Games Decisions

One of the reading's for this week was about making decisions-making and flow-theory. One of the first pages goes through what sort of decisions are bad and good, which I found really interesting.
The bad types of decisions are:

• Meaningless decisions are perhaps the worst kind: there is a choice to be made, but it has no effect on gameplay. If you can play either of two cards but both cards are identical, that’s not really much of a choice.

• Obvious decisions at least have an effect on the game, but there is clearly one right answer, so it’s not really much of a choice. Most of the time, the number of dice to roll in the board game RISK falls into this category; if you are attacking with 3 or more armies, you have a “decision” of whether to roll 1, 2, or 3 dice… but your odds are better rolling all 3, so it’s not much of a decision except in very special cases. 

• Blind decisions have an effect on the game, and the answer is not obvious, but there is now an additional problem: the players do not have sufficient knowledge on which to make the decision, so it is essentially random.

While I agree that the first two types of decisions are bad, I quite like the blind decisions as it kind of mimics the real life - we don't know all the answers to everything, and sometimes we made the wrong decisions, but even though its a wrong one, it should still push the story forward and maybe give you a chance to later on fix it once you actually get enough knowledge. I think it should be used very rarely, as it can annoy the players. 

The good types:

• Resource trades. You give one thing up in exchange for another, where both are valuable. Which is more valuable? This is a value judgment, and the player’s ability to correctly judge or anticipate value is what determines the game’s outcome.

• Risk versus reward. One choice is safe. The other choice has a potentially greater payoff, but also a higher risk of failure. Whether you choose safe or dangerous depends partly on how desperate a position you’re in, and partly on your analysis of just how safe or dangerous it is. The outcome is determined by your choice, plus a little luck…

• Choice of actions. You have several potential things you can do, but you can’t do them all. The player must choose the actions that they feel are the most important at the time.

• Short term versus long term. You can have something right now, or something better later on. The player must balance immediate needs against long-term goals.

• Social information. In games where bluffing, deal-making and backstabbing are allowed, players must choose between playing honestly or dishonestly. Dishonesty may let you come out better on the current deal, but may make other players less likely to deal with you in the future.

• Dilemmas. You must give up one of several things. Which one can you most afford to lose?

The good types of decisions are very often used in games because they make the player feel in control and makes the game interesting. 

The article also mentions emotional decisions where game forces you to either save an in-game character or leave him to die. It is another big decision and usually one of the hardest to make, because even though it is a fictional character, we get used to it and get emotionally attached, especially if the character we play as has some some of relationship with the dangered npc. 

The majority of players do not play through a game with moral choices (such as Knights of the Old Republic or Fable) as pure evil – not because “evil” is a suboptimal strategy, but because even in a fictional simulated world, a lot of people can’t stomach the thought of torturing and killing innocent bystanders.

Source

"Edutainment" Games

"Many “Edutainment” games work like this: first you’ve got this game, and you play it, and it’s maybe kind of fun. And then the game stops, and tries to give you some kind of gross, icky, disgusting learning. And as a reward for doing the learning, you get to play the game again. Gameplay is framed as a reward for the inherently unpleasurable task of learning something. We have a name for this: chocolate-covered broccoli."

I liked how they came up with a name for games that connects entertainment with education, and while I can't think of any from the top of my head, I'm sure there are a lot of those out there.

Overall, its one of the few articles that I really enjoyed reading and it made a lot of sense to me as I was reading it. 

Source

The next article was Lost Garden's Cozy Games article. Cozy is a word I would never associate with a game, as to me, it wouldn't really make too much sense, but after reading the article, I understand that cozy has a meaning in gaming and is used in games.

Coziness itself refers to how strongly a game evokes the fantasy of safety, abundance, and softness.

Safety: A cozy game has an absence of danger and risk. In a cozy game, nothing is high-risk, and there is no impending loss or threat. 

Abundance: A cozy game has a sense of abundance. Nothing is lacking, pressing or imminent. 

Softness: Cozy games use strong aesthetic signals that tell players they are in a low stress environment full of abundance and safety.