Long duration flights

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 moments of playing realistic open world simulation game.

Several years ago, I used to play Microsoft Flight Simulator X Professional on a frequent basis. Aside from doing short duration flights between two airports that are only a few flight minutes away from each other, I also did some long duration flights in order to reach interesting destinations such as Iceland or Spitzbergen.

Those virtual journeys, I mostly used Berlin Tegel as my starting point, took me several days as I splitted them into shorter, about 1 hour long flights. However, this was only possible until I eventually reached a point from which on only open water separated me from my destinations thus requiring me to do several hour long flights in order to complete my goals.

Surprisingly, although nothing special happened during those long flights, it was still very entertaining as it gave me the challenge of managing the flights and communicating with the simulated Air Traffic Control while completing other tasks such as cooking, eating or cleaning. Furthermore, the real-time flights provided me with a very rewarding experience as it really felt as if I would have accomplished something meaningful after crossing the open water between the Faroe Islands and Iceland.

Unfortunately, since those days of long duration flights in Flight Simulator X, no other simulation game really provided me with a similar opportunity for such ambitious projects. This is mostly due to the fact that the scope of the games is too limited or the simulation itself is not immersive enough to motivate me to attempt those endeavors. However, Kerbal Space Program makes a slight exception as flying to the Mun in real time could be one of those challenging endeavors. The only problem is that, in contrast to my Flight Simulator X flights, there will be absolutely nothing to do between the moment of finishing the Trans-Munar-Injection burn and beginning the Orbit-Insertion burn.

Hopefully, the ultra-realistic simulation games will experience a new boom, soon, and provide fans with a huge and open virtual world they can explore unrestricted and in an authentic way. Personnally, I miss those games a lot!

Minecraft’s automatically changing environment: fascinating and sometimes problematic

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 Minecraft’s game mechanics that provide players with the impression of being a part of a living virtual world.

Minecraft provides players with unique and vivid worlds they can freely explore and change. Furthermore, the open world game has no clear goals players need to complete in order to progress with the game. Instead, players are unrestricted and can do what they want as soon as they enter a Minecraft world. As a result, the most common things players do are exploring the world, digging deep into the earth to find caves full of valuable resources or building more or less ambitious projects such as large houses, huge temples or even colorful towns.

The vividness of a Minecraft world is achieved with various types of digital creatures that inhabit the virtual environments. Some of them are friendly, others are neutral or even hostile and try to kill the players once they get too close to those creatures. Also, a few of the creatures can be tamed and subsequently start to follow the players everywhere they go.

A Creeper in Minecraft.

Moreover, the virtual environment can not only be changed by the players, but also by some of the virtual creatures. Creepers, withers as well as ghasts can cause explosions that destroy parts of the landscape when they attack the players and nethermen can even pick up arbitrary blocks in order to move them around thus slowly changing the virtual worlds over time.

That way, Minecraft gives players the impression of being a part of a living world that reacts on them and even changes as time progresses. However, the changing world game mechanic also has a few downsides as it requires players who focus on building ambitious projects to be extra careful to avoid causing an explosion and to frequently check the environment if endermen have moved some blocks away that were an integral part of a particular building. As a result of this, some players turn off this game mechanic in order to be able to build spectacular projects that will never be changed by the game itself.

In the end, Minecraft’s approach of creating a living virtual world is especially fascinating due to the automatically changing terrain which is a feature only a few games have implemented so far. Personally, I very much enjoy this feature as it provides me with the feeling of being able to witness some kind of erosion which is an event I would like to see more frequently in open world games.

Early Access: Not all changes are great for everyone

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 one of the major risks when it comes to playing an Early Access version of a computer game: the game can get changed in a way that does not match the players‘ interests.

Playing an Early Access version of a computer game can provide a gameplay experience that is completely different from the gameplay of a final release version. This is mostly due to the fact that those computer games are still in development and hence periodically receive new game mechanics and balance changes. Depending on the features that are added with a particular update, the whole gameplay experience of a game might change and provide players with new ways of interacting with the game and/or new challenges to overcome. As a result, players of Early Access games often experience a higher playtime than players of a final release version.

