PIGDA 2014 Board Game Jam & Testament

The PIGDA Board Game Jam is a full day event held by Pittsburgh International Game Developers Association annually for people to team up and make a board game and play each other's game. I can't wait to share my experience in the 2014 Board Game Jam! (Finally got ETC and had access to a computer!!!)

I teamed up with Yan Jin, a game designer who usually has lots of weird and amazing ideas. It was held in the Art Institute of Pittsburgh. I was late and stuck in a traffic jam when he texted me the secret topic of this game jam: > travel. My first idea was to make a simulation game about travelling in a town that players need to deal with traffic jams and pick different vehicles and sometimes switch between them.

When I got there, we started brainstorming around 10:30. We talked about a variety of topics, themes and mechanics. He threw out ideas like bacteria travelling in a body and interact with other stuff in it. He also introduced me the game play of a board game called Mr. Jack which allows players to take their turns to explore and interact with each other in limited area. I thought about travelling to different times with a time machine and have parallel universes. I felt it very interesting because I was sure that all teams would definitely be thinking about travelling through space although it sounds really abstract if we make a game about travelling through time. I tried to figure out how it might work, but I didn't get anything but headache. When I was about to abandon the time travelling idea, Yan went through all the things we had and we realized that both of us sort of liked it. So we decided to try our best and see what we could reach. I never doubted that it would be a hard process and it turned out to be true. We listed all the elements and fragments of design ideas. We decided to have three Time Sections: the Past, the Present and the Future. Whatever was done in former time sections changes the things and events happening in the later section. It was really hard to put them together and to make everything reasonable. However, as time went by, I formed the story line and basic mechanics in mind gradually. I got a bunch of problems and couldn't link them together. I tried to express them and let Yan solve all the problems. He did a good job reading my mind, iterating on the details including the items, events and maps and approving my thoughts. I was not confident with the idea of using items to link the three worlds together and I thought it not fun enough until he said it was brilliant to figure out that. We made a rough prototype, tested and changed more than five times. We'd been trying to simply the game play and making it as intuitive as possible, still I felt it hard to understand because there is no similar models in real life. I was almost 2:00 p.m. and we hesitated whether to push down and start over again. I really wanted to follow the spirit of Fail-Fast-and-Flow-the-Fun. But again, we really wanted to create a game about time travelling. It was also partly because of the text on blackboard: "Theme: > Travel". I was wondering if the ">" indicated that we were supposed to make something about super travel or things more than purely travelling. Anyway, we decided to stick to whatever we had. After the organizers set up the printer, it was almost 5:00 p.m. when we printed 3 copies of the map and drew the icons on them. All things were done in a hurry and we didn't even get enough time to run the final version.

There were 8 games at last. It was Demo time from 5:00-6:00 p.m. and we run all the games one by one. We were Team 1 and we named the game Testament. In a play of our game, there was a boy who tried to fight with me with his weapon, the Screwdriver. But he failed and killed himself. It was so fun. (He revenged and killed me in his game later...||||) The second game was about earning resources, delivering them, building and fighting. It looked very professional and clean. The third one was made by a lady and it was on a colorful graph containing lots of paths. The next one was similar to the classical board game Snack and Ladders in game mechanics but they got different themes. The next one was a Hello Kitty flicking game. The most impressive thing about this game was that the players who are not in their turn (basically flicking) are meant to count for the one who's moving, which keeps the game intense and adds more fun. The next one was also made by one person (Tim in a T-shirt with the Massive Chalice on it). It was about all band members earning fame and money for their band and themselves. When they count the total income it is a cooperative system and when it comes to individual it is competitive. He got explanations about all the characters, situation and events, which was awesome. Actually the game play was similar to the final pitch of my Game Design course team, a combination of Grand Theft Auto and Guitar Hero which allows player to experience the process of becoming a rock godfather from a shabby street singer. The last game but not the least was made by two high school (not very sure) boys and it was about wanders visiting various landmarks in Pittsburgh, gathering weapons and money and fighting against one another. The game rules are not perfect but it was really fun to play.

