Meaningful Play Game Design PDF

Meaningful Play Decisions Should Matter Lecture Time! Meaningful Play: What We Want Discernable: Something Happened And You Know It Integrated: Something Happened And There Are Consequences Meaningful Play In a game, meaningful play emerges from the relations...

Meaningful Play Decisions Should Matter Lecture Time! Meaningful Play: What We Want Discernable: Something Happened And You Know It Integrated: Something Happened And There Are Consequences Meaningful Play In a game, meaningful play emerges from the relationship between player action and system outcome This is the descriptive definition of meaningful play It just says what happens in EVERY game Meaningful Play Every game lets players take actions, and assigns outcomes to those actions Depending on the overall goal, some outcomes can be more desirable than others Meaningful Play This should lead to a meaningful experience for the player, but some games do this better than others Players decide which actions to take, but how “meaningful” these decisions are varies from game to game Creating an experience with a high degree of meaningful play is the goal of successful game design! Meaningful Play The evaluative definition for meaningful play which may help us quantify this objective Meaningful play occurs when the relationships between actions and outcomes in a game are both discernable and integrated into the larger context of the game Irritation or Frustration = Bad Discernable: The result of the game action is communicated to the player in a perceivable way The player must know the meaning of their action! When the relationship between an action and the result of that action is not discernable, meaningful play is difficult or impossible to achieve! Discernable This lets players know what happened when they took an action… https://youtu.be/b4mFbVG6iFw?t=16 Discernable … and also what will happen IF they take an action Not discernable? You might as well be pressing buttons randomly! Unless you're really good at guessing game-critical information? Because you're the programmer? https://us.diablo3.com/en-us/item/bovine-bardiche-Unique_Polearm_101_x1 https://us.diablo3.com/en-us/item/sky-splitter-Unique_Axe_1H_005_p2 Discernable Context is also important! Players will not know the relative importance of an action if they do not know the context of considering that action Consider the action of sending reinforcements to your base: What if your base is safe? What if your base is under attack? What if your base is about to be attacked? Need to Know Why = The Bigger Picture Integrated: The relationship between action and outcome is related to the larger context of the game Player actions also affect play experience at a later point! When actions have no far-reaching consequences or do not affect the game outcome, then play becomes significantly less meaningful! Integrated This lets players realize that actions they take may be important in achieving objective/s Without it, your game might as well be a sequence of unrelated mini-games My Next Life as a Villainess: All Routes Lead to Doom!, season 2, episode 1 Integrated This characteristic simply means that there is a context! Should the context be discernable? It depends: Fog of war in a multiplayer game? Enemy presence near/in your base? HP bar of an enemy? The goal of the game? The goal of a stage? Conditions for a secret ending? Decisions Meaningful play in a game means that player decisions matter Many games offer [an illusion of] choice Players should see or later discover where their choices lead How do we make decisions matter? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_pill_and_blue_pill#/media/File:Red_and_blue_pill.jpg Reminder Game pitch deadline soon Refer to our course page for more details Up next: Presenting information to our players for them to process