20
Mar
10

Dying for immersion

By Andre Beccu Leave a Comment
Categories: 8. How to handle in-game death
Tags: , , , , , , , , ,

First of all, I’d like to distinguish between “I died”, as in “Mario ran into a funny turtle and did a crazy animation and fell off the screen”, and “I died” as in “an alien with twelve rows of teeth sucked out my brain and then bit my head off”.

In the first case, I failed and most likely my flow was broken, but everything that happened was well within the boundaries of the Mario universe. My experience was disrupted a bit, but the immersion wasn’t broken. There’s little to fix here.
In the second case, immersion has just taken a severe hit. I DIED! How horrible! I guess I should be shaken. Oh, wait – I didn’t. I just re-spawned at the latest checkpoint. Sooo… why was it necessary to decapitate my avatar again?

Continue reading ‘Dying for immersion’

26
Feb
10

New Topic: How to handle in-game death

By Arcade 48 Comments
Categories: 8. How to handle in-game death
Tags: ,

Allright everyone; the last topic was about reward and punishment and the next one is somewhat similar but also totally different:

How to handle in-game death

24
Feb
10

Other ways of rewarding and punishing

By Arshak Ardeshir Leave a Comment
Categories: 7. Reward and Punishment

New ideas sometimes shed new light on old problems. I have been reading a a lot about player types these days. I am talking about Barles  player types and the other types that have spawned after his.  And even though they are (achiever, explorer, killer and socializer) mostly aimed at MMO/MUD players their usage don’t stop there.

In regular single player games it can be hard to discern player types as single player games seldom allow freedom of personality, and because they guide the player through a predefined rule-set. Having a pre-defined rule set brings (most often) with it a defined rule set for reward and punishment. And since most singeplayer games are about progressing they would have a punishment system based upon that. Which also seems to be the main way we talk about the notion of “punishment vs reward”. We use hardcore vs casual dividing, which really is a crude tool if you think about it.

Continue reading ‘Other ways of rewarding and punishing’

21
Feb
10

Shot your dinner lately?

By Andre Beccu 10 Comments
Categories: 7. Reward and Punishment
Tags: , , , , , , , , ,

Do you hunt and grow your own food? If you don’t, you DO cut your own fire wood, right? Or at least you shift gears manually in your car, because, let’s face it: Super-markets, electricity, and automatic transmission are for sissies.

Oh my, you ARE one of those guys, aren’t you! You like doing things the easy way, taking the path of least resistance. I bet you also play games on beginners’ mode, then!

Continue reading ‘Shot your dinner lately?’

11
Feb
10

the demon’s soul!

By Gustav Ziolkowski 1 Comment
Categories: 7. Reward and Punishment
Tags: , , , , ,

Working in the german games industry has its quirks. The market here is quite specific, with the PC still standig relatively strong. A lot of german “hardcore” gamers play their games almost exclusively on the platform and they prefer titles of certain complexity – and severity of punishment!

Continue reading ‘the demon’s soul!’

04
Feb
10

Being The Guy

By Juha Kangas Leave a Comment
Categories: 7. Reward and Punishment

I recently listened to well known indie developer (if you’re into that stuff) cactus talking about abusing the player. One game that he took as an example is I Wanna Be The Guy. If you haven’t heard about this game before, it’s a game considered to be one of the hardest game ever made. Seriously, try it. Now.

Done? Now, why would anyone in their right mind want to play this game, that pretty much only punishes and abuses you? As far as I know you never get any power-ups and the game never congratulates you in any way for beating an area (well, I haven’t finished it so I don’t know about the ending). In fact, it mocks you if you play on easy.

I think the answer simply lies in the title: you wanna be THE guy. Not just in the game, but in real life. You can tell your friends that you managed to beat this game.

I think this is very interesting, as it is an out of game reward which you must collect yourself in a way. You need to go tell your friends or internet buddies how awesome you are and they will be in awe. You do probably have a sense of instant gratification when you manage to beat the game, but I think this simply come out of the bragging rights that you know possess.

Personally, I found this game quite humorous in the way that it killed me in surprising ways but in the end my patience just couldn’t take it. However, I really can’t blame it on bad game design as it’s obvious what this game is going for…

Making you want to be The Guy.

02
Feb
10

Punish or Help the Weak?

By Arcade Leave a Comment
Categories: 7. Reward and Punishment
Tags: , ,

To get the really cool power ups in games, I usually have to be quite skilled to get them. If I’m skilled enough to get them, it’s likely that I’m skilled enough to beat the game without them. If I’m not skilled enough to get them, it’s likely that I’m not skilled enough to beat the game without them.

Continue reading ‘Punish or Help the Weak?’

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