At last, we were awarded the most complicated and confusing. The judge said "We believe that there's something in there." Honestly I had the presentiment of getting this award when we were designing this game. Well it was great fun playing other teams' game, seeing new visuals and novel mechanics and talking to board game lovers there. I appreciate that the organizers provide the materials and food for us. I had never seen that many kinds of materials for making board games. They are really idea provoking. I was a great day and I hope to participate more board game jams in the future.

How to Get New Ideas

Thinking up new ideas is always important at any time of designing a game. When I was young, there were always many things in real life that I couldn’t understand. However, as I grow up, I feel the truth is that I didn’ t understand myself. Creating virtual worlds is a process of knowing ourselves as the guests and applying them in a proper way in your games. I believe that unique ideas come from people’s raw feelings and unprocessed inspiration in real life. Except for common ways like reading/watching as much as we can or researching on your topic, here I am going to share my methods to fill myself with personalized new ideas.

Pull yourself out of current scene or have a short trip to somewhere else. When I was in college, I used to commute between the city I studied in and my hometown three months a time. The trip was short so I didn’ t fall asleep and couldn’ t do anything deeply. So I would like to pick a random topic about what I was focusing on at that period of time, and thought about it. To my surprise, I could always come up with new thoughts which were strikingly different from my original thoughts because of the rapid change in distance. It’s like doing experiments on your topic by putting it into different environment and taking a trip physically can always be effective. You were restricted in a cage and now you are free. On the train, you are not bothered by outer factors and are ready for meeting strangers but don’t really need to care much. So when you run out of your ideas about a specific topic, try to put your objects in another time or space, pull yourself to another perspective, redefine the relationship between various objects, and something new will come along.

List whatever weird about yourself. Everyone is unique. I personally can easily write down a long list of strange things about my habits or settings, which can be aspects we consider when designing a new character or start a story. They don’t necessarily to be too wild or unusual. By putting them together or modifying to an extreme will make them more dramatic and fun to play with. They are nothing about right or wrong, so don’t be afraid of talking about them. Here is a list of examples of myself:

1.       Good at using chopsticks, can use with both hands.

2.      Can tear up in one minute.

3.       Fall over on flat ground very easily no matter how focused when walking without heels.

4.      Can remember a number/letter sequence up to 50 digits.

5.       Forget lyrics almost every time when step on the stage, which used to kill the drum of a band.

6.      Can put on makeup on a jolt bus.

7.       Have beautiful handwriting. Copy others homework and convinced herself to be the original author by handwriting without words in high school.

8.      Forget what just happened in the last minute.

9.      The last to wake up, the first to arrive at classroom.

10.   Like gambling, seldom win.

Do some slow physical exercise while thinking. Having a good idea means saving lots of work and solving the problem in a smart way. The key to this method is to follow the flow and slow down the cadence of your whole body including your brain. I found this super helpful when I was also in college. It was an extremely stressful time when I was working on a wide variety of activities, promo-videos and assignments. But I kept the habit of go swimming twice a week. It was a precious chance to relax and not to think about anything stressful – at least it was my plan not to think, but it turned out that I couldn’t keep my brain empty and simply focus on doing exercise. So I compromised and started dissect the problems I was encountering in a very slow pace. To my surprise, I was able to notice the inner reason of the crux or come up with solution by slowing down to the pace of exercise I was doing.

