Emily Care Boss, is a professional in forestry, and a trail blazer in indie game design. She has done something that nobody before her has really done well; that is to make not one but, three rpgs about love and relationships with the Romance Trilogy. To be clear, there have been attempts all the way back to the hoary days of 1980's D&D to gamify sex, with tables to randomly define brothels, types of prostitutes, tables for physical assets, and chances of as well as effects of pregnancy on characters. Other games have dealt with it in their own systems, and whole manuals have been made to bring every deviant and perverse activity to your simulationist gaming table. Boss, has (I like to think) burned all of them down by actually making love and relationships the thing the mechanics are about and making the gamified porn irrelevant.
Why does this matter? Aside from the fact that it is a really innovative piece of creative art in gaming by demonstrating clever ways to solve a problem (what to do when you don't want to murder-hobo), she demonstrates that another problem (why aren't there more women in gaming?) might be solved by appealing to other realms of human experience.
I really love the kind of output by the indie game community, because, while I was on a gaming hiatus during the years of the Forge, I nonetheless was on my lonesome trying to puzzle out other ways of telling stories through games, and asking questions; how could I get past the grind of die rolling in a fight to get to what the meaning of the fight was narratively? How could I get to the grit of risk without having to deal with pages (and many procedural minutes) of consulting tables? How could I make the psychological, social, and spiritual harm of a life of murder-hoboing have real meaning in the game? How could I make the flaws of a character something that the player did not compete against, but relish to season a story? My questions have multiplied since my fairly recent resurgence into gaming, and the questions and stories are more interesting than ever.
But the flip side of the indie community is the repellent and overwhelming commitment by so many of the designers that I really respect creatively, to the leftist political dogmas of "social justice". In fact, it is so common that, I have often felt (*gasp!*) marginalized, or triggered by the unquestioning rhetoric and invective that flies just because I don't agree with the intellectual premises upon which those views rest. That merely questioning them has made one of the most prominent indie designers go from calling me "my friend" to a fascist "nincompoop", and a civil question to another whose games I really love leading to a near hysterical screed about ignorance and hate on my part demonstrates, and yet a third from one of my favorite games continuously demonstrating the very definition of prejudice, racism, and sexism while virtue signalling and demanding that racism, sexism, and prejudice stop makes it clear to me that the indie community is far from being the tolerant safe space that it insists it is.
It really came as a wake up call when while regularly participating in a G+ community, I saw someone who clumsily but not hatefully questioned how realistic it was for a wheelchair bound individual to be the chief engineer on a submarine in a game setting that included lots of dangerous physical risk. It was a question that seemed to me to be mostly a matter of not injecting a little creative story crafting on the part of player and GM, and I really had nothing to say to it. It however quickly invited a dog-pile on the person who asked as a hateful, intolerant, and privileged jerk. Two... only two people bothered to actually address the question intelligently and thoughtfully. One to simply ask why people couldn't just let the fiction allow for that, and just let everybody have the fun they wanted. The other was a woman and an engineer who proceeded to discuss how it might be achieved from a technical perspective. She did not resort to name calling or accusations. The questioner (a very active and regular poster of many amiable discussions) ended up being banned from the community, and the record of the thread deleted entirely. This is exactly the sort of revisionism and heavy handed, echo chamber dogma that the game community does not need.
This dogma is rooted the fashionably left handed theory of intersectionality which some know about and many do not. One wonders... if you are "woke" but don't know it... are you just really dreaming? And if you are aware of the issues as described but question their analysis or demonstrate problems in their assumptions that the advocates deny, are you actually more woke than them? If they demand that you endorse an issue even when the facts are against them, is this actually just an effort to socially put you to sleep so that you can become part of their nightmare? And if questioning, no matter how civil, is prejudicially assumed to be an assault worthy of summary exile, can we even really call it tolerance anymore?
But I digress...
I think it is great that Emily Care Boss has created new ways to play stories. What I question is the assumption that she is a shining figure against the oppression of privilege under the dreadful history of (numerically majority) white males in the hobby of gaming. Was the very cool Mike Pondsmith of Cyberpunk 2020 fame oppressed because he was not a white guy back in 1988 (or before that with his earlier games)? I think not. I think that the truth might be found in a different narrative...
D&D came out of miniatures war gaming. This was a hobby with a long tradition in drawing rooms throughout western Europe (not to be too obvious, but racially mostly white) in the century following the Napoleonic era. War has been, until very recently in the age of increasingly remote warfare, largely conducted by males. As such, miniatures war gaming in the west is probably most likely to have been a practice of white males. I suspect that it was of significantly less interest to non-white non-males because it was not so immediately connected to the activity that those other people might be conceivably doing (fighting wars). As such, culturally I daresay that Gary Gygax (a white guy by no choice of his own) living in mid-west America (demographically mostly white) just happened to be interested in zooming in on the stories of individuals on those miniature war game battlefields. Did his race matter? I doubt it... but maybe his social awkwardness that made him prefer indoor war gaming to outdoor team sports did. Had he been from a very wealthy family, perhaps we would not have had D&D because he might have taken up yachting, or collecting Feraris instead. But as a middle class, middle American nerd, he and his friends invented D&D, and other nerds like Greg Stafford brought us other worlds. Numerically, there have always been more white people, so the odds are that there would be more chances of a white person inventing D&D. The fore mentioned Mike Pondsmith, obviously puts paid to the notion that gaming was for white people and took his interest in Japanese anime as well as science fiction, and made a game that has gone on to this day. I don't see him whining about being oppressed.
What I see is a hobby that has begun to refine into an art form, that is barely over four decades old in human history. Leftist thinking is long on empathy, but short on depth in time...
Why has it escaped the left handed thinkers of the indie game community that it is in fact girls who have been role playing as a hobby since time immemorial? The men who took their boyhood imagination with them as adults like Gygax and Stafford, did so perhaps because they were the vestigial ends of a tradition of human warfare, who had less social or athletic prowess than intellectual and imaginative. That many other kinds of people followed that creativity just is. So why have there been fewer girls joining the gaming community in the past or designing games? Maybe because they already were... in different ways. Maybe it took three decades to show us the ends of one way of story telling to raise the question of how to really start asking different questions about how to make games. I believe that Emily Care Boss was one of the original leaders in the Forge, and has a fair bit of status as a designer having been critical in the development of indie thinking. Is she more oppressed, or more privileged? Or is that a stupid question? If one happens not to care for playing an rpg about falling in love, does that make them an oppressive person? Or is it only oppressive to not want to play that game if you happen to be of a particular race or sex, and exercising free agency if you are the other race or sex?
