Scott Kim - Puzzle Makers Survival Kit

Two things a puzzle needs to be:
1.Fun (a very dangerous word)
2.Solvable

Motivations for taking part in puzzles:

• Challenge 
• Distraction
• As we read on we see that the motivations for puzzles are extremely similar to the motivations to play games.

Puzzle Divisions and Brief explanations of each:

Action Puzzles-

Puzzles with a mental challenge combined with a twitch skill, i.e. Tetris

Error recovery.

Easy to learn.

Story Puzzle- 

Use the puzzle to tell a story - about the line between story and puzzle and the link you make.

Keep the story relevant

Certain genres that are more readily adaptable to Story Puzzles

Competitive Puzzles - 

Games where the players use the same area or puzzle and all attempt to complete the puzzle as quick as possible and beet the opponent.

Key is to be quick and is usually turn based games

Should be simple and quick i.e. Peggle

Construction Puzzles - 

E.G. Lego

Modularity - Meaning giving the player choices, for example in Lego you can build whatever you want due to the fact the pieces will fit together in any combination, if the player can only attach certain pieces then the players options are limited and we are restricting the player as a games designer.

Too little or Too much structure

Intensity Ramping in Puzzles:

Different Mechanics - Accelerating Puzzles - based on Twitch

Increasing difficulty through stage or levels - based on Twitch

Increasing difficulty then a new mechanic is added i.e. an upgrade then start from the same difficulty and work up to the next upgrade - difficulty range between levels doesn't greatly increase

Semi-Linear ordering - trying to offer the player complete choice with no set order only the end level or point - difficulty range between levels doesn't greatly increase

Ordered - you must complete one task to move onto the next and so on

Meta Puzzle - smaller puzzles give you a clue to solve the bigger puzzle, gives the player the sense of progression

How Should You Start?:

Enjoying the manipulation of  The Puzzle

Start them with the familiar - Introduce player to objects they can manipulate but do not alter the puzzle state

Specifying rules:

Making it clear what the player can or can not do in the game.

Building up Puzzles:

Make sense in the ordering of the difficulty of puzzles. Don't give the player a really difficult puzzle at the start because they wont do it then your game will fail.

Simplifying:

Example of simplifying - Making a puzzle about cars in a car parking space and you have to simplify the puzzle into its core component of the puzzle, getting the car and getting it out of the car park.

Editor:

Means you can quickly build and tweak a puzzle to test the puzzle components.

Level Design:

Start with a bang 

Teach techniques

Paint a picture 

Develop a theme

Scott Kim - What is a puzzle?

Scott Kim - full-time puzzle designer 1990 - present, Shufflebrain.

"puzzles are an important part of many electronic games" across all types of games and gaming platforms

What is a puzzle?

Random House Dictionary definition - "a toy or other contrivance designed to amuse by presenting difficulties to be solved by ingenuity or patient effort."

"A humorous but insightful definition is "a simple task with bad user interface""

Stan Isaacs - "1. a puzzle is fun. 2. and it has a right answer"

This defines a puzzle as a form of play but distinguishes puzzles from other forms of plays like games or toys.

Example of a puzzle Kim invented:

Is it Fun?

Puzzles enjoyability factors depend on the player entirely, as some people prefer visual challenges where other prefer word puzzles. Also some puzzles depend completely on the users knowledge i.e. chess puzzles because if you do not know how to play chess the challenge will be too great. Which means that all puzzles need to be created to a desired target market to ensure that only the target market are attracted to this puzzle. You get the point.

Does Kim's puzzle have a right answer?

With regards to this type of puzzle it is more so when the players are shown the right answer they agree that it is the best possible answer that can be given but is neither right or wrong.

Puzzles versus Games:

Chris Crawford - veteran game designer and author of Chris Crawford on Game Design states:

Designing Puzzles:

It took me a while to figure it out so i'll tell you its .... this will see if your reading my articles could you please comment the Answer to The Letter Puzzle

Many thanks again, hope you enjoy the reading, again some copy and pasting but i deemed it to be necessary.

-Dan 

Learning From The Masters

Level Design in The Legend of Zelda:
"The NES was the Wild West of game development, I thought, lawless and free... As it turns out i was totally wrong."


"I found an excellent primer in the fundamentals of non-linear game design."


