The Psychology behind Games
By Anders Hejdenberg
Gamasutra
April 26, 2005
Introduction
We are all familiar with the feeling we have when we are completely caught up in a great
game. The state where we are completely focused on playing, and all other things become
irrelevant. This article is about that feeling – why we get it when we play games, and how
we can design games that give us more of it.
In the first part of the article we will look at how we function as humans; what our drives
are and why we enjoy certain activities. At first this may seem a bit unrelated to games, but
soon we will see that the actual game is only what we see on the surface – what we
experience is something else completely. In order to fully understand why we enjoy certain
games, we need to look at what lies below the surface and try to see them the way our
mind sees them.
The second part of the article focuses on how games can be designed to cater to the
player's needs, interests and abilities. We look at the importance of understanding your
target audience, and how games can be built to adapt to the person who is playing. People
both have differences and similarities to each other, and the game's design needs to reflect
that.
Overall, the purpose of this article is to provide a better understanding of why we enjoy
certain games so much and how to design games that focus on those aspects. My view is
that if we can see games the way our mind sees them, we can perhaps get some new ideas
on how to design our games to be more fun for the player.
Part One - Why brains love games
Needs and motivations
Maslow's pyramid of needs.
As humans, we have developed many needs over time that are closely related to our
survival, existence and evolution. In a way, everything we do in our daily lives is in either a
direct or an indirect way related to these needs. Abraham Mallow was the first to summarize
the research related to human behavior by creating a list of human needs and sorting them
in hierarchic order. Maslow's hierarchy of needs was based in two groups: deficiency needs
and growth needs. Within the deficiency needs, each lower need must be met before
moving on to the higher needs. If at a later time a lower need is detected, the individual will
act to fulfil that need before resuming focus on higher needs. When the deficiency needs are
fulfilled, the individual's attention will turn towards the growth needs.
Deficient needs:
1. Physiological needs: To breathe, drink, eat, sleep, bodily comforts, etc.
2. Safety and security needs: To feel safe, out of harms way, protected, to live in a safe
neighborhood, to know ahead what the plans are.
3. Belongingness and love needs: To affiliate with others, be accepted, be part of a group,
to love and be loved, to have a family, to be social.
4a. Lower esteem needs: To be respected, to get attention, to have status, power,
reputation, dignity, to express oneself through words, clothes, or self-creations.
4b. Higher esteem needs: To have self-respect, to be competent, to achieve independence
and freedom.
Growth needs:
5. Cognitive needs: To know, to understand, to explore, to seek adventure, to experience
new things, to travel, to feel excitement.
6. Self-actualization needs: To realize one's potential, to be all that you can be.
7. Transcendence: To help others to self-fulfilment and realize their potential.
Rewarding good behavior
In order to make sure that we listen to our needs, evolution has developed our brain with
designated reward areas that serve to reinforce healthy behavior, such as drinking when we
are thirsty. Dopamine, a neurotransmitter associated with pleasant feelings, is released by
these reward areas to encourage the body to repeat these behaviors. This is the reason why
fulfilling needs is often associated with feelings of pleasure. It could be said that our body
helps us to distinguish positive behavior by rewarding it with an induction of pleasurable
brain chemicals.
When we look at lower needs, things seem to be quite simple: we are hungry, we eat, and
we get rewarded. But when it comes to rewarding higher needs – like gaining the respect of
others for example – things tend to get a lot more complex. The higher needs are not based
around our physical needs, but rather around the psychological needs. So how can there be
a specific behavior or activity to reward, if everyone has a different view of what the needs
are?
The interesting fact of the matter is that it is completely up to our own view of what respect
is to decide whether we have accomplished what we should and deserve a reward. Quite
simply, from an objective standpoint it does not really matter what we do, how we do it, or
why – as long as we feel that we are doing the right thing, for the right reasons, and getting
good results, we will get our fix of dopamine. For example, there is no difference between
winning the lottery and thinking you have won the lottery – they are both just as fun up
until you start trying to spend the money.