However, major development steps might also negatively affect the gameplay experience of long-term players who are playing the game since the beginning of its Early Access phase. This mostly is the case when new game mechanics which drastically change a particular aspect of the game are added.

Skills in The Long Dark

For instance, before the „survival“ skills were implemented in The Long Dark, players just increased an activity’s chances of success each time they performed this activity. This simplistic experience system gave players the feeling of self-improvement without affecting the gameplay too much. With the new skill system in place, players are gaining experience for various skills that unlock powerful abilities once a new skill level is reached. Such a skill system is a common game mechanic in many role-playing games (RPG) that focus a lot on the development and specialization of a player’s avatar. However, not all players enjoy the aspect of experience-based character advancements and highly preferred the simplistic approach. As a result of this, the implementation of the new system has negatively impacted the gameplay experience of some seasoned players.

In the end, that is a risk players must accept when they start to play an Early Access version of a computer game. Depending on the stage of the development, major game mechanics and general design ideas might have not been implemented yet thus providing a different experience than ultimately intended by the developers. However, although it is impossible to satisfy every player type, game developers need to listen to their community when they launch an Early Access version and sometimes even rethink certain design choices. Ultimately, it is the developer’s game and hence they have the final call in which direction the development goes.

Learning a new raid boss

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 why learning a new boss fight has become a simple task for many World of Warcraft players.

One thing that always amazes me is a raid’s ability to learn and memorize the key characteristics and mechanics of a new raid boss within just a week. Raids are groups of people who teamed up in a Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game (MMORPG) in order to collaboratively tackle the most challenging foes that mostly can be found in so-called raid instances.

Last week, „The Nighthold“, a new raid instance, opened in World of Warcraft and challenges players with 10 new boss fights of which each features a unique set of game mechanics. In addition, World of Warcraft, in the current version 7.1.5, offers raids the option to choose between three different difficulty levels: normal, heroic and mythic. While the raid size can scale from 10 to 30 players on normal and heroic, a mythic raid must consist of 20 players. Also, higher difficulty levels can add additional game mechanics to boss fights in order to make them more challenging.

For instance, the „Star Augur Etraeus“ boss features 25 different game mechanics on normal, 28 game mechanics on heroic, and 34 game mechanics on mythic difficulty. Of course, not all of the game mechanics are important for every player, but it is still critical to be aware of all of them in order to master a boss fight.

Currently, I am a member of a relatively casual raid that assembles twice a week for the purpose of experiencing the game’s content without having the clear ambition of beating the highest difficulty. During the first week, we managed to defeat 7 of the 10 bosses and were about to learn the 8th boss as the second raid evening came to an end. Now, in the second week since the release of The Nighthold, we managed to defeat all of the 8 bosses we saw in the first week during our first raid evening. That is quite an improvement!

The reason for this good improvement probably is twofold: on the one hand, most raid bosses reuse already known game mechanics; on the other hand, many good video guides got released and explain the boss fight mechanics in details. Although Blizzard Entertainment, the developers of World of Warcraft, try to challenge players with unique boss fights, most of the game mechanics can be reduced to a few main principles: do not stand in damage causing effects, eliminate additional enemies that join a boss fight as soon as possible, react accordingly when the boss applies a certain negative effect to you or a fellow raid member. Hence, instead of acquiring completely new knowledge, players are only required to generalize the game mechanics used in order to learn a new encounter. It only becomes difficult when a short reaction time is required as this is a human ability that has to be trained separately.

Also, in order to get a good basic understanding of a boss fight, many players watch video guides that explain a raid encounter in details thus providing them with all the knowledge needed before personally seeing the boss for the first time. However, this approach is a bit strange as it takes away most of the challenge of playing World of Warcraft.