Does Emily Care Boss make interesting, cool, and fun games? That is, I would argue, a better question. I don't care that Emily Care Boss is a female any more than I care that Mike Pondsmith is not white if what I want to do is play a game about love or one about street samurai.
Games should be judged on the merit of the design, not on the color of the designer's skin. Social justice (double-speak by any other name) does not help that.
Showing posts with label game design. Show all posts
Showing posts with label game design. Show all posts
24 January, 2018
19 January, 2018
Essential Elements for Stable Civilizations
My single longest game design project has been political.
That is to say, that since 1993, morphing through three different game systems, and seeking inspiration from many others, I have been seeking to make a game about civilizations and politics in order to make it possible to more easily wrap my head around why people (as groups) do what they do. Certainly, all the standard adventure, mystery, and horror stories that have informed my gaming across those years has held my interest. Hero stories are, I believe, essential to inspire living a rich and full life. But heroes do not exist in a vacuum. They live connected to societies, and though they may end up not quite belonging because of their experiences, they are heroes because of what they have sacrificed for their societies. The cowboy, the ronin, the knight errant... these are the essential characters that societies can neither live without, nor allow to live within them. But I am also interested in the drama of humanity, and it is the interplay between societies that has in many ways fueled academic and personal study of history, geography, and culture.
Most of my political reading is poured after the fact into the stew of my game design brain. I am really just trying to make thought models to understand and communicate ideas like serious political scientists, anthropologists, and historians... I just want to have fun with it too.
That said, one of the issues that has simmered over time, is the foundational question:
What is essential to make a group of people draw together and become a cohesive society?
Having revised and revised this list, and pared down continuously over time, I think that the following has sufficiently held up as a rubric in my brain to warrant a formal list (bum, buuumm!).
1) Language
2) Race
3) Religion (or Worldview)
4) Culture
5) Social Structure
6) Strong Government
These are all elements that draw groups of people together, and they go from the most cohesive element to the least. They feed or draw from the other elements up and down the chain, and for every element missing, the society is weaker. From a game design standpoint, they might be viewed as the thing that holds the place of hit points for a society, as they make the society resilient.
Language
This one is the foundation for the rest, since a society that cannot broadly and effectively communicate with itself will fall apart in confusion. Those who have resources (material or immaterial) and know how to speak the language will be able to get things done while those who cannot speak the language will at best be isolated and left to whatever comforts their resources can provide. Thus it is essential that a society be able to speak together from bottom to top and across any functional divisions.
Race
This is the most paradoxical element, being both extremely superficial and at the same time a critically instinctual marker that identifies who is part of the group from who is not. In very basic biological terms, the human animal is distinguished by physical traits of size, shape, and coloration that in simple terms are what we call "race". Those traits provide an easy marker for who is related and who is not, and therefore who is safe and who might not be. As such, this is an element that on it's own, is perhaps the most ingrained to the human animal for bringing together a society. However, as human interaction between races blurs lines, other elements make this potentially a very superficial element if there are explicit mitigating factors to make it so. But lacking those other elements, race is an extremely powerful force for pulling societies into distinct, cohesive groups.
Religion (or Worldview)
This is a powerful element because given the fundamental ability to communicate, the worldview of the society provides the basic thought framework for the beliefs and values the society holds. What they believe to be true and good informs behavior of the individual and the social pressure to reinforce it. The most basic type of worldview is now and has been Religion in one form or another, and this has been the most durable, since religion not only answers where we come from and where we are going also what it all means. Non-religious worldviews have also existed (e.g. communism/Communism) and held together states even when they have not done so as durably as ancient and still extant religions. However, unlike language or race, worldviews may cross groups and provide a unifying force where the others are lacking. I would suggest that lacking the language to communicate however, two groups with a like worldview are more likely to separate for more practical reasons, namely the inability to work out basic things like how to conduct trade among persons, or when one can go to the well.
Culture
This covers the day to day practices that are not necessarily explicitly and exclusively covered under the purview of another element and includes, at least, such things as the clothing, the food, the music, the art, the traditions, and the holidays that a society holds. There is clearly overlap with Religion here, but many things (like chord structure in music) are not addressed in moral or theistic terms, but nonetheless matter to identifying a culture. and culture is very much influenced by it's geography (Polynesians lack the iron culture that the ancient Persians had, but were consummate navigators). I suggest however, that culture is primarily about the hundred comfortable, familiar things that are shared by groups in common which act as a unifying force. Without them, a society has to work harder to come together.
Social Structure
This is about the organization of roles within a society that make it run smoothly as a unit. Who has authority and responsibility over the activity, procedures, and production required to make a large group function over time. It is concerned first with horizontal social relationships, and second with vertical relationships in the society. This element, like race, is a two sided issue and can be either unifying or divisive since it has built into it who has material and social resources. Furthermore, it also overlaps with religion and culture, with those potentially informing roles and responsibilities. If this element is not strong, and the society members feel it is an unfair social structure, then it becomes a liability. Note that a broad range of social structures is possible, and can well include everything from a very egalitarian society in which everyone has some authority in social decisions and shares similar wealth levels, all the way to extremely stratified societies in which a single ruler possesses 90% of the wealth and legal authority over the masses of the rest. If the individuals of the society perceive that their needs are being met, social structure can be highly diverse. Conversely, human nature can corrupt the most idealistic social structure if the people give in to their baser instincts.
Strong Government
A fair bit of overlap exists between the government and the social structure, but this is distinguished by a narrower function. While social structure is primarily horizontal, this is mostly vertical, and has little necessary relationship with the other elements. It is unlikely to be sufficient alone to maintain a lasting society, but may act where a vacuum exists in another area. It is about defined authority from the top, not about assumed or understood social contracts, and is enforced by the sword tacitly or directly. In concert with the other elements of society where they are strong, this is a far less necessary element, but where they are weak, this can act as a unifying force even if it is a unity woven of fear, desperation, and defeat.
Using this set as a touchstone, I have been able to see how the pursuit of or eschewing of each of these elements has strengthened or weakened societies that I have studied in history or observe in today's news. While not a perfect, or all encompassing model, it is nonetheless a model I have found to be consistently accurate in the broad strokes.
Seeing that, I am working on how to use it to create verisimilitude for the political game I have been looking for for decades.
HERE is my current thinking in action.