Measuring results
It can be said that on a personal level – as we perceive it – the ultimate goal for all our
activities is to get pleasure and/or avoid pain. If we have an activity where we can conclude
that the possible gain in pleasure outweighs the possibility of failure and pain, we will most
likely want to do it. The amount of pleasure or pain that is then derived from the activity
relies on how much we've learned (was it interesting to me?), our subjective view of the
activity itself (was this okay for me to do?) and the measurement of its success (did I do
well?).
The problems we face in our modern society is that our options are so plentiful, the
boundaries between right and wrong are not always clear, and we can seldom get a good
measurement of the results of our actions. This means that it can many times be difficult for
us to decide what we should be doing, and perhaps even more difficult to get the pleasure
from knowing that we have done something well. We tend to measure ourselves against
other people, and there is always someone out there that appears to be smarter, happier,
more talented or just plain better looking. So what can we do to ensure that our activities
give us pleasure?
Games
Games are specifically designed to deal with this issue – and not just videogames, but all
types of games. Games can be played against other people, against yourself, against a
computer, or perhaps even against the forces of nature – but what they all have in common
is that they have set goals with set rules that you have to follow in order to play. This
makes it much easier for us to decide what to do and makes measuring the outcome much
simpler. We also have the learning aspect in games since in most games we will have to
keep improving our skills in order to beat the competition (or our previous record).
Game experiences
Roger Caillois is the theorist behind the book Man, Play, and Games. In his book, Caillois
proposed a useful system of classifying the different types of experiences that are present in
games. A game can include just one or all of these different types of experiences.
1. Competition
Activities where players use their skill to overcome the challenge that their opponents offer.
The pleasure lies in developing your skills to outmaneuver the opposition. Football and
chess are examples of such activities.
2. Chance
Activities where elements of chance can have an impact on the outcome of the game. The
pleasure lies in finding ways to minimize the impact of the element of chance, and the
excitement of trying to guess the outcome. Games that are based on chance can also give
players the illusion of being able to control or foresee the future. Slot machines and lotteries
are examples of such activities.
3. Vertigo
Activities that alters the state of mind by disrupting the normal perception of the world,
resulting in a pleasurable state of dizziness. Roller coaster rides and skydiving are examples
of such activities.
4. Make-Believe
Activities where we create alternate realities in which we are not bound by the constraints of
the real world. The pleasure lies in assuming various characteristics and abilities that we do
not possess in our normal life. In this state of make-believe we can feel as if we actually
possessed the powers of what we have chosen to assimilate. Role-playing, theatre and
reading books are examples of such activities.
Pleasurable activities
So if playing games is an activity that can give us pleasure – why do certain games give us
more pleasure than others? Mihály Csíkszentmihályi is considered by many to be the leading
researcher in the field of positive psychology. Csíkszentmihályi has developed the notion of
“flow” – a state that he describes as “being completely involved in an activity for its own
sake. The ego falls away. Time flies. Every action, movement, and thought follows inevitably
from the previous one, like playing jazz. Your whole being is involved, and you're using your
skills to the utmost.”
People who have played games can most likely relate to this feeling. And most people will
agree that this feeling is very pleasurable. But what is it that makes us reach this state of
mind? Mr. Csíkszentmihályi has come up with a list of eight things that are associated with
“flow” or “being in the zone” as it is often described.
1. It's an activity that we feel that we can perform – a challenge that requires skill
Any activity provides us with a number of options – or challenges – that require a certain
skill to do. If we don't have the required skill for the activity, the challenge will easily
become frustrating or feel meaningless. Pleasure comes in the area between boredom and
anxiety at the distinct moment where our options are in line with our abilities.
Playing a game of chess against an evenly matched opponent is a good example of this – if
they were much better than we were, it could feel meaningless since we cannot really affect
the outcome. If we were much better than they were, it could be boring since there is no
challenge in it for us.
2. We need to be able to concentrate on what we are doing
When a person's skill is needed to perform a task their focus will be completely absorbed
with what they're doing. We regress into a state where our actions become spontaneous
and we stop being aware of ourselves as parted from what we are doing. In order to be able
to enter and then remain in this state it is important that there are no distractions – neither
from outside of the activity or from the activity itself.
