http://www.design.wrong.net Musings on game design Mon, 07 Jul 2008 19:22:23 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en What Makes Games Fun? Earlier, I suggested that games are fun because they're hard.  This is a pretty vague statement.  What's hard? I'm going to suggest a general equation here to describe the difficulty of a given decision, for a given player.  Please keep in mind that the values in this equation ... http://www.design.wrong.net/2008/07/07/the-difficulty-equation/ Located here. The game designer is able to choose the size of each unit of play, allowing the designer to fix the size of the unit and adjust the unit's difficulty by tweaking the individual challenges, or to fix the difficulty of each challenge and adjust the size of the unit ... http://www.design.wrong.net/2008/06/26/good-post-on-savepoints/ Well, mostly.  But headlines like that are great for stirring up controversy. The game industry has seen a number of genres die out over the course of its lifetime.  Some of these deaths have been due to technological advantages, but I'd argue that most of them haven't. Flight ... http://www.design.wrong.net/2008/05/26/all-genres-are-doomed/ A little meta-design here. I've described (hopefully!) a number of tools that can be used to analyze design, and to help determine why games are fun, or not. There's two main ways you can use these tools.  You can use them to predict your gameplay, or you can use them to analyze ... http://www.design.wrong.net/2008/05/23/reflective-vs-predictive-design/ Okay, time to back off of game-theory land for a bit. One thing to look for in game design is feedback loops, both positive and negative.  By feedback, I don't mean people praising or insulting you on your board, I mean feedback within your game. Positive Feedback Positive feedback occurs when the act ... http://www.design.wrong.net/2008/05/22/positive-and-negative-feedback/ These are terms that are thrown around a lot, but are not well defined.  So, here's an attempt at a definition. Complexity is a measure of the possible choices a player has at any given moment, as well as the number of factors the player must consider. Depth is a measure of ... http://www.design.wrong.net/2008/05/20/complexity-vs-depth/ Gamasutra - The Designer's Notebook Adaptive difficulty is something of a hot topic. I think there's ways to do it relatively easily, using existing mechanisms, in ways that gamers will find natural. In fact, I'd argue that a lot of games already use adaptive difficulty, they just don't call ... http://www.design.wrong.net/2008/05/18/adaptive-difficulty/ Some Background Info A couple of links, first. Sirlin - RPS Sirlin - Yomi These posts are basically about RPS, and indirectly hint at game theory. First off, RPS.  Now, I'd never argue that RPS is a particularly good game.  What it does do, however, ... http://www.design.wrong.net/2008/05/18/balance-is-not-equality/ Basic Decision Matrix Let's take a look at a simple decision matrix for an RTS.   Rush Produce ... http://www.design.wrong.net/2008/05/18/ai-and-the-single-player-game/ It seems that, in general, there are 3 stages of decision-making. Analysis Opponent Execution  Analysis The analysis stage is about gathering information.  This doesn't have to be done at the exact moment of the decision - it's based on all information gathered to that point.  Once the information has been gathered, it has to be ... http://www.design.wrong.net/2008/04/16/3-stages-of-decisions/