The future is now

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 fast technological advancement of computer games.

On October 21, 2015, the future has become reality. At least, this is what happens in the movie „Back to the Future Part II“ as Marty McFly and Dr. Emmett „Doc“ Brown travel from the year 1985 to the year 2015 and are able to take a sneak peak at the future of the world. Although I do not want to compare the future shown in the movie with our reality, I have to admit that dehydrated pizzas would be a great addition to the standard frozen pizza selection we can find in our grocery stores these days.

As I watched Back to the Future Part 2 on this famous day, I really had to think about the most recent history of the computer game development. Just looking back at the last ten years makes me realize how fast the technological advancement is. Additionally, it is fascinating to play again a ten years old computer game that seemed very realistic back in the days. Today, the game brings back good memories, but my perception of it has drastically changed as it looks really stiff and the textures as well as the physics-engine seem no longer as realistic as they did ten years ago.

For instance, sports and racing games always had the goal to achieve a photo-realistic simulation of the sport in question. Ten years ago, they began to look good from a distance, but they never reached an authentic visual representation. Today, some simulation games have almost reached the goal of a photo-realistic simulation and could trick the human eye when the gameplay is shown on the TV instead of a live coverage of a sport event.

Ferrari LaFerrari in Assetto Corsa

However, this is not the end as the virtual reality (VR), which will achieve a new dimension of immersion, is approaching fast. For instance, the Oculus Rift will be released in Q1 2016 and promises a new immersive experience. The Oculus Rift itself is a head-mounted display that actually allows its users to look around in a virtual world. VR is the next step that brings us closer to a total immersion as the immersion is currently broken as soon as the user looks to the side and thus away from the monitor. This issue will be solved with head-mounted displays that react to the movement of the user’s head.

Aside from the technological advancement of the computer game development itself, new forms and use cases of computer games have been found. Computer games are used for educational purposes and even encode knowledge that can be learned during the gameplay. Those virtual learning environments keep the learners engaged and achieve the same learning outcome as traditional learning methods. Furthermore, due to the technological advancement of the internet, watching the gameplay of other players in the form of Let’s Play videos and live streams has become a new form of entertainment.

As a conclusion, the last ten years have greatly changed the computer games and created new use cases of them. I’m already looking forward to take a look back at today’s photo-realistic games and to compare them to games that will exist in ten years from now.

The achievement 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 how achievements have lost their meaningfulness.

Achievements are a simple method to reward players for playing and exploring the game. Depending on the game, achievements are a reward for completing the game, exploring the virtual world or even doing things in an unusual way. Sometimes, achievements are even combined with additional rewards the player receives for getting a very complex achievement. Furthermore, achievements do not require a lot of additional development as they just check if a player has fulfilled a certain requirement.

The underlying idea of the achievements follows the principle of a flow inducing activity. Each achievement provides the players with a clear goal, a constant feedback about their progress and a meaningful reward. For instance, a player can get an achievement for collecting a certain amount of items. The achievement itself describes the requirement and shows a progress bar to provide the player with a constant feedback about the own progress. As soon as the player has collected the right amount of items, an information is displayed that the player has unlocked the achievement.

The first time I got in contact with achievements was as they got added to World of Warcraft (WoW) with the release of the update that prepared the world of Azeroth for the release of the „Wrath of the Lichking“ expansion pack. At this time, WoW featured 745 different achievements that belonged to eight different categories. Amongst other things, WoW players were able to collect achievements for completing quests, exploring the world, defeating raid bosses or fighting against other players.

An achievement in World of Warcraft.

Although the achievements have not changed the gameplay itself, they added a new layer of meaning to the activities in WoW. For example, completing an instance for the very first time was rewarded with a new achievement that provided the players with a feeling that they have achieved something meaningful. Some of the achievements provided the players with hard challenges and, as a result of this, contributed to a player’s reputation as they were a direct representation of the player’s skill level. Furthermore, the achievements provided the players with new ideas they could try out in the game world in order to unlock some special achievement. This new game mechanic even encouraged players to revisit old places to complete their achievement collection. In conclusion, the achievements were a great system to revitalize old content and to keep players longer engaged in the current content.

Since then, achievements became one if the most easiest ways to keep players engaged in a computer game as they are very effective and easy to implement at the same time. Today, the game mechanic is being implemented in the majority of the current computer games. Some computer games are even rewarding the players with an achievement for starting the game for the very first time. As a result, achievements lost most of their meaningfulness as they have become a common element of computer games. Personally, I do not even notice anymore when I get a new achievement as most of them are rewarded for just playing the game.

In conclusion, achievements are a great way to reward the players as long as they only reward important milestones during the gameplay. This way, the players associate them with important moments during their gameplay and feel rewarded for their performance as they then have achieved something meaningful.

Currently, World of Warcraft features 2587 achievements belonging to 12 categories.

Lessons learned from creating Let’s Play videos

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 some of the lessons I have learned during my career as a creator of Let’s Play videos.

