<!-- MHonArc v2.4.4 --> <!--X-Subject: [MUD-Dev] Rules of the game: How Long Till You Die --> <!--X-From-R13: X Q Znjerapr <pynjNhaqre.rate.ftv.pbz> --> <!--X-Date: Tue, 30 Jun 1998 14:10:39 -0700 --> <!--X-Message-Id: 199806302032.NAA09888#under,engr.sgi.com --> <!--X-Content-Type: text/plain --> <!--X-Head-End--> <!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 3.2//EN"> <html> <head> <title>MUD-Dev message, [MUD-Dev] Rules of the game: How Long Till You Die</title> <!-- meta name="robots" content="noindex,nofollow" --> <link rev="made" href="mailto:claw#under,engr.sgi.com"> </head> <body background="/backgrounds/paperback.gif" bgcolor="#ffffff" text="#000000" link="#0000FF" alink="#FF0000" vlink="#006000"> <font size="+4" color="#804040"> <strong><em>MUD-Dev<br>mailing list archive</em></strong> </font> <br> [ <a href="../">Other Periods</a> | <a href="../../">Other mailing lists</a> | <a href="/search.php3">Search</a> ] <br clear=all><hr> <!--X-Body-Begin--> <!--X-User-Header--> <!--X-User-Header-End--> <!--X-TopPNI--> Date: [ <a href="msg01273.html">Previous</a> | <a href="msg01275.html">Next</a> ] Thread: [ <a href="msg01275.html">Previous</a> | <a href="msg01273.html">Next</a> ] Index: [ <A HREF="author.html#01274">Author</A> | <A HREF="#01274">Date</A> | <A HREF="thread.html#01274">Thread</A> ] <!--X-TopPNI-End--> <!--X-MsgBody--> <!--X-Subject-Header-Begin--> <H1>[MUD-Dev] Rules of the game: How Long Till You Die</H1> <HR> <!--X-Subject-Header-End--> <!--X-Head-of-Message--> <UL> <LI><em>To</em>: <A HREF="mailto:mud-dev#kanga,nu">mud-dev#kanga,nu</A></LI> <LI><em>Subject</em>: [MUD-Dev] Rules of the game: How Long Till You Die </LI> <LI><em>From</em>: J C Lawrence <<A HREF="mailto:claw#under,engr.sgi.com">claw#under,engr.sgi.com</A>></LI> <LI><em>Date</em>: Tue, 30 Jun 1998 13:32:57 -0700</LI> <LI><em>Reply-To</em>: <A HREF="mailto:mud-dev#kanga,nu">mud-dev#kanga,nu</A></LI> </UL> <!--X-Head-of-Message-End--> <!--X-Head-Body-Sep-Begin--> <HR> <!--X-Head-Body-Sep-End--> <!--X-Body-of-Message--> <PRE> URL:<A HREF="http://www.gamasutra.com/features/game_design/rules/19980605.htm">http://www.gamasutra.com/features/game_design/rules/19980605.htm</A> Welcome to the first Rules of the Game. What we're going to do here, every other week from now until my digital death, is to explore a different element of basic game design. We're going to pull it apart, think about it, and figure out all its implications, so that the texture mapping out there is actually being wrapped around something fun. What a concept, huh? ;-) So let's kick it off with a really fun topic: death. One of the first decisions we need to make is how quickly we bump players off for the first time. Do we let them play for a while, slowly building up the pace and challenge, or do we throw them into a world of heart-thumping danger and get the adrenaline charge pumped up quick? When you strip away the specifics of the game, you're really doing two things with that first decision: teaching and motivation. The Hard Lessons of Life and Death Usually the thing you're doing the first time you knock off your player is teaching them the rules of the game. "Don't jump far enough and pfft." In the old arcade game Jungle King, you sat on a branch and watched a vine swing toward you. If you pushed your only button at the wrong time, you fell with a thump and were finished. A quick and painful lesson. Of course the other way to teach that same lesson is to force the player to do a long, dull climb back up the tree. This is teaching with frustration, and tends to work better when you are designing games for kids or consultants. (For both groups time is a coin they don't mind wasting.) The "Oh Yeah!" School of Hard Knocks The other thing you're doing when you use the quick death is setting the challenge. You're trying to elicit the "Oh yeah? We'll see about that." response in the player. Interestingly enough, this works better with hard core game playing boys, (which, let's face it, most of the people reading this are), than it does with mass market players or women in general. Mass market players, people who haven't grown up playing games, tend to get overwhelmed and discouraged much more quickly. They also represent the biggest growing segment of people who might buy your games, so it's better not to piss 'em off. Women, in general, also react badly to the quick and early death. They tend to throw up their hands, look at the boy who's trying to show them how cool this game is, say "This is stupid" and never play the game again. The Solutions: Success Time and Infinite Time If you think about it, a game is like a novel. If you can get people to read a few pages, you can usually get them sucked in. So how do you invite people in for that first bit? The games that have been most successful with women over the years have been games like Tetris and Centipede, both games that taught for their first couple of minutes with success and an increasing pace. You can screw up the first four to six rows of Tetris and still recover, and things go slow enough in the beginning that you get a chance to figure out what's going on. It's increasing the pace as the game goes on that provides the challenge. This