That is to say, that since 1993, morphing through three different game systems, and seeking inspiration from many others, I have been seeking to make a game about civilizations and politics in order to make it possible to more easily wrap my head around why people (as groups) do what they do. Certainly, all the standard adventure, mystery, and horror stories that have informed my gaming across those years has held my interest. Hero stories are, I believe, essential to inspire living a rich and full life. But heroes do not exist in a vacuum. They live connected to societies, and though they may end up not quite belonging because of their experiences, they are heroes because of what they have sacrificed for their societies. The cowboy, the ronin, the knight errant... these are the essential characters that societies can neither live without, nor allow to live within them. But I am also interested in the drama of humanity, and it is the interplay between societies that has in many ways fueled academic and personal study of history, geography, and culture.
Most of my political reading is poured after the fact into the stew of my game design brain. I am really just trying to make thought models to understand and communicate ideas like serious political scientists, anthropologists, and historians... I just want to have fun with it too.
That said, one of the issues that has simmered over time, is the foundational question:
What is essential to make a group of people draw together and become a cohesive society?
Having revised and revised this list, and pared down continuously over time, I think that the following has sufficiently held up as a rubric in my brain to warrant a formal list (bum, buuumm!).
1) Language
2) Race
3) Religion (or Worldview)
4) Culture
5) Social Structure
6) Strong Government
These are all elements that draw groups of people together, and they go from the most cohesive element to the least. They feed or draw from the other elements up and down the chain, and for every element missing, the society is weaker. From a game design standpoint, they might be viewed as the thing that holds the place of hit points for a society, as they make the society resilient.
Language
This one is the foundation for the rest, since a society that cannot broadly and effectively communicate with itself will fall apart in confusion. Those who have resources (material or immaterial) and know how to speak the language will be able to get things done while those who cannot speak the language will at best be isolated and left to whatever comforts their resources can provide. Thus it is essential that a society be able to speak together from bottom to top and across any functional divisions.
Race
This is the most paradoxical element, being both extremely superficial and at the same time a critically instinctual marker that identifies who is part of the group from who is not. In very basic biological terms, the human animal is distinguished by physical traits of size, shape, and coloration that in simple terms are what we call "race". Those traits provide an easy marker for who is related and who is not, and therefore who is safe and who might not be. As such, this is an element that on it's own, is perhaps the most ingrained to the human animal for bringing together a society. However, as human interaction between races blurs lines, other elements make this potentially a very superficial element if there are explicit mitigating factors to make it so. But lacking those other elements, race is an extremely powerful force for pulling societies into distinct, cohesive groups.
Religion (or Worldview)
This is a powerful element because given the fundamental ability to communicate, the worldview of the society provides the basic thought framework for the beliefs and values the society holds. What they believe to be true and good informs behavior of the individual and the social pressure to reinforce it. The most basic type of worldview is now and has been Religion in one form or another, and this has been the most durable, since religion not only answers where we come from and where we are going also what it all means. Non-religious worldviews have also existed (e.g. communism/Communism) and held together states even when they have not done so as durably as ancient and still extant religions. However, unlike language or race, worldviews may cross groups and provide a unifying force where the others are lacking. I would suggest that lacking the language to communicate however, two groups with a like worldview are more likely to separate for more practical reasons, namely the inability to work out basic things like how to conduct trade among persons, or when one can go to the well.
Culture
This covers the day to day practices that are not necessarily explicitly and exclusively covered under the purview of another element and includes, at least, such things as the clothing, the food, the music, the art, the traditions, and the holidays that a society holds. There is clearly overlap with Religion here, but many things (like chord structure in music) are not addressed in moral or theistic terms, but nonetheless matter to identifying a culture. and culture is very much influenced by it's geography (Polynesians lack the iron culture that the ancient Persians had, but were consummate navigators). I suggest however, that culture is primarily about the hundred comfortable, familiar things that are shared by groups in common which act as a unifying force. Without them, a society has to work harder to come together.
Social Structure
This is about the organization of roles within a society that make it run smoothly as a unit. Who has authority and responsibility over the activity, procedures, and production required to make a large group function over time. It is concerned first with horizontal social relationships, and second with vertical relationships in the society. This element, like race, is a two sided issue and can be either unifying or divisive since it has built into it who has material and social resources. Furthermore, it also overlaps with religion and culture, with those potentially informing roles and responsibilities. If this element is not strong, and the society members feel it is an unfair social structure, then it becomes a liability. Note that a broad range of social structures is possible, and can well include everything from a very egalitarian society in which everyone has some authority in social decisions and shares similar wealth levels, all the way to extremely stratified societies in which a single ruler possesses 90% of the wealth and legal authority over the masses of the rest. If the individuals of the society perceive that their needs are being met, social structure can be highly diverse. Conversely, human nature can corrupt the most idealistic social structure if the people give in to their baser instincts.
Strong Government
A fair bit of overlap exists between the government and the social structure, but this is distinguished by a narrower function. While social structure is primarily horizontal, this is mostly vertical, and has little necessary relationship with the other elements. It is unlikely to be sufficient alone to maintain a lasting society, but may act where a vacuum exists in another area. It is about defined authority from the top, not about assumed or understood social contracts, and is enforced by the sword tacitly or directly. In concert with the other elements of society where they are strong, this is a far less necessary element, but where they are weak, this can act as a unifying force even if it is a unity woven of fear, desperation, and defeat.
Using this set as a touchstone, I have been able to see how the pursuit of or eschewing of each of these elements has strengthened or weakened societies that I have studied in history or observe in today's news. While not a perfect, or all encompassing model, it is nonetheless a model I have found to be consistently accurate in the broad strokes.
Seeing that, I am working on how to use it to create verisimilitude for the political game I have been looking for for decades.
HERE is my current thinking in action.
07 December, 2017
Story Before vs. Story Now
HERE is a (now long in the tooth) essay by Ron Edwards that came from much discussion from active days of The Forge.
Alas... those years of my life were days when I really didn't have time for gaming, and so missed the exciting ferment that led to the indie renaissance. *sigh*. It is not fun being behind the curve as a wanna-be designer.
Short version: "Story Before" is plot first and then roll in characters that fit the plot. "Story Now" is the characters acting as protagonists create the plot.
Alas... those years of my life were days when I really didn't have time for gaming, and so missed the exciting ferment that led to the indie renaissance. *sigh*. It is not fun being behind the curve as a wanna-be designer.
Short version: "Story Before" is plot first and then roll in characters that fit the plot. "Story Now" is the characters acting as protagonists create the plot.
01 August, 2017
Game Chef 2017
HERE is my submission (with the indispensable help of my creative partner) for Game Chef 2017. The theme was Borders, with Yarn, Smoke, Cut, and Echo as the ingredients.
