Players Who Suit MUD's (Multi-User Domains)

Richard A Bartle: Players who suit MUD'S. This article was an old one. However the points that were drummed out constantly through it do, in my opinion still relate to the current game world and community. We we're asked to look at how the different styles of players related to us as well as the game world. Also to look at how this article was relevant to our own actions as players in our own game-play sessions.

MUD's are Multi User Domains and are typically text based role playing games, which have a chat element to them as well as online interaction between players. This type of game has evolved into becoming the now known, MMORPG's. Bartle described two types of playing styles, this included:

Action (world orientated) Vs Interaction (player orientated)
Bartle then splits these two types of players into 4 groups. These groups were know as: killers, socialisers, achievers and explorers.

• Achievers: See point gathering and levelling up as their main goal. They tend to give themselves personal goals and are constantly on the look out to improve their character in any way

• Killers: Are players that use killing other players as their main goal. They often just want to cause distress to other players. The more distress they causes, the more joy they get out of their playing experience.

• Socialisers: These types of players base their gaming around talking to other players. They tend to play just because of the aspect of inter player-relationships and often don't care much about the actual game-play as such.

• Explorers: Explorers want to know everything about the game terrain around them. They often try to find and explore the game mechanics and to find interesting objects and artifacts within game. they get a buzz out of knowing they are the first person to find a specific area of item.

A metaphor was given by Bartle to describe these different players. He used the suits from a pack of playing cards to describe them.

• Hearts (Socialisers care about players feelings)
• Spades (Explorers tend to dig up strange and new places)
• Diamonds (Achievers want to have the best of the best in terms of score and items)
• Clubs (Killers club people to death) 

Relationships

Socialisers: Tend to socialise with every player type but mainly other socialisers. They will take an interest in the game just so that people will talk to them.

Achievers: These see other achievers as competition and often want to outrun them in status within a game, the game is very important to this type of player.

Killers: They target achievers as their prey. Because the game means so much to the achievers, the distress caused can be maximised.

Explorers: Never usually want to fight back with killers, but when they do, the killers may need to be cautious as all the exploring could of turned up with a super powerful weapon

Throughout the article, Bartle kept on telling us that the balance of these players are very important as they all have a relationship within the game with each other. If the amount of one type of player was to drop, then the result was to see another side drop dramatically, resulting in another.. and so on. For example, Killers tend to want to kill achievers more than any other player, this is because achievers take the game very seriously and if killed tend to get very distressed. This is exactly what the killers want, and if the achievers get killed to much they may leave the game. This means a reduction of achievers within game, and less players for killers to hunt. Less achievers = less killers.

Conclusion

Throughout this article I learned about the different player types which i never knew about before but found extremely interesting. I would consider my own playing style as an achiever. However I do sometimes like to cross over to the killers playing style also. I feel that now in modern games, they have developed methods in which they force players to experience different player styles. They often have different areas of the game world where specific players enjoy lurking around. Such as a combat arena for killers or a high score leader board for achievers. This article may be dated, but I found that it is still relevant in present time.

Week 7: Casual games design

For week 7 we we're asked too look at an article about casual game design, dedicated mainly on the success of the game company Popcap Games. This case study was titled Space of Possibility and Pacing in Casual Game Design, by Marcos Venturelli.

A casual game is that of a game that can be given to a player of any skill and can sit down and play without much difficulty at all and receive short bursts of enjoyment out of the game. These features are some, which Popcap Games focus on, and will be described later on.

The case study started by addressing how readily available casual games are now becoming, by the advancement of portable devices and wireless Internet, casual games are within a arms reach away. This being said, the fact that the games should be easy to play to a wide area of players, is becoming one of the main goal of game designers, keep it simple to begin with. One of the main reasons why Popcap games has produced successful games is because their games focus on pacing the players through the game predicatively. Pacing is responsible of creating complex interactions between the player and the game.

Pacing:
These elements build up to create the games pace

Tension:  Is the perceived danger that a player might become the weakest side of the opposing forces within the conflict

Threat: Is generated on the level of game mechanics existing as the power struggle tips in favour of the system/players opponents

Tempo: Is the intensity of play. It is also the time between each interaction between the player and the game e.g. the time between clicks.

Movement Impetus: Is the will and desire of the player to progress through the game.