Try new routines of your daily curriculums. I used to walk to school every day, and it was within 20 minutes’ walk. It sounds like what I listed above, taking exercise. But here what I want to address is that always find new paths to reach your destination or even simply pay attention to the other side of scenery or go through the same road from the opposite direction. Sometimes I would set out 10 minutes ahead of time to leave some time for exploring new path although I’m going to exactly the same place every day. It helps people improve the intelligence level according to research. To my own experience, this helps me discover new ways to a specific place, learn the construction of the city, and gain the sense of space. I used to be terrible with directions. But after travelling through some squares, subways or other landscapes for a few times, I feel much easier to remember directions and project the positions from the map. As an environment artist and level designer, I feel it very helpful to practice understanding and visualizing the structure of the environment in real world.

Get ready to take notes on your thoughts at any time. Defen Zhang, a famous Taiwanese writer and creator wrote in her books, ‘can’t bear not writing down my fleeting ideas, use whatever I can grab, even a lipstick or eyeliner…’ I agree with this, and I think having a pen and notebook with us all the time is very useful, taking pictures or recording voice can be good choices too.

Connect anything to your game. After doing a bunch of design, I feel sometimes it’s possible to pick random objects and create a game for it. It doesn’t mean that comparing between all the options is useless. But to some degree it is true. Creation is sometimes about combining unrelated things in incredible ways. Pushing yourself with a certain subject is more effective and can be good exercise for your brain.

Apply a mechanism in industrial design to your gameplay. In Chinese there is a saying ‘Da Dao Xiang Tong’, which is from Lao Tsu’s theory, Tao Te Ching. In my opinion, it basically describes the situation that the world has a shared rule set and everything in a substance world obeys these rules. Game mechanisms are always about verbs. By learning how a machine or a system works, we can always understand the ways to control different shapes and some tricks in design.

Link your design with your special experience. Game is about having whatever can be useful for players to capture an experience and make them a whole. Everyone has his own stories. Any specific experience or feeling you want to share with others can be revived through a game.  Have you ever taken an unforgettable journey which is as fascinating as a dream? Have you ever be betrayed by your friends owing to a misunderstanding? Have you ever had the feeling of growing up after a night? Have you had a secret that you never wanted to tell anyone else because of any concern? … I’m sure there is something in your life that only belongs to yourself; it’s hard to look through others eyes. What you can do is to dig into the feelings, why you feel that way, what you want to do, what you wish to happen, what you can/can’t do in that specific situation, and turn them into ideas, which can be an indie game about transformation or an adventure game about a wonderland.

After talking about many ways to get new ideas, you might think I feel it very easy to come up with new concept. But the truth is, whatever we do is not fully inventing something from zero, they are raised by someone else in the past. In the Game Developers Conference 2014, there was an indie talk that each indie developer had around five minutes to express their indie thoughts. One of the speakers, a female developer started her talk with “Don’t worry. Whatever we are doing has been done by different people for many times in different ways…” But what we are doing still worth to be done. I can’t agree more, I believe that the countless ways to organize and present an element make each work different. As what Garfield said, the thing worthy of being done worth to do again and again. What we should do is to get new ideas and dig out unique inspiration from our distinguished life and turn them into games that have something worth sharing.

Cytus: One of my Favorite Games

Cytus is a rhythm game developed by Rayark Games. The main reason why I love this game is because it looks very busy from the perspective of a spectator, but when you play it, it’s not that hard and you feel cool with yourself thanks to the well-designed player experience. From every little detail, I can see how careful they are making decisions to improve the experience.

Being as simple as possible. As what I said, this game looks very fancy and busy when you see someone else playing it without knowing the manipulations of the game. However as long as you follow the scan line and be clear with the three kinds of gestures, you know everything about how to play this game.

Clear and smart UI design. The notes indicate all the information you need to get while playing it. The relative distance between the scan line and notes tells you when to tap the screen. The color and size changing of notes gives clear sign for you to catch the beat (of course follow the rhythm at the same time). Different gestures have very distinguished UI. Have clear but not overwhelming feedback of combo count and grade of each note.

