Blog - Design Via Fantasy, and Player Expectation

Tuesday, July 15, 2008

Brenda recently wrote an entry about designing a game based on a player fantasy. In other words, you think "who might a player want to be?" and build a game that lets them be that person. For example, a common fantasy is to be a rock star. Design a game with that fantasy in mind and you have Guitar Hero and Rock Band. Another fantasy is to be a hero, and save the world.
Lots of games fulfill that fantasy for you. Combine the rock star fantasy with the save-the-world fantasy and you have something like Fret Nice. ;)

I have made a few recent observations about the games I've been playing lately and how they relate to player fantasy.

The first observation was that even though it's a somewhat negative fantasy, it's that player-fantasy element that kept me playing the online flash game Motherload.
There's something about that game's player fantasy (you're the last "living" thing left on an abandoned colony on Mars, sent to continue their mining business) that keeps drawing me in. In real life would I like to be that guy (er, robot)? Hell no. But in terms of a game fantasy role, I find it strangely engaging.

We had talked in one of Brenda's classes about making games tie in to elements from your childhood memories. I think the premise of Motherload seems very close to one of those childhood memories of mine, hence why I find it so compelling. When I was younger, on nights where I was too cold to sleep I would make my comforter and blankets into a small igloo shape and hide inside, huddling for warmth, pretending I was an arctic explorer that had been separated from my team during a blizzard. Even though I wasn't actively doing anything but trying to sleep, it was fantasy play, pretending that I was just trying to survive the cold for the night. So, if I "played" with that fantasy, the fantasy of Motherload as the lone mining robot on Mars isn't too far of a stretch from that.

(As I haven't mentioned yet but fully intend to one of these days, mere survival is my favorite motivation in games.)

My other observation on player-fantasy stems from when I was recently playing Evil Genius. Something in me, I think the game designer part actually, loves the fantasy of being an evil madman, devising devious traps for my lair of villainy. I think part of the reason I wanted to become a game designer is because back when I was a kid playing the Megaman series of games I always thought the evil genius villain Dr. Wiley was having all the fun. He was making crazy levels filled with traps and enemies that Megaman had to fight and escape. I would even draw elaborate levels out on paper, pretending I was Dr. Wiley designing a new hideout. It turns out that all those devious traps and enemy placement were actually the work of game designers... ;)

In any case, that player fantasy caused me to pick up Evil Genius. Don't get me wrong, it's a fun game. The problem with it is that it takes way too long to deliver the parts of the game I associate most strongly with that fantasy!
It's a problem of player expectation.

When picking up that game I wanted to make death traps and crazy science laboratories where I'd make man eating plants or new death traps, etc.
The game lets you eventually do both. The key word there was eventually.

The traps they give you at the beginning of the game, however, are fairly boring. You can unlock more by researching with evil laboratories but it takes far, FAR too long into the game to get to the point where you can build evil laboratories!

My (player) expectations were not met until after several DAYS of playing the game.
I wanted evil labs from day one. When I think "Evil Genius" I think of evil laboratories and mad scientists. Thanks for hooking me in the first 5 minutes, game.

So, there's the main observation on designing by player fantasy: you must very carefully think about what the player expectation of that fantasy is before you proceed. Designing by player fantasy means your game hinges on player expectations. You need to deliver that fantasy.
Evil Genius did, but takes hours of frustration to get there.
Motherload, however, sold me the fantasy from the instant the game began.
Evil Genius, however, picked what I can probably safely say is a much more common and popular fantasy.

When working on a recent student game project at SCAD (a tabletop RPG) our team did an early exercise on player expectations before writing any actual rules. We established at least an early framework for our game's world and its inhabitants and then made up characters of our own for it. We then proceeded to play a quick adventure with our characters, making up rules when needed. This exercise was to explore what we as at least a few early playtesters expected to be able to do in this particular game world. If a player wanted to do something that wasn't yet addressed, we could then actually write it into the final game. It was an interesting way to deal with the problem of player expectation.

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posted by Brian Shurtleff @ 2:14 PM  0 Comments Links to this post