Game Design
My Social Gaming Experience: Part 3
(Did you miss Part 2 or Part 1 of this series?)
Today we pick apart my experience with Zombie Farm. I played Zombie Farm regularly (2-5 times per day) for nearly two months; significantly longer than many of the other games I experimented with. As with most games, my amount of interaction for each play session was small – about 3-10 minutes per session. During this time, I completed routine tasks not unlike other farm-themed social games – planting crops, harvesting crops, buying doo-dads to spruce up the aforementioned farm, etc. Pretty banal stuff, really.
What Zombie Farm does do (again, some of which is not unheard of in other social games) though, helps to catapult the game from being just a click-fest to something a little more compelling:
Quests: At the beginning of the game, players are challenged (at their own pace) to complete quests – for example, plant and harvest 10 tomatos or harvest 2 Headless Zombies. These quests provide a welcome focus to the player – giving them something to strive for. If we are generous, we might also say that these quests present an “appropriate” challenge to the player. Note the use of the word appropriate here: good games don’t assault the player with challenges that are not accomplishable nor do they present ones which would be too easy. There is a sweet spot to hit when establishing the difficulty of the challenge to ensure that it fits squarely in the middle of this difficulty range. As I’ve discussed in previous posts, it is the challenge that creates the feeling of fun. Without challenge, we are just pressing buttons or swiping fingers.
Invasions: A differentiator for Zombie Farm from many other casual farming games is the actual inclusion of the zombies themselves… and their overall intent: invasions. Once you raise up a zombie army, you can choose to invade other locations (other farms, lawyers, pirates, robots, etc.). This aspect of the game is important because, much like the quests, it gives players an ever-present challenge to explore – the need to harvest zombies, complete the invasion, replace zombies lost in battle, rinse, and repeat. We see here the concepts of variability within gameplay (to keep things fresh) and appropriate challenge wrapped up within this single game mechanic.
Discoverability: If you would have asked me ten years ago if mainstream/casual gamers would grok the concept of an experience point (XP) system, I may have laughed in your face. Yet, here we are in 2011 and we see XP systems layered like MSG onto games that conceivably have no right to possess them – such as Zombie Farm. In Zombie Farm, the XP system works exceptionally well to drive players toward an arbitrary next level. Why would players want to get to the next level? Simply stated, there is content that is not accessible to them until they hit that level. Zombie Farm smartly dangles the carrot of this content in front of the player, showing blackened outlines of the super cool zombie they will have access to at the next level… which will require just a little more play to get to. Players like surprises – whether they are casual or hardcore – and I easily succumbed to this trap myself within this game. Another note here: notice my interest in wanting to get that next zombie. We humans have a strong interest in collection activities – whether those are titles on FourSquare, badges in Gowalla, Achievements on XBox Live, stamps for your stamp collection, or zombies for your zombie herd – our inherent interest (need?) to collect things is a powerful psychological driver.
This sounds so amazing, right? Yet, I stopped playing this game after about two months. Why?
- The game stopped presenting quests after about the first month of play, hindering the focus/drive for advancement.
- Introduction of new game mechanics or opportunities slowed. Instead of presenting something new within 3-8 play sessions, it slipped to providing something new every 12-25+ play sessions. In short, gameplay became a bit of a repetitive grind. To me, the value of my time began to outweigh the delight/surprise earned from the investment of this time.
Let’s recap our learnings from my time with Zombie Farm:
- Good games always provide appropriate challenge to the player. Challenges that are too hard or too easy do not effectively drive engagement.
- Good games provide variability in game play. If players aren’t forced to learn or experience new things, then they stop having fun once they’ve “solved” the gameplay puzzles with which they’ve been presented.
- Good games can leverage inherent human pscyhological behaviors/interests – such as our desire for surprise and our interest in collection activities. Mechanics that tap into these strong motivators are effective for driving consistent engagement provided that they are attainable and of sufficient frequency.
Join me for Part 4 next week for ongoing analysis.
My Social Gaming Experience: Part 2
(Did you already read Part 1 of this series of posts?)
When I began my foray into social games two that I immediately gravitated to were City Story and Zombie Cafe. As a big fan of the old SimCity games and a zombie lover (ewww…), these two seemed like a great choice to kick things off.