Sound. “Cytus has 60+ songs and 120+ variations, including famous composers from all around the world.” I personally like the genres (mainly Classical Crossover) of the music in this game. However what I want to talk more about the sound is, first, in default setting, there’s no aural feedback when you are playing a song. There are many rhythm games that have aural feedback such as muting the notes that you didn't hit or having other sound effects to break the sense of hearing. I always feel very frustrating when a note isn't played at the exact point-in-time, let alone missing a note or hit wrong notes.

Detection and difficulty. This game has more than 10 levels of difficulty and each song has two modes: Easy and Hard. The detection is pretty loose, which I’m sure that it reduces the frustration of potential Missings and Bads. As a skillful keyboard user and an amateur singer/pianist, I feel the difficulty of this game is just fine, which means that I can always have the sense of accomplishment, I’m confident to challenge songs in a certain range and I always feel that I can eventually get a Master (all notes are Perfect) after practicing enough. After playing for about two weeks I realized this state and my true level. But I would like to keep playing it because of the fluent playing experience and I can always get a higher grade which will make me feel cooler. But there are still a few songs that reamain to be nightmare to me, and I don’t even know how to distribute my fingers to reach all the notes.

Addiction. Unlike some simulation games, this game uses its enjoyable playing experience and a good interest curve to make it more engaging rather than setting little goals and utilizing social features to tie players to the game and being active without knowing how much time you've spent on virtual items. The gameplay is mostly intensity in this game. And as what I talked about in the difficulty, you can choose the levels that fit your proficiency, challenge them, practice a little bit (I would practice a song for 10 times if I can get a Master and still feel not boring because I’m busy figuring out new ways to play it perfectly. But for casual players, merely two times will be enough to get familiar enough with the song and notes.), get a higher score, switch to another song at any time, etc. As long as you are comfortable with this music game and want to play it better, the flow will work.

Exercising your brain, fingers and eyesight and improve your sense of music. A good sense of rhythm, agile split vision and flexible fingers will definitely help players do better in this game, and players can exercise themselves by playing this game. I feel I understand the notes with more sensibility after practicing this game.

Surprise.  I've been playing this game without checking any other videos and information, so I didn't know the best grade of a play is Master. I used to share my feeling and grades with a friend who started to play at the same period. He seemed to know the secret songs and other stuff. But he didn't tell me about the Master. So when I first get all the notes perfectly played, I got a Master and there was a quick fancy animation right when I hit full score, which was a surprise. I felt that it was a little reward for advanced players because I can only view it after achieving it. Another surprise of this game is the secret songs. When I showed my high scores to my friends, I was asked to try the secret songs of each chapter. You can enter them by hitting some symbols at the right timing at song select screen. The secret songs are always a little harder than normal songs. Sometimes they are multiple variations in different styles, which is a successful way to give bonus. Players will be grateful with the bonus and feel developers’ enthusiasm about their game. Although when I showed a secret song to a friend, she felt it wasn't a good design because it was too hard to discover without knowing any hint, I still feel it fine to have such bonus.

Level design. What I mean by level design in this game is which notes to have players tapping and how to organize them, such as layout, different gestures. It’s interesting to discover the notes arranging in a tilted row in being counterpoint to the music phrases. The layout is also very clear and well-designed. I can feel the designers are trying to make the notes much easier to reach rather than picking inconspicuous notes and organize them in a way that conflicts human engineering in order to make the game hard to play.

Besides what I listed above, there are other aspects make Cytus a good game, such as the consistency of art and music style, beautiful illustration and short animation for each song, the States screen, etc.

What I don’t really like. Just from my personal experience, it’s natural to have some part that I think is possible to be improved.

Slow songs. The slower songs are always sorted in a little lower level in this game. But when I play a song which is too slow, I feel harder to keep focusing on because it’s not very intense. Also, the slower the notes’ animations are, the longer your fingers need to touch the screen, which will highly increase the chance of getting a Miss or a Bad. I don’t think I’m too skillful, and the attention of players of different levels shouldn't have much gap, so maybe the speed of songs need adjustment through play tests.

