This is an important question when considering how to design a successful game.
Play is an activity done by both humans and animals. In the animal kingdom, play is part of growing up and learning how to control their bodies, hunt and co-operate. Human children need the protection of their parents for much longer and have a great number of skills to learn before they can take on the world.
In humans, play is not just confined to children as adults practise sports to develop and test skills that were useful to our caveman ancestors. Watching and supporting a team or athlete has a psychology all of its own. Adult humans also play games like chess that are purely intellectually competitive. Some computer games are vastly more complex to master than these ancient games. Other games like poker have varying elements of chance and skill and the motive to play them is for money.
Publishers usually ask if your game is fun? But are successful games really all that fun? Most games consist of very repetitive game play with a limited number of controls used to solve, more or less, the same task over and over again. How many games involve killing vast number of enemies by just pressing a fire button and moving a controller such as a joystick in two directions to control the position targeted? They are a metaphor for blowing up an enemy plane or saving the world from alien invasion. Like film movies, there is an element of suspension of disbelief at work. Computer games are safe as there is no risk of the enemy pilot or aliens actually hurting the player. The player merely risks having his character killed or losing the game, which he can restart. The player therefore unlike the real world has big element of control over this cyber-world. Many adult leisure activities do not appear to be all that fun such as boxing or braving the elements to catch fish in the early hours of the morning. (Would you like to be punched about the head and would it be fun?) Very complex psychology is behind peoples hobbies, why they play games, what is fun or what they get out of doing it.
Design Aspects Of Why People Play Computer Games |
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The interactive aspect of games is by far the most important and powerful. Actually being the hero in the game and beating the bad guys yourself, is much more satisfying than watching a hero in a film or TV show do it. However, there are cultural differences in how this interaction is implemented. In the US, publishers like 'interactive' films in which the story line is more important than the interactive game-play. In Japan, first person perspective games such as DOOM are not popular and they require a hero character, which they can see and control. UK developers are masters of producing fast paced arcade games such as racing games. |
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Players also have considerable control over the game world. If the player dies, he can go back to a resave position. The use of 'Cheats' has attained cult status in some games. The finding and use of these cheats to attain victory appears to give the same satisfaction as attaining victory in the conventional way for some players. Psychologists believe that in the case of teenagers who have little control over their lives, this is a very attractive aspect. |
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The competitive aspect of game play comes through either beating a human opponent or the machine. Players can gain social kudos from doing well at games in their social groups. |
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Role-playing elements are important to a number of game genres. This can involve the player assuming the role of a character. Developing or improving a character or a group of characters is a strong motivation to play. |
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For some types of games such as 'Adventure' games, an unfolding story is an important motive to keep playing to the end of the game and the resolution of the story. The open-ended game-play is a main element in the popular paper and pencil role-playing games. However, a structured game with a beginning and end and a clear progression path is a more popular model in computer games. This is due to the problems of creating a vast and unpredictable world in a computer game that is interesting and believable. |
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Computer games can provide escapism to a more exciting world in which the player can act out the life of a swashbuckling barbarian or a space pirate. However, games can be about real life such as the Sims, it is familiar to all and interests everybody. Games can also put a real world pursuit such as snowboarding in a more exciting environment without the risks or skill needed to do the real thing. Exploration of a gaming world and the items in it is a major element in many computer games with themes that could include a dungeon, a country or even the entire universe. Players are encouraged to push levers, open doors, 'drink' potions and test other game devices. |
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Solving puzzles is an important aspect of many games. Problem solving is not a surprising element considering that the first game designers and players were programmers. Solving a series of logical problems is after all what programming is all about. |
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| Interest in a subject, be it an historical period or a theme such as a book or film can spark interest in playing a game. | |
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| Games are an important learning experience and the interactive aspect can be a powerful learning device if used with some subtlety. How many teenagers have learned to edit autoexec.bat and config.sys files, just so they can play games? | |
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Some marketing executives believe that ownership of a game with the latest technology can by itself give social kudos. I would argue the quality of the game graphics and other flash technology used in the game has little to do with the game play. However, the game graphics are part of the process of suspending disbelief and putting the player in the game world you are trying to create. Orson Wells managed over the radio to persuade people across the USA that Aliens were actually invading. Nobody watching the latest science-fiction blockbusters, for all their technological tricks are going to persuade anybody that aliens have actually landed. If two games were released with similar themes and game play and one had better 'eye candy' which one do you think the public would prefer to buy? |
Things that definitely are not fun in games are bugs and poor coding these can cause extreme frustration for the player. Poor game design that can lead to this player frustration is caused by a poor interface, where the player is killed while he is still struggling with the controls. Games where the pace is wrong, can lead to the player being overwhelmed with enemies. Adventure games can lead to the player's character dying every five minutes and forcing him to go back to old saves and make no progress. If the balance is wrong players can become frustrated and bored if puzzles are too tough to solve. This however does not mean that game designer must not make the player struggle for his victory as the use of a "cheat" will only give a hollow victory compared to a design that tests the players brain power or his co-ordination and skill with an input device.
The Market for Games
The bulk of a game's sales tend to be in a very short period after it is released. Sales then rapidly dwindle. If a game has been successful, it can have a second lease of life, when released on budget at a much lower price point. Sales of budget software tend to be more stable, if at a low level and last longer.
