Saturday, April 27, 2019

Video Game Seduction Secrets


Throughout the article titled, “The Seduction Secrets of Video Game Designers…”, Keith Stuart (the author of the article), has outlined topics/considerations that are important to players and game designers. I jotted down a few of these topics while reading the article, and I will expand on them more below.

Autonomy – This term means to govern yourself or a person who wants to make independent decisions. Stuart suggest that this is an important element to players and game designers. For example, within the game, The Sims, the player has total control over the virtual humans. They can even decide to give a human life or death throughout this game.

Story – Compelling plot twists and shock used from movies are proving to be an important consideration to game designers/players. Narrative games are also a popular factor throughout games.

Disproportionate Feedback – Players are rewarded greatly for achieving small/simple tasks in a game. Stuart compared this to a popular game called, Call of Duty. When an enemy is shot, they explode into chunks versus just collapsing to the floor. Pixelated firework displays at the end of a puzzle game such as Peggle, is also something that is important to players/designers. Stuart said it best when he described disproportionate feedback as “an endorphin come-on”.

Failure – At first, this topic did not seem plausible to me. However, when I read more throughout the article, I understood what Stuart was stating. Researchers at Helsinki School of Economics’ Mind lab found that players received pleasure when they lost a life in the game. The design team of the game, Burnout, noticed that players enjoyed crashing the cars because of the realistic animation that happened.

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