snippets of cloud

Screens and pages tend to be scanned in a Z, starting at the top left corner of the screen.

Less than 20% of words written on web sites are read when someone ‘reads’ the page.

People/players, want to scan and don’t want to read.

• On an average visit, users read half the information only on those pages with 111 words or less.
• People spend some of their time understanding the page layout and navigation features, as well as looking at the images. People don’t read during every single second of a page visit.
• On average, users will have time to read 28% of the words if they devote all of their time to reading. More realistically, users will read about 20% of the text on the average page

http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/the_stats_are_in_youre_just_skimming_this_article.php

As a result, Web pages have to employ scannable text, using

• highlighted keywords (hypertext links serve as one form of highlighting; typeface variations and color are others)
• meaningful sub-headings (not “clever” ones)
• bulleted lists
• one idea per paragraph (users will skip over any additional ideas if they are not caught by the first few words in the paragraph)
• the inverted pyramid style, starting with the conclusion
• half the word count (or less) than conventional writing

http://www.useit.com/alertbox/9710a.html

“Simplicity–the art of maximizing the amount of work not done - is essential”

http://agilemanifesto.org/principles.html

Chuck Green Ideabook.com on commercial ‘graphic’ designers, with many parallels for game design.

http://www.ideabook.com/tutorials/1_view/5_principles_of_good_design.html

edited with comments;

“Design is more than meets the eye … The purpose of design is to communicate an idea. It is as much, if not more, about function as it is about looks. It is as much intellectual and visceral as it is visual. If you don’t have a clear, well designed message, you don’t have a design. Design is marketing, marketing is design”

The purpose of game design is to provide an enjoyable experience. Focus on a clear defined core experience as a base.

“Design is about communicating benefits… No matter what you’re selling or giving away, if I am your prospect, I want to know what’s in it for me. I have hard-earned money or time to invest and I rarely part with either without the promise of some return. Are you going to entertain me? Educate me? Inspire me? Solve my problems?”

Is the core experience something that players want, will identify and enjoy?

“Design is not about designers … The good designer pleads “Create a design that answers your client’s needs.” The bad designer commands “Don’t be an idiot—design something that’ll look good in your portfolio.”

You are rarely, if ever the target audience. Understand what the experience your audience will appreciate.

“Design is not an ocean it’s a fishbowl … Design and marketing ideas are not always interchangeable—be careful about the principles you apply and how you apply them.

High concepts and designs are not the same thing.

“Design is creating something you believe in … The saying goes something like this: “great advertising will kill a poor product faster than no advertising at all.” The same is true with design—good design will attract an audience faster than poor design. …Step away rather than compromise your values.”

Form over function leads to shallow experiences, function without engaging form is a dry game. Good function is the bedrock of game design.

Valerian to Boy in The Book of Dead Days, by Marcus Sedgwick (fiction) on the 5 principles of a magician or illusionist;

• Mystery
• Preparation
• Mis-direction
• Practice
• (natural) Skill

Ten minutes to grab the player, teach them and reward them or let them get something back from the game before their attention wanders off.

brainrules.net

• 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

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.”

“…to interpret statements in their literal sense”

“…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

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.”

“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

Alan Kay, TED 2008

“…what fools these mortals be!”

Puck, A Midsummer Nights Dream Act 3
Shakespeare means that we are easily fooled by almost everything. We go to the theatre in order to be fooled, we are actually looking forward to it. The same with magic shows, illusions and games.

Games are immersive fun experiences, that work most effectively if the player willingly suspends their disbelief in the obvious non realities. If either party; the player or the game, break the tacit agreement that supports the player’s suspension of disbelief, then the whole experience unravels and becomes less satisfactory. Games often break this agreement by being inconsistent with how they deal with aspects of the game that are not ‘in game’, e.g. restart, saving or instructions.

“Suspension of disbelief is an aesthetic theory intended to characterize people’s relationships to art. It was coined by the poet and aesthetic philosopher Samuel Taylor Coleridge in 1817. It refers to the willingness of a person to accept as true the premises of a work of fiction, even if they are fantastic or impossible. It also refers to the willingness of the audience to overlook the limitations of a medium, so that these do not interfere with the acceptance of those premises. According to the theory, suspension of disbelief is a quid pro quo: the audience tacitly agrees to provisionally suspend their judgment in exchange for the promise of entertainment.”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suspension_of_disbelief

Game designers can be informed by the guidelines available for teachers of 3-8 year old kids.

The guidance states that through well-planned play, both indoors and outdoors, children can:

• Explore, develop and represent learning experiences that help them make sense of the world
• Practice and build up ideas, concepts and skills
• Learn how to control impulses and understand the need for rules
• Be alone, be alongside others, or cooperate as they talk or rehearse their feelings
• Take risks and make mistakes
• Think creatively and imaginatively
• Communicate with others as they investigate or solve problems
• Express fears or relive anxious experiences in controlled and safe situations

The curriculum is organised into six areas of learning:

• Personal, social and emotional development
• Communication, language and literacy
• Mathematical development
• Knowledge and Understanding of the World
• Physical development
• Creative development