Gamer Instinct

            Gamer instinct is a term used to describe what the player feels is natural to do in any situation, similar to real world instinct. Stomach growling? You look for something to eat. Drowsy state and yawning a lot? You think about going to sleep. The same things apply in virtually every game out there. The player uses instinct to avoid getting hit by projectiles, leaping over obstacles, and getting food when their health starts to run low. Some games defy gamer instinct, although for good reason. But before I get into that, let me just provide some more specific examples of how developers design a game to appeal to the instinct in all of us.

            Alright, so you have a plane game before you. The rules are simple: shoot stuff and don’t get hit. Getting hit means death. Naturally, you learn to avoid everything the enemy throws at you. Rules vary game by game, but this one instinct carries over. It is just a common rule to not get hit by your opponent because taking damage brings you closer to failure. Some games are lenient on this and let you make many mistakes, but that instinct will always tell you to dodge everything bad. This is especially true if the game’s sprites read well as a hostile threat. Take a glowing red ball of fire. Obviously that would kill you outright, so you steer clear. But what about this sparkling blue gem? How do you know THAT won’t kill you, too? Designing your sprites to read well to the player makes their instincts kick in so they don’t have to consciously think about what they are doing. They just will their actions and they happen. By the way, that gem is useful. Might as well pick it up.

            Knowing gamer instinct is invaluable when making an exploration game. The player will see a wide open sandbox to play in, but they need some kind of guidance as to where to go first. If the world looks quite literally like an empty sandbox, they could go just anywhere. But if you were to, say, make an arch of trees that lead to a big prairie, just about every player will head that direction and ignore everything else. It takes a conscious effort to look away from the trees and at the expanse of nothingness. Knowing how to draw the eye of your player is also helpful for teaching mechanics without a convoluted tutorial. This technique is known as conveyance. I might just go over this in more detail in another article, but point is conveyance is a way to teach the player about the world without implicitly telling them. 

Now that the player has been draw to the prairie, we put up two portals that lead to different areas. One of the portals is brightly colored and looks positively inviting. The other is crooked, misshapen, and emanates a bad vibe. Chances are, the player will go through the bright portal as it looks safer. But what if the portal is on the right side of the player’s view? What if the dark portal is on the left? Naturally, players may still opt for the bright portal, but more often than not players will take the left option over the right option. I’m not sure why this is, but it also applies to gamer instinct. We just like picking left first. As for those portals, what is actually in them? A developer can make those portals do anything! The bright one could lead to a fun filled paradise, or it could just outright kill the player. The second option goes against gamer instinct and in some cases can make a game more interesting to play.

Going against gamer instinct is not necessarily a bad thing. Sometimes it’s rewarded such as following a guide arrow to a destination, but taking the other path to find a secret. This is a common trope in games that encourages exploration, although it’s a little pointless in linear experiences. Leading a player through a hallway with a few closets here and there does not make for a good exploration game. As for those portals mentioned earlier, what if the developer wanted to challenge the player’s will? That spooky portal might actually hide some brilliant gold or a wondrous location. One would expect it to lead to a creepy forest or a dark room with little illumination, but it could literally be anything. There are some examples of bad attempts of going against gamer instinct.

There is only one part of Cave Story I dislike. You just beat a boss monster and you enter the next room. At the start, a brief cutscene shows a friendly NPC from earlier falling from the top of the room to the bottom. Naturally, due to gamer instinct, you go down and talk to this person. Doing so rewards the player with an item that lets you boost yourself a little, almost like flying. Except that is the wrong choice! You can get a much better item if you IGNORE THE NPC! You have to deliberately march on ahead knowing full well that a man could be down there injured and you are the only living thing that could conceivably save him or at least listen to his last words. Later the same guy shows up again all fine and dandy. He gives you a stronger version of the booster which lets you direct exactly where you fly. I never figured this out on a natural playthrough with no walkthroughs or guides. I had to see a video online to figure this out. It was maddening to me.

            That’s all I have on gamer instinct. Hopefully you as a reader have gained some knowledge on how players think, how they read visuals, and how it can be fun to trick them into following their instincts and make them defy conventions in order to progress through the game.

Analyzing Games

          What does it mean to analyze a game? It could mean several things, actually. Most commonly it just means examining how a game operates on its mechanics and dynamics. It’s also helpful to know what makes a game terrible and what makes it great. This is crucial to game design and even when reviewing games. 

          For designers, it’s good to know how to analyze so you can figure out how a game works. The best way to do this is to take any game you own and just play it. If you’ve played for a long enough time (in my case since I was barely 4), you can spot things that can break a game. I’m not referring to glitches or graphical errors. I mean certain mechanics that do not entertain you or something redundant. An example: in Twilight Princess, rupees are a type of currency. Thing is, you may only carry up to a certain amount. The game gives you way too many rupees to work with and most of the time you end up losing out on getting rupees simply because your wallet is full. Fortunately, the developers did try to combat this, but did a poor job of it. There is a suit of armor that supposedly grants the best protection. As you wear it, your wallet is drained of rupees. This was meant to combat the excessive amount of rupees lying around, but it drained so fast that within minutes I was broke. The worst part is once you have 0 rupees, the armor inhibits your movement. It’s a terrible piece of armor and this issue could have been fixed by simply making rupees more scarce or possibly making items cost more.