We thought through several ideas, and we tried to think through making an area control game about shifting borders between countries or factions with yarn for the borders, but it proved to be too wonky for the time we had in development. We also spit-balled another game that I hope we can get written and posted before it goes cold, called Wake. Like many of the 70 odd games submitted, it also included death as the border, and used stories for the element of yarn. The idea was that we would be telling stories about the same character with ritual spoken responses (echo) to commemorate various events in the life of a character who'd died. Each story would be shaped by an emotion, possibly by a randomly drawn length of yarn corresponding to that emotion. After the story, and after the spoken ritual, the yarn would be burned. We liked the idea as a way of building characters in reverse.
I liked that the judges sent each contestant four other games for peer review, and from those one nomination for the winning entry. One of my reviews was for a LARP about friendship growing distant, that, while impeccably written was not a game that I would want to play. The one I nominated was a game about characters resolving issues through the lens of hallucinations that has a Walter Mitty sort of vibe. The other two games included two more awkward games. The first, a competitive one that is meant to be a competitive one that would work better as a story telling game with other players adding constraining elements. The second game was very slim, and more awkward still with mechanics and information that drove exactly nothing in the game, while thematically being about a breakup. All in all, not a fun game.
It was good to compete and complete a challenging creative project. This is my second competition submission (the last being last years 200 rpg challenge). Gotta push through and get busy!
We thought through several ideas, and we tried to think through making an area control game about shifting borders between countries or factions with yarn for the borders, but it proved to be too wonky for the time we had in development. We also spit-balled another game that I hope we can get written and posted before it goes cold, called Wake. Like many of the 70 odd games submitted, it also included death as the border, and used stories for the element of yarn. The idea was that we would be telling stories about the same character with ritual spoken responses (echo) to commemorate various events in the life of a character who'd died. Each story would be shaped by an emotion, possibly by a randomly drawn length of yarn corresponding to that emotion. After the story, and after the spoken ritual, the yarn would be burned. We liked the idea as a way of building characters in reverse.
I liked that the judges sent each contestant four other games for peer review, and from those one nomination for the winning entry. One of my reviews was for a LARP about friendship growing distant, that, while impeccably written was not a game that I would want to play. The one I nominated was a game about characters resolving issues through the lens of hallucinations that has a Walter Mitty sort of vibe. The other two games included two more awkward games. The first, a competitive one that is meant to be a competitive one that would work better as a story telling game with other players adding constraining elements. The second game was very slim, and more awkward still with mechanics and information that drove exactly nothing in the game, while thematically being about a breakup. All in all, not a fun game.
It was good to compete and complete a challenging creative project. This is my second competition submission (the last being last years 200 rpg challenge). Gotta push through and get busy!
12 July, 2017
Hacks to The Quiet Year
After playing The Quiet Year a little more, I have a couple observations that the table made for those games.
1) The contempt tokens, as written, were mechanically irrelevant. They only slightly mattered to the fiction.
2) Scarce and abundant resources are likewise mechanically irrelevant. They too only slightly mattered to the fiction.
These are the house rules to The Quiet Year that my table now uses.
1) Contempt Tokens
These are an interesting idea, and as written, they are meant to introduce interpersonal / political conflict into the narrative of the community. I think this is a good idea, but the problem, is that in every case, used as written, my table has found them lacking in punch. You drop contempt on a project on the map? Good for you. Have a cookie and we will just go on with what we were doing.
Our Hack
We decided that when a Contempt token is placed on any project on the map, that project pauses and cannot continue to completion until the Contempt is resolved in the fiction. What we found this does, is escalate the conflict and demand stronger factional commitment. A resolution must be made, and the factions fight harder for what they want. This can be by violence, or by bargaining with another project, but it does accelerate the story.
2) Resources
This is also a game about scarcity in the wake of a war. The problem, is that after initially stating the scarcity or abundance of these things, they cease to matter. Clean drinking water has been declared scarce? The first round of play may introduce a distilling project, but after that, it might well be forgotten, or even if it somehow does not get completed, or gets destroyed, there seems to be no real impact on the subsequent events if it is not addressed again later in the game.
Our Hack
At the beginning of each player's turn, a cost or complication must be addressed related to one scarce resource. A cost might add one to the count down dice for a project as it is slowed down, or a complication might be the loss of a character or thing in the fiction due to the scarcity of the resource. If, for instance, drinking water is scarce, if a well is not dug to get it, building a new wall around the village will take longer as everyone struggles with thirst. By making this a rule at the start of each player's turn, it forces the community to have to confront it more aggressively, and put those scarcity problems more fully into play from the outset.
1) The contempt tokens, as written, were mechanically irrelevant. They only slightly mattered to the fiction.
2) Scarce and abundant resources are likewise mechanically irrelevant. They too only slightly mattered to the fiction.
These are the house rules to The Quiet Year that my table now uses.
1) Contempt Tokens
These are an interesting idea, and as written, they are meant to introduce interpersonal / political conflict into the narrative of the community. I think this is a good idea, but the problem, is that in every case, used as written, my table has found them lacking in punch. You drop contempt on a project on the map? Good for you. Have a cookie and we will just go on with what we were doing.
Our Hack
We decided that when a Contempt token is placed on any project on the map, that project pauses and cannot continue to completion until the Contempt is resolved in the fiction. What we found this does, is escalate the conflict and demand stronger factional commitment. A resolution must be made, and the factions fight harder for what they want. This can be by violence, or by bargaining with another project, but it does accelerate the story.
2) Resources
This is also a game about scarcity in the wake of a war. The problem, is that after initially stating the scarcity or abundance of these things, they cease to matter. Clean drinking water has been declared scarce? The first round of play may introduce a distilling project, but after that, it might well be forgotten, or even if it somehow does not get completed, or gets destroyed, there seems to be no real impact on the subsequent events if it is not addressed again later in the game.
Our Hack
At the beginning of each player's turn, a cost or complication must be addressed related to one scarce resource. A cost might add one to the count down dice for a project as it is slowed down, or a complication might be the loss of a character or thing in the fiction due to the scarcity of the resource. If, for instance, drinking water is scarce, if a well is not dug to get it, building a new wall around the village will take longer as everyone struggles with thirst. By making this a rule at the start of each player's turn, it forces the community to have to confront it more aggressively, and put those scarcity problems more fully into play from the outset.
14 November, 2016
Video Games are Boring
...according to THIS writer who has had a career in video game design. She has some interesting thoughts.
