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6 April 2005
by Mike Rozak
What makes a game fun? Raph Koster's latest book, A Theory of Fun, proposes some ideas which I tend to agree with.
I thought I'd different approach to the problem: Look at some computer game categories and identify the defining "fun" characteristics of the category.
Scanning through some game review web sites, I came up with the following game categories:
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Adventure games
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First person shooters
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God games
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Platformers
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Puzzles
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Role playing games
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Strategy
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Traditional games, like cards and chess
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Vehicle simulations
MMORPGs/MUDs also come in a few different varieties:
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Creation
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PvE
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PvP
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Role playing
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Table-top RPGs or Skotos-like "storytellers"
What makes it fun?
What makes each of these categories of games fun?
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Adventure games - Puzzle solving, which is deductive reasoning. Perception of clues, such as subtle hints in the scenery or what NPCs speak. Exploration and story are also critical.
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First person shooters - Adrenaline generated by the twitch component.
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God games - Resource management. Understanding and mastering the pattern (as Raph Koster says), which is the same as understanding the enemy, in sports and strategy games, even though the computer isn't presented as the enemy.
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Platformers - I view platformers as a combination of first-person shooters, role-playing games, and adventure games. Thus, they take elements from all three.
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Puzzles - Deductive and inductive reasoning.
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Role playing games - Resource management. Doing variations the same task over and over again, which is inductive reasoning. The fact that role playing games can always be won as long as the player is persistent enough is important; it's kind of a "hard work" ethic. Exploration and story are occasionally important. CRPGs rely heavily on displayed numbers, such as experience points, statistics, weapon damage, etc.
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Sports games - Sports games are fun because of twitch and understanding the enemy.
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Strategy - Strategy games are about out-thinking your opponent and understanding the enemy. Strategy games often include resource management.
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Traditional games, like cards and chess - Traditional games have a variety of elements that make them fun. Card games include luck, perception (guessing who is bluffing), and memory (card counting). Chess is a strategy game.
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Vehicle simulations - Twitch and resource management.
The social aspects of MMORPGs and MUDs also translate into elements of fun:
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Creation - Creation worlds, such as Second Life, involve creating and showing the creation to others, making one's mark on the world.
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PvE - PvE games are CRPGs that player play with friends and meet new people.
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PvP - PvP games are fun because of a combination of a challenging enemy (to understand), and beating a real person. PvP also involves playing with friends and meeting new people.
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Role playing - All the virtual worlds can include role playing, but role playing is most common in PvP and table-top RPGs. Role playing is fun as escapism, and a way to understand other people.
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Table-top RPGs or Skotos-like - These are fun because of the story, playing with friends, and meeting new people.
Main elements
If I boil down the main elements, I come up with:
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Creating
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Deductive reasoning
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Escapism
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Exploration
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Hard work
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Inductive reasoning
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Luck
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Memory
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Numbers - Mini-maxing the system.
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Perception - Subtle clues.
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Resource management
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Story
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Twitch
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Understanding the enemy
The social reasons for playing are:
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Beating a real person
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Play with friends
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Making one's mark on the world
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Meet new people
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Understand other people
Many of the elements of "fun" are opposites, such as inductive and deductive reasoning. If I combine opposites together, the list now looks like this:
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Game
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Creating (vs. experiencing?)
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Deductive vs. inductive reasoning
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Escapism (vs. reality?)
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Exploration (vs. explicitly taught?) - Non-interactive books, movies, and TV are good at explicitly teaching information. Interactive experience, like games, are good at exploration.
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Hard work vs. luck
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Numbers vs. perception - Is this a left/right brain thing?
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Remembering the past (memory) vs. predicting the future (resource management)... But predicting the future with resource management is an inductive process.
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Story (vs. choice?)
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Twitch (vs. thinking?)
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Understanding the enemy (vs. ???)... But understanding the enemy is a deductive thought process.
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Social
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Friends vs. enemies
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Getting people to understand you (making one's mark) vs. understanding them
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Meeting new people
Player Powers
(Back to TOC)
6 April 2005
by Mike Rozak
I thought I'd spend some time stating some obvious facts about the powers that players are given to affect a virtual world...
Player powers
Players have the following basic powers in a virtual world:
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Character control - The player can control their character. The character can do whatever it is would be expected of a character, whether PC or NPC. This includes:
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Moving around
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Communication
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Manipulating objects
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Attacking other characters
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Magic, which sometimes allows for extra-character control.
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Etc.
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Influence other players - The player can influence or coerce other players to undertake actions on their behalf. The means of influence can be:
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Social influence
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In-game money or payments
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Game-supported rewards, such as experience points or skill training.
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Etc.
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Influence NPCs - Players can influence or coerce NPCs to undertake actions on their behalf. For example:
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Rile up a hoard of monsters and get them to chase the player, who leads them into the path of another (unsuspecting) player
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Get NPCs to like/dislike a player
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Pets
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Hire NPC for guards, couriers, etc.
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The live team and trusted players can "demonically" possess NPCs
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Etc.
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Create static content - Static content is content that doesn't require the player to program. It can include:
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Message board posts
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Artwork of character appearances
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Crafting of in-game objects
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Backstory (usually created by the author)
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Sprites, 3D models, sounds effects (usually created by the author)
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Landscape creation
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Player housing
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Etc.
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Create scripted content - Scripted content requires programming, but isn't as complex as AI's programming. Scripted content includes:
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Traps that go off when triggers are set off
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Instructions for a hired NPC... or is this influencing a NPC?