A common distraction in many games is difficult controls. If the controls are not simple or
intuitive enough for us to be able to do what we want to do, we will constantly be distracted
from what we are doing. Our focus will turn toward the controls instead of the game.
3. We need to have clear goals for our activity
Without a clear goal you have little means of judging whether or not we are making any
progress. The pleasure does not necessarily lie in reaching the goal itself – it is only the end
of the ruler by which we measure our progress. It is also important that goals are set at a
level where we need to invest our skills to reach the goal – otherwise the goal will become
meaningless.
For example, if our goal were just to reach the finish line in a racing game we would not
need to pay much attention to be successful. If the goal would instead be to reach the finish
line within a short time-frame, the task would perhaps require our complete attention.
4. We need to get constant feedback on our progress
In order to be able to judge if our activities are fruitful, we need to get some form of
feedback on our efforts. We may fail in certain attempts to reach our goals, but if we get
enough feedback along the way, we can still feel that we are on the right track and that our
invested efforts are paying off. Feedback is not only about being told that we are doing well.
It is just as important that the activity is laid out in a way where we can constantly judge
our own progress.
In many fighting games, there is an indication of the opponent's health above their
character. This is a good way to provide us with feedback on how well we are doing, and to
help us develop our technique so that our attacks deal the most amount of damage.
5. We act with a deep involvement that frees us from our everyday worries
In order to be deeply involved it is important that the activity has not been forced upon us
against our will. When we act out of free will with deep involvement, we forget about all the
unpleasantries in life. The activity demands such a full concentration that there is no room
for us to reflect upon anything else.
Even though playing games is usually not forced upon us, some elements in games can
become boring or repetitive after a while. When they do, we can easily become less
involved in the game since we feel that we are being forced to do these things in order to
progress.
6. We need to exercise control over our environment
In a structured activity we can often get a feeling of control. We are free from the anxiety of
losing control that is so common in our daily lives – we are not afraid of failing. The
important thing is that the activity is designed so that it allows us to develop such a great
skill that the risk of failure is eliminated. It's not about having control, but about exercising
control. It is only when the outcome is uncertain and we feel that we can affect the outcome
that we experience that we are in control.
If the game contains elements that the player cannot control but that affect the outcome of
the game, the player will not be able to exercise control. Games that allow the player to
exercise full control will almost always end with the most skilled player winning.
7. We become less self-absorbed
When we concentrate fully on an activity there is no room for self-reflection. All our
attention is used to perform the activity. Afterwards, we can look at ourselves and notice
that we have grown from the experience – our mind has been enriched with new skills and
new accomplishments.
8. Our perception of time is altered
Our perception of time is mainly based on perceived changes around us, but when the
activity demands our full concentration there is no room to register anything but the activity
itself. This can make days feel like hours and hours like minutes.
Summary
Games are activities
that we have specifically
designed to maximize
the amount of pleasure
we get from them.
Games are our way of
having fun, regardless
of our current life
situation. In games, we
do not have to abide to
the restrictions of the
ordinary world. We can
create our own rules
where our specific
talents can be
recognized and
rewarded – talents that
would perhaps
otherwise go unnoticed.
However, games are
not just an activity –
StarCraft
they are also many
other things. This goes especially for videogames. For example, the game StarCraft is not
just about managing resources and planning strategic moves with your game pieces. It is
also about being a military leader in a distant future, it is about stopping a flood of aliens
that are trying to take over your world, it is about treachery and deceit, and it is about
doing the right thing and becoming a hero.
In the second part of this article, we will look at videogames specifically and see how we can
design games that are adjusted after the player's needs and desires.
URL: http://www.gamasutra.com/features/20050426/hejdenberg_01.shtml
Part Two – Designing for humans
Introduction
The core components of videogames are the learning and interaction, to recognize
underlying patterns, to understand how they fit together, to exercise control over them and
to improve our skills in doing so. But videogames also nest other types of media like text,
sound, music, storytelling, art and film for example. It's basically a mix of as many different
types of media as we care to incorporate. These media act in a supporting role to the
somewhat abstract core, providing it with a context and meaning that we can relate to,
understand and enjoy.
