It is a book about games, after all.
It's hard to talk
about creating immersion in games without addressing the most primary emotional experience that people seek out through games: a sense of play and fun.
This chapter addresses techniques of creating fun in games, and explores ways game designers might build upon this knowledge, in order to continue to create fun for this and future generations.
In the beginning was the Game, and the Game was good. And the Great Game Designer looked down upon the game and said, “Let There Be Fun.”
And lo, from near and far, both the young and the wrinkled timidly put down their school books and their briefcases. Hesitantly, they walked out of the shadows and approached the Great Console, which was the altar of the Great Game Designer.
They moved the joystick, and they felt joy. And lo, they were so elated and so emboldened that they then dared to demand that no one ever used the expression “And lo” again, as it sounded far too corny.
And lo, no one ever did. And fun reigned. But then a new desire swept across the land. With one voice, both the young and wrinkled begged the Great Game Designer, “How can we have even more fun?”
The Great Game designer felt pity for his flock, and also a desire to perfect his creation, as well as a desire to add a multitude of zeros unto the Great Number in his bank account.
So the Great Game Designer sent me an email asking for one last chapter on fun, and I said, “Sure, I'll take a whack at it.”
So here goes. But I must admit I had some help.
At one of the GDCs, I had the good fortune to attend a two-day workshop on “Game Tuning.” Small groups were given exercises in game design that really challenged long-ossified neural pathways.
To give credit where it's due, the very bright and generous leaders of the workshop were, in alphabetical order, Robert Fermier, Austin Grossman, Robin Hunicke, Frank Lantz, Marc LeBlanc, Andrew Leker, Art Min, Tim Stellmach, and Eric Zimmerman.
I won't reprise all the interesting challenges the workshop leaders set up for the attending group, but I do want to acknowledge them in particular for actually trying to provide a categorization of different ways of having fun, and for doing quite a respectable job. I've expanded somewhat upon their system, and I thank them for their good work.
Here's a list of types of fun. While the list isn't exhaustive, it does cover a number of the bases. Which of these forms of fun does your game use? Could your game benefit from drawing upon other ways of having fun as well?
Combat, including:
Being part of a squad
Melee battles
Aiming, targeting, shooting
Mixing and matching: spells, weapons, defenses, fighting moves, choice of spirits you can summon, attack strategies, etc.
Complicated attacks that include multi-step attacks[1]
Multiple ways of accomplishing the same task
Turn-based moves with an opponent
Simultaneous moves against an opponent
Territorial acquisition
Using scripted sequences to change mission direction and add surprising twists, such as being attacked unexpectedly
Sneaking and hiding, including camouflage, stealing hard-to-procure items, and code-breaking
Other forms of combat-related gameplay, including making and breaking alliances, negotiations and betrayal, bluffing, or commanding a number of NPCs.
Different forms of travel:
Walking
Running
Bike riding
Driving (in different kinds of vehicles)
Flying (in different kinds of vehicles)
Traveling over or under the water (in different kinds of vehicles)
Swimming
Snowboarding
Skateboarding
Kinetic thrills and competitions, including racing, stunts, and other kinds of kinetic excitement (as in the Spider-Man game)
Sports
Being God—building and managing cities, armies, ecologies, including resource management
The preceding, in a visually compelling environment, whether pleasant, strange, or frightening
Collecting and putting together sets of items
Torturing (what you do with your Sims is your business)
Asymmetric powers (when different roles have different powers and abilities)
Self expression
Building a network (like in Tic Tac Toe)
Taboo thrills—running over pedestrians, barbecuing French poodles, and such[2]
Building machines (including cars)
Superhuman abilities
Narrative/story/drama
Humor (many different types)
Bartering
Changing the actual landscape or buildings in the game you're playing
Training an NPC to do what you tell it
Balance
Solving puzzles
Keeping pets, worshipers, or other NPCs alive.
Dice, cards, etc. to create semi-randomly generated actions
Dancing
Role playing
Single paths
Multi-paths
Nonlinear structure
Emergent gameplay
Choosing what side to play (good or evil, for example)
Timed missions
Mini-games (games within a game) of all kinds
Socializing
In Chapter 2.15, “Emotionally Complex Moments and Situations Techniques,” I discussed incongruence as a way of creating an emotionally complex moment. In Chapter 2.18, “World Induction Techniques,” I made reference to some of the powers of incongruence to contribute to creating a rich world, and referred to the painting on page 3 in the color section.
The leaders of the “Game Tuning Workshop” gave an exercise that used, in effect, incongruence. But here incongruence was used as part of a brainstorming process.
The challenge was: What would happen if you took one type of game, and then tried to integrate into it a kind of gameplay that usually applies to a different type of game?
Everyone came up with highly imaginative ideas. Some groups originated ideas that sounded promising. Others came up with game concepts that would undoubtedly be flops. It's hard, for example, to combine “Britney's Dance Moves” (with dance patterns from early 21st-century pop sensation Britney Spears) and a WWII combat game, as much as some people might find the thought to be disturbingly appealing.
