Weaving Experiences
Values, Modes, Styles and Personas
Alessandro Canossa
IO Interactive / Danmarks Design Skole
Strandboulevarden 47 2100 København Ø
alessandroc@ioi.dk aca@dkds.dk
understands scaffoldings as “temporary and moveable
structures for building enormous new things, but also for
protecting the surrounding area from the new construction.
Scaffolds provide support for the workers and their tools
and materials”.
Translating this concept to the field of game design, I
intend to expand, introduce granularity and flesh out the
“scaffolding” by sub-dividing it in four phases and
renaming them aptly to fit the process they are meant to
describe: the facilitation of player expression within the
framework of a game that is not necessarily open-ended.
The four phases I suggest are: play-values, play-modes,
play-styles and play-personas (see figure 1).
ABSTRACT
This paper proposes basic procedures and core concepts
with the intent of designing single player action games that
without necessitating expensive adaptive technologies allow
players to express themselves.
The method applied is partly inductive, leaning on
empirical observations in the QA department of a game
developer studio and partly deductive, deriving concepts,
frameworks and core ideas from established research in
user-generated content and player-enjoyment.
The purpose of this research is to draft guidelines and
possible pre-production pipelines for level designers in
order to achieve maximum consistency in scope, production
values and artistic expression, and at the same time provide
a focused yet diversified players’ experience.
The ideas presented here stem from a co-operation between
the renowned game development studio, IO Interactive, and
the design-oriented research institute, Denmark's School of
Design.
Fig. 1 Play-values, schemas, styles and personas
The starting point in defining the scaffolding is represented
by what Zimmerman calls “Play-values”: the abstract
principles that the game’s design, both aesthetic and
functional, should embody [13].
Keywords
Gameworlds, level design, play-values, play-modes, playpersonas, player experience.
These play-values will consequently inform the inception of
game play modes, gestalts and schemas. Lindley
individuated gestalts and schemas during his quest for
interactive storytelling [6, 7]. He understands game play
gestalts as patterns of interaction between player and game.
He then goes on to define game play schemas as cognitive
structures that underlie and facilitate the above mentioned
interaction.
1. INTRODUCTION
As Sanders correctly pointed out [10] all efforts aimed at
engendering defined experiences are doomed to failure
since experiences and emotional responses alike are too
individual, subjective and rooted in people’s past to be able
to scientifically aim at re-producing them.
Yet today’s tendency towards mass customisation, as shown
by Bozek [1] cannot be disregarded by game creators. A
failure to incorporate means for mass customisation could
risk alienating the large majority of people that, thanks to
the developments introduced by Web 2.0 [14], are
becoming more and more acquainted with the practice of
expressing themselves at almost every occasion: from
Myspace to Wikipedia.
As a possible way out from this impasse, Sanders suggests
that “Designers will transform from being designers of
“stuff” (e.g., products, communication pieces, etc.) to
being the builders of scaffolds for experiencing.” [11]. She
Play-modes are the resulting sets of all possible navigation
and interaction attitudes that players can utilise to negotiate
any given situation. All the game features that motivate,
facilitate and constrain player action, offer the players a
certain set of methods of operation within the game.
Play-styles are consistent sets of isotopic play-modes which
signify, unify or distinguish players from each other. Styles
need not to be consistent, implying that players can change
style at a whim and select a radically different set of playmodes. If, on the other hand, a player chooses to maintain a
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certain style, he/she will start identifying with a defined,
implied play-persona.
The game I chose to investigate was Kane & Lynch [5]; a
team-based third person action game with strong narrative
elements involving a flawed mercenary and a medicated
psychopath. It is going to be released in the fourth quarter
of 2007; this implies that the timing for this research is
perfect in order to obtain an in-depth snapshot of the
production process at all its stages. There is in fact plenty of
design and concept material from the inception of the game
to the final specifications. Furthermore, the game being in
its final stages, means that it is almost fully playable and at
the same time I have the chance to observe several review
meetings first-hand. Another reason to motivate my choice
is that, contrarily to other games developed at IO
Interactive, Kane & Lynch is much more linear, focusing on
a very strong narrative beside attempting to refresh the
squad-based shooter genre. This means that if the
“scaffolding” theory proves itself fruitful in this game, it
will be even more relevant in less linear games. The last
consideration goes to the fact that not being the game
completely finalized, some of the details discussed here
might be changed at the last moment before release.