Stories. I know this game has stories for each chapter, but I didn't really get or care the plots through the game. I might make it better to have stressed more about the stories though it's a good game without stories or characters. Maybe this is a reason that they made their new rhythm game Deemo.

To sum up, Cytus succeeded to create a smooth and enjoyable player experience. I like the way that they are trying their best to make a hard game to become much easier and cooler to play.

My Understanding about Meaningful Play

Imagine in the faraway future, where new advanced technologies allow humans to experience anything by connecting to AR device or playing an immersive video game. Even nerves can be stimulated electronically, providing a truly immersive experience. It reminds me of a scene in the animated film WALL-E, that owing to the technological advances, humankind became so comfortable, lazy, so averse to physical activities and obese,that they never bothered to experience nature in its natural phsical form. If this happened, how do you feel as a game designer?

Games are not meant to supplant real life experiences; they are meant to enrich our human experiences. This is what I thought after watching that scene. You might wonder: am I only talking about educational games. No, not really. Possibly as a result of the high strung force-fed education that I had (in China), I think there are many aspects can be improved in educational games. When I first heard the term “educational games”, it was field under the genre of “serious games”, and hence never caught my eye. As the genre sggests, most “educational games” are either too utilitarian or too boring.

However the more games I've played, the more I feel that games is a good tool to have a meaningful impact on human life. It is not only about games that are tagged as "educational", but also about any games that cast influence on players. So what is the problem? How can we solve it? The key lies in the difference between being “educational” and “influential”.

I remember that we used to have Ideological and Politics class in school. I always find these classes are nothing but time consuming, mind numbing and brainwashing. What they taught made sense but the way of its being taught is far from pleasant; which is exactly the contrary of what I mean by “meaningful” interactions. For instance, in China, “patriotism education” is the first lesson we learned in kindergarten. It probably sounds ridiculous and hard to imagine for who've grown up in the free world. Regardless, at that age, it’s impossible for children to understand what “love” means, what “nation” is, and what “party” stands for, let alone to put them together. The teaching is excessively utilitarian in its sole purpose to get everyone brainwashed rather than educating effectively. That’s certainly not a good means of education. But, there was a teacher who impressed me. She taught honestly (as honest as she could), not afraid of comparing the education in China with the ones in other countries, especially the early education. In some other countries, children are guided to feel the love for themselves, their parents, their friends, the people, public facilities, the country, etc. The main differences here are, “rote learning” vs. “inspiring by feeling”. The effect of the two methods should be apparent.

However, I feel there’s no excuse not to develop entertaining meaningful games. The reason why I emphasize the word “entertaining” is that the more enjoyable a game is, the more convincing and powerful it will be. Gaming is a process b which the emotions of the player play an integral part. So I treat “entertaining” to be just as important as being “educational / meaningful / influential”. Maybe because I’m also an artist, I can’t regard educational games as real games. It’s kind of like the sophistry paradoxes of “A white horse is not a horse”. It doesn't make a game for not being fun enough; at most it is just sequence of interactions.

There are well-crafted educational games that can achieve their goals. There are engaging indie games with deep intrinsic values, and it often makes people consider their real life. Like what I said earlier about games being meant to enrich our human experiences, a good game tries to form a certain behavior pattern by guiding players to solve the game; a good character tends to be a positive example by inspiring players to comprehend and learn from their behavior. It might sound difficult and impossible. But it’s not. So my attitude is to achieve and never asking the outcomes. Because if you focus on how much you can influence your audience, it tends to lose fun. In other words, it depends on the audience. That’s why I feel “meaningful play” more accurately describes what I’m thinking than “meaningful games”. Without the interactions of players, we can never judge a game. Meaningful games are where meaningful play happens.

