bvanevery
07-30-2007, 07:41 PM
The other day, I tried to figure out the "plot" to a game of FreeCiv.
What are the key events or choices in the game, where a "plot point"
has been reached and now something new is happening? When am I making
important decisions? When do I feel like I'm just waiting around for
something to happen? So I kept a detailed log of every time I thought
I was making an important choice in the game.
I was surprised to find that the only interesting / important decisons
I made were at the beginning of the game. Things like where to build
the first city, the first 4 techs to research, finding the lay of the
nearby land and sea, finding neighbors to invade, choosing who to take
out. After possibly 30..60 minutes of interesting decisions, the game
was nothing but a long slow bog of waiting for the results of
decisions I had previously made. I think I quit about 4 hours into
the game, realizing that nothing about the game had changed, and that
it simply takes forever to push all the units around.
Civ games taking a long time didn't surprise me. I've known that for
many years. What did surprise me, is that I made all my decisions so
early. And then, that I was *still engaged* to those decisions for a
few hours afterwards. Only after a very long time had passed, did I
get bored and call it quits. For a few hours, I was quite entertained
by trying to implement the decisions I had made.
To my mind, this means the structure of interactivity is:
[make decision] --> [anticipate result] --> [satisfaction of success]
The important observation is that "anticipating a result" is a loop.
It's like The Simpsons commercial: "Are we there yet?" "No." "Are we
there yet?" "NO." "Are we there yet?" "NO!" Every half second. We
remain engaged because we are constantly comparing our anticipated
goal with the actual state of the game. We're willing to do this for
quite a long time after we've actually made the decision. We won't do
it forever, we're capable of getting bored, but it's surprising how
long the time interval of [anticipation] can last.
I think, in principle, games can be seen as distinct units of
[decision]-->[anticipation]-->[satisfaction]. Or more simply, as
distinct "units of interactivity." Much as films are composed of
distinct scenes. One difference, however, is that in film, scenes do
not overlap. Whereas in a game, we can have many
[decision]-->[anticipation] units going at once, that we're waiting to
get [satisfaction] from.
More on this framework when I have time to think about how it applies
to various games. Meanwhile, your thoughts? Analytically insightful?
Stating the bloody obvious?
I think the most important realization, is that tweaking the length of
the player's [anticipation] is how we attract or repel them. It's not
just about the choices. It's about how long they remain stoked about
the choices.
This could go a long way to explaining why people will throw away
countless hours on stat-based level-up games. It's just some crummy
number getting bigger, but it's not about the actual size of the
number. It's about the amount of time spent [anticipating] that the
number will get bigger. Wet, lather, rinse, repeat.
What are the key events or choices in the game, where a "plot point"
has been reached and now something new is happening? When am I making
important decisions? When do I feel like I'm just waiting around for
something to happen? So I kept a detailed log of every time I thought
I was making an important choice in the game.
I was surprised to find that the only interesting / important decisons
I made were at the beginning of the game. Things like where to build
the first city, the first 4 techs to research, finding the lay of the
nearby land and sea, finding neighbors to invade, choosing who to take
out. After possibly 30..60 minutes of interesting decisions, the game
was nothing but a long slow bog of waiting for the results of
decisions I had previously made. I think I quit about 4 hours into
the game, realizing that nothing about the game had changed, and that
it simply takes forever to push all the units around.
Civ games taking a long time didn't surprise me. I've known that for
many years. What did surprise me, is that I made all my decisions so
early. And then, that I was *still engaged* to those decisions for a
few hours afterwards. Only after a very long time had passed, did I
get bored and call it quits. For a few hours, I was quite entertained
by trying to implement the decisions I had made.
To my mind, this means the structure of interactivity is:
[make decision] --> [anticipate result] --> [satisfaction of success]
The important observation is that "anticipating a result" is a loop.
It's like The Simpsons commercial: "Are we there yet?" "No." "Are we
there yet?" "NO." "Are we there yet?" "NO!" Every half second. We
remain engaged because we are constantly comparing our anticipated
goal with the actual state of the game. We're willing to do this for
quite a long time after we've actually made the decision. We won't do
it forever, we're capable of getting bored, but it's surprising how
long the time interval of [anticipation] can last.
I think, in principle, games can be seen as distinct units of
[decision]-->[anticipation]-->[satisfaction]. Or more simply, as
distinct "units of interactivity." Much as films are composed of
distinct scenes. One difference, however, is that in film, scenes do
not overlap. Whereas in a game, we can have many
[decision]-->[anticipation] units going at once, that we're waiting to
get [satisfaction] from.
More on this framework when I have time to think about how it applies
to various games. Meanwhile, your thoughts? Analytically insightful?
Stating the bloody obvious?
I think the most important realization, is that tweaking the length of
the player's [anticipation] is how we attract or repel them. It's not
just about the choices. It's about how long they remain stoked about
the choices.
This could go a long way to explaining why people will throw away
countless hours on stat-based level-up games. It's just some crummy
number getting bigger, but it's not about the actual size of the
number. It's about the amount of time spent [anticipating] that the
number will get bigger. Wet, lather, rinse, repeat.