Shigeru Miyamoto creator of The Legend of Zelda


What to look for when doing in depth analysis of game levels:

• "Level Flow. How do the spaces in the level fit together? Where is the player supposed to go, and will she know how to get there?
• Intensity Ramping. Does the intensity of the experience ramp up in a satisfying way? Do monsters get more difficult as the level goes on? Does the player get a chance to learn how the enemies work and then display her mastery later on?
• Variety. Is there sufficient variety in the game play? Do enemy encounters frequently repeat themselves? Are the spaces varied in interesting ways?
• Training. If the design requires new skills from the player, does it teach and test those skills appropriately?"

Level Flow - breakdown:

"First, I analysed the critical path. The critical path is the shortest path through a level without using secrets, shortcuts, or cheats. Basically, it's the path the designer intends the player to take through the level unless she gets really clever.

It's worth noting that the critical path often doesn't require a player to complete 100 percent of a level; it just requires her to complete the mandatory objectives within the level."

"The player begins in Room 1 and can choose to go to Room 2 or Room 3. Rooms off the critical path are faded.

Optional rooms (and sometimes entire paths) branch off from the critical path and reward the player with bonuses. The levels are also full of shortcuts that cut across the critical path. If the player has bombs, for example, she can skip from Room 5 to Room 8 in the above diagram."

Analysis:

"What I found out was that the Zelda development team was able to create the illusion of very open level design by using a few very clever tricks:

1. As I've mentioned, the critical path is almost entirely linear. This means that it's much easier for the player to find her way through the dungeon without getting hopelessly lost.
2. Rooms branching off of the critical path make the level feel less linear.
3. A small bit of room re-traversal at the beginning of the level makes the level feel less linear, but because it only includes a small number of rooms the player probably won't get lost.
4. Giving small, hidden shortcuts through the level allows the player to feel clever, and allows the designer to disguise the linearity of the level.

In short, the optional paths and shortcuts give the feeling of exploration, but the linear critical path means that as long as the player visits every room in a dungeon she should be able to find her way through....It would seem from analysing the flow that the level design strikes an excellent balance between giving the player the feeling of exploration and keeping them from getting too lost."

Intensity Ramping - breakdown:

When analysing intensity ramping you should generally look for these two things:

"

1. The enemy encounters should usually ramp up in difficulty over the course of the level.
2. No encounter should be repeated twice. This gives a greater variety, and also keeps the player constantly answering new questions as she goes through your level."

When looked at in the correct order, the enemy setups ramp up in difficulty well and never repeat.

Analysis:

"The monster sets and room layouts ramp up VERY clearly along the critical path.....Basically, it's clear that the design behind these encounters and their placements in the levels were intentional, subtle, and very well executed."

Variety:

Analysis: 

"One criticism I would lay, however, is that there might be TOO much monster variety. In the 10 rooms that contain monsters, the developers use six different types of monster and a boss. In most modern games, there would be fewer enemy types and the rooms would ramp in intensity by combining monster types together. For example, if the dungeon contained only Stalfos, Bats, and Moblins (and the boss, of course) some of the later rooms could contain all three types, and would be more difficult because of those combinations.

The game does this kind of mixing much more often in later levels, so it's hard to understand why the team wouldn't do it here. Perhaps technical constraints?"

Training - breakdown:

"Many AAA games were including training in their designs, but it seemed very rare on the NES.

Interestingly enough, the original Legend of Zelda does contain some training -- though it's much different than it is in modern games. In The Legend of Zelda, training is accomplished mainly by the "black rooms" where an NPC gives you a hint."

Not the most helpful of hints, unless you're playing the Japanese version.

"The Japanese version of this game the hints were different than the American version. For example, the Japanese version of the message in Level 1 tells you that you need money to shoot arrows. This is a much more useful bit of training."

Analysis:

"This finding surprised me more than the others. I remembered the black rooms, but I'd never considered them to be training, since they were fairly useless.

Once I found out about the translation issue, that all changed. It's clear that Miyamoto and his team were trying to guide the player, and to train them on important things they need to know.

The black room method was not very successful, which is why I think they eventually abandoned it in later games."

"What Did We Learn?

• It is possible to achieve the feel of non-linear level design by taking a linear path and adding short offshoots.
• Ramping encounters up along the critical path still allows you to have a good intensity ramp even if your level designs aren't all linear.
• Miyamoto and company intended to have training in the game, but it was excluded because of localisation errors.