The things that stood out to me are these:
Common reasons people don't like video games because:
1) they are not interested in stimulation or conflict
2) because they lack depth (unlike books or films)
3) they don't identify with the characters or the setting
4) they just. Don't. Care. About. Realistic graphics, physics, or action.
What would entice non-gamers is:
1) taste (and preferred aesthetic)
2) depth
3) exploring who a character is in context to other characters and their situation
She talks about the idea of making games that reveal things about life and humanity. This may often be impossible if the behavior that the game rewards and punishes funnels choices toward simple adrenaline fueled action over and over.
The things that stood out to me are these:
Common reasons people don't like video games because:
1) they are not interested in stimulation or conflict
2) because they lack depth (unlike books or films)
3) they don't identify with the characters or the setting
4) they just. Don't. Care. About. Realistic graphics, physics, or action.
What would entice non-gamers is:
1) taste (and preferred aesthetic)
2) depth
3) exploring who a character is in context to other characters and their situation
She talks about the idea of making games that reveal things about life and humanity. This may often be impossible if the behavior that the game rewards and punishes funnels choices toward simple adrenaline fueled action over and over.
Kishotenketsu: Japanese Narrative Structure
So I have read about this narrative form before, in brief, but have not really dug into it. HERE is a really interesting article about the form.
In brief, the Western three act structure essentially has the following form (with many small variations):
Act I Act II Act III
Introduce the characters Protagonist tries to resolve conflict Protagonist confronts problem
Introduce the problem Complications ensue Climax - success or failure
Incite conflict Conflict escalates Resolution of story
Western narratives have for a couple centuries become more and more concerned with the motivation of the protagonist, and also the antagonist. The conflicting motivations between antagonist and protagonist - who is going to ultimately get what they want - is what drives the story.
Kishotenketsu, on the other hand, has a four act structure, and the story is not driven so much by motivation of antagonist and protagonist, but rather from cause and effect. It is not about what the characters want, but rather about what they do. This according to the article, is rooted in the influence of Buddhism, which is all about eschewing desire. The structure is thus:
Ki - introduction to characters and their situation
Sho - development of relationships between characters and events in the setting
Ten - the twist or complication which introduces new characters, events, or relationships to the story
Ketsu - the resolution in which the twist is explained in relation to the development and resolved
That shift in thinking about story - not what the characters want that conflicts, but what they do which leads to a consequence (good or bad). This may very well leave some strong ambiguity to the characters, but by this Japanese paradigm, that is perfectly OK. What is important, is the emphasis on the parable of the story. In this regard, they much more resemble one of Aesop's Fables. Why did the scorpion sting the fox who took it across the river? Because that is what scorpions do. The Ten is particularly interesting, as it takes the same story, but examines it from a different point of view. It may almost be as if a whole new story has begun, with little or no explanation, with a new protagonist or point of view character (there may not be a protagonist in the traditional Western literary sense, since the POV character might not even be moving the story forward so much as reacting to events). It is in the Ketsu that the connections are explained.
HERE is an interesting article talking about using this narrative form to provide structure to stories in games. It has me thinking about aspects in fate that are all explicitly things that the characters do rather than something that tells us about their motivations or wants.
In brief, the Western three act structure essentially has the following form (with many small variations):
Act I Act II Act III
Introduce the characters Protagonist tries to resolve conflict Protagonist confronts problem
Introduce the problem Complications ensue Climax - success or failure
Incite conflict Conflict escalates Resolution of story
Western narratives have for a couple centuries become more and more concerned with the motivation of the protagonist, and also the antagonist. The conflicting motivations between antagonist and protagonist - who is going to ultimately get what they want - is what drives the story.
Kishotenketsu, on the other hand, has a four act structure, and the story is not driven so much by motivation of antagonist and protagonist, but rather from cause and effect. It is not about what the characters want, but rather about what they do. This according to the article, is rooted in the influence of Buddhism, which is all about eschewing desire. The structure is thus:
Ki - introduction to characters and their situation
Sho - development of relationships between characters and events in the setting
Ten - the twist or complication which introduces new characters, events, or relationships to the story
Ketsu - the resolution in which the twist is explained in relation to the development and resolved
That shift in thinking about story - not what the characters want that conflicts, but what they do which leads to a consequence (good or bad). This may very well leave some strong ambiguity to the characters, but by this Japanese paradigm, that is perfectly OK. What is important, is the emphasis on the parable of the story. In this regard, they much more resemble one of Aesop's Fables. Why did the scorpion sting the fox who took it across the river? Because that is what scorpions do. The Ten is particularly interesting, as it takes the same story, but examines it from a different point of view. It may almost be as if a whole new story has begun, with little or no explanation, with a new protagonist or point of view character (there may not be a protagonist in the traditional Western literary sense, since the POV character might not even be moving the story forward so much as reacting to events). It is in the Ketsu that the connections are explained.
HERE is an interesting article talking about using this narrative form to provide structure to stories in games. It has me thinking about aspects in fate that are all explicitly things that the characters do rather than something that tells us about their motivations or wants.
09 November, 2016
Religion and Magic in Fate
I would agree wholeheartedly that in too many games (and the novels that they inspire) magic feels very mechanical and technological. I would argue that magic in games is most interesting when it is designed not according to a paradigm of physics and engineering, but from religion and symbolism... not the mechanistic but the anthropologic direction (as magical thinking actually did). This is certainly disputable by players of a more engineering bent who prefer a less ambiguous way of including magic in games, but each to their own.
So the designer questions for game magic commonly include
Design Questions
*1) why would I want to be anything but a magic user?*
*2) what can you do with magic?*
*3) what can you NOT do with magic?*
These are useful, but I think more engineering type questions for designing an RPG magic system. I'm going to swipe and modify a different list of questions (credit to Jared Sorenson as due) to take magic away from a mechanistic paradigm, and back into a more mythopoeic paradigm. The narrativist focus from indi games is certainly more at the front than the gamist approach from so many other games with ODD DNA.
Alternate Design Questions
*1) what is magic about?*
*2) how do I reflect that in this game?*
*3) what behavior does magic reward and punish?*
My aesthetic is largely influenced by texts older than a century and a half, or by modern studies of still existing pre-industrial cultures or practices kept discrete from the industrialized world. When I look at texts that describe magic uninformed by modern mechanistic thinking, a few things stand out to me:
Observations
*1) magic is highly related to religion, but is not the same*
*2) with magic, size is (mostly) irrelevant*
*3) the prime driver of magic is not energy but rather meaning*
*4) pursuant to 3, symbolic connections are what shape magic effects; principles of sympathy and contagion explain this*
*5) magic goes against the natural order, as defined by the powers of the world
So I am going to offer a very loose answer to your question of preferred flavors of magic and how it affects characters in the game world with those assumptions in mind.
