Game Design 101: How to Make Choices that Matter | Game/Show | PBS Digital Studios
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- Опубликовано: 1 фев 2016
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Our second installment of Game Design 101 is all about presenting your players with a series of interesting decisions. You may not even realize it, but even the most visibly simplistic games present serious choices that serve to captivate the gamer. Choice give the player more control over the outcome of their gaming experience. They can feel more deserving of a flawless victory, but must also accept responsibility for crushing defeat. When these choices allow for a personalized play-style, a great game can be born. So let us know your favorite video game choices in the comments!
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ASSET LINKS:
2:08 Sid Meier: The Father of Civilization
kotaku.com/the-father-of-civil...
4:38 Arkane's Harvey Smith on Dishonored and Empowering Players
www.gamesindustry.biz/articles...
5:35 Kasparov Chess Challenge
• Kasparov Chess Challenge
5:42 Principles of Corp Deckbuilding: Winning and Defending
• Principles of Corp Dec...
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MUSIC:
""Oh Damn!"" by CJVSO
/ cj. .
""Digital Sonar"" by Brink
""Mindphuck"" by Known To Be Lethal
www.youtube.com/watch?v=B-cyr...
""After Hours""
""Lakes"" by Chooga
www.youtube.com/watch?v=E8hns...
""Beautiful Days"" by Extan
/ beaut. .
""Spectrum Subdiffusion Mix"" by Foniqz
/ f. .
""Good Way Song"" by Electronic Rescue
""Alice y Bob"" by Javier Rubio and Parsec
archive.org/details/escala19_...
""Sleet"" by Kubbi
/ kubbi-sleet
""Toaster"" by Kubbi
/ toaster
""Patriotic Songs of America"" by New York Military Band and the American Quartet
freemusicarchive.org/music/New...
""Lets Go Back To The Rock"" by Outsider
www.jamendo.com/en/artist/440...
""Run"" by Outsider
www.jamendo.com/en/artist/440...
""Fame"" by Statue of Diveo
www.jamendo.com/en/artist/352...
""Freedom Weekends"" by Statue of Diveo
www.jamendo.com/en/artist/352...
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Mario Kart multiplayer. Do I use that oh-so-satisfying blue shell on my best friend who's begging me not to unleash its terrible swift wrath? Do I risk my entire friendship over that one unfair moment that will bring him the utmost misery, and myself complete and unabashed glee?
I always felt like the "notgame" known as "Loneliness" had an interesting way of demonstrating choice in games. Whether you continuously pursue others or give up and soldier on alone appears to say something about you. Games that can make your choices invoke introspective evaluation through the gameplay itself are the most intriguing I think. It's the ultimate kind of narrative design where gameplay meets narrative.
The Megaman games had choice in that you could decide the order of the levels you wanted to play. Whilst it didn't change the game's story, it changed which levels became easier or harder depending on your choices.
I think the main appeal of the 2D sonic games were that you had a choice of what path to follow. Most levels gave you at least two paths, and you had to make choices within those paths. 'Am I going to go for speed, or am I going to kill each enemy?'
I think a good example of players choice is the estus system in Dark Souls, specifically DS1. By having a fixed number of health items the player is forced to constantly make a decision, whether it's to take a risk and not drink an estus when low on health in order to save it for a potential boss, whether its to keep exploring in the hopes of opening up a short-cut or coming upon another bonfire, or whether to fall back to a previous bonfire knowing that they'll have to make their way through the respawned enemies. The constant risk-vs-reward of the limited health restoration in DS1 is an incredibly simple, yet incredibly interesting dynamic that I'm surprised more games haven't copied.
Persona 4 has the choice mechanism built in to everything you do.
Undertale has an interesting was of having enemies use various patterns depending on if they appear with enemies and who they appear with. It also has the obvious story choices of No Mercy, Neutral, or Pacifist, which create different allowances in the game depending on what run you are doing. A No Mercy or Neutral might have to choose what enemy to kill first based on the attack they have, and a Pacifist similarly has to choose who to try to spare first, or if they want to spare everyone at once.
I like how they have this choice in the Pokemon Mystery Dungeon. Similar to the Shopkeeper in Spelunky, Kecleon appears in some dungeons and sells some stuff, from the every useful oran berries, apples and elixirs to rare items like TMs and Orbs. However, when you steal from him, he goes on a rampage and can teleport to your location and is pretty powerful regardless of your current level and then chases you between floors (only enemy that can do this in these games). He also summons more Kecleon so if you defeat him, you're not necesarily safe. Normally, you choose to pay for his stuff, but to recruit Kecleon, you need to do this and in the 99 Floor dungeons, you have few resources (since you have to empty your bag and wallet before going into it) and might be forced to take something in the higher floors.
