DEMANDING BETTER DESIGN: - wtf does that mean? - when we think about our enjoyment of a game, we use the term fun - "was the game fun?" - "this game is a lot of fun", etc - when we design games, if we want to stay in business, we better make something fun - but what does fun really mean? - no one can really define fun - how can we design for something that we can’t really define? - I’m going to describe my interpretation of fun and - how we currently design for it, and why it's immoral - and what things players could demand instead WHAT IS FUN: - Fun is feedback from the brain when "good" things happen - Fun is feedback from the brain when dopamine levels increase. - What is dopamine? - dopamine is a neurotransmitter that gets produced by the brain; it regulates thought, attention, learning, motivation and pleasure - when you have fun, it’s because your brain just released a bunch of dopamine -What releases dopamine? - Everything you do releases dopamine, but certain things can release more: - experiencing something new - expecting something good - receiving a reward - unexpected rewards cause the brain to release more dopamine than expected ones - Why release dopamine? - When those things happen (experiencing something new, expecting something good, receiving a reward, etc), happen, and dopamine gets released, it activates these neuroreceptors called the "D1 Receptors" which formulate new neuron connections - this is learning: memories, habits, all things learned are just new neuron connections - therefore there is an evolutionary reason for the dopamine system: to make learning rewarding. - Power of dopamine: - Everything you want releases dopamine, and you want it *BECAUSE* it releases dopamine. - it is the primary motivation force behind everything you do - Your brain expects some median amount of dopamine, if you constantly over-produce it, the brain’s neutral state will downregulate the number of dopamine receptors: this is how addiction works in drugs, gambling, games, everything that can be addictive: because you’re used to so much of it, your brain makes less naturally, and you crave more. - A study was done at McGill University in 1954 where scientists stuck an electrode in a rat’s midbrain, (NAcc), and excited its dopamine synthesizer. (This was a complete accident, they had no idea about the inner workings of the brain at that point). - When the electrode was activated the mouse became extremely happy and focused - The mouse died a few days later of starvation, despite having food available Fun = dopamine Now that we know what "fun" is, at least in terms of our brains, and how dangerous misuse of this can be, lets look at how certain games engineer fun. EMPTY STIMULATION: - I mentioned that the mouse died of starvation because his brain was producing too much dopamine - I call the method under which the dopamine was produced "Empty Stimulation" - There was no learning, no new experience, and no reward - SKINNER BOX: - a mouse in a box - mouse is given intermittent stimulus, like a flashing light - the mouse should then press a button to get a reward, (food) - this trains the mouse's behavior to hit the button when the light flashes - what Skinner discovered was that the behavior was better trained when the reward timing was randomized ie: - if every time the mouse pressees the button, the reward is given, the mouse is trained pretty well to press that button - if the mouse has to press the button a random number of times to get the reward then the mouse is trained to compulsively press the button - the better the mouse learned it, the more dopamine was released therefore the more the mouse enjoyed it - this is identical to a slot machine: - Mouse (human) gets some stimulus, presses a button and randomly gets a reward - dopamine release can be enhanced further by randomizing the value of the reward - this is just a physical version of a dungeon crawler or mainstream mmorpg - kill an enemy, get a reward sometimes - they tested giving a reward every single time, and it was much less interesting to players than a randomized reward - dopamine release can be enhanced further by randomizing the "value" of the reward - 0.1% chance to drop a really good sword - that's one way games give empty stimulation through rewards - content driven games: - paced rewards in games like call of duty - little checkpoints, to incrementally make you feel like you're progressing - a reward - single player rpgs: - story plot points, to make you feel like you're progressing - a reward - This is also "Empty Stimulation": - this behavior causes your brain to produce dopamine only in anticipation of, and receiving an unexpected reward - it does not reward learning or experiencing something new - you might experience something new every now-and-then in the call of duty example or the rpg example - but you're rewarded much more often - there's very little interaction/cognitive variety, and lots of superficial variety - it is artifical stimulation that bypasses the evolutionary purpose of dopamine - We've already seen how this is bad: the poor mouse died, "but he was happy" MOST GAME COMPANIES DON'T CARE ABOUT GAME PLAYERS: - I'm going to say something here that you might not like, or believe or want to believe, but don't get offended, just ignore it if you don't like it ;) - commercial games are entirely about making money - corporations exist for one purpose: to make money - obligation is to shareholders, not players. they sell a product (games) to make money to make shareholders happy - don't mistaken their intentions: - they don't care about players, in fact, internally they often call them "users" - they care about getting users' money - users are just a resource - players are treated like lab rats for the scientific experiments these companies carry out - user data is fed into algorithms to maximize LTV - rapid changing with A/B testing to maximize LTV - that's how much some of these companies care about you, they distill you down to a dollar value for you're entire 'life' with them - if all they're trying to do is make money, they have to find the most efficient way: - best way to get money is to make users have fun - the easiest and cheapest way to make a player have fun is give them "Empty Stimulation" through - skinner boxes - scheduled rewards (checkpoints, plot point) - feeding "Empty Stimulation" to players is the easiest and cheapest way to make them have fun - this