As a whole package, videogames give us the ability to forget our worries for a moment and
transcend beyond our physical self to an imaginary, illusory world in which our unrealizable
desires can be realized. A world where we can experience new things, visit new places and
be someone else for a while. We exercise control over our environment and we are
rewarded for our efforts – and all of this without putting ourselves through any actual
danger. We leave this make-believe world with a strengthened sense of self-worth, with the
feeling of having pushed our skills to the next level. With this in mind it's easy to
understand the captivating nature of videogames and its growing appeal to the wider
market.
The role of the game designer
The game designer's role is ultimately to create a product that caters for the needs, desires
and abilities of their target audience. This means to support, teach, nurture and reward the
player. To create an atmosphere where the player can feel comfortable and in control
because they trust you to not challenge them with anything that they have not yet been
given the opportunity to prepare for. Your role is to care for the players needs – give them
exciting new things to see, things to learn, skills to master and challenges to overcome.
Don't bore them with the stereotypes they've seen before – refresh them with new
concepts, new ideas and new experiences.
Designing for humans
So if videogames offer vast opportunities to entertain players, how can we maximize the
pleasure that players get out of our games? How can we make our games more fun? I think
that Marc Laidlaw from Valve Software put it quite well: “It's only half what you put into it;
the other half is what people get out of it”. In this last section of the article I will suggest
some steps that can be taken to help us create games that our audience will get the most
out of.
1. Market analysis and user profiles
At some point in our life, we tend to somehow end up in the situation where we have to buy
a present for someone we don't know very well. It's quite difficult! We usually end up
getting them something like flowers, chocolate or wine – things that we know most people
at least don't dislike. And if they do, they can always give it to someone else if they should
end up in the same situation themselves. As a game designer, you are in a similar position
if you attempt to design a game for an audience that you don't know very much about. This
is why we do market analysis and create user profiles.
Creating user profiles is about interviewing people within your target audience to collect
information like age, gender, what they're good at, what their favorite games are, how
much they play, which movies they like, which music they listen to etc. This gives us
various information about our audience that we can use to create our user profiles. Once
collected, each different piece of information is put down as a dot on a user grid. Once all
the people we've interviewed have been mapped out on the grid, we can look at the grid to
see where the dots align. At this point we'll hopefully be able to distinguish some groups of
people with similar background, interests, skills and taste. We use the information about
these people to create a fictional typical user – a user profile – that becomes the
representative for their group. If you have a wide target audience you will most likely create
many different user profiles in order to cover the many facets of your potential buyers. The
user profile can be given a name like Bob, Susan or John to help us treat them as real
people during the design process. For example: “Bob” can be our 27-year-old, middle class
male that buys four games every year, plays approximately four hours per week, likes sport
games, likes to play compete against his friends etc. During the design process we can
bounce our different ideas off “Bob” and the other profiles to make sure that the game we
create is something they will all enjoy. At a later point, when the game is up and running we
can bring in people that match our user profiles to see how well our design works with them
in practice.
When we are interviewing our target audience it is very important that we do not forget that
people's interests, skills and taste reflect their needs, desires and past experiences. If we
can understand why they like the things they do, we can perhaps figure out more effective
ways of pleasing them. We may also realize that people who seem very different on the
surface may have more in common than we think. Therefore, it is crucial that we ask the
types of questions that can give us replies from which we can extract this information.
I should mention that it might not always be wise to ask the audience directly what type of
game they would want you to make. Most people don't know what they want until they see
it. However, if the person you are interviewing has good knowledge of games and game
design, they may be able to provide some very valuable input. There are many people out
there with great ideas for games – Counterstrike, Desert Combat, Natural Selection and Day
of Defeat are all examples of great game mods that were created by players. If we do not
listen to these people, chances are that we will miss out on some great ideas.
2. Game width
What I mean with “game width” is basically how many different needs and desires the game
touches upon. If we cater for a wide array of needs and desires we will potentially be able to
reach a wider audience. The Sim- and GTA series are successful examples of this where a
great variety of needs and desires are represented in an open structure, and it's left to the
player to decide which ones they want to pursue.
