Chapter 1: What Players Want H. Okan Tekdas N

What we are going to cover today is Why Do Players Play? What Do Players Expect?

Why Do Players Play? Players want; – Challange – To socialize – Dynamic Solitary Experience – Bragging Rights – Emotional Experience – To Explore – To Fantasize – To Interact

Players Want a Challange One of the primary motivating factor for single-player games Forces players to think actively – To try out different solutions to problems – To understand a given game mechanism Can be learning experiences

Players Want to Socialize Okey, Batak, Monopoly, Scrabble... Death-match style games; – Doom, Half Life, Halo... Adaptations of single-player games Mostly played over LANs Less opportunity to chat Massively Multi-player games; – WoW, Ultima Online, Knight Online... Tend to be Role-playing games Tend to be played over Internet Greater opportunity to chat

Players Want a Dynamic Solitary Experience Some players like to engage in by themselves An experience that reacts to them as a human – Artificial Intelligence Out of conversation topic: 'Quake 3 Arena' Bots Evolve World Peace After Four-Year War On Pirate's Server'Quake 3 Arena' Bots Evolve World Peace After Four-Year War On Pirate's Server

Player Wants Bragging Rights To win respect High-score table – tremendous incentive Tremendous sense of self-satisfaction – Makes them feel better about themselves

Players Want an Emotional Experience Limited emotional ranges; – Excitement/tension during a conflict – Despair at repeated failure – Sense of accomplishment when succeed Expanding into more unexplored and uncharted emotional territory???

Players Want to Explore One of the main motivating forces Rich experience that games excel at in a way no other media can.

Players Want to Fantasize Many people want to be transported to a more glomarous world – Be someone more exciting – computer games players have chance to live those lives themselves No need to eat, get sleep, or having bath Enables to engage in socially unaccaptable behaviour Fantasize about events in history

Players Want to Interact Limited interaction in; – Watching tv, reading book, or going to concert

What Do Players Expect? A Consistent World To Understand the Game World’s Bounds Reasonable Solutions to Work Direction To Accomplish a Task Incrementally To be Immersed Some Setbacks A Fair Chance To Not Need to Repeat Themselves To Not Get Hopelessly Stuck To do, Not to Watch

Player Expect a Consistent World Having no expectations of what will happen – frustrate and confuse players Consistency of actions and results must be maintained

Players Expect to Understand the Game-World’s Bounds Players want to understand which actions are possible Once understand, they don’t want new, unintuitive mechanisms

Players Expect Reasonable Solutions to Work When a proven solution fails to work, it frustrates players Always multiple solutions in the real-world Designer should make sure both solutions work equally – otherwise players will be irritated

Players Expect Direction Players need to have some idea of what they are supposed to accomplish Usually do not play games in order to simulate real life SimCity – Goal-less game – Like playing Legos

Players Expect to Accomplish a Task Incrementally Players like to know that they are on the right track toward accomplishing the goal Sub goals are neccessary to clue players in that they are on the right track Players get frustrated when there is no positive reinforcement Khalim’s Will (Diablo II Quest) – The quest is completed when players transmute Khalim's lost relics(Eye, Brain, Heart, Flail) into Khalim's Will and use it to smash the Compelling Orb in the Temple of Light in Travincal, opening the way to the Durance of Hate, Mephisto's lair

Players Expect to Be Immersed “Suspension of disbelief” – the point when a piece of art can be its most affecting on its audience – Game crashes – Glitches – Game bugs – Denial of reasonable solutions – Complex GUI’s

Players Expect Some Setbacks Challenges – Attempts must be made to overcome obstacles – Players should recognize why what they were attempting failed Let players win a bit at the beginning – it sucks players into game Then diffuculty must be increased – it keep them playing

Players Expect a Fair Chance There should be some way to figure out a successful path on first try It must be possible for players to make it through on their first try without dying

Players Expect to Not Need to Repeat Themselves King of repetitive gameplay – Tetris Key component that make repetition acceptable; – Game mechanics – Various permutations Allow players to save games – Autosaves – checkpoint savings

Players Expect to Not Get Hopelessly Stuck Nothing is more frustrating than playing a game that cannot be won There must be at least one method that can save player from getting stuck whether difficult or not

Players Expect to Do, Not to Watch They can be useful tools for communicating game’s story Cut-scenes should be stripped down and minimized The quality of the cut-scene really does not matter

Players Do Not Know What They Want, but They Know When It Is Missing Gamers know when they are having a good time Playing games does not mean to have qualification to critique raw game ideas Feedbacks should be obtained when the game is ready