Emotional design: 1. Visceral (How you respond to stimulus) 2. Behavioral (Is something actually useful and can it change your behavior) 3. Reflective (Does it make me think about it, especially after it is gone) Visceral is easy to get but unpredictable. A picture of Trump and Hilary will get a visceral reaction, but we can't know if it is going to be positive or negative. They are also very transient (they don't last very long after they are gone). This means that alone they are not very good for retention, but they are very important for first impressions. Behavioral uses game systems to influence emotions and change behaviors and after a while this becomes a feedback loop, where the game responds to changes in behavior. For example killing sprees, communicate to the player that they are doing well, giving them feedback, but also make the person pump more adrenaline, giving him a visceral reaction and you might push to attack an enemy that you might not otherwise attack, changing your behavior. It also changes the behavior of your allies (inspiring) and enemies (intimidating) Those systems are particularly interesting when they come together in a single mechanic. Every game starts with what we can do with our input devices, and then the rational part of our brain takes over and figures what we have to do. But all of them are superseded by the emotional what do I want to do. (Want to do > Must do > Can do) So emotional design is important because it leads to retention. (Someone can continue keeping notes, it can help others)
For me the audience questions about game addiction and how to measure players' emotional response (spoiler: they can't) really reveals a flaw in how that guy('s companies) go about doing things, and the problem with designing a game based mainly on the stats you can get from your players instead of on qualitative playtester feedback or the like. If you can't measure the players' emotional responses you end up designing your game around the stats you CAN get: do they keep playing the game and do they spend money? Just like with many MMO's the result is a game that may be highly addictive, but not actually very enjoyable to play. I've played lots of games I didn't actually enjoy - actually I often disliked them more and more the more I played them - but I got addicted; I wanted to either reach max-level or see how the game ended, even if I felt fed up with the gameplay itself. Once I'd finally reached that goal I'd immediately uninstall the game, and never recommended it to anyone. Coming to think of it, often I'd probably been happier just watching video playthroughs.
Jim knows his craft. This is the best GDC presentation I've watched (multiple times now). The clarity and depth of insight is outstanding... no mystery why Fortnite is so successful
which increases player retention. which increases player retention. which increases player retention. which increases player retention. which increases player retention.
This video was super interesting in showing how and why Epic makes the same mistakes over and over. Data looks fine on paper but the second an indy gets a new twist on a mechanic or thinks up a new implementation that takes steam by storm all the AAA producers scramble to try to leverage it and rework their data because it flies in the face of their previous collection. Nothing wrong with analytics when used responsibly but it's sounding like they practically run their whole company by waiting for someone else to move the market. Trying to "improve" something creative with a flawed interpretation of data and not even understanding the personal reasons behind it's effectiveness will just have them always playing follow the leader despite being a major player... This is good for their business short term but terrible for the industry as a whole as a creative market. I can respect Epic for their legacy but they aren't known for subtly, innovation or creativity outside of tool development.
For every indie who makes great breakthrough in design there are ten other indies who tried to innovate and failed, this is natural selection driven by market. If huge gamedev companies would risk innovating a lot, they would not last as a business as long as Epic Game did.
Lol, this whole talk was in sticky ethical area, from start till end. This is basically PR with their focus groups and subliminal influence, but in gaming.
I found the 'killing spree' system to be unsustainable. The first time I encountered it, the very thing he described how behaviour changed for myself and those around me was true. However, soon after I gradually noticed that I'm not being myself whenever the announcer or killing spree system appears. It made me feel manipulated, causing me to actively try to resist that system and wanting to turn it off. It was one the features that eventually caused me to quit the game as it was violating my human need for autonomy, control and sense. I hope this can be a warning to whoever tries to use these techniques. They can backfire if you try to forcibly manipulate players and force human behaviour to do something that contradicts natural instincts. It can actually damage retention instead of increasing it.
There is no doubt that Competence, Autonomy and Relatedness is the most important thing for sustained-engagement, but Immersyve has done a ton of talks on GDC about that already, so I don't see a problem with Jim not bringing it up here. Especially considering that his colleague Celia Hodent brings it up during her talk at the same GDC. In any case, killing spree might not add much to Autonomy, but it definitely doesn't undermine it. Rather it serves as sustained competence feedback, while also satisfying relatedness need satisfaction during Red V Blue matches.