However, catering for many
needs and desires does not
necessarily mean fulfilling
needs and desires – we are
much more specific than
that. We have to look at the
specific interests of our
target audience and what
they can relate to. If the
game's setting or style is not
something they find
appealing – or if it is
something they do not
understand – then they can
easily be put off by it,
regardless of whatever other
qualities it has. Prince of
Persia – The Sands of Time,
is an example of a game
Prince of Persia - The Sands of Time
that was very good in many
ways, but sold less than
expected because it turned out that many people had trouble relating to the main character.
In the sequel, one of the large changes made was to change the appearance of the main
character into something that people would find more appealing.
Creating a wide game is good in many ways but the more things we want to include in our
game, the more difficult and expensive it will become to make it. And if we don't have the
means to manage this, then it can have a negative effect on the quality of the game which
in turn may result in less “flow” for the player. What it all comes down to in the end is how
much money we want to (or can) invest, how much risk we are willing to take, and how
much return we seek from our investment. Wider games can potentially make more money,
but they are also riskier and more expensive to create. So in many ways it can often be
more prudent to do two, more narrow games instead of one wide game.
3. Imitation
Imitation is our inherent way of learning new things and we learn our earliest lessons by
imitation. As children we spend a lot of our time imitating action from our social
surroundings and incorporating them into our play. Symbolic play with imitation allows us to
put into practice what we have learned about people, objects, animals, right and wrong etc.
This type of play becomes one of our key methods of understanding the world around us
since our language and ability for abstract thinking is not yet fully developed. When we
play, we often find special interest in iconic personalities like superheroes, princesses, filmor book characters, athletes or pop stars. This is because they are in a way the role models
of our society. By imitating them we learn about the values of our culture and form an
understanding of what we should strive for as adults. The icons that we choose to imitate
are often the ones that we feel similar to, and that we can relate to – this may be one of the
reasons that Harry Potter is so popular among children for example.
As we grow up, we still have role models that we imitate but perhaps in somewhat different
ways. In most cases when we imitate, the entertainment aspect has more significance to us
than the learning aspect. But why would we imitate if it wasn't to learn? The interesting
side-aspect of imitating a character is that we shift our mind into a state where the skills
and traits associated with this character can actually feel like skills and traits of our own.
And like with any activity – if we give it enough focus we become less self-absorbed, and
the more real it can feel to us. So if we want, we can imagine ourselves being a rock star
and get our brain to reward us for our imagined success in the music industry. We can
basically fulfil needs in our imagination that we may struggle with in our real lives.
Another interesting aspect of imitation is that when we become less aware of ourselves, we
also become less aware of our needs. This can just be a nice relief from our everyday
worries, but it can also reach the point where we let the needs of the character we are
imitating take presence over our own needs. A friend of mine told me a story about how he
was playing The Sims one night, and that he was worried because he had forgot to put his
character to bed. The reason he was worried was that if his character would oversleep the
next day then the character may lose his job. When he had finally managed to put his
character to bed in the game, my friend realized that it was 3:30 in the morning and that he
himself had to go work in just a few hours.
Videogames often feature imitation, either in the form where you get to play as a certain
character or when you play as “yourself” but with a new set of skills and options that you
may not have in real life. When designing games it is important to remember that in most
cases when we choose which game to play, we don't just choose what we want to do, we
also choose who we want to be – and who we are is something we can be quite picky about.
As designers we need to listen to our target audience and learn which characters they find
most interesting. And if there isn't a consensus, perhaps the game will need to feature
multiple characters that you can choose from – or perhaps even let the player design their
own character.
4. Emotional impact
A videogame is built from an abstract core game with actions, patterns, rules and objectives
that are visualized and explained through various media. Over the years as technology has
moved forward and enabled us to do more things, these media have come more and more
into focus – as it stands now, they are an essential part of what we regard to be a
videogame. Game design today has become very much about finding interesting new ways
for game and media to work together and complete each other. What's interesting about
these different media is that even though they affect us in different ways, they have a lot in
common in the way in which they affect us. Each media can deliver an emotional impact on
their own, but our emotional response to the climax of a musical piece can be very similar
to how we feel when we are about to beat our previous track record in a racing game. So if
we can trigger them together for the same effect at the same time, we can reach higher
peaks of enjoyment. This is in no way a novel idea, but the difficulty can lie in successfully
judging the emotional state of the player at a given time.