Space of possibility:

As game designers we create a space for possibility, this space is the area that we can limit to create a desired effect on the player. Raph Koster [2005] "The destiny of games is to become boring, not fun"

What he means is that our brains are programmed or enjoy to work out patterns in everything, especially games. We are always trying to master and discover these patterns, and its only a matter of time until these patterns are all used. Whilst designing casual games, we want the game to have a restricted space of possibility so that the game will be easy to play for everyone, but not a large space so that there are too many patterns that it becomes a hard game. Creating a game is within a game itself, its all about creating the right balance.

To keep the players movement impetus stimulated, the game must keep the player interested. Popcap have done this by adding certain elements of mechanics every few levels in their games. A game i am very fond of Peggle, is a game where every 5 levels the game introduces to you a new character to play as, which in turn gives the player a new mechanic to play with. Whilst doing this in the background, the game is also increasing in difficulty slowly, by introducing more obstacle to work around, the players movement impetus is continued.

This is the reason why Popcap are seen as one of or the best casual game designer company at this current time. They focus on giving the players a enticing and exciting experience that thrills the player even in short bursts. This element I will be trying to work into my own group game I am produces currently. We are introducing a new weapon every few levels to entice the player to play even more to increase the movement impetus. The players will continuously be rewarded with death animations of the enemy in a humorous fashion. As well as having the difficulty and Tempo of the game gradually get faster.

Chance and Skill

For week sixes reading we were advised to read Brenda Braithwaite & Ian Schreiber (2008) Challenges For Games Designers. Chapters 5 and 6. These chapters were specifically about luck and chance, and the importance of how and why they are needed in game. Here I will be describing just that in more detail.

Chance is an element used in board games and even digital games to keep the player interested in the game for a longer period of time. This is done by the chance element giving the player a more varied experience during game play. Therefore increasing the replay value of the game in hand. By also giving a variable experience every time, the game designers can prevent players from mastering the game. Chance can be appealing as to also create tension in games. Lets take Texas Hold'em Poker for example, the longer the players bully each other into submitting more money into the kitty, the higher the dramatic tension factor; however there is skill involved with this, its all down to the luck and chance of the cards drawn. This tool that anyone on the board could potentially have a winning hand causes this dramatic tension.

Chance is needed in many games; games which do not have an aspect of chance at all can become very boring very fast. It then leads the games mechanics all down to skill; let’s take Tic Tac Toe for example. It’s a game that is based purely on skill, and because of the small range of possibility, it can easily be mastered and is easily done. If the game was to have on chance element incorporated into the game then this game would have more replay value as well as be more challenging and fun. So what are the tools we use to create chance in a game? Well here are some:

· Dice (There can be many different outcomes depending on the number thrown, there can also be more dice involved giving a higher chance outcome and no matter how many are rolled, the previous roll will never influence the future roll).

· Cards (Cards can be randomised by shuffling, they can be used as resources and they can also be hidden from other players, or not.)

· Pseudo-Random number generator (This is a digital chance producer and can work for most games, must be made sure that the outcome is not bias in any way.)

And now I will talk about the aspect of skill in a game. Skill gives a player the chance to actually improve the way they play games as it doesn’t revolve around a chance element. These games are usually more competitive as the dramatic tension can be high if two similarly ranked players are matched together. The good thing about skill is that it creates many chances for the player; a player of a game that must make decisions based on information given is a skill. There are many decisions that can be used to create an aspect of skill and here a few:

Meaningless Decision:

• These can become frustration for the player if they do not affect any part of the game and should be removed if this is the case

Blind Decision:

• This means the player has a very limited viewable information, or even none at all
• These decisions are usually connected to gambling

Obvious Decision:

• An obvious decision is pretty obvious. One way will have an extreme positive and another will have an extreme negative. Hey player will always go with positive, if these rules exist in games, the game designer should make them rules instead of decisions

Trade-off decision:

• When a user has a hard decision between two choices that are pretty much equal in stats.

Dilemmas:

• This tool gives the player a sense of danger in every possible way
• The prisoners dilemma is when two players must choose the same answer together without contact and if they both get it right, they share the reward, if they don’t, one can take all the winnings, or they both lose dramatically

All in all I thought this was my favourite reading so far as it has made me think more about games and how hard it is to balance a game between chance and skill

80's comic book style painting

Friday 4th of November we we're shown how to create an 80's comic style art piece. We focused on a portrait of a typical comic style person. Heres how my artwork came out:

Tools that can be used to create dramatic game mechanics

This evaluation upon these tools will be based upon a contribution by Marc LeBlanc from Salen and Zimmermans The Game Design Reader p438-459. This post will be a continuation from my previous post about the MDA framework. Marc LeBlanc explains that he has studied games using this framework and bases his work around the mechanics, dynamics and aesthetics of game design. In this blog post i will be focusing on how we (as game designers) can create dramatic dynamics in our games.