In the end, learning a new boss fight rarely requires the acquisition of new knowledge. Instead, learning a new encounter requires players to apply their World of Warcraft experience gained over their whole gametime in order to classify the game mechanics. Therefore, learning new encounters is more of an iterative learning process that starts in the moment when a player starts playing the game for the first time.

Unobtrusive Tutorials

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 different ways how games introduce new players into the gameplay without breaking the immersion.

Most of the current computer games start with a tutorial or at least provide a tutorial as an option in the game’s main menu. A tutorial explains new players the general gameplay and introduces them into the game controls in order to facilitate the start of a new game. In general, a tutorial is a well structured small mission that provides players with clear instructions and clear goals. For instance, at the start of a First Person Shooter (FPS), players receive accurate instructions about the movement controls and subsequently are required to perform a small task, such as running up a hill or collecting an item, during which they can practice using the controls.

RimWorld informs players about game mechanics with small text boxes.

Unfortunately, most tutorials break the immersion of a game as they heavily restrict a player, use a high amount of text to convey the information and often are not directly tied into the rest of the gameplay. However, there are also very good exceptions that inform the players about the game mechanics without actually forcing them to perform a certain activity. The colony simulator RimWorld, for example, displays small text boxes with information when the player has reached a certain point or encountered a particular problem. Players then can read those information in order to learn more about the relevant game mechanics or just ignore them. This way, the game introduces the players to the gameplay without actually forcing them to perform a certain activity.

Astroneer unobtrusively informs players about important game mechanics.

Alternatively, some games almost ignore the player and only display tiny bits of information the player has to know in order to progress with the game. For instance, Astroneer, a space exploration as well as building game, only displays the key binding activating a certain game mechanic when the player has reached a certain point for the very first time. During the gameplay, players need to gather different resources using a so-called Terrain Tool which can be activated by pressing ‚Q‘. As soon as a new player approaches a patch of resources for the very first time, the game just informs the player about the tool without actually explaining how to operate it. This allows the player to activate this game mechanic and subsequently to try it out on their own thus learning the game controls on the fly. Moreover, Astroneer displays buttons on machines or vehicles when a certain activity can be performed without directly explaining what the button does. This again allows players to observe the functionality of the game mechanics and to learn the gameplay from scratch. In the end, Astroneer’s tutorial is hardly noticeable by the players as it does not break the immersion and allows players to continuously play the game.

As a conclusion, tutorials are important as they inform players about game controls they can only guess. However, it is important that the information are presented in a very unobtrusive way in order to avoid breaking the immersion and allowing players to learn the gameplay from scratch which can even result in a rewarding feeling as it gives players the impression of having discovered something on their own.

Borders of borderless open worlds

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 necessity of implementing believable world borders in order to avoid breaking a game’s immersion.

Increasing the immersion of a computer game can often be achieved by allowing players to freely explore the virtual worlds. Open world games do not force the players to move in a particular direction by only providing a linear path through the game world. Instead, those games enable players to wander around and even reach places that have no direct connection to the narration. Naturally, depending on the type of the game, players are still guided by quests and other game goals that, on completion, advance the game’s story, but between those tasks, players are free to explore the game world on their own. This approach gives players the feeling of freedom thus greatly increasing the immersion of the game.

However, open world games, unless they rely on a procedurally generated terrain, are not endless virtual worlds. At some point, a player will reach the end of the virtual environment when constantly travelling in the same direction. In order to avoid breaking the immersion of the game when the player reaches the end of the world, game developers need to implement believable world borders that match the setting of the game. For instance, in a post-apocalyptic world a world border can be implemented by designing an area that is highly contaminated and kills the player within a short amount of time. Other prominent solutions are high mountains, blocked roads or deep water which can not be crossed by the players.

Unfortunately, there are also games that intend to provide the players with immersive environments but fail at achieving this due to bad implementations of a world border. The probably most disappointing and immersion breaking approach is to implement invisible walls. Once a players reaches such a wall, he can not proceed any more in the desired direction and just stops moving. Other bad solutions are when the player instantly dies or gets teleported back to a place inside of the game world.