The game Burnout is a good example of this where game and media work closely together
to maximize the impact of the experience. In Burnout, the more skilfully you play, the more
nitro fuel you are awarded, and the more nitro fuel you have, the faster you can go. Your
speed (i.e. skill) is then linked to the sound- and visual effects so that you get more
spectacular effects the faster you drive. There's basically a connection between the
emotional impact of driving skilfully and the emotional impact of the sound- and visual
effects.
5. The pleasure of learning
The human mind can handle and interpret seven different sensory impressions at the same
time. During one second we can handle as many as 125 different sensory impressions.
Different activities require us to process different amounts of impressions – for example, we
need to process 40 impressions per second in order to understand what someone is saying.
If too many people are talking at the same time, we will get an overflow of input which may
result in us not being able to understand any of them. However, the brain has an
extraordinary ability to simplify large quantities of information into models that it can
process much easier. For example, the first time we drive a car most of us have trouble
focusing on anything else than just driving the car. But after a while when our brain has
been able to process the information and simplify it into models, we can pay more attention
to other things, like the traffic or road signs.
We go through the same process with everything we learn. When we get a sensory
impression, we try to make sense of it by seeing if we have a model to support it. If we
don't have a model we try to acquire some more information about it so that we can figure
it out. Once we have gathered enough information, our brain can complete the model.
This desire to understand, to seek new knowledge and build or revise models is the reason
that we enjoy hearing stories, reading newspapers and watching movies. But it is
interesting to see how we have been able to make these media more entertaining by
adapting them to the way we learn. One thing we often play on is the desire to acquire
more knowledge once we've seen something we do not fully understand. For example, a
typical episode of CSI will start with the investigators finding someone murdered.
Immediately our brain tries to figure it out - How did this happen? Who was she? Who did
it? Why did they do it? In the remainder of the episode we follow the investigators as they
secure evidence, interrogate people and find clues. We get to see some possible suspects
and we start guessing who it might be. Towards the end of the episode, the final pieces of
the puzzle are unravelled and we can finally complete our model for the murder that we saw
in the beginning. If the episode would instead have started with a confession from the
murderer, it would not be as interesting.
When we design games we often seem to forget this. Instead of letting the player decide
what they need to learn, and how long they need to practice, we push them through
obligatory tutorial courses where they get to spend as much time with the things they
already know as with the things that they have never tried before. We let them play two
similar levels in a row where the second one just has more enemies - it's not a greater
challenge, it just takes longer to complete. We have a background story that they can figure
out almost immediately. We have control schemes so awkward that the player may never
master them. We use stereotypical characters that the player has seen a million times
before, making it impossible for the player to find any interest in them. We have to keep in
mind that games too are learning experiences and the enjoyment of a game is closely tied
to how the learning aspect is featured and catered for. Just do not forget that the player still
needs something they can relate to – unimaginative games with stereotypical characters will
always sell more copies than an original game with a setting, character or gameplay that
the player has trouble relating to.
6. Pacing and difficulty
As players we want to experience new things, we want to constantly improve our skills, and
we want challenges to overcome. But we don't want new challenges until we have had the
chance to improve our skills enough to overcome the last challenge, and we don't want to
experience new things if we have not yet processed our last experience. Some people want
a game to be so difficult that they have to fail a couple of times before succeeding, while
others want to make it the first time. Some people have an easy time learning new control
schemes, while it takes longer for others. So how can we make a game where the
challenge, difficulty and pace works for everyone? I think that there are different solutions
for different problems here.
Self-regulated pace
Why not let the player set the pace themselves? Call of Duty is a good example of this,
where the player decides how fast they want to progress through the levels. If they move
forward at a high pace they will be engaged by multiple enemy soldiers at the same time,
but if they progress slowly they can pick them off one at a time. This means that the player
has the ability to adjust the difficulty and pace after their own taste. Racing games are quite
obvious examples of this, where you essentially just drive as fast as you can. If you feel
that you are starting to lose control, you just slow down.