is a trick found in the first couple of generations of games that seems to have disappeared from our current design vocabulary. It's probably a lesson worth learning again. The other old trick that is a great solution to the initial success problem goes back to the pinball days and a game called Black Knight. It's the concept of infinite regeneration for a few minutes in the beginning of a game. In Black Knight, the first couple of minutes every ball that would get drained would pop back up. It prevented the painful frustration of putting in a quarter and having bad luck suck your ball in the first bounce. It also helped people get the rhythm of the game before it "cost" them anything. Take Away Time The bottom line is that the best way to hook a large market into your game is with a little bribe called success. If you make those first few moments filled with why to live, rather than how to die, you're much more likely to suck people into your game. See you in two weeks. -B Unemployed with a Theater Degree from Brandeis back in 1984, Ben Calica [calica#viewpoint,com] has been making a living in the computer and gaming business in various incarnations since then, Including: Founding Editor of New Media Magazine, First Toys Editor for Wired, one of the few single boys to write for Parents Magazine. Product Manager for the multimedia authoring system, SuperCard Director of Production for CyberFlix; (design credits on Lunicus, Creepy Castle, and conceptual design for Skull Cracker) Product Manger for the ill-fated modem for the Sega Genesis, the Edge, for AT&T [which, by the way, we decided stood for All Tiny Testi---maybe I'd better tell that another time]; Worked for NeXT long enough to get into real good argument with Steve Jobs; And recently was the guy behind Apple Game Sprockets... He did a bunch of work on interactive drama (wrote script for MacWorld CD-ROM game of the year in 1993), before he decided it just didn't work. Spends a lot of free time now lecturing on multi-player/virtual world stuff. For a day job he works as Director of Product Development for ThinkFish, an artistic rendering company that recently merged with Viewpoint Datalabs. He could show you the secret desktop software he's working on, but then he'd have to kill you. -- J C Lawrence Internet: claw#null,net (Contractor) Internet: coder#ibm,net ---------(*) Internet: claw#under,engr.sgi.com ...Honourary Member of Clan McFud -- Teamer's Avenging Monolith... </PRE> <!--X-Body-of-Message-End--> <!--X-MsgBody-End--> <!--X-Follow-Ups--> <HR> <!--X-Follow-Ups-End--> <!--X-References--> <!--X-References-End--> <!--X-BotPNI--> <UL> <LI>Prev by Date: <STRONG><A HREF="msg01273.html">[MUD-Dev] Rules of the Game: You don't always live twice Or... Take my life, Please</A></STRONG> </LI> <LI>Next by Date: <STRONG><A HREF="msg01275.html">[MUD-Dev] Sugarscape: A-Life variation with economic interests</A></STRONG> </LI> <LI>Prev by thread: <STRONG><A HREF="msg01275.html">[MUD-Dev] Sugarscape: A-Life variation with economic interests</A></STRONG> </LI> <LI>Next by thread: <STRONG><A HREF="msg01273.html">[MUD-Dev] Rules of the Game: You don't always live twice Or... Take my life, Please</A></STRONG> </LI> <LI>Index(es): <UL> <LI><A HREF="index.html#01274"><STRONG>Date</STRONG></A></LI> <LI><A HREF="thread.html#01274"><STRONG>Thread</STRONG></A></LI> </UL> </LI> </UL> <!--X-BotPNI-End--> <!--X-User-Footer--> <!--X-User-Footer-End--> <ul><li>Thread context: <BLOCKQUOTE><UL> <LI><strong><A NAME="01283" HREF="msg01283.html">[MUD-Dev] Re: Embedded languages was Re: Databases: was Re: skill system</A></strong>, Chris Gray <a href="mailto:cg#ami-cg,GraySage.Edmonton.AB.CA">cg#ami-cg,GraySage.Edmonton.AB.CA</a>, Wed 01 Jul 1998, 03:41 GMT <LI><strong><A NAME="01275" HREF="msg01275.html">[MUD-Dev] Sugarscape: A-Life variation with economic interests</A></strong>, J C Lawrence <a href="mailto:claw#under,engr.sgi.com">claw#under,engr.sgi.com</a>, Tue 30 Jun 1998, 22:29 GMT <LI><strong><A NAME="01274" HREF="msg01274.html">[MUD-Dev] Rules of the game: How Long Till You Die</A></strong>, J C Lawrence <a href="mailto:claw#under,engr.sgi.com">claw#under,engr.sgi.com</a>, Tue 30 Jun 1998, 21:10 GMT <LI><strong><A NAME="01273" HREF="msg01273.html">[MUD-Dev] Rules of the Game: You don't always live twice Or... Take my life, Please</A></strong>, J C Lawrence <a href="mailto:claw#under,engr.sgi.com">claw#under,engr.sgi.com</a>, Tue 30 Jun 1998, 21:09 GMT <LI><strong><A NAME="01270" HREF="msg01270.html">[MUD-Dev] Re: roleplaying farmers?</A></strong>, Mike L Kesl <a href="mailto:mlkesl#cpinternet,com">mlkesl#cpinternet,com</a>, Tue 30 Jun 1998, 18:38 GMT <LI><strong><A NAME="01262" HREF="msg01262.html">[MUD-Dev] Re: the why of online worlds.</A></strong>, cat <a href="mailto:cat#bga,com">cat#bga,com</a>, Tue 30 Jun 1998, 02:53 GMT <LI><strong><A NAME="01256" HREF="msg01256.html">[MUD-Dev] Combat intelligence</A></strong>, J C Lawrence <a href="mailto:claw#under,engr.sgi.com">claw#under,engr.sgi.com</a>, Mon 29 Jun 1998, 23:33 GMT </LI> </UL></BLOCKQUOTE> </ul> <hr> <center> [ <a href="../">Other Periods</a> | <a href="../../">Other mailing lists</a> | <a href="/search.php3">Search</a> ] </center> <hr> </body> </html>