Let’s go back to the scene I described at the beginning. There seem to be a conflict between completely taking over people's lives and bring positive value to our players. By taking these considerations into heart, we can be more direct and clear when designing a game. Like, what do I want to convey through designing this entertaining game that might change the way that players do something? Is there any positive ways my characters can do something which will hopefully be emulated by players do or think about something? Or is it more effective for an educational game to better engage our guests?

What Makes Games Addictive

I remember when we talked about what we want to learn in Game Design class, someone said ‘how to make games addictive’ while another asked ‘how to make games not addictive’. Being addictive to video games is a common phenomenon and mostly it was discussed as a negative part of games. But as game designers, in order to make our games more engaging or popular, sometimes we do need to make our design kind of addictive. So today I’ll talk about what makes games addictive.

First of all, social features make games addictive. When I say social features, I mean interactions between various players and anything that helps building relationships with others. Not only in MMO games, but also in many small games on network tools such as Facebook or mobiles, social features play an important role. In my last blog, I shared the reasons why I love playing computer games. The most motioned reason in replies is about social connections. Games do help shorten the distances between different people. Do you have a bunch of request from your friends sent through social games when you log in Facebook? If you ever played an MMORPG, do you enjoy leveling up or going through instances (PVE) grouped with other players? Even when you are playing MOBA, do you like teaming up with your friends and fighting against another real people who are on the same level as you are? I always think that MMORPG was the most massively engaging genre of video games. Now with the sensation of League of Legends, it kind of becomes the most popular games. And the things they have in common are having real people players as teammates and having real people players as opponents (PVP in MMORPG). Needless to say, how teaming up plays its role in drawing people together again and again. PVP mode is interesting, because real person players are definitely more fun and challenging to beat comparing with AI. Also, I think when playing with other players, it simply makes you feel safe because you think you are doing something the same with other people, so it should be a good or right thing. To sum up, I think social features are the most important thing that makes a game addictive.

Second, operations of a game can make it addictive. People like gatherable things. A typical example of this is simulation games. Are you attracted by the fancy particle effects and vivid small animations of the ripe crops or collectable coins after a task is completed? Can you simply leave them there and try to never tap to gather when you see them? I can’t. Because the animations and glow are so distracting if I try to neglect them so I can’t help gathering them. This happens in other games too, let’s say MMORPG. My boyfriend is a programmer. Once he complained to me, that the game designer was asking him to change the mail system again by insisting on adding the function of letting player go to the mail guy, have a conversation with him and collect the attachments in every mail by hand. Yeah, that’s true. People just like collecting things with their own hands because this adds to the sense of receiving. When I started playing a SIM game, CastleVille last night, I found that I can keep on tapping here and there without any stop for the first 30 minutes (the true time might be longer, because another thing why this kind of games are addictive is that you don’t even notice it’s so time consuming.) and it was when I reached level 7, I first feel I need to stop and wait for something and come check it again. When I play games, I would like to follow the flow and feel the way I was lead or influenced by the game. Not everyone who plays SIM games does like me, but it still reflect some problems. So the interactive of some games are exactly designed to make it addicting. And to some degree, they are good design.

Adorable animations make games more addictive. Similarly to the gatherable things, they simply control you to check the game all the time. If you ever played Sims Free Play or Hay Day, do you feel guilty when you log in the game your characters are starving to die owing to your poor upbringing? Some people do feel that way and can’t help making up for that and start doing a sequence of operations.

Fast paced gameplay makes a game addictive. Remember in the Lightning Round in BVW (Building Virtual Worlds, a course for the ETC students in first semester), we are asked to make a game that focuses on a simple mechanic and creates a fast and addictive experience. Then we have a game based on Tetris, a game called Sum-O-Drums which allows four players controlling two characters doing sumo wrestling against each other, etc. Those games are really exciting and addictive. Once you start playing, you don’t know when you can drop them. Another example is Flappy Bird. As you may know, this game just quickly became an overnight sensation as it climbed to the top free app in App Store and Google Play last week. Players do report that they want to smash their phones or tablets after playing a few minutes. But at the same time, they can’t stop playing it. Because this game is super hard and you always think you can do better after a few more trials.