Difficulty setting
Many games have a difficulty setting which is a good step towards adjusting the game to
the player, but it can often fall short since difficulty is something very subjective. If I choose
easy, how easy will it be for me? How hard is hard? One game played on easy level may be
just as difficult as another played on normal, and one player may find easy to be quite hard,
while another finds it to be too easy. Many players have trouble deciding which one to
choose, and instead of choosing the appropriate level for their skill, they choose easy just to
be on the safe side. This means that they may very well ruin the game for themselves,
since the game will never pose any real challenge to them.
Some games let you change difficulty level between missions, which is another step in the
right direction. But how many people do actually change the settings unless the game is too
hard? If everything is going fine (although it may perhaps be a bit too easy) why mess with
the settings? It can often be more important for us to avoid failure than to pursue the
possibility of making the game more enjoyable.
Dynamic adjustments
The only way for a game to be truly easy or hard regardless of who is playing is for it to
have ways of constantly measuring the skill of the player and adapt the opposition
dynamically. This is something that is probably featured in more games than we would
think, since the whole purpose of it is to not be seen. A good example of this is the first
time I played Quake 3. I had never played it before and decided to set up a quick death
match game with just one AI-bot against me. I chose the intermediate level of difficulty,
and the rules where that the first one with twenty frags would win. The game started and
the AI-bot started killing me over and over again. I tried to find better weapons and figure
out new tactics, but it didn't do much to help me. After a few minutes, the score was 17-0
to the AI-bot, but at that point I was beginning to see some improvements in my skills. A
few seconds later I became completely ecstatic as I got my first frag. It was payback time!
After that the frags just kept rolling in - I was killing him over and over again, and I felt like
the hero of a movie that rose against the evil dictator in the last act. Soon the score had
turned to 19-19 and it was very exciting. I finally got the last kill and won the game, which
was an incredible climax. It was astonishing how I was able to improve my skills so fast,
and turn the tide so that I managed to beat him in the end. What an accomplishment on my
behalf!
But as you may have guessed by now, all was not what it seemed. I decided to test the AI
system to see if there was any built in functionality to modify their behavior after the
player. I let the AI-bot kill me 17 times in a row without fighting back, and that's when I
realized that the more times I was killed, the less accurate their firing became. After 19
kills, my once worthy opponent was merely a half-wit that mostly seemed to enjoy standing
still and staring into walls. It had not been my skills that had improved in my first game, but
instead the AI-bot's skills that had deteriorated. I had just been too caught up in the
moment to realize it. However, this experience made me realize what an extremely powerful
tool this was. The game would never have been as fun for me without it, and I'm sure that
many games would be more fun with it included. I still believe that there is a need for a
difficulty setting in games, even if the difficulty is adjusted dynamically after the player. The
reason for this is that some people enjoy themselves most if they have to try a couple of
times before succeeding. Others enjoy themselves more if they make it in their first
attempt. Both people enjoy challenges, but they should be allowed to choose just how
challenging it should be.
Final words
A game is not great for just one reason – it is great for hundreds of reasons. If many of
these reasons are unknown to us, the only way for us to make a great game is by trial and
error. With better insight into how our mind works when we play games, and a better
understanding of what we seek in our game experience, we can gain more control over the
design and the end quality of the game. We have to realize that making a great game is not
about which features and components to add – it is about what those features and
components do for the player. We have to learn not to underestimate how important certain
aspects of the design are to the player – for example, difficult controls alone can transform
any great game into a meaningless activity. We have to remember that we do not make
games for ourselves – we make them for the player.
If you would like to know more about the subject of this article, I would like to recommend
the books listed below:
URL: http://www.gamasutra.com/features/20050426/hejdenberg_02.shtml
Postscript to Hejdenberg's The Psychology of Games Article
A paper that begins with Maslow's hierarchy of human needs theory will win my favor nearly
every time, and Anders Hejdenberg's excellent current article published on Gamasutra.com
is no exception.