I want to point out how awesome it is that they were making this stuff up back then. These Masters of Game Design discovered these tricks and built on them as time went by.

How fortunate we are, to be able to look back and learn from them"

Hey guys sorry for the amount of copying and pasting but i found yet again it the best and most efficient way to portray what the article was showing me, i believe it to be a very well written piece and if i can understand it then anyone can. As well as this i thought that if i had tried to translate what this article was showing me the ideas would probably become mixed and i didn't want to confuse you as i believe that this was a very good article and didn't need changing or tweaking by an amateur game designer as everything we needed was their, clear as day.

Happy Reading :)

Creating a simple level17/01/2012

My first lesson back and today we was told after reading through Ed Bryne's article, that we were going to attempt in pairs to create a simple level in a similar theme to his i.e. a puzzle, simple to understand, and with no prompt on how to complete the level the user had to be able to pick it up and play, much like last semester where we said if we haven't hooked the player within 15 seconds of picking the game up we would have failed.

Dale's and My idea:

Our idea  was a ninja that would jump from post to post to reach the end goal starting from the left of the screen and ending on the right. At the end of the level the player would have to chose out of 2 rings of fire to chose to jump through, one would go to the next level and the other back to the start. Also as well as jumping the player can swing from hooks that are strategically placed around the level.

To add more danger we also put obstacles at the top and bottom of the page that if touched would send the player back to the start.

The only goal of our game was to reach the end because your master is telling you that you mus train (like the incentive of the ringmaster in Bryne's article whom we never see but the incentive is there) and jump through the correct ring of fire which is simple, easy to use and understand and all of the aspects of the game where tied in to the theme of a ninja.

Once Rob had been round we established that we shouldn't tell the player your either wrong or right we should show them a brief insight into the correct way to finish the level. From this Rob showed us that if we did something simple like colour code the logs the ninja was jumping on and the rings of fire we could establish that the player would have to jump on the specific colours and jump through the corresponding hoop, either the same colour or through patterns thus making a game a puzzle rather than a game where the answers were already given to you at the start. 

Lastly we established that we shouldn't make it so the player controls the height and control over the way that they jump and swing as this becomes a game of skill rather than a puzzle, so we need to do some alterations to make the game more of a puzzle rather than a skill based game with puzzle elements. 

This is just a brief run through of my first lesson back and what we have done with our time.

-Dan 

Ed Bryne Building a Simple Level

This blog entry is an article from Ed Byrne which is describing the key components of level design.

Level  Design Building Blocks:
The basic components of a level or the building blocks are:

• Concept
• Environment to exist in
• Beginning
• Ending
• Goal
• Challenge to overcome between player and the goal
• Reward
• Way of handling failure

These are the basics of all games but with more advanced games like the next big block busting game they will just need more of these basic building blocks.

You need these to create a level "If any are missing, the level will almost be incomplete.You can have a great level with great flow, but if there's no challenge, it won't be fun at all."

With the original Tetris we can use the building blocks as a check list to see if they have the "basic requirements" of a game level.

"Concept: Find a place for the blocks or lose the level.

Environment: The active play area to the left of the game data.

Beginning: The player starts with an empty screen and a score of 0.

Ending: The level is over when the player either creates the correct number of vertical lines (success) or the blocks pile up to the top of the screen (failure).

Goal: Create a number of lines that meet the target requirement for success.

Challenge: The speed of descent, type of blocks, and number of lines needed.

Reward: The player moves to the next level, or receives a brief animated sequence.

Failure: The game ends and must be started from the beginning."

What About Story?:

""Shouldn't a game, and therefore its levels, also have a story?" Well, the simple answer is no-it's  not a fundamental requirement. A story can enhance a level and give the players information about what they are  expected to do, what they might need to avoid or seek out, and so on."

With chess you do not need a story as it can be played without the story of war and politics. Some games do not need background stories to be fun.

"Ideally, a level will to some degree allow the players to create a narrative as they play, even if it's just a series of personal achievements."

"A story does not need to be an epic to be entertaining."

Putting It All Together:

At this point in the article Byrne creates an example, simple level to demonstrate how they all work together. Here is what he said on each point directly from the article:

Above is the image showing how the seesaw element of the game would work. This in real life would break the seesaw but this is where the elements of gaming comes in to play as in game we can obviously do and get away with things that wouldn't happen in real life, this is called "Game Logic".