The latter approach is used in DiRT Rally which is not directly an open world game but tries to provide the players with an authentic environment. Due to the nature of rallying, a player easily can slide off the roads and hence needs a way to return back to it in order to continue with a rally stage. Unfortunately, DiRT Rally uses an unpredictable way of forcing the players back to the roads. In general, players have 15 seconds to return back to the road before getting reset. This already can become frustrating when the player almost has reached the road again and suddenly finds himself in a completely different position. However, at some places the game instantly resets the player although the 15 seconds have not passed yet. Those moments then result in a high degree of frustration as it completely breaks the immersion of the game. A better solution would be to not constrain the players with time limits and instant resets. Instead, players should be able to find their way back to the road – the maps still could have a border in form of impassable terrain – and only be required to manually reset their cars when they are completely stuck. This would greatly increase the immersion, especially as the stages must be completed within a given amount of time (15minutes for short stages and 30 minutes for long stages).

As a conclusion, implementing an authentic and immersive world not only requires the design of a good virtual environments but also demands the implementation of believable world borders.

The Yearly Christmas Update Spam

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 yearly spam of new game updates that get released just a few days before Christmas.

The last days before the Christmas holidays are always very busy and result more than often in a lot of stress. A last minute Christmas gift needs to be bought, a travel across the country needs to be organized or other Christmas related events need to be enjoyed.

The computer game industry also seems to get very busy around this time of the year as many new games or updates get released just a few days before Christmas. Especially the Christmas updates seem to have become some kind of mandatory goal for many game developers. Of course, this perfectly makes sense, as releasing an update indicates that the game still gets improved and, more importantly, it encourages players to return to the game thus raising the global awareness for it which can result in an increased amount of new buyers. Along those lines, many YouTubers also want to enjoy and show their experiences in a new update which in return raises the awareness for a certain title even more.

However, from a player’s point of view, this sudden spam of new updates and releases feels a bit overwhelming as only one game can be played at a time. In addition, Christmas is the time of the year where I have the least amount of time to play computer games as many other things are more important. Furthermore, once the Christmas updates are released, it often takes a lot of time until new game contents are designed which results in a period of time that lacks new additions to games I already play.

In the end, there is no solution to this problem as players want to have a constant stream of new updates whereas game developers like to maximize their revenues which is mostly possible around Christmas. However, it would be interesting to see if countercyclical releases would result in better sells due to a reduced amount of competitors. The only good thing is that so much content gets released around Christmas that it lasts for several months.

Merry Christmas! (Especially the real one and not just the virtual events!)

Virtual world, real emotions

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 provide another example for the real emotions computer game players experience while playing a game.

The emotions we experience when we play a computer game alone or together with friends are, aside from being in the state of flow, the most motivating as well as rewarding elements that keep us playing the game. Furthermore, those emotions are the reason why experiences we make in a virtual world are a real thing that can even affect our real world.

Although I already discussed this topic quite a lot, I like to provide another example of experiencing positive emotions and social connections by playing a computer game.

Last Sunday, the fourth season of the Conelanders Assetto Corsa Racing League has ended and resulted in a few emotional moments for some of the players participating in this league. In contrast to the previous seasons, the fourth season offered the opportunity to the players to form teams in order help each other and to experience another competitive aspect of playing a racing simulation.

Depending on the motivation of a team, the members met for practice sessions, discussed race strategies and supported each other to overcome a bad result. As a result of this, team members not only shared important moments but also developed friendships among each other throughout the 6-race long season. Naturally, after having worked together as a team over such a significant amount of time, participating in the last race was an emotional moment for some of the participants and can even have resulted in the shared goal of continuing to play together.

Of course, this is just a small example of the broad variety of different ways how computer games can connect players from all over the world and allow them to share emotions as well as special moments. The exciting thing about this phenomenon is that the emotions and friendships caused by events taking place in a virtual world are real for the players. In the end, the virtual world becomes an extension of the real world and stops being just game that is played for entertaining purposes.

