snippets of cloud

The more a user or player invests in their part in a game, the more they are likely to keep playing, come back to and arguably, enjoy the game as a whole.

A MMO/Second Life requires a high user investment, this is a barrier to entry for many people, although once you have started the investment in your avatar, character or world it is far more compelling an experience.

From a design paper on creating virtual pets …. the trick is to create a positive feedback loop on the user investment in taking care of the pet. The more the user has spent time interacting with the pet the more it is crucial for him that the pet does not die or run away and matures properly. The initial investment may simply rely on the money spent to buy the pet. Then, the relationship merges from this self-reinforcing dynamic.
The also argue to include uselessness in to the design of pets, to encourage a dependence on the player.
(Sony CSL)

Rewarding user investment, psychologically, the more someone is invests in a game the more valuable the benefits and rewards that come from it are.
http://pages.citebite.com/u9q1p3e2qlcr

Clan games & RPG’s expand on user investment in characters to include guilds, clans & any number of social groupings.

According to Wikipedia, “Angst is a Dutch, German, and Scandinavian word for fear or anxiety. It is used in English to describe an intense feeling of emotional strife”

“Angst is caused when a person makes a decision that has unpleasant consequences and leaves that person feeling guilty and remorseful”
(http://pages.citebite.com/y8m5r9o4yuyu)

Angst can be a more emotional reaction to a difficult and meaningful choice. Creating angst in players, is a sign that you have achieved a good emotional range, immersion and that you are offering meaningful choices.
Too much angst might lead to frustration,  may not be what you player’s want from the game.

As a definition of a game
The game will be a simulation of something; often straight forward, other times an abstracted fantasy, but a simulated model of something.
With a score; (implicitly) providing goal, reward and progression.

Meaningful and agonizing decisions make great games

“The thing that makes a game a game is the need to make decisions.”
from Greg Costikyan’s great article on a design language
(I have no words and I must design)
Considering the game state, the goal(s), the resources available or at stake and the opposition; you can then make a decision.

“The Agonizing Decision. How presenting the player with impossible choices help make a game great.”
from The Games Journal
(Game Theory 101)
An agonizing decision should have something worthwhile at stake, have an uncertain outcome and be framed as an understandable set of alternatives with clear possible consequences.

It is easy to say, hard to deliver on effectively, but meaningful choice is the heart of good game design.

an alternative and good definition of what makes a good game
“A game with good design makes playing it easy.”
from deep in the game
(good design)

The gambler’s fallacy is the notion that the odds of something with a fixed probability change depending on recent occurrences.
E.g. lottery numbers are more likely to come up if they have appeared recently.

It ‘Does exactly what it says on the tin’ is a great marketing strap line and a great principle to consider in game design.
Sometimes you want to consciously misdirect a player’s perception of a situation, but mostly you will be best served by making a unit, creature or feature ‘do what it says on the tin’. By clearly communicating with the player, and using conceptual models that they understand you will allow them to interact and enjoy a given feature or creature more.
Think about archetypal characters in narrative, e.g. Darth Vader or Gandalf
or tank design in RTS games
or characters in RPGs
or bosses in classic arcade games
Once you have developed the player’s familiarity with something, you can create variants or misdirections knowing that they are familiar enough to enjoy the development.

Two rules with some very naive science & assumptions based on ‘limited’ user testing experience.

The rule of 5
Based on the classic ‘7 + or – 2’ cognitive science, I suggest that in game design you need to carefully balance the number of active or significant factors a player has to consider as critical to difficulty. A player’s ability to keep decisions, data, key points or themes in their active short term memory varies wildly, but as a rule 5 concurrent things should be considered a reasonable limit. More than this, and the player will more than likely lose track, not make links between things and generally be unable to decode the model or make correlations between things.
Younger kids tend to be able to maintain less concurrent things related to the game, although they may have more concurrent things in their heads at any one time. Experienced gamers, and people who become absorbed in the flow of the game, tend to have more concurrent things.

The rule of 50
Players tend to be able to recall ~50 connections, contacts, facts, locations, names or whatever associated with a subject. e.g. in a MMOG, recognizing 50 avatar names or player contacts is possible, more than this and they become just names or faces.

The two rules work together; you could reasonably expect a player to carry on conversations with ~5 players from a pool of 50, they may switch around which specific players from inside the pool but are unlikely to be active dealing with more than ~5 at any one time.

How many units can you deal with in a strategy game?
How many sub plots or narrative points can you cope with in a story or RPG?
How many moves ahead can you think in chess?
How many people are in your address book, that you can honestly say you currently deal with or recall in detail?
How many bits of data can process to understand the cause and effect model in a build/sim game?

(google use 6 things)

(the magic number)

Use near misses to encourage, tease & stimulate the player. Even failure should be used to your advantage, creating an illusion of skill and confidence in the player which will keep their engagement, attention and enjoyment.

from http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/5013038.stm
There’s nothing like a near-miss to encourage a gambler to keep pumping coins into a slot machine or laying their chips on the table.
Not only can gaming machines be set to provide a certain number of near misses, these have become more sophisticated in the past decade so as to make a near-miss look even more tantalising.
“A near-miss causes a gambler to over-estimate their chances of winning,” says Dr Luke Clark, a Cambridge University psychologist. “If their horse finishes second, or in a casino they watch two cherries come up on a slot machine and then see the third almost click into place, they’ll keep playing. A problem gambler will keep playing for a third as long again.”
And when a gambler feels their skill can influence the outcome – throwing the die, say, or choosing lottery numbers – a feeling of control develops that keeps them gambling longer.
“There are subtle ways that casinos and slot machines can introduce near misses and perceived skill that encourage people to gamble,” Dr Clark says.

Creating tension & suspense is about managing the viewer/player’s uncertainty of the price to be paid to achieve the outcome.
In games (or film) the outcome is more than likely known or at least desired, the costs and risks of achieving this success are at the heart of creating positive tension (in games the ending is less known, but enjoyables games tends to have the player’s succeed or stand a good chance).

Babe the pig as an example;
(A Small Thing About Suspense)
Reference to coaching;
(Success and Learning)