Useful terms that can be applied to this game:

Intrinsic knowledge:"Knowledge gained about the game from within the game itself" - Andrew Rollings and Ernest Adams on Game Design

Extrinsic knowledge: "Knowledge applied in the game but gained from another source, usually real life"

People use their extrinsic and intrinsic knowledge to accomplish challenges within the game, the knowledge of how a seesaw works gives the player the knowledge on how to achieve this goal of the game.

From this the game can also be more challenging by adding height factors as an example. See below.

The game is now set and ready to be played with no hints just the players intrinsic and extrinsic knowledge to guide him/her through.

I apologise for the amount of copy and pasting but i believed it the best way to show you what was said without copying out the whole chapter as the majority of the article was about the creation of the game Clownhunt, following the basic level design building blocks that Byrne established at the start of the chapter.

Overall i thought to be a good and enlightening read.

Don't Be A Vidiot - Greg Costikyan

What Computer game designers can learn from non-electronic games - Greg Costikyan
"Software is an enormously plastic medium. You can do almost anything with software."

Games that succeed best are normally games that are "truly novel."

If you "Green light another Command and Conquer clone, and it doesn't sell, well, nobody can really say you failed. A lot of Command and Conquer clones get published Some of them sell really well. Yours didn't hit the nerve. You're not likely to get fired. If you green-light something truly offbeat and it fails, you must be a fool. What could you have been thinking. Your job is on the line."

"Going with the flow and safe bet is easier"

"Game developers aren't aware of that an entire universe or weird and wacky gaming styles. Their own imaginations are constrained."

Game developers must read and understand wider contexts other than the field they are working in e.g. "Science Fictionoids" - Tom Disch

"If your sole experience of games were published within the last five years - your imagination will be constrained. You will see only what exists in the here and now, and you will naturally be inclined to ring the changes on the apparently possible, rather than exploring more interesting alternatives."

"You will be a "vidiot", a person whose sole understanding of games derives from video games."

"For more gaming styles have been explored in non-electronic media" because, if for no other reason, it's cheaper and I believe solely because of the technology of the time. The risk is less, meaning more creativity is shown.

Bot until the Greek's actually wrote plays and stories "attributable to individual authors" were plays and stories classed as art, but plays, stories and games have been around since man could communicate and define rules for the playing.

First attributable game = The Kings Game, 1780, a chess variant.

"The late 19th century also saw the first commercially - published board and card games - initially for use with folk games like chess, checkers and whist."

"The mass market industry, such as it, consists largely of old brand-name products that sells because everyone knows the titles; crap licensed from film and television; and kids games that are essentially brain-dead."

"The most interesting titles tend to be those aimed at adults"

German board game market is much, much greater than the U.S.

"Great basic model for online games. Relatively short play times, turn-based to minimise latency issues, short turn times, thoughtful decisions."

"English translations of many foreign board game rules can be found here www.gamecabinet.com."

Games don't need to be complex and sophisticated, a great humour factor can make a great game.

"These games, too, are important for online developers to study; they promote communication and debate among the players, and communication is what online is all about."

"Is there a way to give online gamers a way to give players an offline activity that supports the game and is enjoyable in it's own right but doesn't require them to consume bandwidth and consumer time."

"The attraction of the war game lies in mastering a complex and difficult, complicated tactical decisions to be made - exactly how to position your counters to deliver an attack of maximal effectiveness"

"Wargame is a treasure trove of systems design"

"real-time strategy games, in particular, need to study board wargames to learn that you can emphasize many, many different aspects of conflict in different games--it need not all be about building up crap and blowing up more crap. You can emphasize lines of supply, fog of war, combined arms, maneuver, formation, the quality of commanders, the importance of artillery and air power, morale, home-front production, even the willingness of the civilian population to sustain a war. You just need different systems to emphasize different things."

D+D even though "initially had a crap set of rules, it sparked off popularity in this genre of game as it had a great novel background and became a cult hit. It was a form of partisaptory fiction. And the very open-ended nature of the game was exhilarating too."

"The poor quality of rules was perversely an open invitation to creativity as well"

"G.U.R.P.S, an ugly acronym for "Generic Universal Role Playing System," a base set of rules with supplements extending the rules set for all different kinds of different genres, worlds, and role playing environments - another quickly imitated approach."