          Another example is taking an existing game and making something that could arguably be a clone of it. I’m not saying “copy this game.” I just mean look at a game and see if you can come up with something better. Galactic Café did this with Freedom Planet. They made a game clearly based around Sonic with similar mechanics and dynamics, but it ended up being a lot better. As revered as Sonic may be, the biggest problem I had with that game is being forcefully slowed down. The point of that game is to zip through levels at high speeds. The thrill of being in control of something that powerful is what made the game franchise amazing. Then they throw these obstacles that stop your movement completely and the worst part is you can’t see them coming because the screen is moving so quickly. Freedom Planet did away with that and let you run as fast as possible. They also threw in explorative level design and added a timer that counted up rather than down. You could take as long as you wanted on a level, but that timer just let you know how long you’ve been running around. It was a fantastic game thanks to those changes.

          As for a game critic, you analyze games mostly for their entertainment value. You may have to give some feedback on the aesthetic and graphics quality, but the most important part is the gameplay itself. Should the game prove to be boring, a critic’s job is to point that out and explain why it’s boring. This can be subjective based on the critic’s skill at games overall and if the game is meant to appeal to a certain demographic, especially if it’s a children’s game. Providing feedback on these games is helpful to game developers as it tells them what they did wrong and how they can make improvements in a future title. 

          The best way to improve in your analyzing skills is to, of course, play as many games as possible. It’s even better if you vary up the genre. What if you don’t have a games console? That’s alright. You can learn a ton about game design just by watching people play. You just have to know what to look for. Look at gameplay for a big mainstream title that didn’t do so well critically and compare it to an indie game that ended up being a hit. The differences can be mind blowing! Compare simple mechanics to complex rules and you will notice a difference. Good games do not have to be expensive to make nor do they have to be overly intricate. Just try to make something fun and understandable to start off.

What is Game Design?

            So what is it? Is it like Fashion Design in which you make some spectacular clothing? Or maybe it’s more like Interior Design where you pick out some nice wallpaper and arrange furniture? This is where many people get the term “game design” incorrect. It isn’t so much about the artwork. That’s Game Art or Concept Art. Game Design is the writing of the rules and planning out how the entire game works. This may also include a story if the game calls for one. Anyone who writes rules and documents for a game is known as a Game Designer. That is the main reason many of us are here at SAU pursuing the Game Animation and Simulation program: to make some games!

            Sadly, as of this post there isn’t an emphasis on the design aspect. It’s all about the artwork and programming. Both fields are still important to making a game a reality and can still net you some jobs, but are not necessarily what we may all be looking for. There is speculation that a minor in game design will be added to the program and there is a class about making games called Game Design Management, but what do you do until then? Personally, I’ve been doing research. Research and a bunch of writing of articles to show what I found so far. As a three year student here, let me offer some advice on learning game design.

            First off, you don’t have to make video games. Game design applies to non-digital games as well. If you have an idea for a board or card game, write it down. Write any idea down, really. That idea, whether it be good or bad, might just help you out in the future. It may become a game or it may inspire another idea for some other medium. For example, I had an idea for a multiplayer version of Five Nights at Freddy’s that was inspired by watching some people play a gmod of the game. Someone built a replica of FNAF in Garry’s Mod and it looked fun. I planned a video game document around it, but then it turned into a board game idea. It’s still a work in progress, but ideas take time to realize. They may be built quickly or they might take years. If you keep at it, your work will pay off. 

            Or maybe you don’t want to go for board games. That’s fine. Video games are a lot bigger and more difficult to make. Plus there’s this pressure of either making your own game by yourself like Jonathan Blow did with Braid or finding a little niche to carve out for yourself. I feel like I HAVE to make a game doing all of the artwork, all of the programming, all of the sound and music, and especially the writing just to prove that I’m adequate at game design. It does not have to be that taxing, though. As a designer, you only need to know how to write and design a game. Having basic knowledge of creating artwork and computer programming is a plus, but not essential. In my case, I kind of have to know how to make artwork so I have things to show off on a portfolio. 

            Which brings up an important point: portfolios. Artists have portfolios of their greatest works, but what do game designers have? Pretty much the same thing, but with pitch documents. If you have a good game design document, post it on your site and let potential employers see it. I wouldn’t post the whole thing as someone might try and copy it. As long as the idea sounds interesting enough to develop, go with it. Having worked on a game in the past is an even better option. If you helped someone make their game, just state your role and the game you worked on. An example might be someone who was an Item Designer for Mass Effect. That person had to calculate values for each weapon and how much damage they did. Maybe you designed a level for someone in which case you would be a Level Designer. Super Mario Maker is a good game for learning how level design works.

            Now what about the story? There’s at least one person who establishes a story and possibly the entire world (or the universe!) of that game. The Lead Designer will usually be in charge of establishing the setting, but sometimes a team of writers will do that for him. Maybe you went into this program hoping to write for games without having to design them. That’s great! Creating scripts for games can help improve your writing skills. By scripts I don’t mean code. I’m referring to film script. Many segments of a game need a film script to describe the events that go on. Think of it as planning for a cutscene: you set up the camera shots, direct where the action is going, input dialogue, and stuff like that. You could also do storyboarding for games which lets you organize how the story goes in picture form.

            But what if you don’t want to do ANY of that, but still want to work in the games industry? The only thing I could think of is being a games critic. They don’t make games, they don’t do any artwork, no programming, and no story telling. They look at a game, see its flaws and mistakes, and points them out. They are not payed to insult a game, but rather to constructively criticize it so developers know what went wrong and how to improve upon it better in a future title. I’ve written my fair share of reviews and since pursuing this program, I can spot glitches and faulty textures much more easily. Most critics judge solely based on gameplay and replayability rather than art assets.

            Hopefully this advice helped clear up what game design is and isn’t. It’s all about the way the game plays, but not about what the game looks like. Designers do not have to do any coding (unless they are pretty good at it), no sound direction, nor music making. They make games for the sake of making games.