{"id":1766,"date":"2009-09-03T11:28:38","date_gmt":"2009-09-03T16:28:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/?p=1766"},"modified":"2009-09-03T12:08:36","modified_gmt":"2009-09-03T17:08:36","slug":"seven-questions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/2009\/09\/03\/seven-questions\/","title":{"rendered":"Seven Questions"},"content":{"rendered":"

Why seven? Who knows. It’s one of those magic things, I guess. But the latest Gamers With Jobs conference call<\/a> had a discussion about what seven questions gamers consider when they decide whether or not to keep playing a game. You have to skip past the as-usual interminable but part-of-deal talk about what everyone is playing to get to the topic, but it’s worth a listen.<\/p>\n

In many ways the topic is a little silly. The things that bring me back to a game are usually idiosyncratic and heavily dependent on what else I’m playing, what books I’m reading, what blogs or forum posts I’ve read that day, etc. Yesterday, I was chatting with a friend who was in the middle of playing Imperialism 2<\/em>; guess what I’ve had an urge to return to?<\/p>\n

The questions they came up with were:<\/a><\/p>\n

1) What are the goals of the game? Are they compelling and sustainable?
\n2) Does the game consistently \u00e2\u20ac\u0153pay off\u00e2\u20ac\u009d?
\n3) Does the game avoid impeding progress with pointless obstacles in the game or the interface?
\n4) Does the game flow to the point that you lose track of time?
\n5) Does the game give you sufficient context?
\n6) Is the presentation engaging?
\n7) Write in your question! call AT gamerswithjobs.com<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

So six questions and a punt to users – reply there to help them fill out their list. Question 4 doesn’t work for me since that’s less an issue about the game design than it is an issue about how well the design works – if the game has clear goals, consistently pays off and has an engaging presentation then a flow may develop. It’s more a consequence than a criteria.<\/p>\n

If I were to rewrite this as Seven Questions That Help You Decide A Strategy Game is Good, it would probably go something like this:<\/p>\n

1) Are there variable paths to victory or is this a puzzle game?
\n2) Are there clear consequences for taking a particular action?
\n3) Does the game avoid impeding progress with pointless obstacles in the game or the interface? (stealing GWJ’s because it works.<\/strong>)
\n4) How long before the game has shown me everything it has to show?
\n5) If the game represents an historic or future world, is it a convincing representation? (Note: convincing, not accurate. These can be synonyms, but don’t have to be.<\/strong>)
\n6) Does the game hide important information from the player? If so, is there a good reason for it?
\n7) Write in your question! call AT flashofsteel.com (That’s what readers are for, right?<\/strong>)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The thing is, whether or not I go back to a role playing game or a shooter or a roguelike means entirely different questions because I have different expectations from the genre. In an RPG, I want the story to give me a reason to care that I am leveling up another hobbit bard, whereas I mostly ignore the story campaign in an RTS. My expectations of shooters have changed a lot, too. And don’t get me started on rhythm or arcade games – where does one even begin to discuss “context” in Peggle<\/em>?<\/p>\n

This discussion is a little different for everyone I suspect. The GWJ chat spun off from something Warren Spector wrote about questions game designers should ask, and I bet that Spector’s list would find wider agreement than the GWJ one or even mine.<\/p>\n

So fill the comments here and forum there.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Why seven? Who knows. It’s one of those magic things, I guess. But the latest Gamers With Jobs conference call had a discussion about what seven questions gamers consider when they decide whether or not to keep playing a game. You have to skip past the as-usual interminable but part-of-deal talk about what everyone is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}},"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[21,126],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5GFeQ-su","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1766"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1766"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1766\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1769,"href":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1766\/revisions\/1769"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1766"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1766"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1766"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}