A brief reflection

Hello again,

So, apparently my dad wants me to do a presentation about Reverence and how to make video games in general. This made me think a lot about why I didn't like Reverence and what successful mobile games do. I also started thinking about what mobile games are actually for. What is a mobile game?

Well, to answer that question, a mobile game is a time sucker. That's all they are, will that change ever? I'm not sure. In the current state of the mobile app market, mobile games exist to make you, the player, addicted to them. They also have quite a few nifty tricks to make you addicted.

1. The Challenge

The first tool in the game developer's toolbox is to challenge the player. If you can make this challenge never ending, that's even better. This doesn't apply to just mobile games, this is one of the core mechanics of games in general. It's always a challenge. If you can take a challenge that's relatively easy, and make it seem hard. That's even better. You are now messing with our natural "reward system." A basic overview of this system is: a system that rewards good behavior of an animal in order to ensure its survival. There are two types of rewards, primary rewards and secondary rewards. Primary rewards are given out by your brain when you ensure the survival or your species . Such as when you find food or protect others successfully. Secondary rewards are given out when you do something that links to a primary reward, such as money. We all like money, because it ensures that we survive. It also brings other "upgrades" to life if you make more of it. So why wouldn't we want more? This is where games come in. They don't ensure your survival directly, or even secondarily for that matter, but why else would you spend so much time on a challenge? It must be ensuring you survival in one way or another, according to your brain, so it gives you the secondary reward. Now you're addicted, congratulations. You get a reward from your brain every single time you play another level. Every time you make an upgrade, your brain is rewarding you. This is a pretty strong power and it can bring some pretty strong power to a developer.

2. Endurance

Endurance is a huge concept to try to obtain when trying to make someone play your game longer. If you can make the player continually play your game, you have something special. If you make them addicted to a game that takes a long time to complete, they're not going anywhere for a very long time. How might you do this? Make a game, that at first, isn't frustrating at all. Make the challenges easy, but with a little reward. You don't want to make the player frustrated, or they'll give up and you'll lose them. That's why games don't start out very hard. You don't want to make the player mad and quit. This is also why a good amount of games don't frustrate the player at all, nobody want's to be frustrated when they play a game. They want to relax and be entertained. So try not to frustrate them at all, if possible. However, there's a fine line between frustration and challenging. You want to get as close to that line as possible. Now, we've gone off topic just a little bit. To obtain this endurance you can either make a really long game, or make the computer generate levels for you. Better yet, you can make the game multiplayer, and have people fight each other. The way games happen changes every single time you play them. So it's a good natural way to increase the replay value of your game.

3. Optionally Long Attention Span

Make the player able to play for hours on end, if they want to. This concept goes hand in hand with endurance, but with one little change. The player has to be able to quit in a reasonable amount of time. They're probably not playing your mobile game because they like it, they're playing it because they're bored or they're waiting for something. So, if you can make them able to quit out of a game in a moment's notice without loosing too much progress, that's good. Think "checkpoints" in video games you'd play for fun. They don't want you to loose a lot of data, because that would frustrate you. They're trying to keep you happy with the experience overall. So save their data so you don't piss them off.

4. Puzzles

Something you might have noticed with mobile games, is puzzles. Lots of puzzles. Why? Because it's easy to keep someone's attention with a puzzle. You just have to put it in front of them and they'll try to solve it. If they can't solve it, they can quit and come back later. It's also understandable to try frustrating a player with a puzzle. I wouldn't do it, but it does come into the realm of possibility.

5. Never Let Them Rest

This goes hand in hand with endurance and challenging the player. You never want the player to turn its attention from the game. Always have them doing something. If you can, make load times very short or virtually non existent.  These players are essentially playing with a toy. If the toy stops being fun, they don't want to play with the toy. Simple.

6. Signalling

Now, this is getting more into gameplay mechanics that you can use to help the player out. For example, a form of signalling might be a healthbar. Instead of just killing you when your health is out, they show you how much you have left. Another example might be ammo counters to show you how much ammo you have left. However, there are some that most of us don't even think about. Some of these signalling devices might be in the environment of the game. For example, you might have red lights in the game that set the mood for danger. You could have a clear blue sky to signify peacefulness. There's all sorts of different signalling devices in games that we don't really notice while playing a game. A huge signalling device, is music. The music selected for a game can make or break it. Music can properly set a mood better than almost any other mechanic possibly could. Take, for example, Skyrim and Animal Crossing. Skyrim includes big epic soundtracks to convey the epicness of the land of Skyrim. Animal Crossing has more of a peaceful and childish soundtrack to try and set up a more peaceful atmosphere.

All in all, try to use as many sensory signalling devices as you can. That being said, there is a limit. The reason we don't notice these signalling devices in games, is usually because they blend naturally with the game's environment. So don't overload the player, but don't skimp out. Try to find a natural medium.



That's all I've got for now. I'll try expanding on this if I think of more stuff. Also, RGB is moving along quite nicely. I'm currently working on a menu system, and actually finding sounds to put into this game. I slacked off on them last time.


Until next time

Continue Reading