Different Types of Fun in Games

The Different Types of Fun in Games

When designing a game it is good to keep in mind the your goal is to make the game a 'fun' experience for the players, but how does one achieve this fun in a game?

In the article 'Gamification User Types and the 4 Keys 2 Fun', Andzej Maczewski talks about the different types of players, what they want to do, why they find it fun, and how that type of fun is achieved.

The following image is a good representation of what Maczewski is saying in his articale. Socialiser, Achiever, Philanthropist and Free Spirit are the player types. The text in red is what the respective player wants from the game, and the yellow text is why they want it. Finally the three words at the top shows how to give players that type of fun.

Different players enjoy games in their own way, however it does not mean that each player is limited to falling under just a single player type. Even when designing a game for a specific audience, one should try to appeal to as many player types as possible - and even more so if you want to interest a wider audience.

As one of my lecturers stated: The most successful games tend to offer their players at least three types of fun.

How Does This Relate to My Dissertation Proposal?

In my dissertation I am trying to find ways to get players to be able to play together more freely in MMORPG-like environments without being hindered by the game's mechanics.

As opposed to playing alone, when players spend their time playing together, they get to take part in activities which involve communication, co-operation and competition. This happens to be the 'people fun' that socialiser player is motivated by when playing games.

It would be a big improvement to the player experience if MMORPGs would find new mechanics which do not hinder people fun.

This point aside, I still have to design a playable game. It would do me good to try and include as many of the types of fun as possible, therefore I will most likely refer back to this post as a guide when designing my own game.

References

Andrzej Marczewski. (2013). Gamification User Types and the 4 Keys 2 Fun. Available: http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/AndrzejMarczewski/20130610/193985/Gamification_User_Types_and_the_4_Keys_2_Fun.php. Last accessed 30th Oct 2014.

Chosen Title & Marking Criteria

The Proposed Title.

"Making a Non-Digital Asynchronous Multiplayer Game Which Keeps Players Together in an Environment Similar to an MMORPG's"

What is an asynchronous multiplayer game?

As Ian Bogost states in his 'Asynchronous multiplay: Futures for casual multiplayer experience', multiplayer asynchronous games can have any number of players based on its design (with a minimum of two). However unlike in synchronous games, players play in sequence, sometimes immediately after each other, and in other cases, after a duration.

Bogost also mentions another characteristic for asynchronous multiplay. This is the requirement for a type of persistent state. This persistent state is often seen in MMORPGs as the persistent world which allows the game world to carry on existing during the player's absence. To do this would require the use of a server or database in order for players to be able to 'load' the world's current state when they join the game.

What is meant by "an Environment Similar to an MMORPG's" ?

MMORPGs generally have a persistent game world. They are based on player progression over a reasonably long time and can be played by many players. Players can play either at the same time or at different times than other players and can spend different durations than each other.

Why not just use an MMORPG?

I want to achieve the mentioned traits in a non-digital game rather than an actual MMORPG as the technical knowledge and resources required to run an MMORPG are out of my reach and I would rather focus on designing a game which keeps players together.

What do I mean by keeping players together? and why is it important?

In MMORPGs players are able to progress through the game alone or with other players. I want to design my game in a way that it will not hold players back from choosing to play with their friends should they be playing at the same time.

After having played and looked at several popular MMORPGs I noticed something they had in common. It is very difficult for different players to always play at the same times, and for the same durations, and even if they did, they might still progress at a different speed. The result of this is that players will end up in different places, with different quests and different levels.

This in itself is not an issue as each player has their own 'story', but unfortunately when players want to play with their friends, they often find that the mechanics of the game will greatly hinder their experience due to reasons such as:

• The difference in power is so huge that one player will feel like their efforts are meaningless while the other player might be too powerful to even get any challenge.

• Some players will have already completed certain quests which their friends have yet to do, thus progression will be hindered for some of the players.

What this results in is that most players will end up spending most of their time having to play the game alone even while their friends are also playing. This issue is greatly diminished later on once the 'end-game' is reached by both of the players, however the journey to that point should not have to be so unnecessarily dull.

