But here's the thing, an 8 minute video can't compare to personal study and struggle. Even if all I'm going to do is greater internalise what was already said, and gain a practical or proximal understanding of their own golden info; that will be worth it.
So I'm going to perform a close analysis of what they're saying... And involve more pictures and embedded bits to make things more interesting. Additionally, I'll probably be doing this in reverse. Or at least do their vids as they come.
Playing Like a Designer Part 1:
The short of it... Playing games and analysing games will help you build your own games.
The Cartesian Games-Console (0:42)
"To observe while experiencing"
Striking a balance between observation and experience.
Experience aids you in enjoying a game, and therefore knowing if a game is "good" or not.
Observation aids you in understanding your enjoyment of a game, the analysis and disection of good.
The two can be opposing forces.
Hopefully however you'll achieve this.
A perfectly awesome image provided by Allison.
This is essentially the concept of being self-aware of your experiences. Thinking about your thoughts.
There's elements of Freud's Self-Analysis in this, why are you feeling what you're feeling? What does it mean? and then also, how could I extrapolate that to others?
Additionally, the Cartesian Theatre and Cartesian Dualism I always found the analogy somewhat lacking, as theatre is a non-interactive medium, so figured I'd amend it with an interactive games console.
This is an important skill to have in any walk of life, as introspection aids happiness, as you gain a greater understanding of who you are, who you want to be, the differences between the two, and ultimately how to close that gap.
But I digress. Something they haven't mentioned, but I'm evidently doing is to document it. Even if this only aids in cementing the knowledge, it'll help. This is actually lended to by my recent endeavours in Lucid Dreaming, which first and foremost requires dream recall, which is aided by a dream journal, which in turn ties in with Freuds Dream theories! Afterall, an experience is a purely transient event in the past that gets coloured by memories and thoughts, so recording it during or as soon as will aid with crystalising that moment. But lets not get into too deep down this rabbit hole..
Biase based off... biase (2:28)
Biase is anything that colours your experience of a game...
Familiarity/Learned Biase
Preferences of games, those you've enjoyed in the past.
Knowledge of controls... Knowledge of Hud... Knowledge of anything from previous experience that directly impacts on your experiences of this one. Even "what is expected" can be down to this.
Particularly interesting in this day and age. If you look at the control schemes of some older games, take Deus Ex for example, it was completely MAD! WASD to move as standard, but the brackets to activate things, and the right button was "use" what ever happened to e or f as a use button?
A lot of modern games have very, VERY simelar control schemes, especially in the FPS world.
 |
| Not quite thinking outside the box... but close enough |
A lot of this is beneficial. Hell, when I get around to an analysis of Magicka I'll tell you exactly what a bad control scheme looks like, how it's both functionally and familiarity-wise poorly designed. And WASD is a brilliant control scheme, one that many a game is using, from TF2 to WoW, as they all give access to the majority of the keyboard, including numbers for weapons/spells/etc.
Especially interesting for me.
Mentioned in my other blog that my Dad got a PS3 recently, and I in turn got him Fallout 3. I figured it's a fairly easy step into FPS's, and RPGS, taking a nice simple element of each... in theory.
So much muscle memory that he did not have. Even with the VATS system killing things was a challenge, and his ability to use the controller was non-existent.
I've got 14 years at least of familiarity with Playstation controllers, which have kept the same basic layout, just evolving subtley. It's amazing how inaccessible games must be to first time players, and that's an important element of design.
Hell, it explains why there's more browser players using the familiar mouse than any other type of games player, that and cost of gaming isn't very attractive to first time buyers.
Just a brief interlude,
Extra Consideration: Controller Evolution Is rather brilliant and adressed some of these biases.
Pretty self explanatory. Changes in mechanics have cost-benefit. Better design, less exploration.
Games that involve alternative "health bars" can adress this, like thirst bars, but also ammo and shinier weapons could be used instead.
Of course, games that let you completely miss awesome stuff with no indication make me pee blood. Not just talking about a unique gun etc, but generally important items like say a bobblehead in Fallout 3.
I'd say that's about enough for Part 1, I'll start more on Part 2 soon.
No comments:
Post a Comment