There are two competing thoughts on how the games market is formed. One is that there is a core market of dedicated player's who keep up with the latest hardware and trendiest games. This probably best represents the market for consoles. The other is that as people buy a new PC they buy the latest games to show off their new machine. Therefore, the market is small and constantly replaced. This would explain why clones of games are successful and the market for these games does not get saturated by players sick of playing what is basically the same game. There are of course hardcore fans of a gaming genre that play and are knowledgeable about every new shooter or CRPG that is released. The number of titles produced for consoles is controlled and publishers pay the console manufacturer a fee. This results in console games being more expensive, and although they tend to be better polished, they are rarely original.
The Market and how the game is sold may affect the game design. If the developer intends to by pass publishers and sell through share-ware, then the game will have to be designed in separate parts such as Doom with a few levels to get the players interest and make him want to buy the rest of the game. If the age range of the market is such that parents buy the game for their children, you then have two different markets to please. Parents will want to see wholesome educational aspects or at least no corrupting sex and violence. The young players will still want involving game play. The adults will not buy one of your titles again if the children get bored with it in five minutes and will want value for money by keeping the children occupied.
Learning about Games and Game Play
Many bad computer games having been made by developers who do not play computer games and do not understand their products or the people who want to play them. The best way to learn about game play is to play games. Unfortunately, this is a time consuming and expensive process to completely play a game from start to finish could take you in the region of three to four months. You will probably know if the game is good much quicker than this. However, if you tried to play a lot of games for just a short period, you would not learn how to pace a game correctly. You would not spot problems in an otherwise excellent game, which for reasons of bugs or poor design leave the player stuck and frustrated.
Try to play poor games as well as games at the top of the charts. You will learn more by asking yourself why these games are bad and how they could have been made better. This is easier than trying to work out the secret element that made a game a blockbuster success that you could apply to your game. Games inspired by this route will be an obvious clone.
A game is a system of inter-linked parts that work together. Some of the things to look for are:
- The Interface Design - is pressing J to bail out from an aircraft logical and easy to remember?
- The Pace of the Game - is the player left bored searching for enemies to fight or puzzles to solve or is he overwhelmed by enemies and tough puzzles?
- The Graphics and Sound Effects - do these add to the atmosphere or is the player left to watch without involvement?
- Maintaining Interest - this is the suspension of disbelief and comes from the other factors. Does a racing game have responsive controls and fluid graphics that put the player in the car or is he just pressing a few buttons and looking at a sprite moving across a computer screen. Almost as bad is if the player actively admires the 'computer graphics'.
Games Journalism
The games magazines are the main means of marketing in the game industry and you will have to read them. Internet versions are now much more common and widespread and are largely run by enthusiasts rather than people who see it as their first step as a career in magazine journalism. However, you will still see reviews of games by some young writer who clearly feels that he does not actually have to play the game to write his review!
The magazines will give you an immediate idea of what is being released and what is considered cool. The game magazines in Britain are youth magazines. The trendy computer games are a backdrop to the youth attitude of the magazine. American magazines used to be for hobbyists and their role was to inform these fans of what was out there. They were generous in their praises and did not attempt to give the games a score. However, intruders from Britain have changed that attitude.
The magazines have a symbiotic relationship with the games industry, they cannot exist without it, and want the industry to do well. A new development company without a top-flight publisher, releasing a below average game is likely to become the victim of journalistic "integrity".
Increasingly, the magazines are sold for old budget software such as old games for 'free' on their cover discs. Beware of learning about a game by playing its demo. The demo will be incomplete and the code may not be as solid as the finished game. Having said that, you can gain a good idea if the game is intriguing enough to buy or looks too poor to be worth bothering with. Magazines have been known to put old and unauthorised versions of demos on their cover discs that could wrongly show the game in a bad light.
The magazines are generally able to say if a game is good or not by the score they give. They do sometimes get it wrong and I can point to some games that were good and proved it at the market place but were given low scores. In contrast, some games that were given 9/10s did badly in the market place. Myst is an American Adventure game that did brilliantly in the US but only average in the UK. It was followed up by a sequel, Riven, in which the graphics were improved to keep up with technology. The games scores amongst the UK magazines are quite wide apart. Edge gave it a below average 6 and its more recent sequel Riven an average 7. PC Format gave Myst a high score of 83% but Riven only managed 48%. PC Review gave Myst an excellent 9. Maybe they knew it was already a best seller on the other side of the Atlantic.
The big fuzzy area is with the games that get average scores most of these are indeed average games, but many are downright dreadful. Some excellent games can get average scores but still do well in the market place. The now defunct version of PC Review gave the original Civilization a 7! Do not necessarily worry too much if your game is given an average score, if it is truly good, it will shine through anyway. Some magazines will give games in 'uncool' genres low scores, even if they are truly good games. Wargames frequently come in this bracket. Why bother sending your product to these magazines, if they are likely to be treated in this way?
Most review scores are in fact a fairly accurate representation of how good the game actually is. The magazines are much poorer at saying exactly why a game is good or bad. The guy reviewing the game if he is freelance is paid only for the words he writes and will be on a deadline. He may only play the game in the morning and write it up in the afternoon. Full time staff writers and editors are also unlikely to spend the time necessary to learn all the ins and outs of the more complicated games. Bugs are hardly ever mentioned. If a game is so buggy as to be unplayable it will be given a low score. However, the explanation is likely to be that the graphics are poor or the game play is clumsy. Nobody would buy games or read game magazines if it got out that a lot of games were programmed so poorly as to be doubtful as a saleable good for it's given purpose.
Copyright 1998 and 2004