But coming up with possible successes or failures wasn't the point. The point was to give a power-up to one's creativity when it came to creating fun.
So, using the idea of incongruence, you might find it a creative challenge to see what would happen if you mixed game types with incongruent game activities.
Some designers have tried to mix and match types of gameplay, and the results have been games that satisfied no one and flopped financially. A very well-founded resistance to mixing modes of gameplay has developed in the game industry.
What's right is that every once in a while someone mixes types of gameplay and makes a game that is all the more appealing because of it. Grand Theft Auto III and Vice City are perhaps the most successful of these hybrids, combining foot travel, driving different vehicles (including driving stunts, chases, and combat from within vehicles), flying, and other kinds of fighting. And this isn't the entire list.
As this book is being written, I and the other members of The Freeman Group are currently working on about a dozen games, spread between six publishers. For a fourth of these games, the developers have decided to mix forms of gameplay. I don't know if these experiences are representative, but it does make clear that such experiments persist.
The following examples are by no means intended to be suggestions for great games. Rather, they're here to demonstrate the brainstorming process I've been discussing. Let's mix and match types of gameplay, just to see what happens.
You must race across post-apocalyptic America, building cars out of the scraps of debris you find along the way. These cars have been “weaponized” (loaded down with guns, cannons, and so on, as well as defensive armor), so the game includes lots of fighting with your enemies.
Each car only lasts for a limited period of time, so you've got to use your car to find other metal scraps with which to build your next car, before your current car expires. At the end of your car's life, because it's going to die anyway, you load it with explosives and use it as a bomb to destroy an enemy's car or installation.
You can eventually learn how to go into stealth mode and turn you and your car invisible—turning it visible once again, just before you attack your foes.
Strange, vicious creatures have attacked and conquered parts of Earth.
You've got to build an army of these same creatures, who'll then fight as your warriors, against their own kind. You accomplish this by sneaking into the creatures' habitat and, when they're asleep, stealing one or more of the baby creatures. If the parents wake up, you must fight off the dangerous and cunning beasts.
Once you have the baby creatures, you then need to raise them until they're of fighting age. There's quite a bit of resource management in keeping them alive. There's also extensive fighting that results from defending them both from predators, as well as from their parent's rescue attempts. Once they're grown, they become part of your army, to be called upon at will to do your bidding.
There are, in the game, many different superpowers a person can possess, such as:
You can zoom across the landscape at superhuman speeds.
For a short period, you can change your appearance to look like an enemy.
You can command weapons to go off and fight by themselves, although only within a limited radius of where you're located.
In the no man's land that the world has become, you have to make alliances with other superhumans and work as a group.
The problem is that when a group of superbeings work together, and each person in the group has different powers, then the group gives off a “manna ring.” It's a ring of power that your group exudes, going out about 30 feet in all directions from where any member of your group stands. As long as the members of your group within eyesight of each other, the manna ring surrounds each person.
Any enemy who comes within your group's spatial manna ring gets a power-up of their own—i.e., they become amped up by tapping your group's power. So, the very thing that makes you strong—your alliance—has the side effect of also empowering any enemies you fight at close range.
Conversely, the best way to fight a group that has more power than your group is to split up the members of the target group so that they can't team up on any of your group members, and then have your group engage them one-on-one, tapping their superior power (their manna ring) to even your own chances.
Here's how alliances and betrayal enters into it: Each alliance can have no more than four people. You may come upon another superhuman whose abilities and powers would be more helpful to your groups' survival than one of your existing members. So there will be incentives to shed your group member and bring the new superbeing into your group. Or perhaps the person shed will be you, in which case, for your own protection, you've got to find or start another alliance.
Some groups may decide they won't betray each other, and will maintain the original group, out of friendship, or for some another reason. That can be done, but the powers of each member of such a group will gradually fade. Thus there's an incentive to continually be swapping out members.
This has, by the way, a social element, in that it always forces players to team up with new players.
You could entertain yourself with this creative exercise forever, and it would probably never get tiring. In a way, doing so is like a game in itself—a game centered on creation and building.
You can use the list of Fun Techniques as a checklist to see if any of them might potentially benefit your game. You can also use this list, as I have here, to experiment with incongruence in order to ignite a few creative sparks and break open your thinking in your game's design.
I don't think the world will ever get to the point where it can't benefit from a little more fun. If you're reading this book, my guess is you already are, or soon will be, upping this planet's smile quotient—a very worthwhile endeavor indeed.
[1] An example of a multi-step attack would be that you (1) leave a rifle on the ground, (2) steal around the corner, (3) see the shadow thrown by an enemy picking up the rifle, and (4) shoot and blow up a gas canister near the corner, which in turn kills the enemy.
[2] Don't dare write me a nasty email on this one if you ever laughed at Something About Mary, any of the National Lampoon Vacation films, any of the Scary Movie films, or about a hundred other films of that ilk.