Both games featured a fun theme, pleasing aesthetic design, and an easy-to-use user interface. Thousands of other players played them, had rated them favorably in the app store, and they were hovering at the top of the popularity lists for games. How could they not be great?
I uninstalled them both after a few days of play.
Why? The devil here was in the details. The details, in this case, being the (mis)use of a mechanic I’ve seen in so many other social games: Time
In City Story, you use coins to build new buildings. Once you have some buildings (e.g. factories), you use some amount of coins to start off the production of some type of widget. After a variable amount of minutes or hours, you can then retrieve these products, usually generating more money than you had used to create products. Production Money + Time = Production Output.
In Zombie Cafe, you use some amount of money to start off cooking a recipe. After a variable amount of minutes or hours, you can then retrieve this meal and start serving the dish to customers. Again, we see a simple equation take place: Production Money + Time = Production Output. As with City Story, as a gamer, it is our hope that the the output we get is worth more than the money and the time we invested.
These games layer some additional mechanics to drive this operation (e.g. build 3 of X type of products, keep food on the tabe for customers or your cafe rating decreases, etc.). As a player, you must rinse and repeat this interaction over-and-over to meet these (or similar) goals.
I suspect the use of a time mechanic evolved for two primary reasons:
- When gaming within social networks such as Facebook, the passage of time doesn’t feel like a major expense – you are coming back to check on your social network anyway… why not take a few minutes for a game?
- For less patient gamers, you can conduct micro transactions to circumvent this time barrier. This provides a route to income for the developer/publisher.
As I’ve explored social games, I’ve learned to live (often begrudgingly) with the time mechanic. I have no illusions as to their impact and why they exist.
But for today, I want explain how the implementation of the time mechanic in the two above examples drove me away. What is surprising is how simple my concern is, and how easy it would be to fix.
In both of these games: Failure to monitor and conform to the game’s time mechanic while not playing the game is penalized.
In City Story, if I don’t collect the products my factories built within an arbitrary (and for me, unknown) period of time, they would be “ruined” and unsalvageable. I lose the money I invested and have to start again. I have to wait because time is an insurmountable barrier – unless I want to invest real money via micro transactions to circumvent the barrier. Of course, just the subtle negative feeling you get from not retrieving your goods in time is frustrating just by itself, the “financial” impact within the game notwithstanding.
In Zombie Cafe, if I don’t get my prepared dish off of the stove and onto the serving table, it burns and is unusable. Again, my failure to conform to the game’s timetable of when I should play it penalizes me. I’m asked to play the game when it says it should be played, not when I say it should be played.
In both of these games, the time mechanic is playing with you, instead of vice versa. I’ve played many other games where your end product doesn’t spoil… it just sits there and awaits player interaction. Sure, you lose out on the opportunity to be utilizing that resource to develop the next product, but at least you are not wasting previously invested time and money. In those cases, the time mechanic is in effect, but it is in effect within your control, and not vice versa.
What are our game design take-aways?
- As is the case with all interaction design, a good experience puts players in control of their actions and provides them with a clear understanding of the outcome of their actions. When we are playing a game, we exercise influence within the game. When we are not playing the game, most reasonable people assume that their lack of inaction wouldn’t (shouldn’t) have consequences. In both of my examples, the game punishes the player for not playing by the rules of the game – even when those rules shouldn’t be in effect because the game isn’t being played! And no, push notifications are not an acceptable solution to out-of-game interaction.
- Challenge is important to games (as I’ll discuss later), but insurmountable challenge or unreasonable/unknown punishment is regarded as unfair by the player. Since the joy of a game is the subtle battle of learning the systems and mechanics in play (even if most gamers wouldn’t think of that process so literally), a system that is not discoverable by the player will be regarded as unfair, confusing, and flat-out un-fun. Challenges should be within scope and understandable.
I suspect that as the social gaming matures, designers will learn how to move past the use of time as a barrier or punishment. Time is a cheap, quick-fix mechanic to drive challenge. Game designers can do better.
Can I Haz Social Gaming?
Currently I’m embarking on a fortitude-testing quest: I’m exposing myself to social casual games.
Why?
Social gaming is now (arguably, of course) the world’s most popular form of gaming.
My first exposure to these games was a brief one a little over a year-and-a-half ago.
