Casual Game DesignDesigning games everyone can enjoy

Martijn Reintjes said,

Comment • March 26, 2007 @ 9:49

Do you have any good examples of games that forgot their milemarkers?

William Willing said,

Comment • March 28, 2007 @ 21:52

@Martijn: That’s a good question. I can’t think of any, actually.

You probably have to go out of your way to design a game without mile markers; they’re such a common aspect of computer games. When games err on this issue, it’s more likely to be with the spacing of the markers. I seem to (vaguely) remember playing Stonekeep and being bored because the scenery never changes; it just didn’t seem like I was making progress. That’s a risk common to dungeon crawlers and most of them have moments when they just seem to drag on.

Another instance of this problem might occur when you have a game that allows you to travel around a lot. In Morrowind you could walk around quite some time without exactly running into anything particularly interesting. Most point ‘n click adventure games had moments where you were just walking around, wondering what to do next.

It might be an interesting experience to take a platformer, like Mario, Duke Nukem or Lost Vikings, and combine all levels into one big level and see what difference it makes. I suspect that the game would be a lot less enjoyable.

William Willing said,

Comment • March 29, 2007 @ 15:56

I feel that mile markers are slightly less synonymous with scenery changes or breaking down the game into levels and more with actually showing the % complete throughout the game. Discrete levels only really amount to the same thing if the player knows how many levels there are.

I’m not sure I agree. The difference between percentage and mile markers is that a percentage tells you something about how far you still have to go, where a mile marker doesn’t. Sure, you can count the number of markers you’ve passed and determine from that how far you still have to go, but that’s not what I was thinking of when I wrote the entry.

A mile marker just says ‘Well done, you’re making progress’ and that might be enough motivation to carry on. When (and if) you reach the end is not as important; it’s about the journey, not the destination.

When reading a book, you can always see how far you still have to go and I don’t usually consider that a plus. If the book is really good, you just stop caring about reaching the end. If the book isn’t so good, you might just get frustrated that you still have so many pages to go.
On the other hand, if the book is merely okay, knowing that you read more then half of it already might be a reason to finish it, but is that really the type of motivation you want?

For me, it’s the same with a game: if I start wondering how far I still have to go before I reach the end, that’s usually an indication that I’m not too invested in the game anymore. If the game you’re playing is really great, then it doesn’t matter whether you know what percentage you already finished; you’re caught up in the game and nothing else matters. Not all games are really great, though.

The example with the clock at the end of my entry didn’t come out of nowhere. When I was in college, there was a clock in the front of the lecture room. When the lecture was interesting, that didn’t matter, because I ignored the clock, but whenever there was a part I didn’t really care about, I couldn’t help but count the seconds. In those instances, taking away the clock would have made it easier for me to sit out the lecture.

So, I’m inclined to say that showing the percentage completed of the entire game isn’t a smart thing to do. The only advantage I can think of right now, is to show the player that she still hasn’t quite seen everything the game has to offer, even though she might think so. (”You’ve completed 98% of the game. Come on, hunt down that last 2% of content: you know you want to!”) Hopefully, some of you can name other advantages.

I agree that percentages can be used to fool the player in a positive way if you cheat with them. Let the player think she has to find a new game to enjoy and than surprise here by giving her more goodness. Yummy!

Bezman said,

Comment • April 10, 2007 @ 22:16

I still think mile markers are more like a %. I’d say that in a race, a better sign that you’re making progress is simply the changing of scenery and the progression of the actual surroundings. I did a duathlon with my brother last year (for the first time) and during that, simply seeing a new part of a track, seeing different trees, seeing myself run past other (older) people, seeing deer at one point, the progression onto and back off from the bike section… Although in my mind I had a vague inkling of how much there was still to go, I was more focused on each individual moment and found the changing environment enough to indicate progression. Frankly, if mile markers were present, I know I’d have spent 10s working out my % progression after each one and a lot more time just worrying about my relative tiredness, performance etc.

