The Nature of Play

While reading about the nature of game play for my graduate class in game design, the adjectives used to describe this experience are all free-wheeling and open-ended.  "Boisterous",  "non-directed", "spontaneous", etc.   It is clear the nature of play is an invitation for the player to experiment and explore. 

But I was wondering how much the needs and perspectives of a player coming into to a game affects his/her game experience.  Can a competitive player who thrives on beating other players be thoroughly engaged in a chance-based game?   Can a player who thrives on achieving levels and responding to incentives enjoy a game focused on make believe? 

Psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi interviewed a wide variety of people when researching the elements of enjoyment, and identified conditions that made activities pleasurable to people:

  • Confidence in chance to complete a task
  • Ability to focus on the activity
  • Goals are clear
  • Feedback is immediate
  • Opportunity for "flow" - total immersion in the game and escape from daily life
As long as there is a balance between frustration and boredom, challenge and ability, then a player can remain thoroughly engaged and in the flow.  So despite the diversity of player perspectives and types of games, game designers can provide challenging goal-directed activities to appeal to a variety of players.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Minecraft - Seismic Sandbox

Image
In my graduate class on the Design of Learning Games, we spent a lot of time studying, playing and discussing the globally successful game, Minecraft.  There are several elements that I think were pivotal to the success of this game. To start, unlike most digital games available at that time that were goal-driven, Minecraft was a true "sandbox" game.  To that end, a player could enter the game, like a kid in a sandbox, and do as little or as much game play as desired.  To this end, it was not plot driven with defined goals to achieve "success".  Each player could determine what "success" meant for himself.  This concept was key in that it gave the player total control over the direction of the game play, which drove creativity, invention and innovation on the player's part.  Just what could be made with blocks?   A quick search on the Web shows the just how far a few blocks and unlimited creativity can go in fostering players' creations. ...
Read more

Functionality - Game Design Basics

Image
In designing a game, there are four basic steps of design:  foundation, structure, formal details and refinement.    The idea is you visualize the concept of your game from whatever seed of inspiration it was channeled from, and then proceed to build a structure around the concept to make it playable. In the design stage of foundation, it is essential to identify clearly the goals of the learning game, and then build the foundation of fun and player engagement around that.  The game structure is where you identify the rules of the game while maintaining functionality and fun.  In my game designed for hospitalized children, it was important for me to build rules that also gave the player choice in how to continue on their path.  So although the player had to learn specific self-help skills and demonstrate use of them, the player had some flexibility in choosing which skill to use to assist them through certain tasks. In designing the formal detail...
Read more

Playtesting: A to Z

Image
In one of my graduate school textbooks,  Game Design Workshop  (Fullerton, T. 2019) that I use for my Design of Learning Games class taught by Dr. Fengfeng Ke at Florida State University, there is a short commentary by game designer Eric Zimmerman and architect Nathalie Pozzi on playtesting.  It lists a Cliff-Notes version of their playtesting "rules", one for each letter of the alphabet.   I tremendously admire the collaboration of these two veterans whose playable installations have appeared at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, in Paris, Berlin and around the world.  I am only going to discuss a few that really spoke to me. Add caption A)   Playtest before you think you are ready .    This goes to the heart of so much I have read about game design including think out of the box, listen to everyone on your team (whether on the technical side or not), create prototypes early and test them, and more.  All these suggestions are t...
Read more