The Fascination of Computer Games

During my ongoing literature review I often discover interesting facts about things I’ve never thought about. Sometimes I can connect these facts with my own observations: The result is mostly a completely new idea why things are as they are. Maybe these ideas are new to you, too. Therefore I’ll share my new science based knowledge with you!

This week: This time, I think about two main factors that make the gameplay of a computer game highly motivating.

Computer games are vivid and engaging environments. Here, I like to focus on two central factors making the gameplay highly motivating: an epic story or the chance to be creative.

Story-based computer games offer a broad variety of different narrative types. It can be a simple career mode allowing a player to work their way up to the highest tiers and ranks of the simulated content, e.g., racing games. Computer games can also tell a very atmospheric story evoking deep emotions in a player. For instance, Live is Strange challenges players with a very emotional gameplay and the option to rewind time to change decisions made thus changing the lives of others. Being in charge of the lives is also targeted by the Mass Effect games. The Mass Effect trilogy tells an epic story: the player is in charge of the fate of an entire galaxy being inhabited by different species.

By providing such an epic story, computer games challenge players with goals being bigger than theirselves. This can become a very motivating element as it makes a player’s actions highly relevant and provides rewards rarely available in the real world. Suddenly, by playing a game, players can change the lives of a larger group of people. These virtual people then thank the player for their effort and actions. As a result, a player receives emotional rewards rarely available in today’s stressed and harsh environment.

Thus, by providing an epic story, players experience a high motivation as they not only enjoy an exciting narrative but also receive emotional rewards. They contribute to big and meaningful events changing the lives of many others.

The other type of highly motivating computer games target a very creative gameplay. Here, players have nearly complete freedom inside the virtual environment and can realize large projects requiring a focus on many details to achieve perfection. Typical games that provide such a gameplay are Minecraft and Factorio.

Minecraft allows players to completely change vast landscapes by turning them into towns, temples, large castles or other creative environments. Factorio gives players complete freedom over the design of large factories requiring a high amount of planning and micro-management.

By allowing for a focus on many details while providing nearly complete freedom, a computer game can inspire players to target large-scale builds. Finishing these builds is ambitious but also highly motivating as players constantly see how much progress they made.

In the end, by providing an epic story or complete freedom, computer games can achieve a highly motivating gameplay.

Experience-based Retention Mechanisms

During my ongoing literature review I often discover interesting facts about things I’ve never thought about. Sometimes I can connect these facts with my own observations: The result is mostly a completely new idea why things are as they are. Maybe these ideas are new to you, too. Therefore I’ll share my new science based knowledge with you!

This week: This time, I think about the frequent implementation of multiple experience point systems in a game. The systems individually reward the utilization of different game elements, thus aiming at increasing a player’s motivation.

Since several years, one can observe a game design trend of connecting an experience point system with a game’s core game machanics. A game mechanic defines a player’s actions inside of the virtual environment or creates the game’s challenges a player has to overcome. For instance, Minecraft allows a player to swing a sword and challenges them with dangerous enemies that spawn during the night and attack the player. This interaction between these two game mechanics creates one aspect of Minecrafts overall gameplay.

While Minecraft only implements one experience point system allowing for the performance of special actions, e.g., enchanting and repairing of items, other games also provide a weapon-based or action-based experience system. Here, players can improve the performance of certain game elements by frequently utilizing them during the gameplay.

Similar to practicing the performance of an action in the real world, this game mechanic suggests the development of a better proficiency in the performance. This experience system is enhanced by the provision of unlockable perks making the actions and weapons stronger.

As this game mechanic provides a clear goal as well as a constant feedback, it often is perceived as very motivating and can even induce the experience of flow. However, when it is applied to every individual action or weapon, it can also result in a desire to completely upgrade all game elements. As a result, players probably play the game for an extended amount of time beyond the end of the core narrative.

From a game design perspective, this is a very efficient approach. It requires only a small amount of development work, is easy to extent and effectively increases a player’s motivation. From a player’s perspective, it mostly aims at vested players. Gamers with a limited amount of time who like to play a game for short periods only might feel constrained as they cannot keep up with the performance of others.

Personally, I currently belong to the latter category. I enjoy to play complex and difficult games. However, I like to have access to the full potential of the game right from the beginning without being required to put in a lot of time to get access to all game elements. To me, the success in a game should be more based on the skill of a player and not on the time a player invests in the game.

In conclusion, nested experience systems are an effective way to increase a player’s motivation. However, they also reduce the overall enjoyment of a game when it is only played for short sessions.

Between Flow and Presence

During my ongoing literature review I often discover interesting facts about things I’ve never thought about. Sometimes I can connect these facts with my own observations: The result is mostly a completely new idea why things are as they are. Maybe these ideas are new to you, too. Therefore I’ll share my new science based knowledge with you!