"Role playing is officially cool"

"An exceptions game has a very simple, limited rules set; but some game components have additional rules printed on them that alter, modify, or break the basic rules. As a result, they can be quite complicated when viewed in toto, but are quite simple to learn in the first instance. "

"The literal game is, of course, you against another player with a deck, and what happens over the table. The meta-game is what occurs beforehand: the purchase of cards, the construction of a deck of cards that support and interact with each other in interesting ways, the trading of cards with other players, and the interaction among a group of gamers that leads players to build decks precisely to take down the decks of other players in the group, and so on."

Live Action Role Playing - LARPS

"The point here is that the dividing line between theatre and role playing  can be blurred - and thinking about how to blur it further, and how, for instance, to import theatrical techniques into a graphical MUD, may be a fruitful avenue of exploration."

"If the universe of gaming is filled with so many diverse styles, why is computer gaming stuck in such a rut? Lets see some imagination, guys!"

Jacob Davenport - Writing Game Rules

Sorry again, but I have yet another small blog entry here as the article was yet another small piece so I will share the whole article with you.


Writing Game Rules

Why This Is Important

When someone tries out your game, they first must read the rules you have written. If they are poorly written, even if your game is great, the players will be frustrated. Your game lives or dies on the strength of the written rules. The rules create an early impression for the players, and poorly written rules will sour them on your game. Game reviewers often will not play a game with poorly written rules, and even if they do they will mention the shortcoming in their review. The owner of your game will have a hard time finding new players to play the game if the rules are too difficult to read. Good writing is important even in the early stages: playtesters do not like to read badly written rules before they test your game. Taking time to write your rules well may even illuminate ways to redesign the game to be better.

Fundamental Qualities

The three fundamental qualities of good explanatory writing are clarity, brevity, and completeness. It is very difficult to achieve all three of these conflicting qualities. Everything extraneous to the rules must be stripped out, leaving only words and pictures that help teach the game. Unless it helps the players learn the game, do not mix in humor, history of the game design, extra information about the scenario, or anything else. If you really want something extra to appear, perhaps it could be in a side bar that can clearly be skipped by the players who just want to read the rules. But if it can be skipped, why would you waste the ink on it? You are done when there is nothing left to be removed.

Order of Explanation

Give your players information in the order they need to know it. First your rules should start with a summary of the game, or the metaphor that this game represents. This is the context in which all the rules will fit in. When done well, the rules make cohesive sense, and experienced game players may even be able to predict what the rules will be based on the summary. Usually the objective of the game follows. It directs the play of the game, and players can understand how the subsequent rules will help or hinder in achieving their objective. The rules that follow should build on this foundation.

Avoid leaving the reader in suspense. Do not talk about a game mechanic that you have not yet explained.

Use white space and lists to organize the rules, so that related rules are close together on the page. Bullet points help clarify where one idea starts and another ends, and which ones are subsets of others.

Reading Aloud

When done correctly, one person will be able to read your rules aloud to the other players, and then they may begin playing. If someone has to read the rules and then "translate" them for the group, you have failed to write the rules well. Read your own rules aloud to yourself and to others. White space and bullet points help the reader have correct cadence and pauses for reflection and digestion of each new idea.

When you teach a game to someone in person, you will have a dialog with them as they ask questions about the game. Well-written rules will anticipate those questions and answer them as the player thinks of them. Reading your rules aloud to people helps bring out these common questions, and helps you order your rules correctly.

Clarifications

Often examples help, especially one with a diagram. Have your examples in italics, so that players who understand the rule just explained can skip them, but players who need help can read them. This simulates the extra discussion that is required with some players.

There may be extra clarifications that the players will need, but they may need it infrequently. This information should be referenced later in the rules, perhaps with a note at the appropriate spot that the information is at the end. This will give the players the most important information immediately, with the ability to check on a specific problem later. This division helps get the players ready to play the game sooner, while still remaining complete.

Review

The best way to know if your rules are correctly written is to have them reviewed by someone else. You are too close to your own game and writing to know if you have done a good job. Solicit harsh and honest feedback, without which you cannot improve your writing. Get people who do not know anything about your game to read the rules aloud to other people who do not know anything about your game. Take notes on any confusion they have. Have the courage to rewrite your rules completely when it seems necessary, or even just to try out a different tact. The more people who review and comment on your rules, the better your rules will be.