Play-personas are mental constructs that allow the player to
identify his/her own behaviour with prototypical profiles.
The logic of these play-personas is the same that governs
Max Weber’s "ideal types" [12]. Personas are constructs
that players build to unify their own actions and to make
sense of them. It’s the player’s implied narrative tool. When
a player refers his/her own adventures during a game
encounter it often reads: “… and then I did this and then
this happened”, etc… it is clear that this “I” is not the
player him/herself but a role that he/she is playing. If
players tell themselves these stories, why can’t designers
plan and create games that accommodate for a (consistent)
variety of them?
Summarising the four-layered structure of the gamescaffolding: play-values, the first layer, inform and inspire
the inception of the second layer (gestalts, schemas and
modes), the second layer articulates into play-styles (third
layer) and, if maintained consistently enough, they
eventually coalesce as play-personas (fourth layer). It is my
purpose to show how designing around play-personas
allows players to express themselves, their individuality and
their personality even within the boundaries of fairly linear
games, hence negating the necessity of asset redundancy,
multiple paths, branching or resource-intensive adaptive
technology.
3. PLAY-VALUES
As mentioned earlier, play-values are the abstract principles
that the game design will embody. For example, the values
that Zimmerman mentioned behind his SiSSYFiGHT 2000
[13] are:
-
reaching a broad audience;
2. PRACTICAL APPLICATION
-
not requiring a powerful computer to play;
The initial step of the research was to investigate whether
the developers at IO Interactive responsible for the game
and level design were already making use of the concepts
listed above, even unconsciously. Obviously the main goal
was to check if these terms (or synonyms of the terms) were
playing a significant role in the communication between
designers, artists, programmers and level-scripters. In order
to gather this kind of information, I utilised written game
design documentation, direct interviews (DI), and audio
recordings of internal review meetings. Armed with this
data, I could make assumptions regarding the overall design
of the game as a system, and on a smaller scale, to see if
they influenced the functional and artistic development of
the game levels.
-
a game that is easy to learn and play yet deep and
complex;
-
mechanics that foster social interplay;
-
a smart and ironic look and setting.
When confronted directly, the designers behind Kane &
Lynch acknowledged immediately the term play-values,
pointing out that the term used in-house was “goals” and
informed me that they consciously spent time and resources
defining aesthetic, narrative and functional goals for each
single level but did not formalise them for the overall arc of
the game experience. Nevertheless, reading the background
story and the profile of the characters, I immediately
recognised the overall goals lurking between the pages
describing the flow of the game and the story.
Secondly it was very interesting for me to try to identify the
four layers of the scaffolding in a game currently under
development at IOI, independently of whether the designers
made conscious use of the terms or not. I reviewed material
at very different stages: from the earliest game concept to
the finished documentation, from first playable prototypes
to the finished game with the purpose of charting the
evolution of the scaffolding and its implications for the final
product.
The main character, Kane, is described morally as both
light and dark, battle-hardened but with a strong sense of
style, ruthless in fending for his life but with strong values
of honour and family, physically fit but smoking too much.
He has learnt not to trust anybody the hard way and now
he’s been paired with a partner he strongly dislikes, Lynch,
to carry out a mission that he feels is deeply wrong but is
unavoidable if he wishes to save his family. It’s a character
built entirely on contradictions and strong themes, right and
wrong are never clearly separated and the story arcs are
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addressed internally as “mechanics” or “features”. Reading
the game design documents I discovered two distinct
groups of play-modes: actions performed by the player on
the game world (the avatar, the environment and other
NPC) and actions performed by the player on the crew of
mercenaries that follow the avatar.
World play-modes are:
- Walk
- Run
- Sprint
- Crouch
- Sneak
- Climb
- Rappel
- Cover
- Pick up
- Context sensitive actions (plant bomb, man turret,
break door)
- 3rd person shooting mode
- Over the shoulder shooting mode (blind fire)
- Sniping
- Selecting-swapping weapons
- Single shot
- Full auto
- Throwing grenades
- Variable modal accuracy
- Bare hands combat
- Push-blade combat
- Healing
never fully accomplished. This attempt to dodge more
mainstream and manichean solutions results in the relatively
easy task of confirming whether these values are transferred
to the successive layers of the scaffolding for experiencing.