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Scripts for object behaviour
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Etc.
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Create AIs - Most developers think of AI as merely a bunch of scripts, which it is... at the moment. I suspect that in the future, AIs will be much more than scripts, so I have placed AI in a separate category. AI creation can include:
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Creation of an instance of a known AI... "Create me an orc".
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Customization of a known AI... "Create me an orc that occasionally tells jokes."
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Entirely new AI personality.
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Etc.
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Etc. - The list of player powers is by no means limited to the categories I have listed.
Notice that character control, influencing player characters, and influencing NPCs are online activities that must be done by a person real-time. Creating static content, scripts, and AI can be done offline, and affect non-specific players at a later point. I'll reference online and offline activities later.
Player categories
Virtual world "players" fit into the following categories...
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The author and development team - As a general rule, the author and development team have full offline powers. They might also have full online powers, but they spend so much time creating the offline content that they don't get a chance to use their online abilities.
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Game masters - Game masters often have full online powers, and fairly weak offline powers.
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Trusted players - Trusted players, "wizards" in text-MUDs, have the same or similar powers to game masters. They have full online powers, and weak offline powers.
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Ordinary players - Ordinary players are usually limited to character control powers, and bits and pieces of the others. Ordinary players are often sub-categorised further:
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Party members - Party members have powers over other party members that other player categories do not. For example: A party member can see the health and buffs of another party member, or may even be able to borrow equipment from an unconscious party member.
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Enemies - Game-sanctioned PvP enemies are able to attack one another. In World of Warcraft, a member of the Hoarde cannot attack another member of the Hoarde, but can attack a member of the Alliance. (Given the right circumstances.)
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Neutrals - These are players that are neither party members nor enemies. They usually have the least amount of power over each other.
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Etc. - There might well be other player categories.
The matrix
For any virtual world, it's possible to create a matrix of player powers vs. player categories. Each cell can be filled with the specific abilities that a player has. (By the way, Richard Bartle categorizes worlds based on persistence vs. player category in his book, Designing Virtual World.)
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Author
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GM
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Trusted players
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Ordinary players - Friends
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Ordinary players - Enemies
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Ordinary players - Neutrals
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Character control
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Influence other players
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Table-top
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PvP
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Influence NPCs
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Create static content
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Create scripted content
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PvE
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Creation
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Create AI
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I haven't bothered filling in this matrix for a specific game. I did colour the cells and label them; see below.
Interestingly, if you examine a game and ask "Where does the fun come from?" you'll notice some trends:
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Player vs. Environment worlds provide most of their "fun" from the lower-left corner, where the author (or GMs or trusted players) create static content, scripts, and AIs for the players to experience.
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Player vs. Player worlds derive their "fun" from the upper-right corner. The fun comes from players interacting with one another.
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Creation worlds, like Second Life, derive their "fun" from players creating stuff and showing it off to the rest of the world.
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Table-top RPGs like Dungeons and Dragons, and Skotos games, are "fun" because the author (or GMs or trusted players) intimately partakes in the player's experiences, in real time.
Some other observations:
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Large companies should prefer virtual worlds based on static, scripted, or AI content, and written solely by their own authoring team, because the amount of work to create such a world is independent to the number of players. Thus, they can derive large economies of scale. This seems to hold out, since the largest worlds are PvE.
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Very small fee-based operations should prefer virtual worlds based on the author, GMs, or trusted players intimately controlling their own characters, influencing players, and influencing NPCs. The cost is proportionate to the number of players. This seems to hold out; the smallest worlds are from table-top RPGs with a GM and 4-6 players, and Skotos text-MUDs.
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Mid-sized companies should prefer the right-hand side of the matrix, where players have the most influence, mainly because that's all that's left. They can't compete against the table-top RPGs at all. They can compete against large PvE worlds, but only with lower-quality eye candy, which means their market is much smaller. (Text MUDs attract 1/100th the number of players as a bleeding edge MMORPG.)
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Worlds whose "fun" is derived from the left side of the matrix have an experience that depends upon the quality of the authors hired. The quality of players that are attracted to the world is less relevant.
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Worlds in the middle of the matrix depend heavily on volunteers. The quality of the players' experience depends upon the quality of volunteers that can be attracted to the world. These worlds are restricted in size by the number of skilled volunteers available.
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Worlds on the right side of the matrix rely on the players. A bad player population will ruin the game, while a good player population will make it shine. The world's staff is concerned with attracting good players and weeding out the bad. Because these worlds must be picky about the players they attract and let in, their size is limited, just as the size of popular nightclubs is limited. A very good weed-out process creates a role-playing world, while a poor weed-out process creates a PvP blood-bath world.
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Static content is quickly consumed by players, just as "static" movies are only watched once by movie viewers. Scripted content is more repeatable. AI content is highly repeatable, especially when it become as good as a real person. Of course, scripted content is more difficult to create than static content, and AI is more difficult than scripted content.
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If/when AI gets good enough, large companies will use their AI to replace live authors, GMs, and volunteers, and encroach into the "table-top" corner of the matrix. This won't happen for many decades.
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Single player games fit in the "PvE" corner of the matrix, and compete against the large PvE virtual worlds. Consequently, PvE virtual worlds must make themselves different enough from a single-player game to justify their existence, but not so different that they lose all their economies of scale.
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Novels and movies fit into a single cell, which is author-created static content.
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