Finishing

Resist the urge to print your rules in an interesting font, even if it fits the setting. Make your rules as legible as possible. If a reference card or page would help, include it in a place that is easy to get to. Consider how the rules will be used, if they will be read once and set aside or frequently examined. Wherever possible, get input from other people about these issues, because it is other people, not you, who need these rules. With frequent revision, consideration, and rewriting, your game will shine through and be as accessible as possible to new players.

Thanks again and I hope you enjoyed the article.

J.Seigel (2007) How to write rules (without confusing people)

Hello there I am going to be honest. I have read the article but as this article was so short I thought I may as well share the whole article with you.


How to Write rules (Without confusing people)

This desperately needs to be the topic of a GDC session. It doesn’t apply to most digital games, but it’s indispensable in analogue game design, and a valuable communication skill in general.

The rules of a game are the most important aspect to convey to a player. In non-digital games, if the rules are not understood, the game can not be played.

It’s important to write rules that leave no stone unturned; a player shouldn’t be questioning what something means, or unsure of how to interpret something (unless, of course, the ambiguity is intended). At the same time, brevity is key, and no player wants to read a tome every time they play a new game. The writing — the designing — of the rules is as crucial to the play experience as the design of the game itself.

I’ve been writing a lot of rules lately, interspersed with some digital design docs that will probably go nowhere. Regardless, the intersection of the two has given me some new insight into the creative process. Here are a few tips for writing clear, cohesive rules.

1.       Flavor first: If the game has a narrative tying the mechanics together, make that narrative clear immediately. The metaphors will be helpful in explaining and justifying the game’s logic and mechanics.

2.      Get the boring stuff out of the way: List the materials needed for the game next, followed by any pre-game instructions for setting up. If it gets wordy or over-complicated, slim it down and add an illustration or two to help explain.

3.      Begin with the end: The first rule you should give the players is the winning condition of the game. Tell them what their objective is. From a logical standpoint, all the other rules serve the winning condition, and will make more sense when described with regards to it. It also makes it easier for players to find when they forget how to win.

4.      Go from general to specific: Think of it like newspaper journalism, or an inverted pyramid. After the objective, describe the broad, overarching rules before describing the instances and exceptions. If it’s Mille Bornes, explain placing mile cards before you explain the hazards and remedies, explain the hazards and remedies before you explain the safety cards, and explain the safety cards before you explain the coup fourré‘s. Another way of saying this would be to explain the things that happen most often in a game first, and the things least likely to happen in a game last.

5.      Tell players what they can do, before telling them what they can’t: Somewhat related to the previous point, you should always explain the least constricting rules before explaining the most constricting. Rules explained earlier therefore become the primary rules, and the rules following are the instances and exceptions where the primary rules change or don’t apply.

In addition to these rules, remember to use short sentences with low-level vocabulary. When necessary, use illustrations (sometimes nothing beats a good drawing).

White space is also crucial. A page full of text looks intimidating. Use bullet points and short paragraphs to keep the reader/player from getting overwhelmed.

Finally, don’t be afraid to be friendly! Unless it’s entirely antithetical to the style of your game, use a light-hearted tone with your rules. I’m slowly learning that seriousness isn’t exactly a staple of this industry. When the purpose of a product is to be fun, then describing it should be fun as well.

 I hope you enjoyed the article, many thanks.

Richard A. Bartle: Players who suit MUD'S

Multi-user Domain/Dimension


2 playing styles; action versus interaction, and world orientated versus.

Mud's labelled as either"social" or "Gamelike"

"Most Mud's trace their lineage directly back to Trubshaw's 1978 game (Bartle 1990; Burka, 1995) and, perhaps because of this heritage, the vast majority are regarded as "games" by their "players""

"Mud's can be of considerable value in non-game (i.e. serious) applications"

"are Mud's:
Games like chess, tennis?
Pastimes like reading, gardening or cooking?
Sports?
Entertainment?
Or a combination of all four?"

Fours things players of Mud's enjoy:
"1) achievement within the game context
2) exploration of the game
3) socialising with others
4) Imposition upon others. Players use the tools provided by the game distress to (or to help) other players"

Labels of four player types:

Achievers, explorers, socialisers and killers

"Many (if not most) players have a primal style" but drift between all four styles, to chance their style or to increase their primary styles level.