Creating Let’s Play (LP) videos is a special way of playing a computer game as the player commentates and records the own gameplay. The resulting LP is a coverage of the gameplay that is enhanced with an additional story arc due to the player’s commentary. This article reports on my own experiences of creating LPs and uploading them to YouTube. Most of my experiences might be obvious and already well known. Furthermore, some of my experiences are caused by the functionality of YouTube and are not directly connected with the creation of LPs.

Learning how to create LPs takes time. It might be possible to extract the most important elements of creating an LP by watching already existing LPs, but actually recording a video and comming up with an exciting commentary is challenging as all of this happens just in front of the own computer screen without any audience. As a result of this, the player just talks into the microphone without getting an immediate feedback on the own performance. Additionally, it takes time to get used to play a game and to commentate on the own actions at the same time. Some games are really demanding and thus it is not that easy to simultaneously focus on both tasks.

Building a loyal audience takes time. One of the biggest challenges of creating LPs is probably to build a loyal audience that enjoys the videos and even interacts with the content creator by commenting on them. This can be explained with the high amount of other Let’s Players that are competing around the attention of the viewers and the functionality of the YouTube search algorithm that favors YouTubers who already have a high amount of viewers. In the end, a new content creator has a very hard time to reach other people as the uploaded LPs are only found by a few viewers.

It is all about the game and not about the player. The majority of the viewers is mostly interested in the gameplay of a particular game and does not follow the player’s progress through a different game. As a result of this, only a particular LP series gets a high amount of views whereas all the other series are only watched by a few users who are really interested in the player’s playstyle. This behavior has surprised me the most as I have selected my favorite YouTubers by their playstyles and not by the games they are playing.

Announcements, offers and requests only have a limited effect. Creating special announcments or requesting some feedback has a very low response rate. This observation aligns with the previous observation that the majority of the users only follows one video series. Even if a less popular video series is announced in a popular video series, the amount of views of the less popular series remains the same.

Although my observations revealed some curious aspects of uploading LPs to YouTube, creating LPs can be still very entertaining and can become a great hobby.

Complex strategy 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 turn-based strategy games that provide the players with very complex strategic options.

Personally, I enjoy playing strategy games as they allow me to experiment around with different approaches to win the game. In general, strategy games can be separated into two different groups: real-time strategy (RTS) and turn-based strategy (TBS) games. The former kind of strategy games simulates a continuous flow of time and thus the player is also required to react in time during a battle. In StarCraft2, for example, the player has not only to prepare a well mixed army, but also to control the movement of the units in real-time. The latter kind of strategy games removes the continuous flow of time by segmenting the gameplay into turns. During the own turn, the player can move the own units, attack enemies, order new infrastructure, and/or start new research projects. In XCOM: Enemy Unknown, for instance, the player controls a small team of soldiers who can move for a certain distance or attack an enemy during a turn. Once all actions are used, the player can not do anything else except for ending the turn and following the opponent’s actions.

In contrast to the gameplay of TBS games, the gameplay of RTS games does not follow a long-term strategy. Instead, RTS players execute a certain tactic and adjust the tactic based on the reaction of the opponents. In the end, the gameplay of RTS games is mostly determined by the rock, paper, scissors concept as each unit has some strengths and some weaknesses. The gameplay of TBS, however, evolves around a long-term strategy and requires the players to think ahead in order to win the game. In addition, TBS games can also evolve around a so-called „grand strategy“ that provides the players with an overall goal they have to pursue throughout the whole gameplay. Every decision during the gameplay has to contribute to the grand strategy even though the decisions are not beneficial for the player’s current position.

During the gameplay of an RTS game, the players have to outmaneuver the enemies by creating an army that exploits the weaknesses of the opponent’s army. Additionally, RTS players have to adjust their strategy once they discovered the tactic of their opponents. Although this requires a good decision-making, the strategic options in the game are not very complex. In contrast to the RTS games, the TBS games can provide the players with a lot of different strategic options to win the game. In Civilization V, for instance, the player is able to win the game by fulfilling one of many victory conditions. The player can win the game by dominating all the enemies, by researching a spacecraft and leaving Earth, or by reaching a certain diplomatic influence. All these different victory conditions require a different playstyle and a focus on different resources in the game. In the end, the strategic options of TBS games can be very complex and sometimes even overwhelm the players.

Personally, I really enjoy playing very complex games as they allow me to try out various tactics and to find new ways to triumph over my opponents. However, those complex games do have also a downside as the high amount of strategic options is hard to understand during the initial hours of playing the game. Players easily can feel overwhelmed by all the different choices and might even not be aware of all the strategic options in the game. In addition, players have not only to learn the controls of the game but also to develop an understanding for all the resources and the dependencies between the resources. In the end, the initial hours of playing such a game challenge the players with a very steep learning curve which can sometimes even be discouraging to the players. On other hand, as soon as the players have developed an understanding, they feel really rewarded by the high amount of strategic options.

In conclusion, grand strategy TBS games encode a high amount of knowledge that has to be learned in order to successfully play the game. As soon as the players have developed an understanding for the game mechanics, they will thoroughly enjoy the gameplay. However, achieving this understanding is a hard challenge.

Motivating players to tackle nine years old content

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 way how World of Warcraft motivates its players to tackle nine year old content.