Why would anyone be anything but a magic user in this game? I answer this by answering the question of what magic is about. I assume a world in which people are not ambivalent about the notion that they are but small things in a much larger and more powerful world with more powerful and willful agents behind that world (gods, spirits, devils, etc.). The forces are constrained by their natures, and are powerful, but not omnipotent, omnipresent, or omniscient. The priests who commit their lives to understanding these forces are most adept at interacting and negotiating with them. A priest invokes the gods through the legitimately proscribed rituals to get an expected result.
A magician however, may make use of the understanding of the nature and power of the gods, but without regard to the morally proscribed invocation of that power. In actual history, very often cultures would separate what they did locally as legitimate because it was locally appropriate to their gods, but what the other folk beyond the mountains did was magic. Even in their own societies, those who practiced something heterodox from normal ritual were considered sorcerers rather than priests. So here is my answer to question 1 from the first two lists above:
_1) Magic is about an individual (i.e. player characters) invoking a desired outcome through a transaction with the greater powers behind the world. As such, it is potentially more powerful than any outcome that a mortal could achieve alone. On the other hand, this is a power that requires a great investment in years of discipline, study, sacrifice, and service to acquire, and as such, precludes the participation in or acquisition of other kinds of knowledge, experience, or ability that other characters might have. Furthermore, there are obligations to the powers that be that other characters do not have to observe_
In Fate mechanical terms, I would say that means that a magician must commit aspects, stunts, and/or skills in order to have access to magic. The level of power determines how much investment of other mechanical elements it costs for access. This is of course mostly the assumption taken already.
My answer to question 2 from the first two lists above is this:
_2) Magic can potentially do anything, from innocuous charms to repel mosquitoes or light campfires, to awesome effects like summoning a plague to devour the crops in a village or raising a tempest against the enemy fleet in the channel. The cost depends on what is sacrificed in the magical transaction. Effects in the interest of the powers are more readily achieved.
Rituals using symbolic connections to the powers are performed in order to accomplish the invocation of the power. The more symbolic connections, and the more strongly symbolic they are, the more powerful the effect._
In Fate mechanical terms, the cost does _not_ have any specific limitation on number of uses per day, or slots, or cost in manna pool or fatigue as the common price for using magic; magic is not powered like a battery. The amount of energy to burn down a castle is of no more import than that to light a candle where the powers behind the world are concerned. What does matter is the _significance_ of the action. Lighting a candle is of little significance to anyone but the user of the candle. Burning down a city is highly significant to thousands. As such, while a magician may very well be able to burn down a city, the magician will bear the burden of finding a way to pay for the loss of property and lives of thousands. The cost may be a year of the magician's life for every life taken... or the blood sacrifice of no less than a king or queen to rain fire down on the city.
How to judge lesser effects? I would offer that rituals are performed to establish the strength or legitimacy of the invocation, and each symbolic connection between the effect, and the subject/object of the effect increases efficacy. Size or value of the components (material, verbal, somatic, focal) is only as significant as they are in the heart and mind of the magician. For example, if an aspect or stunt is dedicated to a magic staff, or the power of the magician's voice, that thing should be more potent (say a +3 when used). Otherwise performing rituals are essentially a challenge series of creating advantages to make significance of the objects used. You want to raise a storm to wreck a ship; your breath blown ritually over a bowl of sea water is two elements. Your breath might be of a basic similarity to wind, while sea water in the bowl is more powerfully symbolic of the sea itself. If you collected the spray of a breaching whale (the Breath of the Leviathan) that is in itself worth a bonus as both wind and the water of the sea, and thus worth more.
Need to work more on writing up the details, but there is the concept.
So the designer questions for game magic commonly include
Design Questions
*1) why would I want to be anything but a magic user?*
*2) what can you do with magic?*
*3) what can you NOT do with magic?*
These are useful, but I think more engineering type questions for designing an RPG magic system. I'm going to swipe and modify a different list of questions (credit to Jared Sorenson as due) to take magic away from a mechanistic paradigm, and back into a more mythopoeic paradigm. The narrativist focus from indi games is certainly more at the front than the gamist approach from so many other games with ODD DNA.
Alternate Design Questions
*1) what is magic about?*
*2) how do I reflect that in this game?*
*3) what behavior does magic reward and punish?*
My aesthetic is largely influenced by texts older than a century and a half, or by modern studies of still existing pre-industrial cultures or practices kept discrete from the industrialized world. When I look at texts that describe magic uninformed by modern mechanistic thinking, a few things stand out to me:
Observations
*1) magic is highly related to religion, but is not the same*
*2) with magic, size is (mostly) irrelevant*
*3) the prime driver of magic is not energy but rather meaning*
*4) pursuant to 3, symbolic connections are what shape magic effects; principles of sympathy and contagion explain this*
*5) magic goes against the natural order, as defined by the powers of the world
So I am going to offer a very loose answer to your question of preferred flavors of magic and how it affects characters in the game world with those assumptions in mind.
Why would anyone be anything but a magic user in this game? I answer this by answering the question of what magic is about. I assume a world in which people are not ambivalent about the notion that they are but small things in a much larger and more powerful world with more powerful and willful agents behind that world (gods, spirits, devils, etc.). The forces are constrained by their natures, and are powerful, but not omnipotent, omnipresent, or omniscient. The priests who commit their lives to understanding these forces are most adept at interacting and negotiating with them. A priest invokes the gods through the legitimately proscribed rituals to get an expected result.
A magician however, may make use of the understanding of the nature and power of the gods, but without regard to the morally proscribed invocation of that power. In actual history, very often cultures would separate what they did locally as legitimate because it was locally appropriate to their gods, but what the other folk beyond the mountains did was magic. Even in their own societies, those who practiced something heterodox from normal ritual were considered sorcerers rather than priests. So here is my answer to question 1 from the first two lists above:
_1) Magic is about an individual (i.e. player characters) invoking a desired outcome through a transaction with the greater powers behind the world. As such, it is potentially more powerful than any outcome that a mortal could achieve alone. On the other hand, this is a power that requires a great investment in years of discipline, study, sacrifice, and service to acquire, and as such, precludes the participation in or acquisition of other kinds of knowledge, experience, or ability that other characters might have. Furthermore, there are obligations to the powers that be that other characters do not have to observe_
In Fate mechanical terms, I would say that means that a magician must commit aspects, stunts, and/or skills in order to have access to magic. The level of power determines how much investment of other mechanical elements it costs for access. This is of course mostly the assumption taken already.