I will discuss my research in a later post, about the different types of fun and why it is important to allow players to be easily able to play with other players without being hindered by the game mechanics.

The challenges I will face.

Creating an environment similar to that of on MMORPG in a non digital environment.
Designing a progress based game for this environment.
Design must be done in a way to make players want to play together, while keeping solo play a viable option.
Building an economy for the game.
Balancing the game.
Handling data manually in the place of a server.
Gathering the people to test my prototypes and iterating based on feedback and analysis.

What is the marking criteria, how do the jobs tie into this?

As informed by my recent job search for game design jobs, I found that the following skills were commonly required for the job, and all relate to my proposed project, thus these are the points on which I want my dissertation to be marked:

• Coming up with new features / mechanics.
• Creating a detailed design documents for the initial prototype.
• Iterative design and prototyping.
• Testing and analysis of game-play in order to make improvements
• Balancing and Pacing.
• Building a good economy for the game.
• Learning how to make good use of a spreadsheet application similar to Microsoft excel.

References

Bogost, Ian. "Asynchronous multiplay: Futures for casual multiplayer experience." Other Players 6.8 (2004).

Timeline for completion of first prototype

As I'm getting closer to the date of my proposal, I need to get a more solid plan on what steps need to be taken in order to get my dissertation started.

After finding the skills which are commonly required for game designer jobs, I should be able to refine my previous to-do list, into a proper timeline towards the completion of my first prototype.

Date	Task	Completed
Earlier Date	Search the internet for game design job ads to find out the skills being asked for.	Yes
Earlier Date	List the skills I have / don't have / need, in relation to said jobs, in order to know where to focus my efforts.	Yes
Earlier Date	Research if anyone has ever tried replicating an MMORPG atmosphere for testing without coding an actual MMORPG.	Yes
25th Oct	Create a timeline containing the tasks planned until the completion of the first prototype.	Yes
26th Oct	Decide on the title of my proposal, along with the marking criteria.	Yes
29th Oct	Find reference materials and research player progression and related mechanics.	-
30th Oct	Find reference materials and research types of fun in games.	Yes
31st Oct	Find reference materials and research pacing in games.	-
1st Nov	Find reference materials and research meaningful choices.
2nd Nov	Write up the proposal using the blog as reference.
5th Nov	Complete And Submit Proposal
6th Nov	Find reference materials and research tools to create dramatic game play.
7th Nov	Find reference materials and research chance in games.
8th Nov	Find reference materials and research segmentation of game play.
13th Nov	Find reference materials and research game balancing.
14th Nov	Find reference materials and research level design.
15th Nov	Find reference materials and research economies in games.
20th Nov	Find reference materials and research player grouping in multiplayer games.
21st Nov	Find reference materials and do research on the mechanics, dynamics and aesthetics typically found in MMORPGs.
22nd Nov	Create a design document detailing the initial design for the game. (May require additional days)
27th Nov	Create a spreadsheet which will be used as the game's database.
28th Nov	Gather play testers.
29th Nov	Test the first prototype.

Trying to replicate the MMORPG environment.

How will I create a world for my RPG?

As I mentioned in a previous post, the following points need to be true in the game world:

• A reasonable number of players can play in the same game world.
• The game world is persistent, thus progression must be saved.
• Players are able to join the game at different times and are able to take actions without waiting for other players to be playing.
• Players can also stop their gaming session at any time, without breaking the game.
• Players can decide to either play alone or together with others.

Additionally, I want the game to be economy and combat driven rather than story driven as this is what most players spend their time doing while progressing in MMORPGs. This means that the game will need a combat system as the core grind mechanic. Players will need to choose actions to perform which will be handled by the game master (me) before their next action may be performed.

Keeping this in mind, I researched the methods I can use to host an RPG game session and I came up with the following:

Play by Post

As Alexander Hinkley discusses: a play by post RPG takes place on a forum. Players create threads, which act like the "game world". The poster writes the details of the world or scenario, and people who post on the thread will give descriptions of the character they are role playing as. Players post their actions, following the rules of the world they are playing in. Sometimes the forum will be a single world, and contains information of the items and skills and stats that exist in it.

