Brandon Van Every wrote:
> On Thu, Jul 2, 2009 at 5:32 AM, LingMac<lingmac@...> wrote:
>> * Emphasis would be placed on immersion,
>
> Gagh I hate that word! It never explains why so-called immersion
> occurs. Some people coo about graphics. Others coo about audio.
> They never explain why these things are supposed to be immersive.
> Step out your front door, it's 100% realistic. But is it exciting?
> No, for most people it isn't.


Immersion as I understand it refers to a game's ability to make you
feel you're really a character `immersed` in its fictional universe.
Why being given control of one and only character throughout helps
this is pretty obvious. Believable sounds and graphics also enhance
that. Night falls and you can hear the crickets singing, the eventual
wolf howling in the distance; you look above and see a believable
night sky, and as you approach home, "your" wife greets you with
convincing facial animation and dialogue. You're immersed.

Of course, by itself immersion CAN be pretty boring, but when we do
introduce that axe murderer twenty minutes into the plot, it'll
amplify the emotional effect on the player tenfold.

Suppose you wished to break immersion for whatever reason, what would
you do then? Implement an over the top combo system, complete with on
screen pop up words such as "5 HITS, WONDERFUL!", "10 HITS, BRUTAL!",
"15 HITS, GENOCIDAL!". If you want to go the extra mile, you can
actually add an obnoxious narrator to speak these aloud. :)

Idiosyncratic, gamist rules can also have that effect. When the game
allows "your" ten year old daughter to equip a Halberd twice her size,
you're suddenly reminded that "you're just playing a game". And that's
what ultimately kills it.


> I have come to prefer the term "engagement." And I have an
> explanation for it: in a game we are given a mental task to perform.
> Whether an analytical (cerebrum) task or a hand-eye coordination
> (cerebellum) task. The game is "engaging" if the player is willing to
> keep performing the mental task. It has little to do with the
> graphics or audio, except insofar as they're part of the mental task.
> Thus, Pong can be engaging, for people who are not tired of it yet.
>
> Another thing I like about the term "engaging" is it lets me do away
> with the "fun" requirement. Games don't have to be fun, they have to
> be engaging. Amusement is only one form of engagement. Anger can be
> strongly engaging. Or obsession... was I really having fun when
> playing Civ games over and over again? Or was I obsessed about the
> optimal movement of units and so forth? "Engagement" allows for a
> broader spectrum of game drivers. Lots of things could work as long
> as they don't get boring. Boredom is the opposite of engagement.


So, if a player is engaged, he's entertained, one way or another.
There are various ways to create that entertainment, one of which is
through immersion.


>> though of course you can influence others to an
>> extent. Depending on their personality, circumstances and their
>> opinion of you, they could betray and even kill you. The player is
>> never meant to feel completely safe (as that's boring).
>
> Continuous stress can be boring also though. There should be times
> when the player does in fact feel safe.

Well, if you've just stumbled upon a remote stronghold with plenty of
food, no bugs or humans other than your wife and kid in sight, you'll
be granted a reprieve... for now. :)


> Just as movies have their
> moments of relief before the gloom and doom begins again. I think one
> of the keys to sustaining engagement, is the mental task has to be
> varied.


Fighting bugs, fighting thugs, negotiating the hierarchical web of
your group (if you decided to stick with one), finding supplies and
defensible shelter, studying bug behavior, uncovering the lore of the
land, scheming to take over the leadership either as a charismatic
leader or as an iron-fisted dictator, watching your kid grow and learn
new things... I'd guess there would be something for everyone and
plenty for all. :)


>> * Two things tend to destroy the value of decision making in games
>> nowadays:
>>
>> 1 - You can always decide one way, see what the consequences are,
>> reload and decide the other way.
>
> This is not a disadvantage if it keeps the player engaged. I do it in
> The Battle for Wesnoth all the time. Often I have to, because 3rd
> party campaigns are unbalanced and my guys get killed for no good
> reason. Also the amount of luck in the game is too large IMO, and
> other people's opinion as well. Wesnoth is a hex wargame, so the
> mental task is analyzing spatial relationships between units. Lotsa
> spatial relationships to analyze, so quite possibly a lot of
> backtracking. I wish Wesnoth saved games would load instantly, or
> that the game had a continuous Undo feature, in the manner of some
> Chess programs.


I recommend you play Spelunky sometime (it's a terrific game anyway).
Spelunky illustrates how the ability to save and reload can be a bad,
bad, bad thing. If it had that, you'd finish the game in two hours and
it would have been a thoroughly unremarkable experience. But it
doesn't. You die, you start over. In a procedurally generated world,
with new challenges and opportunities not even the game designer
himself may have imagined. You see, normally you'd be exploring these
caves, stumble upon a giant spider and be like "meh". Spider kills
you, you reload until you kill it and go about your way yawning once
or twice. But since there's no save..... "OH GOD FUCK GOD NO" *runs
like a madman, spider in pursuit, is cornered into a dead end, throws
a bomb at spider, gets the timing wrong, so the bomb bounces off of it
and explodes in a corner instead. The explosion does open a tiny
escape route, so as the spider pounces to end your life, you dash
towards it and make it to safety in the nick of time.*

Really, you have to PLAY this game to understand how EPIC that is. :)


>> 2 - Decision time menus! Do you
>> A - Go fight the acid spitting, 30-headed, ten story tall Hydra to
>> recover the little girl's doll or
>> B - Rape the little girl, devour her entrails and offer her heart at
>> Baal's altar to summon a cosmic evil unto the world?
>
> I'm not sure what you're saying here. Are you saying that most people
> won't choose B? I will certainly choose B, if I am in the mood to
> play an evil villain.