My answer to question 2 from the first two lists above is this:
_2) Magic can potentially do anything, from innocuous charms to repel mosquitoes or light campfires, to awesome effects like summoning a plague to devour the crops in a village or raising a tempest against the enemy fleet in the channel. The cost depends on what is sacrificed in the magical transaction. Effects in the interest of the powers are more readily achieved.
Rituals using symbolic connections to the powers are performed in order to accomplish the invocation of the power. The more symbolic connections, and the more strongly symbolic they are, the more powerful the effect._
In Fate mechanical terms, the cost does _not_ have any specific limitation on number of uses per day, or slots, or cost in manna pool or fatigue as the common price for using magic; magic is not powered like a battery. The amount of energy to burn down a castle is of no more import than that to light a candle where the powers behind the world are concerned. What does matter is the _significance_ of the action. Lighting a candle is of little significance to anyone but the user of the candle. Burning down a city is highly significant to thousands. As such, while a magician may very well be able to burn down a city, the magician will bear the burden of finding a way to pay for the loss of property and lives of thousands. The cost may be a year of the magician's life for every life taken... or the blood sacrifice of no less than a king or queen to rain fire down on the city.
How to judge lesser effects? I would offer that rituals are performed to establish the strength or legitimacy of the invocation, and each symbolic connection between the effect, and the subject/object of the effect increases efficacy. Size or value of the components (material, verbal, somatic, focal) is only as significant as they are in the heart and mind of the magician. For example, if an aspect or stunt is dedicated to a magic staff, or the power of the magician's voice, that thing should be more potent (say a +3 when used). Otherwise performing rituals are essentially a challenge series of creating advantages to make significance of the objects used. You want to raise a storm to wreck a ship; your breath blown ritually over a bowl of sea water is two elements. Your breath might be of a basic similarity to wind, while sea water in the bowl is more powerfully symbolic of the sea itself. If you collected the spray of a breaching whale (the Breath of the Leviathan) that is in itself worth a bonus as both wind and the water of the sea, and thus worth more.
Need to work more on writing up the details, but there is the concept.
21 October, 2016
Man Against Nature in Fate
In an interesting discussion on G+ Fate Core page, the question of how to "fight the environment" came up. The setting in question is a zombie apocalypse world, and after some discussion, here is my take on a man vs. nature (or un-nature) challenge.
I'm a fan of Zombie fiction like Dawn of the Dead, World War Z (book not movie_) or The Walking Dead not because the zombies are the villain (they are pretty boring for that) but because a zombie apocalypse strips us naked and forces us to confront inexorable death with grace and humanity, or with savagery and terror...
Of course the zombies of the apocalypse are part of the environment, as often as they are directly an opponent, properly done.
Consequences are a mechanic that supports us understanding what the cost of our choices successful or not, is in the fiction. As such, I would argue that the zombies themselves, as a practically endless horde, make consequences a moot issue.
Stress is about the near misses or the things that could have cost us but didn't. It's alternatively a way to pace conflicts, but as a pacing mechanism without consequences or the ability to take out the opposition, is no different than scoring successes in a challenge or a contest. So mechanically, again I would say stress for the zombie horde itself is a moot issue.
It makes more sense to address the horde part of the apocalyptic environment as an obstacle to be overcome, and that you can create advantages on. An advantage you create mechanically may be "Hacking the Horde to Bits" with your chainsaw in the fiction; your Zombies! approach vs. the player's Fight skill. Likewise, PCs can create an advantage like "rickety barricades" with the Twinkie shelf and the ice cream freezer mechanically, which in the fiction prevents you from using your Zombies! approach till you have overcome their barricade. That all works out neatly mechanically with little fuss, and reflects the fiction perfectly. The Brick can still do all the fighty stuff while the Brainiac does the crafty stuff, and it would just be as created advantages mechanically even though in the fiction it would be hacking the zombies to bits with garden tools while the other is fixing the car.
MURRAY'S FULL SERVICE AUTO STATION
Aspects:
Decrepit Zombie-Infested Gas Station
Broken Glass And Debris
Collapsing Veranda Roof
Scene Goal/Murray's: Hinder and Devour the Living
Scene Goal/PCs (Pick One):
Scavenge fuel (3 victories) - Applicable Skills: Notice, Investigate, Survival, Crafts, Drive. Tasks: Find gas can and siphon; find a vehicle with fuel, siphon fuel.
Scavenge a working vehicle (5 victories) - Applicable Skills: Notice, Investigate, Survival, Drive. Tasks: Find vehicle keys; Find matching vehicle; Scavenge Fuel (as above).
Scavenge a part to fix a vehicle (7 victories) - Notice, Investigate, Survival, Crafts, Drive. Tasks: Find needed part; remove broken part; replace part; scavenge fuel (as above).
Zones: Behind the Service Station; In the Service Bays; In the Convenience Store; In Front of The Service Station
Skills/Approaches:
- Zombies! (+4): Can Overcome, Create advantages, Attack, and Defend. The behave like Romero Zombies, slow, mindless, tireless, hungry.
- Hazards (+3): can attack and defend. This is strictly reactive, and cannot create advantages or overcome, but can harm or hinder direct actions by characters who move through, or interact with the environment (other than zombies).
- Notice (+2): Can overcome, discover (CAA), or defend. This assumes the area has active agents to notice things - e.g. the endless hordes of Zombies. You use this to make active agents (zombies) become aware of characters.
- Scarcity (+2): Can create advantages, and overcome. This represents the lack of, or requirement to have to improvise for characters to find the resources they need. You use this defend against character's attempts to find things they need.
Stunts:
- No Straight Paths: Murray's gains a +2 to Defend with Hazards when Heroes move from one Zone to another to Attack.
- Wake The Dead: adds +1 to Zombie! for one scene on a successful create an advantage roll with Notice when and if loud noise, bright lights, or recklessly obvious movement draws attention in Murray's. Yes it starts small, but is open ended as a zombie horde grows. Reckless parties could find themselves in a sea of hungry dead...
- That's Not The Item You're Looking For: Murray's has a +2 to Scarcity when creating the advantage That's Not The Item You're Looking For after the Heroes think they have found the item they were searching for.
Game of Death - an October Challenge Game, Mostly About Punching
http://dcugames.blogspot.com/2016/10/game-of-death-first-draft.html
This is the first completed game for my October challenge. The month is two thirds done, and I have learned that it is very hard business to try to create a game a day. I might try again in a more modest form with a game idea seed a day next time... we'll see.