The problem I found with this is that it will be difficult to keep actions happening at a steady pace if the game is not being played in real time. When taking the role of a game master, I would have to regularly perform updates and record information for every single player action. Unless this happens in real time, the game's pace will be too slow.

Shared Fiction Role Playing

This method focuses heavily if not completely on combined creative storytelling from all the players. With its focus being on storytelling rather than stat progression, it does not allow me to replicate an MMORPG's style of play.

Live Action Role Playing

This involves having people acting out their actions in real life. It would require too much effort to gather and motivate people to do this on a regular basis, so I immediately dismissed this option.

Table Top RPG

Another method I found is used for the typical Dungeons & Dragons sessions. According to Alexander Macris's article, it is recommended for these sessions to be hosted once or twice a week. Avoiding weekend nights helps with the availability of participants. These sessions take around 4-5 hours and ideally take place in quiet rooms with a big table and comfortable seating. Snacks and refreshments would help in keeping up the participants' moods.

Whenever a session starts it is important to give an update of what had happened recently and the current state the players are in and what they can do, before asking them what they will do. On the other hand, sessions should not end until any ongoing fights are happening, this is due to the fact it is difficult to keep record of ongoing combat and tactics.

Gathering people for some time around a table is a viable solution for me as the university's game design labs are a reasonably good place to hold regular sessions. However certain details would need to be different since I do not need any actual role playing in my game.


Preferred Method

The only two methods that made sense for my project were the Play by Post and Table Top, but given my situation at university, I think it would be wise to go for the latter as it will be easier to recruit play testers to drop into ongoing games and play.


Changes to the 'Table Top RPG' method

This method requires several people to play together, ideally from start to finish for around 4-5 hours. It is important to have players experiencing the campaign's story together without missing out on pieces of it.

In my game, story and role play will not play a large role, and for the sake of being similar to an MMORPG environment, I would rather that players dropped in and out of the game at different times. Given this scenario, there is no point to set a fixed duration- instead I would start the session as soon as I manage to recruit some play testers, and stop once no more players are willing to play.

The university's game design labs would provide a comfortable place to play, and the lack of need to role play means that the noisy environment should not be too harmful to the game play.

Economy and Stat tracking will be very important, so it would be wise for me to use excel on my laptop to keep track of any changes that take place.


The next step

Having decided on the preferred way to host the game, I will next need to focus on Designing a non digital RPG system that will allow players to play through its 'content' over a few weeks. This would allow me to gather information and feedback and use it to iterate the game.

References:

Alexander Hinkley. ( 2010). Types of RPGs. In: Katie Leonard Creating an Online Roleplaying Game. Lulu.com. 3-9.

Alexander Macris. (2010). How to Host an RPG Session. Available: http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/tabletop/checkfortraps/8278-How-to-Host-an-RPG-Session. Last accessed 12th Oct 2014.

Design jobs and their requirements

A good way to find out which skills I should be focusing on improving, is to find out which skills and responsibilities are expected from applicants when applying for Game Design related jobs.

I will highlight the points that are common between the different jobs to find out the most desired skills. Similar points will be highlighted using the same colour.


Job Vacancy #1: Senior Game Designer

Expected Skills & responsibilities:

• Work with the lead designer to fine-tune the vision

• Come up with suitable game mechanics that fall in line with the game’s vision

• Create and maintain design documentation in a Wiki

• Iterate designs to create a great gameplay experience

• Communicate with an external developer to make them understand the design and the overall vision

• Proactively find problems with the gameplay and come up with solutions

• Excellent written communication skills (English)

• Very good analytical gameplay balancing skills

• Excellent Microsoft Excel skills

• Gameplay mechanics / system design

• Ability to understand the game’s vision and apply it to every design

• Ability to take direction and feedback, and working this into your designs

Job Vacancy #2: Senior Game Designer - Social Games

Expected Skills & responsibilities:

• Work closely with a Project Manager to make a new hit game come to life.

• Come-up with new feature ideas which will increase user experience, engagement and monetization.

• Transform high-level ideas into detailed and well thought-out concepts.