Last but not the least, the fluent flow or stories of a game make it more addictive. This happens very often in story based games, such as RPG or AVG (adventure games). When I start play an RPG, I don’t quite identify the avatar as myself at the very beginning. And I don’t feel the immersion of the game, and don’t really care what happens to this game world. But as the story goes, the sense of identification grows stronger and stronger, I turn out can’t wait to accept each challenge, beat the boss, go through the dungeon, touch the truth and finish the game in one breath. This is because the story is closely organized by the writer and you think you need to do it now! I used to read a book about game design. In that book, it said ‘The story of a game is actually fixed, but a good game can successfully make you feel that you are the only hero who can save the world, just with the sword in your hand, and if you DON’T do that NOW, some tremendous tragedies will definitely happen.’ Remember you already build the connection between yourself and the character in the game? Then it’s natural to be addicted to the game and can’t stop playing. If it’s a long game, even there’s ‘Chapter 1’ or ‘Act 2’, still you can hardly get out of the game sometime. Because there are dialogues, quests, check points, dungeons, cut-scenes coming after one another. Everything just comes so fluently without leaving you any chance to quit and take a breath.

Above are the top five things that I think make games addictive. Other elements that contribute to addiction of video games can be the level-up system, the unyielding spirits of players and so on. However being addictive to games is not a good thing. What we can do is to use our tastes to choose what we love and use our eyes to judge what we see. Hope this helps you design or understand games. Thanks for reading.

Why We Love Playing Games

Everyone plays games, from physical games to digital ones. It is widely discussed before: Why people like gaming? Basically, the reason is to have fun. Today I would like to talk about why I like playing games. I’m quite open to all kinds of games and am not very picky to them. In this passage, I’ll focus on digital games and board games that I played most. So here are my ideas on why I love gaming:

1. Games are meant to be interesting, imaginative, relaxing and enjoyable. Like interactive comic or TV series, games are very interesting and they can help you kill boring time as well as relax people. In order to make players enjoy the experience in the virtual worlds that they've created, game designers are always trying their best to create novel mechanics and gameplay.

2. I love playing with others in game worlds. Teamwork, social and PVP are definitely the key words for almost all multi-player games. Some games allow us to cooperate with others. For instance, MOBA games such as League of Legends or Dota allow players to communicate and achieve the goal with the help of each other. Multiplayer role-playing games such as World of Warcraft or Dungeons & Dragons allow players to enter a dungeon and kill bosses with different characters in various classes. From these games, we always feel that one person can never rescue a world on his own. It can be really painful if you play with randoms who are not skillful or you are not familiar with each other, but you can try to communicate with them. If you achieve your same goal by talking to each other, it’ll be a good game. There are also many light-hearted games that stress social features much. Do you often send out or receive request from your friends on Facebook through Hay Day or Candy Crush? These social games are so popular that almost everyone is playing or has played them. To some degree, it is because you see your friends are playing them now and that you help each other by a few clicks. I remember the first master I had in MMORPG games; she was very responsible for me and treats me as a close friend in real life. She is my mentor to this game genre. She also brought lots of friends to me and made me feel like being at home. I was really amazed at the beginning. In return to her accompany and help, I wrote lyrics and recorded a song as a present to her. Competition is another side of social features of games. I believe that player is much more interesting to play with than all the AI of games.

3. People like challenge. Some games are really hard to play. They are designed for some so-called hardcore players. Even you are smart, skillful and experienced, you might not play them well. People don’t like things that are too easy to complete. Think about the feeling after you solve some complicated puzzles or command something that seems to transcend the limit of humans. The sense of accomplishment along with the rewards offered by the game will make players feel content. In this case, games are your good friends; they will never trick you and will always provide equal rewards after you reach some goals.