But here it is, a complete, but simple game. It uses a decreasing resource management mechanic, with two different die resolution mechanics used in a hybrid tandem; a die pool for gaining successes, and a die target number mechanic for determining binary pass/fail success.
Having put it out unplaytested, it is sure to have problems that need to be addressed, but it should be fun (though brutal).
I have about half a dozen other half done ideas to choose from next. Hopefully, I can get the rest out by the end of month!
This is the first completed game for my October challenge. The month is two thirds done, and I have learned that it is very hard business to try to create a game a day. I might try again in a more modest form with a game idea seed a day next time... we'll see.
But here it is, a complete, but simple game. It uses a decreasing resource management mechanic, with two different die resolution mechanics used in a hybrid tandem; a die pool for gaining successes, and a die target number mechanic for determining binary pass/fail success.
Having put it out unplaytested, it is sure to have problems that need to be addressed, but it should be fun (though brutal).
I have about half a dozen other half done ideas to choose from next. Hopefully, I can get the rest out by the end of month!
04 October, 2016
Rewards Schemes In Game Psychology
Was reading about a study that measured results of performance based on intrinsic and extrinsic reward schemes HERE.
The short of it is this...
People were relatively happy to solve puzzles for free because of intrinsic motivators.
Adding an external motivator (cash payments) increased how many puzzles they solved. Yay!
Subsequently taking that extrinsic motivator away tanked their motivation and reduced their performance to less than it was originally. Boo!
Offering an external reward and then taking it away is sometimes worse than never offering it in the fist place. It’s something psychologists call “the overjustification effect” and it has been found in various other studies as well.
Whether an external reward will trigger the overjustification effect depends on a few things. The person must be intrinsically motivated to start with, then she must start receiving an external reward that gradually takes center stage in her mind. It also helps if the external reward comes at first as a surprise.
Another factor that’s important is whether the external motivator is seen as controlling and even manipulative rather than simply informational. It matters if a game tells you “Hey you aren’t playing right if you don’t aim for this achievement.” That’s controlling and hurts intrinsic motivation. But if it tells you “Hey, you’ve been doing your thing and that earned you this achievement” that’s informational and should increase intrinsic motivation.
The short of it is this...
People were relatively happy to solve puzzles for free because of intrinsic motivators.
Adding an external motivator (cash payments) increased how many puzzles they solved. Yay!
Subsequently taking that extrinsic motivator away tanked their motivation and reduced their performance to less than it was originally. Boo!
Offering an external reward and then taking it away is sometimes worse than never offering it in the fist place. It’s something psychologists call “the overjustification effect” and it has been found in various other studies as well.
Whether an external reward will trigger the overjustification effect depends on a few things. The person must be intrinsically motivated to start with, then she must start receiving an external reward that gradually takes center stage in her mind. It also helps if the external reward comes at first as a surprise.
Another factor that’s important is whether the external motivator is seen as controlling and even manipulative rather than simply informational. It matters if a game tells you “Hey you aren’t playing right if you don’t aim for this achievement.” That’s controlling and hurts intrinsic motivation. But if it tells you “Hey, you’ve been doing your thing and that earned you this achievement” that’s informational and should increase intrinsic motivation.
01 October, 2016
Art And Fear
Some years back, I read the book The Artist's Way, which is a program for creativity through writing discipline. It was useful to me a couple run throughs, and one of the key points is that creativity comes from the discipline of just writing... good or bad... every day.
I read Art and Fear more recently, and the authors related a story about a college art class in which the professor split the students into two groups. The first he would grade on one project alone for the whole semester, but it had to be completely perfect in every way. The other group he graded solely on quantity; they had to produce something every day, even if it turned out terrible. What the professor found is that even though the second group produced a lot of crap, they also produced as a group, the best work by the end of the semester, even though the other group was expected to.
That is something that I find helpful if I can hold on to it.
I am going to try to set a challenge for myself with that idea in mind.
It is October.
For this month, my goal is to try to write a mini game every day. I will give myself the leeway to go back to previous games or previous ideas and re-skin them, or re-imagine them if something really interesting comes to mind, but the point is to try by virtue of quantity, to find something good in the lot... to capture creative inspiration hiding in the clutter.
We'll see how this goes!
I read Art and Fear more recently, and the authors related a story about a college art class in which the professor split the students into two groups. The first he would grade on one project alone for the whole semester, but it had to be completely perfect in every way. The other group he graded solely on quantity; they had to produce something every day, even if it turned out terrible. What the professor found is that even though the second group produced a lot of crap, they also produced as a group, the best work by the end of the semester, even though the other group was expected to.
That is something that I find helpful if I can hold on to it.
I am going to try to set a challenge for myself with that idea in mind.
It is October.
For this month, my goal is to try to write a mini game every day. I will give myself the leeway to go back to previous games or previous ideas and re-skin them, or re-imagine them if something really interesting comes to mind, but the point is to try by virtue of quantity, to find something good in the lot... to capture creative inspiration hiding in the clutter.
We'll see how this goes!
23 September, 2016
Flow Theory And Game Design Questions
Flow theory postulates three conditions that have to be met to achieve a flow state:
1) One must be involved in an activity with a clear set of goals and progress. This adds direction and structure to the task.
2) The task at hand must have clear and immediate feedback. This helps the person negotiate any changing demands and allows them to adjust their performance to maintain the flow state.
3) One must have a good balance between the perceived challenges of the task at hand and their own perceived skills. One must have confidence in one's ability to complete the task at hand.
1) One must be involved in an activity with a clear set of goals and progress. This adds direction and structure to the task.
2) The task at hand must have clear and immediate feedback. This helps the person negotiate any changing demands and allows them to adjust their performance to maintain the flow state.
3) One must have a good balance between the perceived challenges of the task at hand and their own perceived skills. One must have confidence in one's ability to complete the task at hand.
Jared Sorensen's three questions for design are:
1) What is my game about?
2) How does my game do that?
3) What behaviors does my game reward and punish?
I think Flow Theory really intersects with #3 a lot. That is the kicker.
There is an interesting essay on Flow HERE.
In it, is an interesting example of using Flow for a really innocuous purpose: picking shoes.
1) What is my game about?
2) How does my game do that?
3) What behaviors does my game reward and punish?
I think Flow Theory really intersects with #3 a lot. That is the kicker.
There is an interesting essay on Flow HERE.
In it, is an interesting example of using Flow for a really innocuous purpose: picking shoes.
So the loop goes from: challenge >> opportunity to act >> feedback >> new opportunity to act.
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