• Create wireframe screens, mockups and user flows for new product features and content.

• Perform & analyze user testing and recommend design solutions.

• Keeping the design coherent for the development team by maintaing specification document throughout the development.

• Provide the development team detailed design of features for agile feature implementation.

• Conceptualize, create and maintain detailed game design documentation throughout the project cycle

• Design compelling & funny characters/storyline to a new social game concept.

• Experience in designing a Social Game from beginning to end.

• Experience or knowledge of game design, level design, gameplay theory & story writing.

• Strong knowledge of game balancing and pacing.

• In-depth understanding of Facebook as a gaming platform.

• Excellent communication and presentation skills.

• Systematic and strategic thinking as well as imagination and creativity.

• High level of English.

• Passionate game player with in-depth knowledge of casual or multiplayer/online games.

Job Vacancy #3: Monetisation Designer - Midlands

Expected Skills & responsibilities:

• Balancing 

• Pacing 

• F2P monetisation of the latest titles.

• Develop UI and systems to ensure the player experiences balanced and rewarding gameplay.

• Strong experience with designing in-game economy

• F2P design theory 

• Excellent communication skills.

Job Vacancy #4: Senior Game Designer for Exciting Mobile / Tablet Games Studio

Expected Skills & responsibilities:

• Develop concepts and prototypes for new games.

• Develop and maintain design documentation, including gameplay mechanics, guidelines, UI flows, game loops and player progression.

• Plan and implement the game economy and gameplay, and tune it with game metrics and user experience testing.

• Work with the Executive Producer to define and drive the design of a game: the mechanics, story, missions, and more.

• Feels capable of becoming a Design Lead in a project.

• Three or more years of professional game design experience including mobile / free to play.

• Proven track record in game design.

• Proven user interface and user experience design required.

• Excellent analytical, facilitation and organizational skills.

• Ability to schedule and prioritize design tasks.

• Comfortable working with Excel.

• Demonstrated the ability to work well in an agile manner with Producers, Artists, and Engineers.

Job Vacancy #5: Senior Game Designer

Expected Skills & responsibilities:

• Familiarising yourself with the game. You will come to grips with why it is an exciting title, and will have already come up with some creative ideas for improving it.

• Have a real impact on finalising some of the game’s core areas. 

• Work with programmers and artists to establish great design work in the UI, gameplay systems, and product roadmap.

• Design and deliver additional content for the game after launch. 

• Work with a team to develop these designs into functional features and events.

• Your designs will continue to keep millions of players engaged, and equally continue to attract new players. You will be an expert in live operation design, and in understanding what keeps players coming back for more.

• You'll have excellent communication skills and be able to influence people with subtlety and grace.

• You'll have worked in a design role on a number of titles, in a range of different gameplay systems.

• You really understand and enjoy F2P design and how to blend both gameplay fun and monetization.

• You have an interest in live titles, and in creating content that will keep millions of players returning and engaging with titles.

• You can assess the potential risk and return of your design suggestions.

• Your design documentation is concise, clear and visual.

• You are comfortable with iterative design practices and rapid prototyping.

• You’ll be able to de-construct existing games, laying bare their mechanics and structure.

• You understand learning curves, pacing, gaming compulsions, mobile UX, and what really motivates players.

• You’ll be a consummate collaborator and team-player, understanding how to work in a growing team and a fast-paced, exciting environment.

• You’ll bring your energy, creativity and passion to everything you do.

• A peerless written and verbal communicator, you should be comfortable writing design specifications and technical design specifications.

• Confident and smart, you’ll be happy working alongside MBA graduates and business minds, collaborating with them to develop your features.

Common Skills or Responsibilities

The following are commonly required skills which I will be taking into the dissertation.

Coming up with new features / mechanics. (Creative Design)

Good skill at creating detailed design documents.

Experience with iterative design and prototyping.

Test and analyze existing gameplay to come up with improvements.

Strong knowledge of game balancing and pacing.

Good experience with Microsoft excel.

Experience related to building economies in games.

Conclusion

After checking the skills which I found in common between the five design jobs I looked at, it showed that my current project idea would touch upon most of the said skills. Fortunately I already have experience on the points that I won't focus on.