Once a theory taught in depth at the post-graduate level to introduce certain theories of
human communication, Maslow's work is a rock- solid foundation upon which to build a
serious and thoughtful article.
From my own area of professional endeavor, and as a life-long student (and professional
practitioner) of the arts and sciences of human communications (with its own unique
vantage point - akin to that of psychology but without all the Freudian guilt-trips), I write to
suggest a few additional areas of study that astute game developers can benefit from
mastering. What follows are offered as a supplement to Hejdenberg's excellent and
scholarly work. They deal for the most part with the specific area of human communication
known as interpersonal communications.
I suggest game developers would benefit by obtaining at least some degree of familiarity
with each of the many theories that apply to interpersonal communications. I recommend
this because understanding the unique perspective of interpersonal communications is just
as important to game developers as the purely psychological aspects discussed by
Hejdenberg.
After all, today's computer games with their constantly improving visual and aural
components are morphing into interactive mediums for communicating - both on an
interpersonal level (through competitive play) and a mass communications level - as a new
media for advertising.
The theoretical knowledge of what keeps humans engaged in relationships is important.
Relationships are fundamentally dyads - where 2 people are engaged in 2 way
communications in an ongoing, satisfactory, even if not completely pleasurable way.
Understanding the motivating reasons why we remain in communication with each other is
an essential component of game developer knowledge.
A theory that I especially favor is known as the "the exchange theory". As it applies to
interpersonal communications: people will stay in relationships (or, communicating with
each other, or playing a game)as long as their individual perception is that they are getting
more out of it (the relationship, or the game) than they are putting into it. Another way to
view it is that human nature is at its very core self-oriented. People engage in random acts
of selfishness by their nature, and no bumper sticker is necessary to remind us of it. Ayn
Rand, the founder of the philosophy known as Objectivism, and a widely read novelist, is
well known for authoring "The Virtues of Selfishness" thirty some years ago.
Another communications tidbit is what this writer first theorized while in graduate school at
Western Michigan University - also a good while ago. "Nocera's Theory" came to me as an
effort to condense and simplify all I had been exposed to during my years of intense postgraduate study there in Kalamazoo. It is still valid: "everything communicates something."
Because it takes time for a theory to be proven or disproved, and subject to academic
processes like peer review, over the years I gave my initial theory more thought. This time,
however, I was aiming towards a goal of absolute simplicity - like E=MC2. (Short and sweet
and easy to remember.) During that time of additional intense reflection it dawned on me,
like the fabled apple falling upon Newton's head, that I could drop the word "something"
and leave the world of communications with Nocera's Law: "Everything communicates!
(Note to the studious: the exclamation point is essential. It adds an element of
instantaneous proof of the law itself. Therefore, any omission of the exclamation point is not
truly representative of Nocera's Law.)
Finally, I will conclude this with two additional recommendations as a bonus for those who
are serious enough about their craft to be reading this.
First, get the complete knowledge of left-brain/right-brain function. However, keep in mind
that those widely accepted generalities are subject to the ubiquitous 80-20 rule. Thus, while
always applying to a majority of gamers, they will never be applicable to all gamers. (And,
lefties, as well as those who have evolved (or maybe regressed) into being "wholebrainers," - well, we need love and attention to our needs and proclivities, too!)
One last essential, know that our ears will direct our eyes. This is a critical, but often
overlooked part of our human nervous system's hard-wiring and neurological programming.
Think of it like this we have descended from the successful mating of survivors. (See:
evolutionary theory!) The sense of hearing for early man was essential to survival of our
species. It would often serve as our first alert to possible danger, or a possible source of
food for early hunters. Happily those who had it obviously survived at least long enough to
mate - and we, as their descendents still get along with brains wired that way.
So ears will always tell the eyes where to look, and not vice versa. Therefore, the aural
stimulation found in better, or more compelling games should appear not encoded to occur
in precise conjunction with a visual event - but, rather as the precursor to the visual.
Experiment with triggering the sound a few milliseconds in advance both as an alert and to
draw the eyes to where and what might next occur.
-Thomas Nocera, M.A.