Over the course of a year, several so-called „world events“ take place in the virtual world of Word of Warcraft (WoW). The world events are based on real world events, such as Christmas, Eastern and Thanksgiving. Currently, the „Brewfest“, which is based on the Oktoberfest, takes place in Azeroth and imports some elements of the Bavarian culture into the virtual world. The Brewfest was added to the game in the year 2007 and is now celebrated for the ninth time. Surprisingly, although the underlying quests were not significantly changed during the last nine years, the Brewfest still attracts a lot of players who complete all the related activities in order to earn „Brewfest Prize Tokens“.

Brewfest 2015 – Dark Iron Attack

The reason behind the high demand for the tokens can be explained with the fact that the Brewfest 2015 received a bunch of new items that only can be purchased with the special Brewfest currency. Usually, old content is no longer visited as soon as the players can not get anything new from it. The reason behind this phenomenon lies in the structure of the events in the game as they do not feature an infinite amount of unique quests. Instead, an event features a few quests that can be repeated on a daily basis and that reward the player with a certain reward on completion. In this case, a player has usually completed all the available quests on the first day and starts to repeat them the over the course of the following days in order to gather enough resources to obtain the desired event rewards. Over time, the quests cease to be entertaining and become a chore the player has to complete.

However, the player is provided with a clear goal and a constant feedback about the own progress and thus the player is very motivated to tackle the quests on a daily basis. This is also the main reason why the gamification is so successful as it provides the users with a clear goal and constant feedback about their progress so that they are highly motivated to work towards that goal by completing daily chores.

Players deliver kegs in order to obtain Brewfest Prize Tokens.

As soon as the player has obtained all available items, the motivational effect of working towards a clear goal stops and the player looses interest in completing the daily quests. However, the motivational effect can be restored by adding new rewards to the game and, as a result of this, the player has a new incentive to tacke the daily chores in a highly motivated way. In this case, adding new rewards to the game is a very effective and easy strategy to raise the interest of the players for the old content as the events do not need to be changed.

The NPC that sells the event related items is surrounded by players.

This is especially surprising as the content is already nine years old and the rewards are nothing more than a few fun items that do not change the gameplay of the players in a significant way. On the other hand, it demonstrates well how strong the motivational effects of virtual rewards can be.

Telling a story

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 entertaining aspects of creating Let’s Play videos and telling a coherent story across multiple episodes.

Since the last days of October 2013, I am creating so-called Let’s Play videos (LP). Creating an LP is a special form of playing a computer game as the player is commenting and recording the own gameplay. Therefore, the resulting video shows the computer game’s content that is extended by an additional story.

The most interesting and entertaining part of creating an LP instead of just playing the computer game comes from the fact that this method allows me to tell a unique story. Naturally, the uniqueness of the story depends on the game itself as an open world game provides more freedom than a linear story based game. However, it is still possible to create a unique LP about a story based game as each player can approach certain events in the game in a completely different way and thus add a unique story layer to the gameplay.

Open world games, however, are perfect to tell a story as they do not feature a predetermined story and thus surprise the players with unforeseen events. Furthermore, open world games do not have a clear goal and allow the players to set their own goals and try to achieve them. These two features can be used to tell a unique story as the player can choose a goal and document the own actions that are necessary in order to achieve the selected goal.

All the unforeseen events that take place during this time are the basis for the narration. During the gameplay, the player has to react to those random events and thus a new entertaining story begins. Moreover, some of the random events can distract the player from the main goal and tell a story-within-the-story. In the case of a very ambitious goal, it is even possible that the unique LP story becomes a vast narrative.

In the end, all the small episodes are connected by the overall goal that was set by the player and hence they become a coherent story that was surprising to the player and to the viewers of the resulting LP episodes.

Utilizing modifications to telll a unique story

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 utilization of modifications in order to tell a unique story.

A ‚Let’s Play‘ video (LP) [1] documents the progression of a player through a video game and adds an additional narration to the gameplay as the player comments on the own actions and the game’s story. Depending on the type of the game being played, the resulting video can have many forms. An LP of a story based game mostly documents the player’s progression through the game, whereas an LP of an open world game can also be used in order to tell a unique story.

A story based game already features a story and does not allow the players to deviate from the story in order to experience something unique. In contrast to those games, open world games do not offer a pre-determined story, thus providing an empty canvas to the players [2]. During their gameplay, players can explore those virtual worlds and experience a unique story no one else has experienced before. Using open world games for the purpose of creating an LP series is especially rewarding as each LP tells a different story and, as a result of this, differentiates LP series about the same game.

Although each LP of an open world game tells a unique story, all the LPs do have one thing in common: they are based on the same game, hence the environment and characters mostly look the same. This minor flaw, however, can be deminished by utilizing some modifications [3] that allow a greater customization of the game world and, as a result of this, allow the creators to create a completely unique story. Additionally, some modifications allow the implementation of custom textures, thus giving the game world and the characters a new appearance. Vested content creators even can create personalized textures in order to emphasize their narrations.

The emergence of open world games that allow the utilzation of modifications resulted in the phenomenon that one game can tell an endless amount of stories. Moreover, vested content creators can utilize these games as an empty canvas to create a unique narration.