I have a 200+ game library on steam that I've collected over the last nine years. Out of those games I have two that are 1000+ hours, and one that is 2000+ hours, Team Fortress 2 and CS:GO, respectively. The gameplay mechanics in these games (and Minecraft, which I don't own in Steam but its probably near the 2000+ mark lol) is fun, but also so well done to the point of being addicting for multiple reasons-addicting mechanics can come from things like being the best in an area of, or unique, gameplay (in current releases), and a high skill ceiling that gives veterans a challenge years later. I don't think there's necessarily a fine line here, that only comes if you're making questionable choices to get the addiction.
39:45 I Only played the first GoW, but from what you describe it seems that gears 1 was most depressing, because and gears3 was as depressing as Bulletstorm because the situation wasn't relatable but rather over the top doomsday scenario. But maybe i got bamboozled by the colorful image :).
As a game designer, i find some of these tactics very inhumane, like mentioned by someone else, extra credits did a video on this and shows how unhealthy and... inhumane they really are, you are retaining players in this game, not because they want to keep playing but because they are being manipulated to do so, and after they are done with the game, and manage to break out of the vicious cycle, they wont spread the good word about your game. How many people have recomended anyone WoW? To me only 1, someone who was starting to play it many years ago. Everyone else ive met complain in the same way mobile game or browser based gamers complain, they dont really like the game anymore, but they keep playing it. Tactics like the ones mentioned in this video are the hardcore drugs of the video game insustry, yeah they are fun for a while, until you realise you cant stop playing these games. These practices need to stop. I never played abything published by these guys, and i'm very happy i havent now that i know how they look at their player retention. Disgusting.
Those other problems I could understand. But the tower one was a huge fuck up on your part. I've never seen a game that makes a disconnect like that. Especially when you just got done talking about how ideas are shared in the same genre as it's easier to understand.
Hmm, the more I watch this, the more I feel dissapointed at how short-sighted these strategies are. They only work for a short period of time, until the person playing notices the intent behind it. This triggers a natural reaction to resist and rebel against this intent. These tactics are absolutely NOT how to achieve retention. This is how you kill retention.
Short term gains like the ones in the video are valuable to get crap through QA or the first couple weeks of launch ... or even to get funding but pisses players off pretty fast because so many AAA titles adopts these techniques. Which is ironic because then they all just become interchangeable with each other and the player is already bored with the game before it is released.
This is hollow, abusive and manipulative to the max - with no respect for what an emotion actually is and the person feeling it. if you wanna make your game a soulless corporate product - follow this guide. i play games for over 22 years now and after hearing this talk i realize whats wrong with many newer AAA-games - instead of actually having a vision, creating something really solid and fun and touching, the focus lies on making you think it is all that, with every soulless, mechanical, cynical trick in the book. Makes me sick!
Finished watching the rest of it and while there were a few good nuggets, like affordances, as well as signs/feedback, I felt shocked at how disconnected this guy was with human nature and game design. He's more clueless than his presentation makes him look like. The patterns stuff are a result of design, not something you're supposed to actively design. Its only an end-product, not the path to manufacturing said end-product. As information, its mostly useless, confusing and leaves more questions than it answers. Not even once was there mention of purpose-driven design, fundamental human needs or feelings. The very core things that best design solutions rely on. Not to mention he seperated emotions and feelings as two different things, which they are not. This guy is a total hack. : /
This guy's a hack... but he was the lead/sr. designer for the entire GoW series, Bulletstorm, UT2, UT2004, and UT3. All very well received games. You don't have to agree with him, but he has quite a bit of success in his credentials, not to mention he often supports his points with data (not just in this talk, but in his others as well).
How could you compare a game company which success is reliant on games which have to be fun to be successful and well recieved in the first place, to Monsanto. Which makes fucking GMO food which isnt well recieved by people.
You're wrong, emotions and feelings aren't the same. Emotions are the collection of physiological data-streams in the shape of Electrical signals, Electric magnetic signal, Chemical waves and presure waves
Emotional design:
1. Visceral (How you respond to stimulus)
2. Behavioral (Is something actually useful and can it change your behavior)
3. Reflective (Does it make me think about it, especially after it is gone)
Visceral is easy to get but unpredictable. A picture of Trump and Hilary will get a visceral reaction, but we can't know if it is going to be positive or negative. They are also very transient (they don't last very long after they are gone). This means that alone they are not very good for retention, but they are very important for first impressions.