4. Games link your body and mind together, which simply makes you feel comfortable. Someone said that play is simultaneously a source of relaxation and stimulation for the brain and body. Once I read from a book in which it wrote, that a prisoner will feel good even when he cleaned his place. This is because when you do something right physically, no matter how simple it is, you’ve completed a conjunction of body and mind, which is a basic level of happiness. I was amazed when I first read this thought in Zhang De Fen, a Taiwan writer and spiritual mentor’s book. However, I realized that it’s true when your brain control your body to make and are told it’s something right that will simply make you feel joy. So game is a thing that you will probably find yourself enjoy playing it as long as you are playing it.

5. Games are artworks. With the development of digital arts, games are becoming more and more visually and aurally adorable. As a 3D artist, I always focus on the beautiful graphics when playing a game with great visual elements. In my opinion, graphics might not be the most important thing for games, but a game with bad aesthetic implementation will definitely make a failure. So as the sound, because sometimes we find that sound can be more powerful and convincing when creating the atmosphere.

6. We love stories that have twists and turns. When I was a little girl, my favorite games are Xianjian series RPG games. For some genres such as RPG or AVG, story plays an important role. The first work of Xianjian series was released in the year 1995. At that time, digital arts and game engines are not well developed, while it made a hit by its touching stories. I also remember when I first played Gujianqitan (another Chinese RPG game) through, It was the last second week before a final exam. After that, I had a strong feeling that compared with the big disaster happened to the main characters, everything is not that important in my life. But it doesn't mean everything in real life is meaningless. On the contrary, then I cherished my life for being so harmonious. I worked harder, because I felt it is happiness that I can achieve what I want with my effort.

7. To experience what we will never experience in real life. When I talked about Gujianqitan, I also think up that this game created a long journey that I won’t have chance to experience in my real life. Games are virtual worlds. Many game developers are trying their best to achieve immersion using new technologies so that people can feel like they are in real world. People are curious about unknown things and games provide infinity possibilities. It is a big difference that when you hear or read something from experience it by yourself. You can’t really think as your parents unless you’ve grown up. However, games have the potential to make you experience something by using elements like graphics, sound, interactions, stories, etc. Other examples, like when I play Warhammer Fantasy, I play as if I’m really leading an army of high elf and that my opponent’s Skaven army will definitely get panic when I killed most soldiers of one square team. And when we play Dungeon & Dragons, we are really exploring in a dungeon where Goblins will appear and hurt us so we need to take actions fast!

8.People like to customize or own something even in virtual worlds. Think about any simulation game such as Clumsy Ninja or Princess Maker. Even other games like Plants vs. Zombies ask you to name your something at the beginning which will let you have the feeling that ‘I will take charge of this’. We start to like this from we were kids, children enjoy decorating their clubhouses several times a day.

9. I really love collecting things. Although it sounds not fun at all and a little stupid, I just like having collections of a bunch of virtual props and the sense of being wealthy in game. This is a reason why in some cases, the game will let you physically reap or collect what you get with a simple click, rather than have the item in your ‘inventory’ automatically. That’s because game designers want to convey the feeling that ‘It is me who just got something with my hands!’

10.Games help you exercise your brain and learn something new. Meaningful pay is also a goal of successful game design. Not only educational games, many entertaining games can help you exercise your brain from time to time. We can say that strategies are necessary to all kinds of games. What’s more, being themed differently, there are many things we can learn while playing games. For instance, Monopoly teaches us economic, while some anecdote based games teach us history and mythology, which may help us understand our real world better.

Above are the top 10 reasons why I love playing games. There are other ones like ‘It’s nothing but addictive!’, ‘sometimes I like to solve puzzles alone’, ‘I want to show off to others!’, ‘I design games so I must play a lot’, and even ‘I learn English!!!’ (Please don’t laugh. ^^) …Well, hope you find something in common or something meaningful. Thanks for reading and enjoy playing!