In Mind Games, Part 1, I discussed the elements of an
exceptional game, and the psychological impacts of music in story-driven games.
Part 2 of Mind Games will focus on the concept of fun. Let’s face it; a game
cannot be considered exceptional unless it is exceptionally fun.
What makes a game exceptionally fun? Is there a formula that
transcends personal preference and creates a fun experience for everyone? I’d
like to quote Neils Clark
from his Gamasutra piece, Psychology
is Fun. It is a phenomenal article, and I would recommend it to game
developers. Clark captures the essence of fun by raising some very interesting
points about desire, need, and the longing to escape from reality:
“The key to generating fun in the
brain of the player is to cater to them. They should always have options for
how they want to stimulate themselves. Don't bother them with aversive
situations. We already know about the world we're escaping from…”
When we play a fun game, we are the masters of our universe.
A fun game should give players the opportunity to experience things they would
want to experience. We seek arousal, not tedium. This is why there are no
successful games that allow you to work on a factory line doing the same exact
thing for hours on end.
Fable 2 is a
prime example of this. It was actually a fun game, but there were some aversive
factors to it as well. For instance, my moral compass can support robbing a NPC
for money in a video game; chopping wood, crafting daggers, and serving beer
are noble professions and suitable for making money in the real world, but in a
game, it’s only fun for about 60 seconds. Unfortunately, many players subjected
themselves to hours of this inexplicable behavior.
…We can send their minds to the
giddy heavens, conjoin them with the stars. Best of all, once most folks get a
taste for self-actualization, they'll sacrifice physiological, safety, love,
and esteem needs in order to keep tasting the sweet magnanimity of our media
experience…
…Designers can tap flow's
engagement, while demanding only a fraction of the dedication. In reality, we
favor the challenges that make us feel we're accomplishing something profound.
In this way flow states are immensely powerful. They can provide gamers all the
joy of a life worth living, without any of the struggle.”
Many people suffer from delusions of grandeur. We want to
feel important, and we experience intrinsic rewards each time we achieve
success. But achieving success in real life is real hard! Do you know why the Grand Theft Auto series
is so fun? Players always assume the role of a common criminal, but through a
series of fun and non-life threatening illegal activities, they end up taking
over the criminal underworld. And they do this in a matter of hours.
When we can achieve the kind of success that most people
only dream about, we feel really good.
Who cares if it didn’t happen in real life? We tried hard and accomplished
some incredible things, and for our brains, there is little difference between
that alternate reality and this one. At least, not while we’re immersed in it.
Another important fun factor is the difficulty. No matter
how beautiful, empowering, and intrinsically rewarding a game is it will not be
fun if it is too easy, or too difficult. This can be a complicated balance to
achieve, especially if your game targets casual and hardcore gamers alike, but
there is no shortage of willing game testers out there, so be sure to stock up
and get your valuable feedback while there’s still time. Just remember; as a
gamer, I am legendary, but I also want to be challenged.
Finally, it’s important that your game immerses players in
every way possible. The more genuine the experience is, the more immersed
players will become. Make it easy to love the characters. Create a history for
your game world that players have the option of exploring. Provide players with
goals, and the freedom to pursue them.
Enter Skyrim.
Here is a fun game. Self-actualization? Travel the land playing champion to the
gods, putting an end to a civil war, and saving the world from the apocalypse
by way of a world-gorging dragon? Yes, I believe Maslow
would be pleased. Immersion? The HUD is almost non-existent, aside from a tiny
and barely noticeable reticle and a compass at the top of the screen. There are
books and scrolls numbering in the hundreds that detail the history of the
world, and it’s various heroes and villains. Yes, it is quite easy to feel as
though you are a part of the world, even allowing you the ability to shape the
way events unfold. Is it difficult? Well, that’s a little tricky, but it
represents the perfect opportunity to enforce the importance of balanced
difficulty in a fun game.
The Elder Scrolls series has been packed full of glitches
and bugs throughout its various installments. Some of them are frustrating,
some of them are empowering, and some are just neat to watch. However, some
glitches present an altogether different danger when exploited. There are
various glitches that allow Skyrim players to become very advanced, very
quickly. By advanced, I mean jumping off mountaintops and landing unscathed, or
slaying giants with a single stab from a dagger.
This extreme distortion of difficulty will make the game
very boring, very fast.
It is for this reason that developers try to patch these glitches
as soon as possible, to prevent players from demolishing their own fun. It is
not intrinsically rewarding to accomplish something when no obstacle you
encounter is challenging. But we will pursue that vastly unbalanced advantage
over our foes if a way is provided, because it is in our nature. We imagine how
awesome it would be to kill a dragon by punching it in the face, until we’ve
actually done it and we realize that we have relinquished the spirit of fun in
exchange for unlimited (and unnecessary) power.
So what makes a game exceptionally fun? It should make players
feel like they’ve accomplished something, and it should do this on a regular
basis. It shouldn’t make them engage in the tedium of everyday life, ever. It should be challenging, but not
to the point where they experience anxiety. It should be immersive, preferably to
a point where it’s impossible to communicate with them if they are playing it.
The most important part: all of these goals must be achieved without the gamers being consciously aware of it.
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