Okay, so mechanics of a game is what the game designer has ultimate control over, these mechanics influence the game dynamics and how it runs as a whole, which then these dynamics influence the player to receive an emotional response. therefore in order to create an emotional response from our player we must focus on creating a set of mechanics that when constructed would give out a dramatic feel. From this reading i discovered a powerful quote from LeBlanc himself: "We cannot create drama; we can only create the circumstances from which the drama will emerge" This is an absolute truth when it come to game designing and to help us construct these circumstances we can use a tool called a Dramatic Arc. Here is the diagram of this arcs structure:

The opening (in our case, the story's conflict) rises up dragging the player into the game with it, giving them increased tension and emotional responses where at the top the climax, the story and then therefore the dramatic tension cuts dramatically and resolves. LeBlanc notes that the point at which the climax occurs is important as executing it too early could make the player feel the resolution was rushed as it needs to be in proportion and rewarding in my opinion. This drama and tension all depend on two main factors in games design: Uncertainty and inevitability.

Uncertainty and inevitability can be controlled separately by individual game mechanics, these game mechanics much be balanced in order to acquire the dramatic feel inside the game. During a game of lets say Chess, the inevitability is designed into the game in the form of a ticking clock. The ticking clock is that of the amount of player pieces the game has, this element creates a feeling of counting down to the dramatic finish to the game e.g the rise of tension and drama can easily be seen here. This game mechanics cannot create drama unless uncertainty is in the equation. Uncertainty in a game is the tool for the lack of foresight in a game so that players cannot immediately see the outcome of the game. The best way to do this is to stretch the games uncertainty for as long as possible. An example of this would be StarCraft II's fog of war, by limiting the amount of information a player has of the game, this increases the uncertainty of the game. However i must stress that these both don't work alone. If you use one without the other, the dramatic effect is not sustained.

Another set of tools that create dramatic tension is using force and illusion. I have mentioned one of these already (fog of war) but here are them explained. Being a game designer you can force the player to change the game state in a game in order to change their perception of the games situation. Using this force technique we can 'force' the games dynamics and making the player feel dramatic tension.  Illusion also creates dramatic tension by changing the players perception of the game state. By keeping something hidden such as previously mentioned, the fog of war, the player can believe that the game is ending sooner than it is, or ever later.

LeBlanc also mentions positive and negative feedback systems. These mechanics are used to manipulate the game by changing the way a player reacts to the game.

• Positive feedback is when the leader of a game gains a larger advantage than the other players which then creates tension. An example of this would be Liars Dice. A game in which rewards the winning players with the ability to see more dice in their hands than their opponents thus gives them a larger advantage over the opponents,
• Negative feedback is when the losing player gets a hidden boost or handicap towards the game which then decreases the gap between the players which then leads to increasing the uncertainty of the game outcome, resulting in dramatic tension.

This is were I will end my contribution and opinions on some tools you can use to create dramatic tension in games. Toodle pip!

LeBlanc, Marc (2006), Tools for Creating Dramatic Game Dynamics, 438-459, in:     The Game Design Reader: A Rules of Play Anthology. MIT Press.

Zotero: A trial and error story. REVISED

Here is the result of a task from my lecturer Ed to construct a bibliography using the programme Zotero. Here's how it turned out:

Books

Heather Maxwell Chandler (Author)

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Chandler, Heather Maxwell, Chandler, Rafael (2010), Fundamentals of Game Development. Jones and Bartlett Publishers, Inc.

Dillon, Roberto (2010), On the Way to Fun: An Emotion-Based Approach to Successful Game Design. A K Peters/CRC Press.

Journal Articles

Jin, Seung-A Annie (2011). "I Feel Prsent. Therefore, I Experience Flow: A Structural Equation Modeling Approach to Flow and Presense in Video Games",  Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media. Vol. 55 Issue 1. 114-136

Martínez, Katynka Z. (2011). "Pac-Man meets the Minutemen: Video Games by Los Angeles Latino Youth",  National Civic Review Vol. 100 Issue 3. 50-57

Contributions

Lowood, Henry and Nitsche, Michael (Eds.) (2011), Lowood, "Video Capture: Machinima, Documentation, and the History of Virtual Worlds" The Machinima Reader. MIT Press: 3-21

This has been recently updated to meet Ed's standards of the Harvard System. Hopefully it is fixed now.