Things To Do

The following is a list of things I would probably need to do in order to achieve what I am aiming for.

• Search the internet for game design job ads to find out the skills being asked for.
• List the skills I have / don't have / need, in relation to said jobs, in order to know where to focus my efforts.
• Research if anyone has ever tried replicating an MMORPG atmosphere for testing without coding an actual MMORPG.
• If any ideas are found, I can learn from them before deciding on the 'system' I intend to use.
• Do research into the important steps to create an MMORPG, and take notes of what I think can be useful for designing my game.
• Take a look at common mechanics found in popular MMORPGs, and identify how they could help or hinder this project.
• Do research on progression in games.
• Do research on grinding mechanics.
• Research on meaningful choices in games.
• Research on complexity in games.
• Research level design.
• Design a game that would be suitable for my 'experiment'
• Ask other players to help me test my game in order to record information.
• Iterate through the many flaws that will undoubtedly arise and repeat.

It is probable that I have missed out on something, so I might have to update this list as I go along.

If anyone has any suggestions for any references I should be looking at, please let me know as it would help me in my search.

Narrowing Down (New Logline: How can I keep players together inside an MMORPG environment without taking away the option to solo?)

Narrowing Down

First off, I could narrow down my log line to: 

'How can I keep players together inside an MMORPG environment without taking away the option to solo?'

What I mean by this is that I intend to somehow design a (more simple) game which uses an environment similar to that found on MMORPGs, in a way that would not split friends apart as is often done in almost every game from this genre.

The next task would be to replicate this MMORPG environment without actually coding it, in order to make it feasible. The key features of an MMORPG I want to replicate are:

• A reasonable number of players can play in the same game world.
• The game world is persistent, thus progression must be saved.
• Players are able to join the game at different times and are able to take actions without waiting for other players to be playing.
• Players can also stop their gaming session at any time, without breaking the game.
• Players can decide to either play alone or together with others. 

So far I have considered two ideas which might allow me to try and replicate the MMORPG environment.

1. A Role playing forum based game. Players would tell me their desired actions and would receive updates on their current situation every so often, allowing them to then tell me their next action.
2. A weekly DnD style, drop-in/drop-out when you please session, where players choose actions in turns and can interact with other players or simply play solo.

With either of these, a small database of sorts would be required in order to keep track of player stats and positions. The said database would only be accessed by me, as I would take the role of the "server". The designed game must be simple enough however, in order to make it manageable by a single person.

Still Over Scoping?

It may be the case that I am currently over scoping. For now all I can do is do research in relation to the problem I wish to tackle, and try to plan the steps that would be required to complete this project. 

Time will tell, soon enough.

My original idea... MMORPGs, are great for overscoping!

My Original Idea

I had originally been hoping to focus my dissertation on making a design document for an MMORPG*, as I am very interested in how the genre could be used.

*****

*MMORPG (Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game), is a game  genre where a large number of people are able to connect to the same server, at any time. The server acts as a persistent world which which will change and evolve even while players are logged off.

I find this genre very interesting because the player takes control of one (often) personalized character which 'grows' with the player over time and through all this player gets easily immersed in the game.

*****

Unfortunately I later found out that the design document would be good to show the theory of what I learnt from my research, however I would still need a method of presenting something practical. The most obvious way of doing this would be to code an entire MMORPG based on my design document.

Needless to say, this idea is far beyond what I can do so I ultimately gave up on it and started thinking on more feasible ideas. 

Where do I start? - First Thoughts

I'd like to design something... Where do I start?

I am thinking about focusing my dissertation on design and I will use my existing knowledge of flash action script in order to show the results achieved from my research.

My thoughts so far are along the lines of 'making a simple yet deep digital game through the use of meaningful choices.'

Since I have yet to undertake the research, I might have to tweak this idea slightly once I am better informed of the proper meaning of depth in games and what constitutes a meaningful choice.

Edit: The next blog post pretty much makes a 180 degree turn due to some new-found inspiration. Hopefully this will not happen often as I need to decide on a single goal.