Behavioral uses game systems to influence emotions and change behaviors and after a while this becomes a feedback loop, where the game responds to changes in behavior. For example killing sprees, communicate to the player that they are doing well, giving them feedback, but also make the person pump more adrenaline, giving him a visceral reaction and you might push to attack an enemy that you might not otherwise attack, changing your behavior. It also changes the behavior of your allies (inspiring) and enemies (intimidating)
Those systems are particularly interesting when they come together in a single mechanic.
Every game starts with what we can do with our input devices, and then the rational part of our brain takes over and figures what we have to do. But all of them are superseded by the emotional what do I want to do. (Want to do > Must do > Can do)
So emotional design is important because it leads to retention.
(Someone can continue keeping notes, it can help others)
For me the audience questions about game addiction and how to measure players' emotional response (spoiler: they can't) really reveals a flaw in how that guy('s companies) go about doing things, and the problem with designing a game based mainly on the stats you can get from your players instead of on qualitative playtester feedback or the like.
If you can't measure the players' emotional responses you end up designing your game around the stats you CAN get: do they keep playing the game and do they spend money? Just like with many MMO's the result is a game that may be highly addictive, but not actually very enjoyable to play.
I've played lots of games I didn't actually enjoy - actually I often disliked them more and more the more I played them - but I got addicted; I wanted to either reach max-level or see how the game ended, even if I felt fed up with the gameplay itself. Once I'd finally reached that goal I'd immediately uninstall the game, and never recommended it to anyone. Coming to think of it, often I'd probably been happier just watching video playthroughs.
Jim Brown gives such a good, informative talks in GDC. His previous talk of Level Design & Negative Space is as good as this
Jim knows his craft. This is the best GDC presentation I've watched (multiple times now). The clarity and depth of insight is outstanding... no mystery why Fortnite is so successful
which increases player retention. which increases player retention. which increases player retention. which increases player retention. which increases player retention.
Too bad paragon couldn't retain players... lol
This video was super interesting in showing how and why Epic makes the same mistakes over and over. Data looks fine on paper but the second an indy gets a new twist on a mechanic or thinks up a new implementation that takes steam by storm all the AAA producers scramble to try to leverage it and rework their data because it flies in the face of their previous collection. Nothing wrong with analytics when used responsibly but it's sounding like they practically run their whole company by waiting for someone else to move the market. Trying to "improve" something creative with a flawed interpretation of data and not even understanding the personal reasons behind it's effectiveness will just have them always playing follow the leader despite being a major player... This is good for their business short term but terrible for the industry as a whole as a creative market. I can respect Epic for their legacy but they aren't known for subtly, innovation or creativity outside of tool development.
For every indie who makes great breakthrough in design there are ten other indies who tried to innovate and failed, this is natural selection driven by market. If huge gamedev companies would risk innovating a lot, they would not last as a business as long as Epic Game did.
@@anthonyvortex3357 nintendo refuses to push out a new product unless its innovative, even if it would not sell
30:02 - 30:29 ___ 0:44 ___ 2:12 - 2:47 ___ 6:23 - 7:38
Epic gives talk on retention. Fails to retain players with Paragon
Lol, this whole talk was in sticky ethical area, from start till end. This is basically PR with their focus groups and subliminal influence, but in gaming.
I found the 'killing spree' system to be unsustainable. The first time I encountered it, the very thing he described how behaviour changed for myself and those around me was true.
However, soon after I gradually noticed that I'm not being myself whenever the announcer or killing spree system appears. It made me feel manipulated, causing me to actively try to resist that system and wanting to turn it off. It was one the features that eventually caused me to quit the game as it was violating my human need for autonomy, control and sense.
I hope this can be a warning to whoever tries to use these techniques. They can backfire if you try to forcibly manipulate players and force human behaviour to do something that contradicts natural instincts. It can actually damage retention instead of increasing it.
There is no doubt that Competence, Autonomy and Relatedness is the most important thing for sustained-engagement, but Immersyve has done a ton of talks on GDC about that already, so I don't see a problem with Jim not bringing it up here. Especially considering that his colleague Celia Hodent brings it up during her talk at the same GDC.
In any case, killing spree might not add much to Autonomy, but it definitely doesn't undermine it. Rather it serves as sustained competence feedback, while also satisfying relatedness need satisfaction during Red V Blue matches.
Love you GDC.
Excited to watch this!
Take care not to design games to be addicting instead of designing games to be fun. You're kind of walking a fine line.
You're only going to design an addicting game if you can make a fun game to begin with.
