Factors that can impact players (Some of)

Play Style Play Styles vary, you should encompass as many styles as you can comfortably What Play style affects – Difficulty – Time investment – Flow – Rhythm – Gameplay Hooks Things to avoid – Learning through Death (Bosses are an exception to me). – Unexploreable areas that seem reachable – Player Frustration

Personal Factors I like killing video game rabbits – That is one of my personal factors Probably not one you will want to focus on as it is not a very broad demographic (to my knowledge) Select typical Factors as key importance Making other parts of your gameplay as flexible as is reasonable

Flow Avoiding the difficulty level reaching a point where the player cannot continue playing the game comfortably The Inverse holds true, playing a game in which you are flying through the levels can be un-rewarding

Rhythm Enter the rollercoaster of Positive Reinforcement – Up and down up and down, but ever climbing

Dissonance and Boredom Dissonance is usually your enemy – The torch in Doom3 – Getting Irrivesably stuck When is dissonance good? – As potential clues to a game puzzle Uncharted, used to avoid flow issues – To creep the player out in a horror

Wow Factor This is not always something you intended – Face Off It is typically Iconic – Onslaught for Unreal 2k4, cars guns and violence – QuakeWars was too similar to be a wow factor to many people – Can be anything in the game that people remember vividly The bosses, The Cut-Scenes (FF)

Ergonomics How well does the game play? – How well does the menu work? Ut3 – Can you customise the things you don’t like? Ergonomics also extends to the HUD – Does the player know what is happening? – Can they see the main screen through the information?

Hooks Things that will make people want to play the game – A new experience – Gameplay modes Resident Evil story changes – Achievements – Alternate goals/stories / gameplay – Online modes

Linearity This is something to avoid – Well to avoid the feeling of linearity Distracting the player Using a Bottlenecking design Using a Branching design

Gestalt This is probably the hardest of all to describe. It is roughly to opposite to dissonance, where everything feels right. Dictionary explanation is ‘something that is more than the sum of all its parts’