at playing skilled games. I have noticed that when children play games you can tell that they think it is a skill of their for rolling three six's consecutively, by saying words before they throw the dice, or throwing them in a certain way (without looking like they are cheating)
Of course in Gambling throwing the dice in a certain way would lead to you being thrown out of a casino. With gambling the excitement is not only winning the game, but the physical aspect of gaining money out of luck. Though the cleverness used in gambling is the rather large amount of choice you get when playing, in roulette its your decision to place as much chips on a number, if your decision to fold or bluff at poker, it's your decision to twist or stick. With the amount of choice in a game who wouldn't think that they were in control? But it is just a use of illusion, making the player think that they have a certain 'vibe' going on.
Thursday, 3 November 2011
zotero
The result I got from Zotero (edit 27/03/2012)
Books:
Bell.R., 1979. Board and Table Games from Many Civilizations. Mineola, New York : Courier Dover Publications
Fullerton, T., 2008. Game Design Workshop: A Playcentric Approach to Creating Innovative Games 2nd ed., Morgan Kaufmann.
Journal articles:
Jacobson, J. & Hwang, Z., 2002. UNREAL TOURNAMENT FOR IMMERSIVE INTERACTIVE THEATER. Communications of the ACM, 45(1), pp.39-42
Books:
Bell.R., 1979. Board and Table Games from Many Civilizations. Mineola, New York : Courier Dover Publications
Fullerton, T., 2008. Game Design Workshop: A Playcentric Approach to Creating Innovative Games 2nd ed., Morgan Kaufmann.
Contributors:
Chandler, H.M. & Chandler, R., 2011. Fundamentals of Game Development, Jones & Bartlett Learning
Chandler, H.M. & Chandler, R., 2011. Fundamentals of Game Development, Jones & Bartlett Learning
Salen, K., 2006. The Game Design Reader: A Rules of Play Anthology, MIT Press.
Journal articles:
Jacobson, J. & Hwang, Z., 2002. UNREAL TOURNAMENT FOR IMMERSIVE INTERACTIVE THEATER. Communications of the ACM, 45(1), pp.39-42
Price, C.B., 2008. The usability of a commercial game physics engine to develop physics educational materials: An investigation. Simulation & Gaming, 39(3), pp.319-337.
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