If competing seriously, the mile markers could definitely give an edge, but in terms of enjoyment, I realise now that the lack of them was a bonus. Similarly when I went on a massive group ride to Edinburgh. I did actually have ‘mile markers’ (as my bike had a working milometer) but the fact that they weren’t displayed on the road allowed me to focus on the sun, the seeds that poured down from trees at one point, the beautiful rolling pastures and so on.

Well said re: game and books ‘progress indicators’.

One thing I would definitely like to see in games is an indication of how long each section will take. Sometimes I have all afternoon to play or read or watch a film. Sometimes I just want to take a few minutes. I want to know that I can slot the entertainment time in. With a film or a TV show on a DVD, I can easily check the screen time to ensure I have enough time to watch it all. With a book, it’s easy enough to estimate based on my own experience of my reading speed, the size of text, intended audience and the number of pages. (I prefer to read normal-sized books in one sitting if possible.) With a game, I understand that the time taken will vary the most compared to other mediums, but I just feel that - specially with casual games - it’s great when an indicator is provided of a level’s length compared to others, or maybe some indication (to a newcomer) of whether this is a game that will require 5 minutes or an hour to get anywhere. Puzzle Pirates does actually have an indication (in minutes!) of how long certain missions will take when you begin. I understand that this can’t be done for everything but some attempt would be nice. (The same game makes no attempt to indicate how long any mission will take other than those that are completely time-based.)

I agree that percentages can be used to fool the player in a positive way if you cheat with them. Let the player think she has to find a new game to enjoy and than surprise here by giving her more goodness. Yummy!

Like in Castlevania Symphony of the Night (Saturn/PS)?

(How did you quote my text?)

Incidentally, on the topic of hunting down the final %, one of my pet peeves with Donkey Kong Country on the Snes was simply that there was no indication whereabouts the last % would be. They sorted this out with the sequels, which showed on each level what you still had to find there (but went on to make the levels overly sprawling in my opinion, but that’s a totally different matter). I suppose that’s synonymous with explaining clearly how to improve - but rather than being a case of giving guidelines as to how scores are calculated or whatever, is a case of keeping the geographical locations small enough.

Maybe that could be another topic in itself? I’d write something myself, but frankly don’t feel qualified.

William Willing said,

Comment • April 15, 2007 @ 21:22

You can use simple HTML-elements in your response, so you can use blockquote-tags around a quote. I took the liberty of doing this for you in your comment.

It seems to me that we disagree on terminology, but not on meaning. Whenever the progress indicators become more important to you as a player than actually playing the game, something isn’t the way it’s supposed to be.

I find your wish for the indication of a game’s duration interesting. As I argued with my book example, the duration shouldn’t matter as long as the game is great. Anachronox is one game where I didn’t think about duration, or progress, or reaching the end and that’s one of the main reasons it made it into my top 10 of favourite computer games of all time. Such games are rare, but that’s the kind of experience I’m looking for in a game.

On the other hand, there is a practical side this. You don’t always have time to play for hours on end. Sometimes you have no more than half an hour before you have to leave for work and you want to know whether you can play the game before you in a meaningful way in that time. At such an occasion it’s convenient to know how long a game (or a level) will take approximately. Do you have an additional reason to want this information?

I can’t say anything about Castlevania Symphony, as I play computer games almost exclusively on a PC. (I played some Xbox games, but all of them were available on the PC as well.)

I’d write something myself, but frankly don’t feel qualified.

That never stopped me.

eddies said,

Comment • October 4, 2007 @ 1:11

well i know some games who actually forget their milemarkers for sometime and making quite difficult for the player to go through prince of persia revelation is one of them and us navy seal socom is also another examples i guess mile markers are really important in every game to keep up the motivation for the player and also to keep up the entertainement in the game at full pace too and made games addicting for the gamers.

kind regards
eddies
www.naturalgames.com