The Narrative Play-Values (NPV) identified are:
-
NPV1: the revenge of an underdog facing
overwhelming odds forced into trusting
untrustworthy allies. Importance of the “fragile
alliance”.
-
NPV2: a highly moral man cast by misfortune in a
highly immoral environment, trying to do right by
doing wrong.
-
NPV3: the main hero is a man that loves his
daughter, a legendary mercenary and possibly a
traitor.
Functional Play-Values (FPV) are:
-
FPV1: action, emphasis on fighting rather than
opening doors or operating equipment.
-
FPV2: simplicity, to support a fast paced game
play and to increase the appeal to console gamers
commands need to be very simple.
-
FPV3: creativity, players should have the freedom
to creatively use tactics in varied ways to engage
the enemy
As expected, narrative play-values mainly informed the
flow of the action and the structure of the tasks and
missions of the different levels in the game, while
functional play-values dictated the choices made by the
designers while defining play-modes, so far confirming the
hypotheses laid out in the scaffolding theory.
Crew play-modes are:
- Ammo request
- Shoot at
- Go there
- Follow me
- Crew member heal
- Crew member select
4. PLAY- MODES, SCHEMAS AND
GESTALTS
As mentioned earlier play-modes are each and every one of
the rules of the game, all the actions available to the player
while playing a game.
Play-schemas are the mental models that players utilise to
understand the context and represent their actions.
According to Lindley, they are “cognitive structures that
link declarative (or factual) and procedural (or
performative) knowledge together with other cognitive
resources (such as memory, attention, perception, etc.) in
patterns that facilitate the manifestation of appropriate
actions” [8].
Lindley defines play-gestalts as patterns of interaction
between a player and the game, they are usable subsets of
all the game rules and features; they represent a possible
minimum set of rules that are necessary to successfully
support a particular playing style [7] and progress in the
game.
When presented with these concepts the designers
recognized only play-modes and explained that they are
Observing testers playing, talking to each other and
conducting direct interviews allowed me to group these
play modes in schemas, here are the individuated schemas
for player actions:
- Movement (walk, run, crouch, pick up) design
affected by FPV2
- Action movement (climb, sneak, sprint, rappel,
cover, context sensitive actions, healing, using
equipment) design affected by FPV1
- Basic ranged combat (3rd person mode, single shot,
selecting weapons) design affected by FPV2
- Advanced ranged combat (over the shoulder mode,
full auto, throwing grenades, variable modal
accuracy, sniping, swapping weapons) design
affected by FPV1
- Basic close combat (bare hands) heavily
influenced by both FPV1 and 2
3
-
Advanced close combat (push-blade) heavily
influenced by both FPV1 and 2
Crew actions schemas are:
- Squad command (shoot at, go there, follow me)
directly influenced by both FPV2 and 3
- Individual command (ammo request, heal, select,
shoot at, go there, follow me) clearly the outcome
of NPV1 and FPV3
implications for the players and for the narration are
immense.
When asked directly, game designers recognized
immediately the concept of play-styles, they know exactly
what it means and what it implies, yet they do not seem to
make use of it during the design phase, it does not appear in
other internal communication such as review meeting and it
is not mentioned anywhere in the design documentation.
Nevertheless observing game testers it was clear that it is
perfectly possible to develop personal play-styles.
The domain of play-styles still requires a lot of work, but
the possible outcome in terms of increased player
satisfaction definitely calls for further research.
Schemas, in this game, are layered as “basic” and
“advanced”, meaning that beginners choosing a low level of
difficulty can successfully accomplish the missions making
use solely of basic schemas. Once players have acquired a
sufficient level of familiarity with the game, they can start
experimenting with the different options they are given and
eventually develop a favourite set of play-gestalts to face
the various game encounters and challenges. Play-gestalts
are dynamically defined every time a player selects among
play-modes the actions that will guarantee his/her progress
in the game, for example:
-
hold back the team in a covert position,
-
sneak and flank the enemy,
-
order a squad attack,
-
attack from covert position in “over the shoulder”
mode.