gets justified with the mentality of: "we're giving players what they want" or "players are having fun" - this is bad, this is immoral, this is borderline evil - the poor mouse died, "but he was happy" - people spend many hours, many a large percentage of their waking life playing games, it must have an effect on the brain - lets quickly look at another modern entertainment invention: sitcoms - a sitcom is a nicely organzed 22 minute time-boxed bubble where there's a crisis and a resolution - this has trained western brains to being interested in problems that can be solved in 22 minutes - "they, (sitcoms), create impatience for irresolution" - David Milch, creator of Deadwood - look at skinner box-like activities in mmos: "collect 10 widgets from the tigers over there" - solvable in ~22 minutes, repeat - look at checkpoints in modern games like call of duty, everything goal is obtainable in about 22 minutes - think about why investing is so hard. - if you invest your money, you'll have a long term reward: more money - if you spend your money now, you'll have a short term reward: more stuff - it doesn't matter that the long term reward is more of a reward - our brains are wired for immediate reward - games get designed for fun by constantly giving immediate rewards - if this is is how our brains are engaged, how can we expect to frame, let alone solve, a problem like global warming - when it doesn't have visible reprocussions for 200 years? - "sitcoms make people happy", "people want sitcoms, we're just giving them what they want" - this is not an acceptable answer, these practices have negative effects on peoples' thought paterns and behaviors So we have a definition of fun, and how fun can be abused to give empty stimulation to players. Setting out, at the start, to make a 'fun' game leads too often to abuse. We should consider ways in which games can be well designed, that would be intrinsically rewarding, which will be fun as a byproduct. DESIGNING FOR FUN: - "No other artistic medium defines itself around an intended effect on the user, such as fun" - Raph Koster - Don't design games with 'fun' as an end goal - It's easy to make games that are fun when you set out to engineer fun - just feed the player empty stimulation - it's much harder to make games that have meaning inherit in their design - going back a little: we know that the feeling of fun is your brain releasing a bunch of dopamine - and dopamine gets release when we: - learn something new - expect something good - get a reward (unexpected reward is better than an expected one) - I said it's lazy and immoral to focus only on the reward system, yet that's what most games do - we can design games that focus on intellectual tasks, from sensorimotoric skills right up to advanced reasoning - I'll talk about this more in a bit - rewards would happen organically, for solving some intellectual task - they would be intrinsic to the design of the game - 'fun' would happen as a byproduct of good design, not as a primary design goal that gets manufactured - what's stopping us? - it's too easy to keep players having fun with "Empty Stimulation" - if there's no demand for meaningful play, it won't exist, at least in any significant percentage - there's stuff being done on the fringes, but we need to bring it more into the players' conscious mind - player apathy and conservatism: - game design is remarkably conservative, expecially because it's considered a progressive medium - we've established genres and classify a game in broad terms - the "Puzzle" genre is incredible narrow: bejeweled is considered a puzzle game, but Bangai-O or Ikaruga aren't - people naturally gravitate to what they know - people don't want to try new, radical designs: they're harder to get into - I'm guilty of this too: no matter how hard I try, I can't play dwarf fortress - this is why retro is so popular: - we're used to it - we feel safe - design palette has regressed: - Ultima IV progression and rewards are crazy by today's standards - Michael Abbot, a professor of game design and writer of the blog brainygamer.com gave his students an assignment to play Ultima IV and he concluded that the game was too weird for today's standards - player's have too much cheap entertainment easily available that they aren't willing to put work into understanding new game designs - breaking out of our "safe zone" with design - demand new design, not just new content - focusing on it! - even progressive-minded people are too caught up in the whole 'games are art' debate - THINK POSITIVE: it's a market-based economy, if players are aware of these things, and demand more than empty entertainment, then game makers will have to deliver! WHAT SHOULD WE DEMAND? - treat interactions and thought-based play as meaningful and place less value on what we currently refer to as "content" - if play itself is rewarding, then games themselves can be designed to be intrinsically rewarding - based on Piaget's theory of cognative development, (and almost all neo-Piaget's theories): - break cognitive function into two polar stages - the sensorimotoric operations are developed in the human brain first - hand/eye coordination - logical reasoning and abstract thought come much later in development, and don't necessarily ever stop developing - motoric skills act almost completely independant of reasoning skills - if we choose to view rewarding as 'learning', then we can breakdown the things that games can ask us to learn through play: - purely motoric: super meat boy, guitar hero, gran turismo - players are shown exactly what to do, and must repeat motoric actions as precisely as possible - purely throught-driven: go, dvonn, zertz, chess - players have perfect information - abstract goal at some unknown distance away - steps to obtain the goal are non-obvious: - possibilites must be discovered - decisions must be made by weighing the found possibilities - current possibilities and decision are affected by previous decisions - somwhere in between: - ikaruga (until memorization sets in, then it's purely motoric) - requires very precise motoric movement - playspace is a constantly evolving maze - you can predict the future of maze at t + x, given you understood how the maze got to its current state - using your predictions to make decisions - starcraft - requires high levels of dexterity and motoric control - lots of mind games, causing players to make constant decisions - braid - motoric operations such as timing jumps or lining up cannon fire - many say the game would have been better w/o these 'mundane' challenges - a puzzle game with non-obvious solutions that must be thought about abstractly - boardgames are best suited to the left-side of the spectrum - Kris Burm, designer of some of my favourite boardgames, (gipf project: Zertz, Dvonn, Yinsh), made an abstract game: Tamsk where the pieces were hour-glasses - an attempt to add some agency/videogame-like qualities to a boardgame - I haven't played it, but it was canceled and kicked out of his collection: gipf - so I assume it didn't work out - they push the boundaries on the left side of the spectrum much more than videogames do currently - take a look at the gipf series, you can play most of the games on boardspace.net - videogames can fit anywhere anywhere in this spectrum - I often find myself enjoying, and thinking about ideas on the left side of the spectrum - why? (this is personal opinion only) - that's not to say that good games can't exist on the right side, I just find the it more limiting: Super Meatboy and N/N+ are great games - there's very little player choice on the right side of the spectrum - the player is given a clear an obvious path, and must execute some predefined series of mechanically challenging actions to follow the path - "they (games) depend on decision-making, decisions have to pose real plausible alternatives, or they aren't real decisions" - Greg Costikyan - the term "challenging" in other media almost always refers to "intellectually challenging" at some cognitive stage greater than sensorimotoric - we rarely say something like "braid is challenging" - we quantify intellectually challenging with terms like: "the puzzles are hard" - one could argue that this is what is unique about games, but I think that's far too limiting in terms of game design - I believe motoric challenge should be minimized as much as possible - if somethign can be made simpler mechnically, then do so - motoric challenge can be used to enchance intellectual challenge - for example: why have complex steering mechanics in a racing game? - make steering as easy and straight-forward as possible - replace difficulty in turning corners with thought-based actions - collecting things: - player must read playfield and make decision where he can collect something, or if he should do something else - videogames are amazing at problem solving through play - in board games you have to think about an abstract problem in an abstract place and make a decision - in videogames, you have the ability to play in the problem space - you can play to learn how certain things act and react - play with interactions - learn about the world through interactions - solve problems though play - Braid gives perfect information and encourages solving the puzzles through play - Ikaruga: - presents players with a complex ever-changing labyrinth - the player learns the patterns and learns to make decisions as how to best navigate it - the learning and discovery happens through play - videogames offer introspection through play - this is something rarely considered in the game design - "low reflection, high-gloss entertainment" - Ian Bogost - Huizinga described play as happening in a "magic circle" where a different version of yourself, and your world exists - we use the term "escapism" when discussing video games - this essentially limits games to temporary distractions - the language implies that when you play a game, you're escaping and don't take anything "back" with you - I think this is the wrong way to approach game design - play is most certainly not 'escapism' so we shouldn't belittle games with terms like 'escapism' - human beings inhabit 2 worlds - the physical world - but we kinda only perceive the physical world through our sensory perceptions - our senses act as lens to the physical world - it's kind of a second world, for example: - conspiracy theorists, juggalos, christian conservatives, etc live in the same physical world as the rest of us but they kinda still live in their own "world" - "it's more precise to say that we inhabit a world that's made up of thoughts, concioness and ideas" - Alan Moore - to prove how important this is: philosophy, politics, ethics, are "thought inventions" - these things aren't "real" in the physical sense, but they're "real" in this other world that we live in - games have this power to alter the value structure of this "other world" - they can act as a thought-manipulation lens - for example, a game could change the value of posessions - posessing objects could actually be a negative thing, and trying to get rid of posessions could be valuable - we play in this magic circle with this other version of ourselves, in a completely new space - it can teach us something about ourselves - or change how we think about something - or change our values - games provide insight into the human experience: - dollhouses, particullarly in the late 17th century, were used to teach girls about the woman's role in the home - dollhouses given out to 'soon-to-be-brides' - monopoly was the sucessor to "The Landlord's Game" - which was a critique of capitalism, became popular around the wallstreet crash that led to the great depression - "The Sims" is a metaphor for modern America suburbia: - get a big personal space in a row of identical houses - buy things to make your personal space superficially nicer, which makes you happier - work harder at your job so you can buy nicer things - repeat - The game was misunderstood in France, because it didn't model French life - it was very American-centric - Senet, an ancient Egyptian board game was played by yourself, it was said you were playing aginst Ra himself - The Seventh Seal, a movie by Ingmar Bergman, pits a man vs Death in a game of chess - In ancient China, Go was an analogue to astrology: patterns on the board were interpreted to mean something about the players - i feel there's a whole spectrum of thought exercies that games are remarkably suited for, yet aren't being designed for CONCLUSION: - "fun" shouldn't be blindly considered when thinking of the quality of a game - it's too easily engineered by methods that have a negative impact on players - instead critique the design of a game, which, if well-designed should intrinsically be fun - games have the potential for so much more than we're currently designing, lets demand more!