If too many of one type dominate the game then others will leave making a domino effect of other player types leaving the game.

It is difficult to get a sort of statues quo where all player types can get along and play together.

Interest graph (lines represent source of players interest in a Mud)


"The game world is just a setting like the characters that make it more compelling"

If Muds are made biased to one player types through the mechanics then the game isn't a Mud any more as it needs a piece of each player type to be a Mud.

Players - "when all sense of elsewhere presence is lost you no longer have a Mud"
World - "if there's no one to tell, or no way to tell them, you don't have a Mud"
Interacting - "If players can't play, it's not a Mud"
Acting - "Without depth, you have no Mud"

Programming = Nature of Mud

Admin = Nature of a Mud

"Ways to emphasize players over world:
add more communication facilities
add more player-on-player commands
make communication facilities easy and intuitive
decrease size of the world
increase connectivity between rooms
maximise the numbers of simultaneous players
restrict building privileges to a select few"
cut down on the number of mobiles

Ways to emphasize world over players:
have only basic communication facilities
have few ways that players can do things to others
make building facilities easy and intuitive
maximise the size of the world
use only "rationale" room connections in most cases
grant building privileges to many
have lots of mobiles

Ways to emphasize interacting over acting:
make help facilities produce vague information
produce cryptic hints when players appear stuck
maximise the effects of commands (i.e. add depth)
lower the rewards for achievements
have only a shallow level/class system
produce amusing responses to amusing commands
edit all non descriptions for consistent atmosphere
limit the number of commands available in any one area
have lots of small puzzles that can be easily solved
allow builders add completely new commands

Ways to emphasize acting over interacting:
provide a game manual
include auto map facilities
include auto log facilities
raise the awards for achievement
have an extensive level/class system
make commands to be applicable where ever they might reasonably have meaning
have large puzzles that take over an hour to complete
have many commands relating to fights
only allow building by top quality builders"

"These strategies can be used to encourage or discourage different styles of play"

These should be used to get new players only to enhance or not the current players

"Denial of history is not, in general, a wise thing to do"

"These major factors distinguish a Mud from and adventure style computer game:
a Mud is not goal orientated
a Mud is not extensible from within
a Mud generally has more than one user connected at a time"

This rules out Amy Bruckman's theory that Mud's are a type of adventure game.

"Dynamics:
To increase number of achievers:
reduce number of killers, but not too much
if killer numbers are high, increase numbers of explorers.

To decrease number of achievers:
increase number of killers
if killer numbers are low, reduce number of explorers

To increase number of explorers:
increase number of explorers (as no one really attacks them)

To decrease numbers of explorers:
massively increase the number of killers

To increase number of socialisers:
slightly decrease number of killers

To decrease number of socialisers:
slightly increase number of killers
massively increase number of achievers
massively decrease number of explorers
decrease number of socialisers

To increase number of killers:
increase number of achievers
massively decrease number of explorers
increase number of socialisers

To decrease number of killers:
decrease number of achievers
massively increase number of explorers
decrease number of socialisers"

The following diagram shows the flow of player influence

                

                + <------------ +

                - <------------ -

        killers + ------------> - achievers

        - + + - - ------------> +

        ^ ^ | |  -  + ++        ++  --

        | | | |  ^  ^   \       /   /

        | | | |  |   \    \   /   /

        | | | |   \    \    X   /

        | | | |     \    \/   X

        | | | |       \ /  \/   \

        | | | |       / \ /  \    \

        | | | |     /   / \    \    \

        | | | |   /   /     \    \    \

        | | | |  |  /         \    \   |

        | | v v  v v            \   |  v

        - + --++ - -             ++ -- -

        socialisers               explorers

        + -     - +               +     +

        ^ ^     | |               ^     |

        | |     | |               |     |

         \ \___/ /                 \___/

           \___/

"Game-like" Muds are the ones of which the killer - achiever equilibrium has been reached

"social" Muds are the ones in which the pure social-stability point has been reached"

"all-round" Muds, which exhibits both social and game - like traits.