In order to illustrate the impact of play-styles in the playing
experience we can examine the very first level of Kane &
Lynch: “Bustout” (see the map of the level in fig. 2).
5. PLAY-STYLES
If players chose to negotiate game encounters through
consistent, isotopic play-gestalts, they start expressing a
peculiar play-style.
In real life the variations available to execute a task or tell a
story are nearly countless as shown for example by
Queneau in “Zazie dans le metro” [9]. On the other hand in
the game environment, even accounting for the
phenomenon of “emergence”, the possible interactions are
much more limited because game designers only include
very small subsets of all the possible actions. Chomsky
acknowledged the importance of “infinite use of finite
means” in his works on generative grammar [2] and it
shows how the expressive potential of the limited input is
vital to gain a glimpse in the player’s state of mind. It is
possible then to read each action started by the player in the
game environment as the semiotic “unintentional sign”
defined by Eco: “actions of an emitter, perceived by a
receiver as signifying artefacts” [3]. Due to the connotative
layer, these signifying artefacts may unconsciously reveal
properties of the mental state and behaviour of the emitter.
It pays off to understand player’s actions as semiotics acts
(unintentional signs) because play-styles point towards
more than just strategies to successfully complete the game.
For example the functional attributes of “bare handed close
combat” (basic schema) and “armed close combat”
(advanced schema) are nearly identical, but the psychic
Fig. 2 map of level “Bustout”
In this initial level the player starts at the location
denominated “Crash”, professional mercenaries ram the
prison transportation that was taking Kane to his execution.
It is a very emotional experience thanks to a clever use of
camera and video-post effects (wavy cam, unclear and hazy
vision, bloom and blur effects), although this necessitates
for an extremely linear progression where the player does
not really have any choice and is “on rails”. The player is
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forced to escape the first shootout without a chance to fend
for him/herself, the only refuge is in the alley. The sole
choice given until the mark “police car” is the chance to
pick up a handgun, which in turn is a way to train the player
to pick up objects. We arrive at the second shootout with
the possibility to just observe our “saviors” or to take part
in the action either with unarmed close combat or with the
handgun. After climbing the fence (another play-mode
learnt from the “advanced movement” schema) the player
gains access to rifles dropped by mercenaries shot by the
helicopter that appears in the back lot of the garage. In the
garage, which marks the end of the first half of the level, we
have the first really big confrontation where the player will
have to hold a small army of policemen until a gas tank
explodes liberating the way to the fourth shootout. This area
can be quickly evaded just by running in the alley where the
player learns another way or negotiating obstacles: by
jumping over a car it is in fact possible to gain access to the
warehouse, the first real breathing room since the
beginning. In the lower part of the warehouse another
shootout forces the player out and towards a diner, stage for
the last gunfight before the escape of the crew.
-
Studying these variables is the main instrument in order to
detect coalescing play-styles.
6. PLAY-PERSONAS
When a player behaves consistently in the game and
maintains a defined play-style for longer periods (if not for
the whole game altogether) then he/she identifies
completely with a certain profile. I am going to call these
consistent profiles “playing personas”. In spite of the fact
that players tend to switch styles extremely easily, it’s clear
that the designers themselves acknowledge the possibility to
play out personas. For example in the game “Hitman: Blood
Money” [4] players are given special rewards for
completing missions following certain set rules (only killing
the assigned targets and getting out with the suit). Those
rules restrain the in-game behaviour to a specific style that
maintained long enough gives birth to the play-persona
called “Silent Assassin”. Play-personas are constructs that
share many similarities with Weber’s ideal types.
This first level does not allow for crew control and it
consists mostly of narrow, corridor-like passages, yet the
linearity is concealed with several open areas and a couple
of obstacles to overcome in order to proceed along the path.
In spite of the limited set of options available to the player
and the narrow, linear structure, it is very successful in
establishing and reinforcing both narrative and functional
play values, furthermore player expression in terms of play
style is not only allowed, but deliberately encouraged in
many of the shootout sections.
“An ideal type is formed by the one-sided accentuation of
one or more points of view and by the synthesis of a great
many diffuse, discrete, more or less present and
occasionally absent concrete individual phenomena, which
are arranged according to those one-sidedly emphasized
viewpoints into a unified analytical construct”. [12].
