Good Luck, Make Fun Part 3: We Did It!

Game Dev - Before any of you go on a rant about how I planned this all along, I’d like to address that. Look, I didn’t go into this week with any thought of writing a part 3 to glmf. In fact I was pretty set on writing about another one of the following lovely ideas: How listening is one of the most important factors in leading; how the game industry has become over reliant on extrinsic vs intrinsic game design; what game development is really like; and what it means to be a Creative Director. But, guess what? A conversation got me thinking about part 3 and now I think we can say it’s become serialized. Who would have thought?!

I’ve dodged, ducked, diped, dived, and dodged defining fun, and there’s a reason for that. Because games aren’t really about designing “fun” as that’s too ambiguous. During the ancient days of the arcade era, the goal was to get players as excited as possible to stay with the game (and spend quarters). Simple and exciting was the key and that’s the idea of “fun,” but things have become substantially more nuanced

As games advanced out of the arcade era and onto consoles/PC, designers would realize “fun” was a catchall for a slew of emotions players could have from games (obviously PC and consoles were around during the arcade days, but there was a shift with the NES). Rather than a focus on eating quarters, games could be sold at a single price and that expanded the definition of “fun.”?

It would be hard to say Doki Doki Literature Club was a “fun” game. In fact I would say quite the opposite. The gameplay is as minimal as can be. The same is true for Spec-Ops: The Line (hi Walt). Both of these games are about the journey. In one way or another, you’re going to experience sadness, regret, etc. This leads to the real definition of “fun” as it applies to modern game design. It’s an abstract meant to express a variety of emotions: adrenalin, excitement, fear, loss, perseverance, struggle, tension, wonder, etc. Each player determines what “fun” means to them. That means that the design of each game starts with an idea of the emotions you want players to feel, as there can certainly be multiple. Let’s break it down?

An example I like is 2004s F.E.A.R. which was developed by Monolith (See Monolith parenthetical in Indy section). F.E.A.R. was a First Person Shooter where players were confronted with combat, exploration, and the paranormal. That meant eliciting a combination of desired emotions. The core combat of the game was pure action and adrenaline, especially as the enemy AI would adapt to player behaviors rather than being completely scripted. In plain speak, encounters would play out differently each time. The second emotion was, drumroll, fear. F.E.A.R. is a horror game and borrowed heavily from the Japanese horror movies of that time (think リング). The game would present one of its antagonists at completely unexpected times (Alma, Paxton Fettel, and the occasional surprise mech)

The first part of the formula is the fast paced adrenaline. Each encounter becomes visceral, exciting, and dynamic. This is all done through the core combat mechanics of the game (rate of fire, reload speed, movement speed, player induced time slowdown, enemy behavior, level layouts, etc)

The second part of the formula is fear. This is interesting as it doesn’t arise directly from player actions, but rather from narrative design in scripted moments. Fear arose from moments where Alma would appear and walk slowly or charge the player as they were locked in a perspective (the moment when you climb down the ladder and see her on top sticks in my memory, along with when she was on all fours)

The third part is anticipation and tension. When you’re not in combat or seeing a creepy little girl, that’s when you’re progressing through the levels. Each one a nondescript warehouse, office building, or neighborhood. Those environments were knocked when the game launched for being unexceptional. I would argue they actually drove the feeling of anticipation and tension. The fact they were devoid of color and life played perfectly into both the reading of combat as well as the appearance of aberrations. The anticipation and tension were crucial for the payoffs of fear and excitement?

There was a dynamism in the peaks and troughs of each of these emotional waves. It was done through visceral combat, tension building progression, and paranormal terror. The manipulation of player expectations is what made the game so good. Those wave oscillations played off each other and when things were calm, anticipation rose because you expected it to be short lived. The longer it went with nothing happening, the more anticipation built. The natural thought would be something scary would happen, but the wave would oscillate and be interrupted by visceral combat. It was only after the adrenaline of combat was subsiding that Alma would appear. It was truly exceptional design

“Ok ok, I got lost in a moment” how do you design something like F.E.A.R. And get to the desired emotions? You start with an overview of what the world is, why the player is there, and what they’re doing. This brings us to mechanics. What is it that makes your game unique? Prototype that first. Then you build around that idea. I wasn’t at Monolith when they made F.E.A.R., but I imagine they had the idea to build a FPS with heavy inspiration from Japanese horror. They prototyped and figured out how they wanted combat to feel, i.e, added the ability to slow down time (thanks Max Payne). This became systemic. The Fear emotion arose through the narrative, audio, and environments. The systemic design was all about the flow of combat and how it would lead into the paranormal and how each of those would cross with exploration

So, I suppose what I’m saying is you need to start with the emotion(s) you want players to feel as they act in the game. That can come straight from the high concept idea (What, Why, Where). Set out with the goal of making sure that core emotion is reached and if you want additional emotions, understand how that core loop supports them. And if the phone rings in a dimly lit office, don’t investigate it