snippets of cloud

• Currency rewards: the acquisition of a game resource that can be spent represents a fairly universal reward system…
• Rank Rewards: the player gains benefits from acquiring points towards an eventual step up in rank.
• Mechanical Rewards: such as increases in stats that the player can feel the effect of.
• Narrative rewards: a little narrative is effective for certain players as a reward.
• Emotional rewards: when the player feels they have done something for someone in the game.
• New Toys: anything new that can be experimented with is a ‘new toy’.
• New Places: are a mimicry reward for players driven to explore
• Completeness: achieving completeness (chasing 100% for instance) can be a reward in itself.
• Victory: defeating a challenging foe (or a boss).
• (This is stolen/paraphrased from the blog Only a Game) via Andrew Chen

1. Whenever possible, consider alternatives
2. Reframe the question
3. Correlation doesn’t equal causation
4. Never forget the sample size
5. Anticipate your impulsivity
People find it difficult to predict just how far off course their emotions can pull them. It’s all about planning ahead.
6. Make contingency plans
Humans are better at concrete goals.
7. Make important decisions when relaxed and rested
8. Weigh costs against benefits
Research shows that our minds prefer to consider either costs or benefits; taking both into account takes considerable effort. We often forget is the ‘opportunity cost’
9. Imagine your decision will be spot-checked
10. Distance yourself
Big decisions are always better made after a night’s sleep.
11. Beware the vivid, personal and anecdotal
12. All decisions are not equal
13. Be rational!

While money has more importance to people in their real lives, score shares many of the same influences to gamers when they are playing and in the gaming zone.

Based on an article in MCV 25th April 2008

• The consumer sets the price - piracy, rapid discounting and trade-in schemes prove the consumer options on what they pay for product.
• It’s all about experiences - live music or premium social events
• The music industry is thriving, it’s the music companies that are stuffed - music and games have not been more popular
• Profits come from secondary sources - and revenue from alternative sources
• The nature of distribution is changing - physical to digital

Real Characters - you have to identify yourself in the characters
Mystery - it triggers the imagination
Rhythm - there are some timings which the experiencer expects a certain reveal or change
Questions - create more insight in to yourself or the world
Anticipation - triggers the imagination
Surprise - shake up the experience
Depth - creates the illusion in the imagination that the world exists
Contrast - makes the original richer and more valuable. Contrasts are the basis of good story
Climax - pays off the anticipation

“…and I was rewarded for it! Not just with the sheer joy of the act itself — even though that would have been, for a while, reward enough. No, the more you explore and leap, the more your powers increase, and the higher and farther you can go. Rewards are so frequent that it keeps you hooked, because there’s always “just one more” thing to do before you take a break. You never take a break.”

Outcomes vs. Activity

“…to interpret statements in their literal sense”

“…a law client who was promised something in two weeks but received it in one was vastly happier than a client who was promised something in one day but received it in four. ‘Under-promise, over-deliver’ became her mantra.”

“…the insight that there is an ideal moment to practice what you’ve learned. Practice too soon and you waste your time. Practice too late and you’ve forgotten the material and have to relearn it. The right time to practice is just at the moment you’re about to forget. Unfortunately, this moment is different for every person and each bit of information. Imagine a pile of thousands of flash cards. Somewhere in this pile are the ones you should be practicing right now. Which are they?

Fortunately, human forgetting follows a pattern. We forget exponentially. A graph of our likelihood of getting the correct answer on a quiz sweeps quickly downward over time and then levels off. This pattern has long been known to cognitive psychology, but it has been difficult to put to practical use. It’s too complex for us to employ with our naked brains.”

http://www.wired.com/medtech/health/magazine/16-05/ff_wozniak?currentPage=all

Osmo Wiio’s laws of communication;

• If communication can fail, it will.
• If a message can be understood in different ways, it will be understood in just that way which does the most harm.
• There is always somebody who knows better than you what you meant by your message.
• The more communication there is, the more difficult it is for communication to succeed.

(http://www.37signals.com/svn/posts/986-osmo-wiio-communication-usually-fails-except-by-accident)

“Don’t tell people how to do things, tell them what to do and let them surprise you with their results.”
“A good plan, violently executed now, is better than a perfect plan next week.”

Make it social and face to face for more fun.

“…hang out with other gamers all the time, but it’s mostly in multiplayer online play, using headsets. It’s social, sure. But as any psychologist will tell you, hanging out in real life allows for even richer styles of communication to emerge. In face-to-face mode, we’re better at picking up the little nuances — frustration, glee, sarcasm, subvocalized ranting, body language — that build team cohesion, and allow us to game with a positively Vulcan level of mind meld.”

“People respond to people. Faces and stick-figures, however crudely drawn, immediately

elicit attention, understanding, and reaction. Whether to show relationships and quantities,

emphasize a point, or just provide a sense of scale, draw people in by drawing in people.”

“We don’t ask consumers what they want. They don’t know. Instead we apply our brainpower to what they need, and will want, and make sure we’re there, ready.”

Akio Morita, Founder of Sony

Feature creep

A ‘jump moment’ is when the player or viewer involuntarily jumps in reaction to a shock, surprise or spectacular event.

Sudden jumps are the scariest thing, ONLY when the director successfully misdirects you so you don’t expect it.

Building a scenario from Call of Cthulhu 6ed

• a mystery or crisis is posed…
• the investigators become linked to the problem…
• the investigators attempt to define the mystery…
• the investigators use the clues and evidence to confront the danger…
• the mystery is solved.

Complex discovery plot;

• onset
• discovery
• confirmation
• confrontation

The Philosophy of Horror, Noel Carroll

Achieving flow, consistent rewards and progression should create an addictive experience.

“MMORPGs, tobacco, alcohol, credit. Addictive endeavours. Games=fun/escapism, drugs=euphoria/escapism, credit=”success”. Inescapable products make customers slaves. Could even add security to list, guns/SUV’s/RFID/taxes=”security”, but it’s tangential and political. A new Monopoly board recently released eliminates paper money favor of digitized credit system. Brainwash em young, get em hooked on credit and indebted forever!”

http://www.wired.com/techbiz/it/magazine/16-04/bz_darkside