This week: This time, I think about my observations in respect to the influence of flow and presence on the overall experience of a computer game.

Flow occurs when a person is completely immersed in the performance of an activity. This results in the experience of joy and can be described as „being in the zone“. Flow requires an activity that matches the person’s skill level without being too difficult or too easy. When in a state of flow, one likes to remain in the activity.

Presence describes the subjective illusion of being in a real place. Presence positively scales with the degree of sensory immersion in the virtual environment. This mostly is achieved by using visually immersive devices like head-mounted displays. Presence has an effect on the overall experience of the virtual environment and the activities performed.

While the degree of presence also indicates how much a user feels to be a part of the virtual environment, i.e., experience the feeling that own actions matter, flow indicates to fully absorb a users attention and awareness. I recently observed this phenomenon as I played Factorio, again.

Factorio

Factorio is a desktop computer game being played from a bird’s perspective. While the user can interact with the virtual environment using their avatar, presence potentially is low in contrast to fully immersive virtual reality applications. This is a result of a user’s perspective and the fact that Factorio provides no full visual immersion. Despite the low presence, Factorio induces a high degree of flow and fun when being played. It fully absorbs my attention resulting in the outcome of completely forgetting about the passage of time and blending out other changes in the real world.

Thus, although presence is highly important for a very believable experience of a virtual environment, a high flow-inducing characteristic is more important for computer games to be entertaining and fun. However, once having achieved a highly flow-inducing gameplay, increasing presence could further enhance the overall experience.

When do I feel present?

During my ongoing literature review I often discover interesting facts about things I’ve never thought about. Sometimes I can connect these facts with my own observations: The result is mostly a completely new idea why things are as they are. Maybe these ideas are new to you, too. Therefore I’ll share my new science based knowledge with you!

This week: This time, I think about my personal requirements to experience presence inside of a virtual environment.

Recently, I helped two colleagues preparing their experiment by volunteering as a participant. The central goal of their study is to measure the subjective experience of presence. Presence is the subjective illusion of being inside a virtual environment despite physically being located in a completely different environment. The illusion is increased when a user is visually immersed in the virtual environment, e.g., by wearing a head-mounted display.

This experiment made me think about my personal experiences with presence. Which gameplay and design elements are needed to feel present inside a virtual environment? Personally, I feel the highest degree of presence when either the virtual world is manipulable and reacts to my actions as well as when the virtual environment is designed in a natural way, features a believable scenery and is freely explorable.

A manipulable world requires virtual objects or agents I can interact with and that show a reaction based on my actions. The effectiveness of these interactions for inducing presence is not depended on their complexity or believability. It is more about the mere possibility to actively change things inside of the virtual world with my actions. For instance, the option to grab and throw a virtual object already is enough to let me experience presence. However, simply indicating my existence with 3D assets of the game controllers or even a realistic avatar rarely induces presence. Thus, to feel presence, it is important to me that my actions matter, e.g., by changing the position of an object, and not that I am visually represented inside of the virtual world.

A freely explorable and believable scenery requires a lot of modelling and level editing. Like in the real world, I enjoy seeing new places and exploring them by changing my perspective. For a virtual environment, this requires a detailed virtual world and the possibility to freely navigate through the environment. Environments that mainly consist of nothing more than a nearly empty virtual world featuring only a few assets make it very hard for me to experience presence. Here, I immediately notice that it is nothing else than a simulation thus breaking the illusion of actually being inside of the virtual world. Thus, to feel presence, it is important that the virtual world hides the fact that it is a simulation by presenting many details making it lively and believable.

In the end, as complex virtual environments are diffcult to design, each virtual world should contain at least one interaction possibility. This interaction should enable a user to perform an action inside of the virtual environment that causes a change of it. As a result, they potentially experience presence when immersing themselves inside such a virtual environment.

Typing Commands

During my ongoing literature review I often discover interesting facts about things I’ve never thought about. Sometimes I can connect these facts with my own observations: The result is mostly a completely new idea why things are as they are. Maybe these ideas are new to you, too. Therefore I’ll share my new science based knowledge with you!

This week: This time, I think about how the computer games represent effective educational tools as they embed the application of the game-knowledge in complex scenarios.

While Linux and a few Mac users might be used to type command line inputs into a console, most other computer users probably find this method quite confusing and not very intuitive. By now, most users are familiar with using windows, icons, and buttons when it comes to executing and controlling applications. These graphical user interfaces are more intuitive and less prone to false inputs. Thus, they are more comfortable to control and do not require a user to remember specific inputs to execute a certain function.

This results in the fact that only a few users can operate a terminal thus leading to the impression that this tool is for experts, programmers, and hackers only. While this might be true to some degree, having a basic knowledge about using command lines can be beneficial and helpful. Learning most relevant commands, such as „cd“, „mv“ and „rm“, however, is challenging as users have to internalize them.

