Tom seriously this is a horrible field, I read a whole whole bunch of it for my dissertation and 90% of it is really strikingly awful, like simultaneouly meaningless and wrong. And I love acadamese! It's just really clear that the people mostly writing it flatly don't play games.
Jayemanne and McCrea are fantastic though.
― Gravel Puzzleworth (Gregory Henry), Thursday, 1 December 2005 19:29 (twenty years ago)
Leee it ws basically on text and games interacting and wht happens, like half text in games themselves and what it does sometimes with complicities etc and half metatheory abt Writing About Games and why it is mostly bad and awful but doesn't need to be.
The thing is I'm really sure I'll read it in like four years and be staggered by how wrong I am, the whole idea of What Games Even Are is so in flux right now, it's like writing on the novel in 1715 or something, which is another this field is sorta lame I think.
― Gravel Puzzleworth (Gregory Henry), Saturday, 3 December 2005 01:05 (twenty years ago)
I think fun, in games at least, is simpler than what they describe.
To me, the 'fun' element of games seems to come out of ego, of being better than the game. People who like a challenge in games most of the time only seem to enjoy it provided they win, and get frustrated if they don't.
The challenge with level design, given this case, is to let the gamer win even though it appears you're trying to do otherwise. If you make it too easy, the player feels you're letting them win. If it's too hard, they believe that you're an asshole. If it's too repeditive, they feel that you're not trying hard enough to beat them.
To common way to keep a constant 'fun' level in games is to linearly ramp up the difficulty; bigger/more monsters, more obtuse puzzles, more traps and the like. This is balanced by the players natural progression of skill, being that if they do something long enough then they will become good at it. Linear difficulty progression works by maintaining a balance between how good they player should be at that point vs. the odds against them.
However this theory doesn't work indefinetly and these days it can become very hard to balance. People that have played FPSs for a long time will have the shooting thing down to an art, easily being able to dodge incoming missles or in some cases even being able to preempt most of the suprises, meaning that the more experienced players don't feel they've overcome anything, with you letting them win. Try to counteract this by upping the difficulty from the get-go, and you'll alienate the less experienced crowd.
The way forward, I feel, is a 'juttered difficulty gradient'. By this, it means that for one level you master a paticular skill, then by the next level you learn and master an entirely new skill. This is what made the Zelda games so great; they conform with the juttered difficulty theory and also with the more conventional 'risk and reward' practice. Every time you beat a level, you're given a new power and/or weapon, and in the next level you need to make good use of it. This is also laid out well being that you normally need your new ability to be able to access the next primary level, giving the player a small orientation before dropping them into the thick of it.
The main advantage of this method is that it isn't reliant on 'fun' being based on the players previously-aquired skill, but on mastery of the current environment, which provides most players with an equal playing field.
Still, this is just my theory, and I may have had a bit to drink.
― PlayfulPuppy (playfulpuppy), Monday, 5 December 2005 10:15 (twenty years ago)
three weeks pass...