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!