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"
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