Using Terminal commands in Hacknet

Like with any other learning content, learning these commands requires a high motivation for a repetitive practice. This can be achieved by embedding the learning content in computer games and turning it into a central input game mechanic which is embedded in a complex scenario, i.e., the narrative of the game.

While this is not the intention of Hacknet, the hacking simulation game represents a perfect learning environment for terminal commands. During the gameplay, a player is challenged to hack computers, to search for specific files, and even to download or to modify these files. For this purpose, Hacknet simulates a hacking terminal that requires a player to type and to execute commands of which most of them are commands used in regular terminals.

As a result of this, players subconsciously learn the basics of using a terminal in a highly motivated way during the gameplay. Also, as there is only a small visual difference between the game terminal and a regular terminal, users can directly transfer their learning outcome from the game context to a different context.

In conclusion, computer games represent powerful educational tools as they can easily embed a learning content in complex scenarios. This leads to a high degree of motivation and allows for an repetitive practice during different challenges already requiring a training transfer within the context of the game.

The rewarding moment when everything starts to move

During my ongoing literature review I often discover interesting facts about things I’ve never thought about. Sometimes I can connect these facts with my own observations: The result is mostly a completely new idea why things are as they are. Maybe these ideas are new to you, too. Therefore I’ll share my new science based knowledge with you!

This week: This time, I think about the rewarding moment that occurs when a complex design project inside of a computer game is tested and used for the very first time.

Some games, such as Kerbal Space Program (KSP) and Factorio, allow a player to carefully design ideas and subsequently to test them for effectiveness and efficiency. In KSP, a player assembles complex spacecraft that are potentially intended to reach distant celestial bodies and to land on them. After having finished the design phase, the player can launch the spacecraft in the simulation phase and complete the desired mission.

Designing effective production lines in Factorio

Factorio challenges a player with the design of large factories that refine basic resources into higher goods to finally assemble final products. As recipes for some higher tier goods are complex and require multiple steps of refining materials, achieving a high effectiveness and efficiency is the key to successfully play the game. This especially is important as the player also is challenged to design the paths on which the goods are transported. By not correctly designing these paths, bottlenecks can occur and slow down an entire production line.

As a result of this, players need to carefully design their production lines. On the one hand, they need to consider the amount of resources needed to avoid having a shortage of a particular material. On the other hand, they need to find ways to efficiently transport the required amount of resources in time to avoid slowing down the production. Thus, a major part of the gameplay consist of laying out new patterns of machines and trying to connect them with conveyor belts which transport the resoures.

This mentally demanding phase of the game ends when the player finally connects a new production line to the power and supplies it with the needed basic resources. This event represents a very rewarding moment in the gameplay as the player can observe how the materials pass through the system and confirm that the design is effective (or needs some additional improvement …). Personally, I find these moments very rewarding as they conclude partly difficult puzzle phases with visual summaries of the found solutions.

In the end, by allowing players to design own projects and subsequently observe their results, a high motivation to continue searching for a solution is achieved. The gameplay requiring the development of designs can, as demonstrated with KSP, also contain learning content. This knowledge then is subconsciously practiced as players need to apply it to successfully find a working solution.

Between Let’s Plays and true appreciation of the game

During my ongoing literature review I often discover interesting facts about things I’ve never thought about. Sometimes I can connect these facts with my own observations: The result is mostly a completely new idea why things are as they are. Maybe these ideas are new to you, too. Therefore I’ll share my new science based knowledge with you!

This week: This time, I think about the internal struggle between being creative by creating let’s play vdeos and simply enjoying the pure gameplay of a computer game.

Creating Let’s Play videos (LPs) is a special form of playing computer games. Instead of only focussing on the game, players capture their gameplay and simultaneously provide a commentary. This results in a video-based coverage of the gameplay that is enhanced by an additional narrative.

Being a LP creator myself, I really enjoy this additional layer of my gameplay. Aside from enjoying the gameplay itself, I can share my experiences and approaches with others. In addition, by sharing LPs with others, I get the opportunity to discuss decisions and to receive suggestions how I can improve my gameplay or challenges I can address in a future video.

As creating LPs also allows for showcasing advanced and creative builds in open world building games, sharing those videos can result in a video-based exhibition. In this way, the computer game becomes an empty canvas and the gameplay turns into art. By editing the videos, LP creators can refine their videos and continue the creative process.

This additional element of playing computer games can become an integral part of the gameplay experience. Personally, I noticed that I miss it when I play games off camera. As a result, I mostly wait with playing a new game until I have the capacity to record it as I do not want to miss out on some entertaining moments of my gameplay. However, in the case of some special story-based games, I deliberately decide against recording it to fully enjoy the gameplay without feeling the desire to move on to keep the video entertaining. In those special cases, I just like to rest in the moment of the gameplay and fully enjoy it.

