Interactive Design, Assignment 1: Gameplay
What makes a game fun?
The entertainment value of a gain is defined in many ways, but the goal of a game is to allow people an entertaining escape from their everyday lives. For some, a game might be fun because it’s simple to learn, aesthetically pleasing, and has a good story or puzzle component to it. Others want a game that is realistic; whether that’s graphically, logically, or otherwise, they want the game to represent a real-life environment that they can interact with.
Game, control, and UI design plays a huge role in making a game entertaining. Intuitive controls, haptic feedback and logical game layout all help determine if people like a game. If you ask a person if they enjoyed playing a game, you’ll often hear that bad games “don’t make sense”, were “too hard to learn”, or the player “didn’t understand what to do”. All of those comments lead back to poor design. A game developer might have a fantastic concept and idea for a game, but if they can’t execute that concept through successful design, the game will not be wee received.
Why do people prefer certain games?
People like games that align with their other interests. You probably won’t like Madden NFL Football if you don’t have any interest in the sport. You might not care for Halo if you hate guns and science fiction stories. But beyond the subject matter of the game, people gravitate towards games who’s design best executes the concept of the game. If I’m a football fan, I will prefer the game that most sensibly recreates what I perceive to be a real football experience through layout, controls, UI, and the physics of the game play. As games increase in complexity, design becomes more important; a user must intuitively know how to accomplish a task in the game, both logically and physically, or it ceases to be fun.
What are the physical, psychological, and social aspects of game playing?
Physical: some people enjoying video games because they test hand/eye coordination. Also, whereas in the past playing a game always meant sitting on a couch holding a controller, modern video game systems (Wii, Kinect), actually allow for full body psychical interaction with the game, increasing the amount of actual physical effort and skill required to play a game.
Psychological: Games allow people the opportunity to achieve goals, gain rewards, and build social capital with their friends. Services like XBox Live track user’s successes across multiple games and use a point system to rank players, providing a psychological payoff for playing games.
Social: People play with and against each other. Gaming also allows people to escape their everyday lives, and take on any persona they wish, whether its becoming a wizard in a role-playing game, or becoming a secret agent and blowing things up.
Comparing Wii Tennis, Dance Central (Kinect), Madden NFL (iPhone), Angry Birds (iPhone)
Wii Tennis
Game type: Sports Simulation – Wii Tennis loosely interprets the game of tennis, by allowing the player to concentrate on simply hitting the ball, and not worrying about moving around the court. The game is geared towards simplicity in every way; the graphics, controls, players, game play, and options are all very simple and easy, allowing someone who has never seen or played the game before to pick up the controls and start playing in only a few minutes
Controls: There is only one control – swinging the wand. No buttons or direction pad is necessary during the game.
Rules of the game: Simplified rules of tennis – sets are best of 3,5, or 7 games, and the player only has to serve, return serve, and volley to score points. The computer moves the player toward the ball, and only requires that you swing the wand at the right time to return the ball. The only complexity in the game occurs when you have to determine the flight of the ball and its velocity, and angle your swing and arm speed to return the ball cross-court, down the line, short, and long.
What made the game challenging: The game is very easy to learn, the only challenge is fine-tuning your ability to place the ball where you want it, and mastering the physics of the game
What made the game fun or not: The simplicity of the game makes it an immediately entertaining experience, there is not much of a learning curve. The graphics, colors, animation, and sound effects are very cute and fun. The haptic and audio feedback are rewarding, you can hear and feel the ball come off the racket, makes the game rewarding. The computer AI is easy to beat at first, and then gets more competitive, but never to the point of beating difficult to beat. The game provides an entertaining experience in two-player mode.
Dance Central (Kinect)
Game type: Dance simulation – the player is rewarded points for mimicking dance routine moves that are shown on the screen.
Controls: The Kinect system allows the player to only use their body as the controller. Cameras and a laser sense body position and determine if the player is making the right movements.
Rules of the game: The player is given points by moving their body in rhythm with the dance moves that are shown on the screen, in tune with the music. Moves are easy to master at first, and then as the player progresses, more complicated moves and combination are unlocked, given the player a sense of achievement. Dance Central has a library of (whats seems to be) about 100 songs.
What made the game challenging: Getting used to the Kinect interface for the first time can be confusing. Most people are used to having a physical game controller to interact with; buttons to push, directional pads to move, and even a wand to point and click with. The player must learn a set of motions to interact with the Kinect system. Unlike the Wii, you cannot just turn on the Kinect and play. The interactions are simple once they’re learned, but there is a learning curve. Also, the game itself was graphically over-stimulating. There are dozens of flashing and animating elements on the screen at one time, and while you’re playing the game, its not obvious what visual cues you should be focusing on at any one time.
What made the game fun or not: The game is very fun once you get through the initial learning curve. Compared to the Wii, it’s harder to learn how to play, but once you do, the motions feel natural and the game is entertaining.
Madden NFL (iPhone)
Game type: Sports simulation – Madden NFL attempts to recreate the game of football; calling plays, controlling your player, throwing, catching, running, kicking, and tackling.
Controls: Madden NFL utilizes the iPhone’s touchscreen in a few ways. The player has the option of using a virtual directional pad in the bottom left corner of the screen, can drag their finger over the player to pull and push him in the right direction, and can “point-and-shoot” to throw the football and complete passes.
Rules of the game: Madden NFL’s rules mimic the game of football.
What made the game challenging: The different kinds of controls made the game confusing. During any one play, the user might have to use three different input types; using the directional pad, dragging their finger over a player to move them on the field, and tapping a target to get their quarterback to throw the ball. The interface and controls are not intuitive, and detract from the game play. I spent more time wondering how to control the players than i did thinking about the game.
What made the game fun or not: The complicated control interface made the game a less than enjoyable experience. Madden attempts to make the game as realistic and feature-filled as possible, but ends up creating a muddled game experience. The developers would be better off creating a simpler, easy to learn, easy to control game.
Angry Birds (iPhone)
Game type: Puzzle, point-and-shoot – Angry Birds combines hand-eye coordination with puzzle-solving skills.
Controls: Touch screen. The user has to aim and shoot tiny birds with a slingshot into objects on the opposite end of the screen. The slingshot interfact requires the user to tap, drag, pull, and release.
Rules of the game: The player earns points by blowing up pigs and wooden structures by slingshotting birds across the screen. Some birds have special abilities, and the player must learn how the best strategy for maximizing their bird’s special powers.
What made the game challenging: Success in the game is completely dependent on how well the player can judge angle and velocity. The sling shot control is easy to learn but very difficult to master. Also, come birds have a specialty, secondary function. While in mid-flight, an additional tap will make some speed up their flight, slow down, or drop bombs. Also, different sized birds have variable “weights”, so the player has to adjust the power and angle of their shots accordingly.
What made the game fun or not: The game is very cute, and is fun to play just to watch the birds fly across the screen. It’s simple to learn but tough to master, and there is a strategy element in determine how to best utilize the destructive power of your birds.
