Designing achievements: how to unlock their potential

Ever since the announcement that the new Wii U would not be having a universal achievement system at launch, both fans and haters of such a system have been pushing their opinions on each other. Now, this is nothing new, because haters gonna hate, and fanboys gonna love. However, this eternal struggle doesn’t take away from the concept that achievements can evoke very strong emotions in players. From a game-design perspective this doesn't come as a surprise: achievements can act as a reward, which are vital for creating a motivated player (if you want to know more about rewards, check my previous blog post on Rewarding your users).

Xbox Live Gamerscore: Now others can judge your mad gaming skills.

Since the adoption of universal achievement systems (Gamerscore on Xbox 360, or the Trophies on the PS3), achievements have become commonplace in video games. Besides their role within a game, they now also play a large role out of the game. Which achievements do my friends have? How many achievements do I have? This new meta-game might be an additional reason for players to focus on unlocking achievements within games. As a game designer it is becoming more and more important to not only incorporate achievements, but also to understand how they work. That way you can ensure that achievements add to the experience, and not subtract from it.

Hitting the right notes: Music in games?

Last weekend I went to the ‘Distant Worlds: Music from Final Fantasy’ concert in Edinburgh (which is, coincidentally, also the reason why there was no blog post last week). This wonderful performance, by Arnie Roth and the Royal Scottish National Orchestra, reminded me how important it is to include fitting music in video games. Now, I am not an expert on making music for video games, so it’s difficult for me to give specific pointers on the creation of good music; you would need an experienced composer to help you with that. However, as a game designer, there are still a few important elements to think about.

Distant Worlds Edinburgh - It's amazing to how many people gathered here, just for the prospect of hearing their favourite Final Fantasy songs. 

First of all, music should fit with what’s happening in the game. However, this is not always a straightforward process, as it is completely dependent on your aims for the scene. A happy song when someone is being murdered might not be the best idea, but it made sense in the movie American Psycho. A sad song when you have just slain a strong enemy might seem strange, but it made sense for a well-known death scene in Final Fantasy 7. The trick here is to understand what emotion you are trying to trigger in the user. For example, do you want them to be fearful, sad, angry or perhaps joyous? (Disclaimer: emotions come in different gradations; some music will have a stronger effect on the user than others). By linking songs that have a strong emotional impact, with scenes that have a strong emotional impact, you can create memorable moments within your game.

How to give your characters more character

In the last few blog posts I focused on carefully structuring and refining game mechanics to increase engagement. While these mechanics are an important part of games, there are also other gameplay elements to consider, such as story-related components. Today we are going to look at one part of stories: the characters that the user will encounter and interact with. Some of these characters might play a minor role, but there will be others that are going to be key to the story. If such a character lacks personality, they will only make the user less interested in the story.

Final Fantasy XIII - While in general Final Fantasy games have characters with a lot of depth, Final Fantasy XIII was criticized for having bland and one-sided characters.

Rewarding your users: why, what, and how

A new piece of equipment, finishing the game, a new ability, a new piece of furniture for your virtual house, or being one of the top ten players in the world. All of these can be something that you receive, or achieve, when you’re playing a video game. Can you imagine a game that does not have any form of rewards?

That’s difficult to imagine, isn't it? Rewards are such an intrinsic part of games, that without them, it would be hard to even call it a game at all. Rewards don’t always take the same shape though. They can be something material, such as an item that changes the gameplay, but they can also be something immaterial, such as defeating the final boss and seeing the conclusion to the story.

The Legend of Zelda - Rewards have the power to create memorable moments and events in video games.

From the perspective of the designer, a reward is something that is given to the player to change their way of interacting with the game and/or to motivate the player to continue playing the game. Things start getting difficult when you start asking people about the ideal reward. This is something that’s not easy to define; not everybody enjoys the same rewards. A clear example can be seen in those videos of teenage girls throwing a tantrum because their parents bought them the wrong car for their sweet sixteenth birthday.

Twitchy: How to keep your action-game fans from becoming too frustrated.

The last few weeks I have been enjoying myself with trying to survive in Super Hexagon, a game created by Terry Cavanagh for mobile platforms. It has been a while since I played such a game and it reminded me of a dimension in which games can vary; I personally call it the reactive vs. deliberative dimension. This dimension deals with the way how users respond to the state of the game. Do users have the chance to make a hypothesis about the effect of their actions on the future state of the game (deliberative), or will users have to give the correct input to the current state of the game as fast as possible (reactive, or twitch). In this blog post I will mainly focus on the ‘reactive’ side of the dimension.

Pac-man: An age-old example of reactive gameplay

The Incredible Machine: an age-old example of deliberative gameplay

Many ‘reactive’ games have certain characteristics: users have to quickly adapt to the state of the game by giving the correct input (or face being mocked by the game-over screen), the game states are usually in a random order (so the user doesn’t know what to expect), and the aim of the user is generally to survive as long as possible (or survive a given level).

Taking the first steps...

Welcome to ‘The Brooding Designer’. This blog will chronicle my search for a greater understanding of the ‘black box’ we call video games.

Games, as you may know, can come in all shapes and sizes. But, no matter how simple they sometimes may seem, they can still be counted among the most complex forms of media. They usually contain very different elements; Narration, user interaction, sensory information, and feedback are only a few of the most common ones. To understand each component individually, you would have to master a dozen different disciplines.  

While at first this may seem impossible, there are a lot of amazing people out there who can take all of these ingredients and combine them into an extraordinary experience. This delectable combination is made possible by a wealth of previous experiences, leading to an intuitive approach to design. Many other people however, don’t have access to this much desired ‘key’ that can open the mysterious ‘black box’ that we call video games.

In my own experiences I have seen many glimpses of what lies within the box, and I want to share these glimpses with you. However, even though I myself have been playing games for most of my life and have been designing (educational) games for a while now, there are still many questions that haunt my thoughts at night. So, I invite you to join me on my search to open the black box, and maybe together we can successfully navigate the dark depths that we will find within.