Fun in computer games (by alaric)
I've noticed a pattern in computer games which I find fun. Not all games I find fun; they can be fun in different ways. I'm just saying I've noticed a particular element which subtly contributes towards the funness.
Namely, having to make a tradeoff between two or more competing requirements.
Let's have an example - Desktop Tower Defence. It's a tower defence game, which means that you use your resources to build a set of defences that waves of attackers then flow into.
Firstly, clever placement of defences has a much greater effect than simply how much you spend on them. So the game requires some measure of thought, rather than repetitive accumulation of resources followed by spending them.
But the crux of the matter is that there are different kinds of attackers, which have different weaknesses. A defence set up in the way that would be the strongest against land-based attackers - a long winding zig-zag with turrets along it - would be weak against flying attackers, since they just fly over your layout in a straight line rather than being constrained to the paths. Against them, you want a solid block of turrets in a cross, under the two orthogonal lines they fly along. So you need to establish some tradeoff between the two challenges. Not to mention that there are turrets which only attack air targets, but have a high damage per cost ratio, and turrets which only attack ground targets, and turrets that attack both but have a worse damage per cost ratio. And turrets with long ranges, or high fire rates, or that do a lot of damage per shot, or damage neighbouring targets due to a splash effect, and so on.
Sometimes you can have a tradeoff that's too simple - it's amenable to mathematical analysis to find an optimal result. That's no good. It has to be too complex to work out on paper, but not too complex to grasp. The middle ground between the two is the area where experimentation is rewarding.
I probably ought to read A Theory of Fun for Game Design...
Thu 16th Oct 2008 10:42 am 
Subscribe