Overbalancing a Mud:

"Tilting a Mud towards achievers would make it obsessed with game play"

"Tilting towards explorers would add depth and interest, but remove much of the activity"

"Tilting towards socialisers removes all game play and centres on communication"

"Tilting towards killers is more difficult because this type of player is parasitic on the other three types" Make it a shoot-em-up style game.

If something is added to tilt a Mud one way a counter balance must be added to equal out the Mud's player types.

"So long as a system is a (text based) multi-user-virtual world, that's enough." To be a Mud.

So "are Mud's:

Games like chess, tennis? Yes
Pastimes like reading, gardening or cooking? Yes
Sports? Yes
Entertainment? Yes
Or a combination of all four? Yes"

Brenda Braithwaite: Elements of Strategic Skill

Elements of Strategic Skill
The Role of skill in games:
"At it's heart , a good game is a series of interesting decisions - go right or go left, build an offensive or defensive unit, figure out what your unit should do next. The success of decisions  - whether a mental or physical reaction - is a measure of player skill."

Magic circle - When we fall into the game, film, book and fall into that world.

Games are better at drawing us into the "magic circle" as they "have a stronger pull because they integrate players and their decisions into the experience." Whereas books and films you are just viewing the experience.

"Flow." Is an optimal play state and one designers work hard to achieve.

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi - Psychologist and noted researcher who come up with "flow"

Types of Decisions:
Obvious Decisions:
In cases where obvious decisions are key it can make the game boring, if the player has choice but not choices over the consequences it is boring after a while I.e. roll a 4 and move 4 spaces, then pay the other player who owns that space in Monopoly is tedious and boring.

To make things more entertaining the more trivial decisions sometimes get removed, an example of this is in older RPG's where the player would have to choose to rest and eat for a turn to gain HP and stamina, nowadays this is changed so that they automatically refill to make the game more fun so the player can focus on the more interesting decisions.

Meaningless Decisions:
"The only thing more frustrating than a choice with an obvious right answer is a choice with no right or wrong answer."

"If decisions are interesting because they affect the outcome of a game, then meaningless decisions are not interesting because they don't affect anything." Meaning this gives to players the illusion that they are influencing the game making them feel more involved.

Blind Decisions:
Blind decisions are where the player makes a decision on something important but with no basis on their choice, it is only important once the choices have been revealed or that game state has finished. For example in Roulette "The decision is not obvious, because it's not clear ahead of time what the correct number is" It's not a meaningless decisions as the fame outcome is affected by it, either the player wins or loses their hard earned cash. It's not an "interesting decision. because the player has no information to base her choice on" But the game is still drawing because of the gamble the players take.

Trade-offs:
"A trade-off happens when a player doesn't have enough resources to accomplish all of his goals."
If one choice is better than another the choice is obvious.
"A game is called balanced if the choices are weighted so that their is no single best method that always wins"

Basically when a player has to decide between a selection of objects for example or which path to take. Each one has their own pros and cons, this makes the decisions more interesting for the player as they are not always weighted or balanced as mentioned above, so thought is needed when making a trade-off.

Dilemmas:
"Similar to a trade-off, but occurs when all choices will harm player in some way."

Golden Balls is a great example of a dilemma as at the end the players have to make a choice without knowing the others answer, if they co-operate they split the winnings but if they are both greedy they get nothing and if one "steals" and the other "splits" the person who stole gets all the winnings.

Risk Versus Reward Trade-offs:
"A form of trade-off, a risk versus reward trade-off happens when the player finds herself faced with a situation that has multiple outcomes, but whose level of risk is different. It's not so much a question of "which one of these things do I want" but rather "Am I willing to risk it all for a potentially huge pay-off... or death?""

Frequency or Anticipation of Decisions:
If decisions are thrown at the player every second the player will become frustrated, unless the decisions are such of games like The Sims where the player makes their own goals.
In reverse to this not having enough decisions can be boring for the player, but having them spread out can entice the player making them want to play on, building more drama and tension within the game.

Trade-off Mechanics:
"A trade-off puts the players in a situation where they must choose between things. In order to keep their money, they can't have the armour they have their eye on. Designers use a variety of mechanics to put players in this situation.


Auctions
Purchases
Limited use Special Abilities
Dynamic limited use special abilities ("by varying the strength of special abilities based on space, time, location or some other factor, the strategic nature of the decision is amplified")
Explicit Choices (giving the player pros and cons of each choice)
Trading and Negotiating"