When a game stops being challenging

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 elements that make a game challenging.

World of Warcraft (WoW) probably is one of my favorite games all time. It is the game I played the most by far and that entertained me for more than a decade by now. The main reason for this incredible lifespan is the fact that the game periodically received updates that provided new regions to explore and new evils to defeat. Now, 12 years after WoW got released, I still enjoy joining my friends in Azeroth in order to fight our ways through a dangerous instance.

Despite all the joy I continue to derive from playing WoW, I have to admit that the game has ceased to be challenging. The main problem is that the game mechanics barely have changed since the game’s release and, as a result of this, I have fully internalized all my virtual capabilities. Of course, I still have to be focussed and pay attention to critical events during a boss fight, but that is just a matter of concentration and does not challenge me to improve my skills in order to become better at the game. In addition, most of new boss mechanics that have been added to the game are very simple and easy to exhaust thus providing not a real challenge.

Normally, a game is challenging when a player operates at the limits of the own ability in order to exhaust one of the game’s challenges. In addition, while playing a challenging game, players can train their skills in order to improve their performance. In other words, a game is challenging when it follows the main principles of flow and allows players to train their knowledge.

Unfortunately, this is no longer the case when it comes to WoW for several years by now. Although I still enjoy playing the game and experiencing new story arcs, I noticed how I significantly reduced the amount of time I play WoW. Currently, I only play the game when I do have a fixed appointment with my friends in order to tackle a certain dungeon.

In general, I noticed that, although some content is left to explore, many games cease to be challenging as soon as I fully learned all the knowledge that is encoded in a particular game. As a conclusion, amongst other things, good games need to provide a lot of room for improvement in order to remain challenging for a long time.

Between Frustration and Excitement

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 struggle of constantly having issues during virtual races and the motivational effects of the game that keep me going despite my negative experiences.

Since I joined the Conelanders Assetto Corsa League, things have not worked out so well for me. Aside from a few top-10 finishes, I never had a race I was really content with. The reasons for this are quite simple but yet very complex.

The probably main problem was that I rarely had the chance to spend a high amount of time practicing the race tracks which resulted in a huge disadvantage concerning the overall pace. Most of the time, I was, depending on the track, 3 – 8 seconds slower than the fast drivers. In addition, the lack of practice increased the chances of making a mistake or being overtaken by another car. Furthermore, my slower pace was also problematic when I lost contact with a group of cars due to an incident as I was not able to catch up with them again.

The other main reason for my mediocre results was the high amount of race incidents I was involved in. During the majority of the races I was spun out at least once by another driver who tried to overtake me at a place where it is not possible or in a way that was just too aggressive. Being spun out not only broke my concentration but also resulted in a huge loss of time and, due to my lack of speed, to a loss of contact with the other drivers. As soon as I was spun out during a race, the chances for a decent finish were ruined already.

In the end, I was frequently frustrated after a race weekend as I rarely managed to complete my personal goal of having a clean race which then could easily have resulted in a top-10 finish. As a result of this, I often was questioning myself if I should not stop participating in those races.

However, as participating in such a Conelanders race as well as driving a virtual race car in general always resulted in me playing at the very edge of my skill level, I was all the time motivated to compete in the next race despite all the negative experiences I made during the previous race again. As soon as I calmed down and overcame the frustration caused by the last race, I accepted the challenge of racing anew.

As a conclusion, the struggle between frustration and excitement is a prime example for the motivational effects of flow. Assetto Corsa as well as the Conelanders League provide me with a clear goal, new (or better the same as I never exhausted one) challenges and a constant feedback. In addition, the activity of racing exactly matches my personal skill level thus resulting in me being completely immersed in the gameplay.

Unfortunately, the motivational effects start to decline as I constantly encounter the same issues over and over again. Although flow has a huge motivational effect, it can not overcome a constant stream of disappointments and needs to be backed up with some successes. Hopefully, this will happen in the next race …

… challenge accepted!