I'm saying four separate things:

1 - In and of themselves, those menus are intrusive. They come with a
giant, implicit signpost saying "Careful! Your decision here, unlike
all the other implicit decisions you've been making all the time, may
affect how the story branches/ends. Feel free to be a jerk in the rest
of the game, hog all the medipacks, send your allies first as
cannon-fodder, cast area of effect spells that burn them along with
the baddies, but if you want the Good (TM) ending, choose to go kill
the hydra and retrieve the girl's doll now!"

2 - To make matters worse, only extremes are usually presented. How
about ignoring the girl? How about explaining to her how dangerous the
Hydra is, and how you'll buy her another doll instead?

3 - Decision menus don't allow the player to feel ingenious or
inventive. You could place an option there saying "Cut a piece out of
your spare blanket, which happens to be of the same color and fabric
as the girl's doll, then ask your friend who happens to be a veteran
toy maker to make another." The player reads that, thinks "Whoa, I'd
never have thought of anything contrived like that, but whatever."
Or you could just present a little girl who's sad because she lost her
doll. As casually as possible, like it's just flavor and not some
"quest"(TM). Observant player notes similarity between blanket and
doll, and remembers the protagonist is friends with a toy maker. He
goes there, presents the blanket to the toy maker, doll is made.
Little girl remarks enthusiastically how it looks just like her old
one (I.E. the engine acknowledges the player's ingenuity). Which
option do you think would be more rewarding for the player?

4 - Combined with a save and reload feature, decisions lose emotional
value and create apathy. "Oh sure, I'll go fight the hydra. If I die,
I'll just reload until I kill it. Fun."
No, that won't do. The player should be torn over what to decide. When
he does decide, that decision should carry weight to it. He's making a
sacrifice, he's taking a risk, that is supposed to mean something.
Again, play Spelunky and you'll understand. :)

In short, decision time menus suck ass. Fact. :D


> Not everyone feels they can act, or pretend.
> Some people have a very strong sense of right and wrong and aren't
> willing to "bend rules." It's part of their psychological archetype.
> It isn't part of mine! This would be a case of "know thy audience."
> Also in knowing what it means to be a "mature medium." It means you
> can expresss things other than the socially obvious and safe. Go down
> the video store aisle, how many horror flicks do you see? Some people
> still kick up a storm that these are horrible, despicable films, but
> they have long since lost that free speech battle. Meanwhile the game
> industry is quite squeamish, timid and "immature" about the materials
> it'll deal with.


Another problem is that many game designers think that making their
games "mature" means adding a lot of forced, wanton cursing, women who
seem to be allergic to fabric and lots of over the top violence with
buckets of blood. That has precisely the opposite effect that they
intended.
A mature game is simply a game whose themes will appeal to an adult
audience.


> What's wrong with being evaluated on "one thing," or knowing that
> you're being so evaluated?


Again, immersion. :)
"I can hog all the medi-packs and send my men on suicidal missions,
they'll still love me (those that survive, that is) for as long as I
select the cute options in the decision time menus."
Well, that reminds me that I'm just playing a game, that I'm not a
character in that fictional world and that those are not real people.


> Seems to me, the problem is what happens
> once you are evaluated. Is all the game content on the "goody two
> shoes" branch and a simple you-have-lost message on the "evil despot"
> branch? Well then as a game designer you have made your bed. Do we
> present choices in order to fail the player, or to give her new
> options to explore? Perhaps the choice isn't meant to be
> all-or-nothing, but fits into a system of cumulative consequences. In
> that case, is the accumulation of consequences analytically
> interesting? Is it balanced? Is there really only one way to
> successfully navigate the system, despite all the variables and
> inputs?


That's another problem with the industry, heavy-handedness.


>> Instead, it is silently (heh) and
>> unobtrusively watching everything you do; whether your fighting style
>> is reckless or conservative, if you are inquisitive about your
>> surroundings and what seems to attract your attention most, etc.
>
> Can I tell that these things matter to the game?


Not at first, but in retrospect it'll make perfect sense. Then you'll
love the hell out of the Silent Hill series and become a lifelong fan. ;)


> Simulation is not a good end goal for game design. You should
> struggle to achieve Engagement. Simulation can be a tool for that,
> but you have to remember: open-ended, unconstrained simulations
> generate a lot of random, frustrating noise for players to navigate.
> Too much frustration and engagement ceases. The player quits the
> game.


The parameters of the simulation must be tweaked to make things
interesting. On the other hand, I've lost count of how many times I've
been frustrated at games that present themselves as simulations, but
are in fact pseudo-simulations (New Horizons - Uncharted Waters,
Romance of the Three Kingdoms, X-Com Apocalypse, etc). Usually it goes
along these lines:

You have to hide a stockpile of food from enemy hives. You often spot
enemy drones scouting for food on the field and study their search
patterns. You sometimes also spot convoys of drones carrying food back
to their hives. With these patterns in mind, you hide your food
somewhere the scouting drones would never think of looking (assuming
you got their behavior right). You also know the only path between
your food and all hives in the area must go through a narrow canyon,
so you set a sentinel there just in case. No way it's gonna miss a
large convoy coming to lift your food away. You then receive a
nonchalant pop-up message informing you all your food has been stolen
by Hive raiders. Why? Because the game is a pseudo-simulation. It
didn't actually compute the drones finding your food and lifting it
away, it just rolled a probability die and decided that it did happen.
Player feels thoroughly cheated. Why keep the pretense, with
"scouting" drones on the field and stuff if it's not actually going to
carry through with it?