For Weber the ideal type is a conceptually pure mental
construct used to monitor the behaviour of social groups. It
is totally theoretic, almost fictitious and generally not
empirically found anywhere in reality, but in our case it can
prove to be a priceless tool to measure play-behaviours.
Ideal types are used as some sort of unit of measure,
standards much like "metre", "second" or "kilogram" not
really found in nature, but useful to measure it.
Navigation and interaction attitudes are important looking
glasses through which we can study emerging play-styles.
Navigation attitudes tell us how players move in the game
space:
- physical position of the avatar within the limits of
the available space in relation to the vector of
hostile NPCs.
-
pace of movement (walking, running, staying still,
sneaking, sprinting, etc.)
-
use of cover, flanking or frontal charges.
Ultimately are those mental models that players refer to
when they report “I totally pulled a Rambo there to pass
through the blockade” and it is up to the designers to plan
and provide diverse, engaging, satisfactory and at the same
time consistent play-personas.
Interaction attitudes inform us on how players choose to
negotiate obstacles and NPC:
-
preferred weapon
-
preferred shooting mode
-
use of grenades
-
use of advanced teamwork (swap weapon, give
ammo, heal, etc.)
-
use of individual command or squad command
whether or not player makes use of aiming
modifiers
7. CONCLUSIONS
Each one of the four stages of the “scaffolding for
experiencing” can lead to increased player satisfaction and
more focused and consistent design. Although the designers
were almost always aware of the concepts and cognizant of
their meaning, they were only occasionally found in the
documentation or utilised in internal communications.
Nevertheless their existence and relevance has been proven
during direct interviews with testers.
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Clear improvement can be gained just by becoming aware
of mechanisms that already are present in the back of the
mind of the designers, artists and scripters.
d2.1: working model of computer game experience.
30.09.2006.
[9] Queneau, R. Zazie dans le metro, Paris,
Gallimard,1972.
8. REFERENCES
[10] Sanders, E. B.-N. “Scaffolds For Building Everyday
Creativity” in Design for Effective Communications:
Creating Contexts (Ed.) Allworth Press, New York,
2006. As found on:
http://www.maketools.com/pdfs/ScaffoldsforBuildingE
verydayCreativity_Sanders_06.pdf
[1] Bozec, P. "My Everything" - From Play Lists to
Profiles and Virtual Worlds. Mass Customization: The
Explosion of Choice and Creativity, keynote at Nordic
Game, Malmo, 2007.
[2] Chomsky, N. Le strutture della sintassi, Bari, Laterza,
[11] Sanders, E. B.-N. Scaffolds for Experiencing in the
1970.
New Design Space in Information Design Institute for
Information Design Japan (Editors), IID.J, GraphicSha Publishing Co., Ltd., 2002. As found on:
http://www.maketools.com/pdfs/ScaffoldsforExperienc
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[3] Eco, U. Trattato di semiotica generale, Bompiani,
Milano, 2002.
[4] IO Interactive. (2006). Hitman: Blood Money. [XBOX
360], Eidos.
[12] Weber, M. The Methodology of the Social Sciences.
[5] IO Interactive. (2007). Kane and Lynch. [XBOX 360],
Edward Shils and Henry Finch (eds.). New York:
Free Press. 1949.
Eidos
[6] Lindley C. A. and Sennersten C. “A Cognitive
[13] Zimmerman, E. “Play as Research: The Iterative
Framework for the Analysis of Game Play: Tasks,
Schemas and Attention Theory”, Workshop on the
Cognitive Science of Games and Game Play, The 28th
Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society,
Vancouver, Canada, 2006.
Design Process” in Design Research: Methods and
Perspectives edited by Laurel, B. and Lunefeld, P.
Final Draft: July 8, 2003. As found on:
http://www.ericzimmerman.com/texts/Iterative_Design.
htm
[7] Lindley C. A. The Gameplay Gestalt, Narrative, and
[14] As found on:
Interactive Storytelling Published in the Proceedings of
Computer Games and Digital Cultures Conference,
June 6-8, Tampere, Finland, 2002.
http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/oreilly/tim/news/2005
/09/30/what-is-web-20.html
[8] Lindley, C. in FUGA The fun of gaming: Measuring
the human experience of media enjoyment - deliverable
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