At that time, I dismissed them as “those time wasters that people play between Facebook updates.”
Since that time, social gaming’s ability to successfully grab (and maintain) people’s hearts, minds, and wallets has been indisputable.
As a fan of games, amateur game designer, and perhaps more importantly, a user experience creator, I feel it is critical that I understand the mechanics of these games and what type of experiences these games provide.
As such, I’m now diving into these games head first and giving them a chance to woo me in the same way that they have seemed to woo 65+ (80+?) million others.
Currently, I’m exploring CityVille, Zombie Farm, and Trade Nations.
My plan is to dissect this adventure (and my learnings) in future blog posts. Stay tuned!
Ambient Adaptation and Storytelling
Recently I’ve had the good fortune of being exposed to a few games that break away from the designs seen in the current crop of “popular” gaming options.
Limbo (XboxLive Arcade): Limbo begins with no instructions and no words. There are no cutscenes and a minimalist musical score. Mechanically, the game is a puzzle-solver that is wrapped up in a 2D side-scroller. Based on this description, you might assume that the game is quite shallow. But you would be mistaken. And in a few moments, I will tell you why.
Demon’s Souls (PS3): Demon’s Souls is a 3rd Person Role Playing Game (RPG). The game drops players into a graphically-impressive dark fantasy world. There is a limited introduction and an even slimmer tutorial. The game is set at a punishingly-high level of difficulty (that cannot be changed by the player) and has some mechanics (or lack thereof) that you might see in a video game from the early 1990′s (for example, no pause, extreme punishment for player error, and arcane stats that would make most well-educated individuals scratch their heads in bewilderment). Again, we might assume that such a game would create frustration more than it would engender fun. You might even accuse the design team of essentially “falling asleep at the proverbial wheel.” But again, this unique approach actually works in the game’s favor, creating an experience unlike any that I have played in the most recent decade of gaming.
I believe these games heavily utilize two concepts to great effect:
Ambient Adaptation: A widely-accepted theory (to which I ascribe) about what makes a game “fun” is that it is the process of learning that occurs while playing a game (i.e. being challenged and then learning how to overcome those challenges) which makes the experience enjoyable. As such, we can assume then that without a challenge, and without the accomplishment of beating a challenge, we would find the game to not be very fun. Demon’s Souls pushes players into a world where the player will live and die by not only their skill, but also by their ability to learn. This environment, while at times frustrating, also forces the player into an almost continuous-cycle of learning. As such, if we agree with the assertion that learning is the catalyst for fun, then Demon’s Souls effectively seeds the game with constant opportunities for fun. Sure there is the capacity for learning in many of today’s other blockbuster games (for example, via regular skill acquisition and basic puzzle-solving), but what is so unique about Demon’s Souls is how the game, by leaving the player out in the cold with little instruction, forces even the simple actions to become opportunities for learning. In turn, these seemingly insignificant learning opportunities form a cycle of continuous self-reward, thereby contributing to the creation of an overall positive and “fun” gaming experience.
Ambient Storytelling: Jeff Watson would define ambient storytelling as “stories or games that take place in the background, rather than traditional attention-focusing media artifacts such as movies or console video games.” Although this is certainly an appropriate definition, I might propose a definition for use within the context of interactive entertainment (e.g. video games): “Ambient storytelling is the conveyance of an experience through subtle methods during the course of regular gameplay.”
Limbo is a shining example of how a story can be generated without cinematics, talking, or text. Limbo provides an ambience and play mechanics that work seamlessly together to constantly challenge the player to ask him or herself a singular question: “what is going on here?” Many games unceremoniously provide the answer to this question via the aforementioned shortcuts (cinematics, text, etc.). Limbo, on the other hand, challenges the player to develop their own story as they play through the experience. This act of imagination and creation stimulates the mind in ways that many hand-fed experiences cannot. In fact, how often do we hear people say “the book is better than the movie”? Well, ten times out of ten, the book triumphs for the same reason why Limbo’s ambient storytelling is head-and-shoulders above a pre-defined game storyline: it empowers the reader/player to become the driver of a story that is inherently thought-provoking and personalized.
It is my hope that game developers will analyze and take to heart the lessons learned from these two exceptional games. In fact, I would confidently wager that ANY and ALL games would benefit from the better use of ambient adaptation and ambient storytelling.