I have a 200+ game library on steam that I've collected over the last nine years. Out of those games I have two that are 1000+ hours, and one that is 2000+ hours, Team Fortress 2 and CS:GO, respectively. The gameplay mechanics in these games (and Minecraft, which I don't own in Steam but its probably near the 2000+ mark lol) is fun, but also so well done to the point of being addicting for multiple reasons-addicting mechanics can come from things like being the best in an area of, or unique, gameplay (in current releases), and a high skill ceiling that gives veterans a challenge years later.
I don't think there's necessarily a fine line here, that only comes if you're making questionable choices to get the addiction.
CS:GO and Rocket league for me are the 1000-2000hrs
39:45 I Only played the first GoW, but from what you describe it seems that gears 1 was most depressing, because and gears3 was as depressing as Bulletstorm because the situation wasn't relatable but rather over the top doomsday scenario. But maybe i got bamboozled by the colorful image :).
As a game designer, i find some of these tactics very inhumane, like mentioned by someone else, extra credits did a video on this and shows how unhealthy and... inhumane they really are, you are retaining players in this game, not because they want to keep playing but because they are being manipulated to do so, and after they are done with the game, and manage to break out of the vicious cycle, they wont spread the good word about your game. How many people have recomended anyone WoW? To me only 1, someone who was starting to play it many years ago. Everyone else ive met complain in the same way mobile game or browser based gamers complain, they dont really like the game anymore, but they keep playing it. Tactics like the ones mentioned in this video are the hardcore drugs of the video game insustry, yeah they are fun for a while, until you realise you cant stop playing these games. These practices need to stop. I never played abything published by these guys, and i'm very happy i havent now that i know how they look at their player retention. Disgusting.
"patterns," or: "Skinner boxes 101."
other than that ethically bad design point, it was a good talk.
Really glad I saw this talk. I had low expectations after reading the comments below.
Those other problems I could understand. But the tower one was a huge fuck up on your part. I've never seen a game that makes a disconnect like that. Especially when you just got done talking about how ideas are shared in the same genre as it's easier to understand.
Great talk!!!
Hmm, the more I watch this, the more I feel dissapointed at how short-sighted these strategies are. They only work for a short period of time, until the person playing notices the intent behind it.
This triggers a natural reaction to resist and rebel against this intent. These tactics are absolutely NOT how to achieve retention. This is how you kill retention.
Short term gains like the ones in the video are valuable to get crap through QA or the first couple weeks of launch ... or even to get funding but pisses players off pretty fast because so many AAA titles adopts these techniques. Which is ironic because then they all just become interchangeable with each other and the player is already bored with the game before it is released.
Damn look at baby fortnite
If you're actually designing games this is a very important talk
tl;dr How to emotionally manipulate people into buying DLC and loot boxes.
Dios MIO STOP Swallow
This is hollow, abusive and manipulative to the max - with no respect for what an emotion actually is and the person feeling it. if you wanna make your game a soulless corporate product - follow this guide. i play games for over 22 years now and after hearing this talk i realize whats wrong with many newer AAA-games - instead of actually having a vision, creating something really solid and fun and touching, the focus lies on making you think it is all that, with every soulless, mechanical, cynical trick in the book.
Makes me sick!
Finished watching the rest of it and while there were a few good nuggets, like affordances, as well as signs/feedback, I felt shocked at how disconnected this guy was with human nature and game design. He's more clueless than his presentation makes him look like.
The patterns stuff are a result of design, not something you're supposed to actively design. Its only an end-product, not the path to manufacturing said end-product. As information, its mostly useless, confusing and leaves more questions than it answers.
Not even once was there mention of purpose-driven design, fundamental human needs or feelings. The very core things that best design solutions rely on. Not to mention he seperated emotions and feelings as two different things, which they are not.
This guy is a total hack. : /
This guy's a hack... but he was the lead/sr. designer for the entire GoW series, Bulletstorm, UT2, UT2004, and UT3. All very well received games. You don't have to agree with him, but he has quite a bit of success in his credentials, not to mention he often supports his points with data (not just in this talk, but in his others as well).
Monsanto is "successful" too, but that doesn't mean they're good.
How could you compare a game company which success is reliant on games which have to be fun to be successful and well recieved in the first place, to Monsanto. Which makes fucking GMO food which isnt well recieved by people.
You're wrong, emotions and feelings aren't the same. Emotions are the collection of physiological data-streams in the shape of Electrical signals, Electric magnetic signal, Chemical waves and presure waves
Feeling is the awareness of emotion. An important distinction to make as we are not always aware of our emotions
looks like moses parted this guys hairline