In the end, creating LPs is a very creative form of playing computer games that contributes to the overall experience but also prohibits to rest in a very special moment. Thus, it results in a constant struggle between being creative and simply enjoying a game.

A true form of art

During my ongoing literature review I often discover interesting facts about things I’ve never thought about. Sometimes I can connect these facts with my own observations: The result is mostly a completely new idea why things are as they are. Maybe these ideas are new to you, too. Therefore I’ll share my new science based knowledge with you!

This week: This time, I think about how story-based games are a true form of art that require creative as well as artistic skills during the design process and evoke feelings as well as internal conflicts in a player during the gameplay.

Story-based games are mostly designed to present complex and advanced narratives to players. The gameplay of these games challenges players with decision-making tasks to continue with the story. The decisions often have an impact on the continuation of the story and can lead to completely different experiences or endings.

In this way, these games rarely implement advanced interactions like action-based or simulation-based games. Instead, they rely on easy navigation game mechanics to allow for an exploration of the virtual environment and an interaction with it. Hence, the challenges of developing these games are a result of the need for a narrative providing multiple story archs depending on a player’s choices.

As a result of this, game designers are challenged to create and to evoke the right atmosphere. This not only requires the utilization of atmospheric visual effects or music, but also to develop complex characters and problems. Thus, the game design process of these games is comparable to film making. In addition, game designers need to present the narrative in form of texts, spoken monologs or dialogs, acting of the characters, or a combination of these forms.

This approach not only requires the creation of assets that audiovisually present the story, but also the utilization of techniques commonly found in film making and theater. Game designers implement different perspectives, cuts, visual effects, and background music to establish the desired atmosphere and to immerse a player in the story. Hence, creating and designing story-based games demonstrates that game design is a true form of art.

In the same way, playing and enjoying these type of games evokes internal moral conflicts in players due to their dense atmospheres, complex problems, and the requirement to make difficult decisions. Thus, computer games are not only entertainment, but also a true form of art.

The events were caused by me …

During my ongoing literature review I often discover interesting facts about things I’ve never thought about. Sometimes I can connect these facts with my own observations: The result is mostly a completely new idea why things are as they are. Maybe these ideas are new to you, too. Therefore I’ll share my new science based knowledge with you!

This week: This time, I think about the effects of playing advanced story-based computer games. As players are in control of major events of a narrative, they can start to feel responsible for the effects of their decisions.

When making difficult decisions, we often ask ourselves if going for the alternative route would have been better and reduced the negative effects. Naturally, we cannot estimate what the real effects would have been, but it seems to be a common habbit to question our own decisions. While we know these thoughts from our daily lifes, having these kind of thoughts being evoked by a computer game is a very exciting experience.

As discussed last week, I currently play Life is Strange in the hope that I can finish it before other things start to keep me again from playing it. Life is Strange is an advanced story-based game that challenges players to decide how the narrative shall continue. The choices a player makes have drastic effects and even determine whether one of the central characters lives or dies. Thus, the continuation directly affects the players as it was their choice how the story continues. They decided to perform a certain action and have to deal with the consequences.

A similar game is Orwell that puts the player into the role of a member of a security agency who gathers information about citizens of a fictive nation. By accessing their private digital data and communications, they find information that subsequently is used against the citizens when being uploaded to the agency’s database by the players. As a result, players are responsible for the fate of the observed people. By uploading certain information, citizens are suddenly regarded as a major thread and taken into custody or even killed during the story.

As a result of this kind of gameplay, players question their choices in a similar way as they would if this would be a real world event. Often, the decisions are quite complex when the player has to pick a side between two parties who all have valid arguments. By making the decision, one party might negatively react to the player. More importantly, the choice might significantly affect the continuation of the story later on in a way a player cannot predict at the time of the decision.

Personally, while progressing through the narative of Life is Strange, I found myself several times sitting at my computer after having ended a playing session and thinking about my choices. Where they really the right choices? I always tried to pick options I probably would also use when I would be in a similar real world situation. This makes it even more complicated as it results in a test of my own principles. Hopefully, my choices will lead to a happy ending of the story and not reveal that I did a huge mistake at some point. In the end, those games teach us how to make decisions and to accept their effects as a part of life and the passage of time.

In conclusion, experiences made in advanced story-based computer games affect our real lifes as it were our conscious decisions that led to certain events. These kind of computer games use the immersive effects of playing computer games with the challenge of making complex decisions in an environment and setting we might also experience during our daily lifes. Suddenly, it is no more just playing a game, it is a test of our personality and the experience of feelings that are real even though being evoked by a simulated environment.