Someone's been watching Game Maker's Toolkit
Games with branching paths (E.g. Darius series, Final Fight 3, Star Fox 64, Outrun) this is my favourite type of "choice" to make in a game, it's a clear and obvious choice that directly affects what you'll see throughout the rest of the game, and I LOVE when games do that! This adds a lot of replay value, for you to see everything the game has to offer you have to play through it multiple times, each time taking a different path, and it's even better when devs hide secrets or collectables within those paths so that even after playing through every path you still have stuff to see and do, which adds even more replayability!
I think the games without real goals or path to follow, like Animal Crossing are probably the most choice filled games.
This is part of the reason I love Tetris so much, especially at the higher levels. Each piece has a multitude of possible purposes based on how the "board" (name?) currently is. And at the higher levels, you really have no time to think but you still have to make choices, not just lay down blocks randomly.
Fire Emblem 7 ( or just Fire Emblem in the US) was a game full of interesting choices that allowed for huge player autonomy! My favorite moments in each Fire Emblem Is always the beginning. The player is immediately struck with a choice that had far reaching consequences! In the beginning of the game you always start out with maybe 3 or 4 units. One of those units-- usually a paladin, is insanely strong and can slice through enemies better than the main hero. one of the consequences of choosing to use the paladin for every chapter is that you end up learning that his stats plateau around level 10-ish, while the enemies stats keep growing! You learn in that scenario that the weaker characters may hold big changes! On your next playthrough when focusing on a weaker character you end up learning that they can wreck enemies in the late game if you keep focusing on their growth! Such massive changes from one tiny choice. It's why I became a fan of the series!
I'll go all the way back to the first level of Contra. Players get the choice to run along the top level or drop down to the water. The water allows you to bypass a number of mobile enemies, but makes it harder or impossible to get some of the weapon powerups. When I'd play with my brother, one of us would usually drop down into the water, because the turrets can only target one of you and other would get to destroy them pretty easily. Contra also gives the choice of weapon powerups. You always take the spread gun, but a choice between the flamethrower or laser might be situational.
Bit.Trip Void is one of the starkest examples of a simple risk vs. reward choice. The entire game's design is built around this single choice mechanic.
Currently playing The Witness and that puzzle allows you something that most puzzle games don't do, allow you to choice which puzzle to do. By allowing the world to be open and instead of a static menu like most basic puzzle games, it allows players to do puzzles at their own pace and what ever order they do them.
I think Pokemon does a great job with choosing how you want to build teams.
Relevant to my current project is a choice common in tower defense games, in which you can call an enemy wave early. If you call the wave early, you risk being overwhelmed, but you get a bit of bonus gold. If you don't call the wave early, you miss out on the bonus but play at a less frantic pace. Also, a more seldom seen mechanic is the "interest on start of wave" mechanic (which combines well with towers that don't build instantly for obvious reasons). The interest just gives you some percentage, say 5%, of your gold amount at the start of a wave, this is a major incentive to not overkill a wave and build "just enough", so you can amass more gold in the long run for the harder end waves. However, if you play too boldly and start letting enemies through you may lose out on bonuses for completing a level perfectly without leaking (relevant if completing perfectly awards you some sort of currency used in the metagame, i.e. buying upgrades in between levels, such as in Kingdom Rush or Gemcraft).
Bungie Had a game back in 2001 called Oni. I don't know if anyone remembers it but it was amazing.
I recently started playing Dungeons & Dragons for the first time. A group of friends and I started playing as adults after growing up in the "D&D is the Devil" age. None of us had played before, and I elected to run the game. I wrote out a ton of stuff, had a huge story, a great first session planned in which I would introduce combat through a festival competition, so it was non-lethal to my players so the learning curve... And then something happened that threw everything off the rails. Something strange was going on and one of my players decides to shoot an NPC in the leg with his bow because he feels threatened. "You do what?" I asked. "I shoot her in the leg." It was at this moment, having been playing for about 30 minutes, when I realized the shortcoming of games like The Walking Dead. Sure, you make decisions. Some of them are even life-and-death situations. But in the end, the story ends up at the same place. Even in something as massive as Skyrim or Witcher 3, you may have a different order of experiences, or bypass some things all together that someone else plays through, but in order to "beat" the game, there are specific things that happen, and everyone ends up at relatively the same place in the end. By no means does this make those games less fun to play! But what I realized in that moment playing D&D for the first time is that when the game creator (me) is in a collaborative story telling experience with the players, a space that exists where they can attempt to do literally anything (as opposed to a fixed set of options in TWD or Skyrim)... I don't know, there is something really special about that.