17

Game Play

Although the first half of this book discussed the shaping and execution of story narrative in a simulation environment, the fact is that story alone will not carry a successful simulation. Compelling interactivity will be critical for maintaining user interest in the simulation, and for the dissemination of pedagogical and training content that the user can begin to engage, practice and master. The development, deployment, and evaluation of effective pedagogy in effect “completes the pyramid” of simulation building.

Inevitably, compelling interactivity should be “play”–what we usually refer to as “gameplay.” Much has been written about theories of play (the study of which is known as “ludology”; see bibliography for references), but in a nutshell, play involves a set of rules and allowed behaviors, user actions that offer both pleasures and challenges, specific goals or objectives, and motivation to reach those objectives, which, when met, constitute an achievement, advancement, or victory. Failure to meet objectives constitutes the opposite: lack of advancement, or a loss.

Great gameplay can sometimes disguise sub par or mediocre storytelling. But as this book has argued, the addition of great story to great gameplay will get us much closer to a deeply immersive simulation that advances pedagogical goals.

Because different media and delivery platforms will deeply influence the quality and delivery of gameplay, their evaluation and selection are critical. In this chapter, we’ll discuss some selection criteria for media and delivery platforms, as well as strategies for deploying, balancing, and testing gameplay. But first, we should carefully define elements of gameplay, and how they may better serve our pedagogical and training goals.

USER INPUT/ELEMENTS OF GAMEPLAY

It is helpful to look at the types of input available to a user, and the elements of gameplay we can begin to work with. Often, gameplay is defined too narrowly, and we overlook interactivity and functionality that will create or enhance gameplay.

If we think of input as a selection of verbs (i.e., actions) the user can sort through and choose, we begin to see that the verb set itself is pretty limited. Users can select. They can execute (e.g., press a mouse button, fire an onscreen weapon, etc.). They can navigate. On a strictly 2D screen (for example, a webpage, an early videogame “side-scroller,” or a 2D real-time strategy game), they can scroll left, right, up or down, or push around an icon or avatar vertically or horizontally. On a screen that simulates 3D space, the user can move forward, backward, and turn around within the space. The user can also climb or move up or down, via some means (e.g., jumping capability, a ladder, or a “jetpack”). The user can interact with and manipulate screen objects, e.g., via a pointer (using the drag-and-drop metaphor), onscreen hands, or other organic or mechanical device (feet, hips, knife, etc.). All interactivity and navigation is executed via keyboard, control buttons, mouse or pointing device—unless we employ a touchscreen (where the pointing device is an actual human finger) or a true virtual reality world with which the user can physically become engaged (to be discussed briefly in Chapter Thirty).

Given the limited actions or verbs available to a user, what will he or she find fun, challenging and worth repeating?

We’ve all seen the movie scene where a released prisoner first enjoys his or her freedom outdoors, and moves around in sheer delight, sometimes running, sometimes braking to a stop. We recognize the essential truth of this scene: one of the innate pleasures of living is the freedom to navigate space. This truth carries over to any sort of digital space we create, whether 2D (e.g., a webpage) or 3D (e.g., a first-person shooter game). Being able to navigate, and explore, gives us the feeling of control over the world. Janet Murray defines this as “agency,” a critical element of successful interactivity.

Sheer exploration will hold a user’s attention for awhile, but virtual navigation becomes more engaging when there is purpose behind the navigation. In 3D space, users will get even more pleasure in navigating with speed if they have specific goals to achieve: get information, beat a time, interact with an object or virtual character. Navigation is equally important in 2D space: the World Wide Web took off partially because of the pleasure in “surfing” webpages, moving speedily from page to page with the goal of gathering specific information.

Users enjoy learning when it is a clear means to a desired end. Learning to navigate more quickly, effectively and efficiently is a pleasure when it helps a user reach a goal. If the goal is viewed as worthy of achieving, then a user will gladly practice and repeat a navigation or other activity in order to claim it, and will happily embrace a challenge because it invests the objective with greater significance. We cannot underestimate the value of having clear-cut goals invested with meaning, and here is where story can do so much for us, as has been discussed in previous chapters. When goals carry not only abstract value or economic value (e.g., “I will do my job better if I learn this, and get a promotion”) but emotional value (e.g., “and then they will all love me again!”), the player is likely to undertake even harder challenges and take away more meaning from the engagement.

If we alternate between challenges (necessary to claim the goal) and rewards (that are offered upon achieving the goal), we’ll begin to create balanced gameplay that will engage the user in a concentrated learning experience.

Navigation alone, no matter how goal-oriented and challenging, would eventually become monotonous. Interestingly, making choices is also a pleasurable experience for users. We see this whenever anyone takes a “Cosmo quiz” (the self-assessment game feature in Cosmopolitan magazine): the cerebral engagement of examining a situation that demands action and selecting from several alternatives is empowering and invigorating. (It is another form of agency, because we again exercise control.) Indeed, one of the signs of clinical depression is when a person avoids making choices in his or her life, and leads an increasingly passive experience.

These choices, however, must contain real consequences that the user can perceive. Users quickly lose interest in inconsequential choices: they will refuse to be lab rats, pushing buttons just to keep themselves busy. The Cosmo Quiz would be uninteresting if it ended each month with “to be continued.” Instead, quiz takers are rewarded after meeting all the challenges (making decisions) by getting a score and gaining knowledge about themselves. The goal is both desirable and fun.

Both navigation and decision making keep a user interacting with his or her environment. Some learning is best achieved when the interactivity is synchronous with other events and actors (characters) in the environment; other learning, often more cerebral, is better served by asynchronous, or turn-based, interactivity. Think about a game of chess, which is all about reflection, study, and strategy. Real-time situational awareness, or scenarios where decision making must be made based on reflex, instinct, or emotion, may be better served in fully synchronous worlds.

Object manipulation is yet another source of play. We are, after all, toolmakers and tool users: our desire to create, control, modify, and destroy objects seems to be encoded into our DNA. Firing weapons and destroying life and property may be more fundamental to our natures than we care to admit. Fortunately, dragging, dropping, targeting and firing virtual objects is a more politically correct method of indulging this pleasure. Rich 3D environments give us the ability to engage gears; assemble disparate parts into objects; fight, dress, or embrace avatars; or eliminate dangerous items or characters.

Puzzle solving is one of the classic elements of gameplay. It involves some form of navigation, coupled with decision making and, often, object manipulation. But puzzles need to be integrated into the simulation, not merely busy work. Perhaps a code needs breaking, or a DNA pattern needs reading. Perhaps equipment needs assembling, or a door needs to be unlocked in order to rescue a potential victim.

Ticking clocks can often enhance gameplay. This is really a dramatic device that gains even greater meaning when the user pits him or herself against it. A decision may need to be made, a corridor may need to be navigated, or a piece of equipment may need to be assembled in X amount of time. The ticking clock further crystallizes the importance and urgency of the goal and gives us a very easy-to-measure rate of progress (e.g., I have improved if I can beat the countdown by 7 seconds instead of 2; I have improved if the clock just beats me, rather than my having made little progress before time runs out).

Hide-and-seek is another activity that extends a sense of fun. If you’ve lost your keys and then find them, you know the pleasure and satisfaction you feel—not all of it is because you need your keys! Instead, there is a deep feeling of accomplishment, of having used brains and perseverance to succeed. Quests—the key activity in so many action and adventure games—are really just extended hide-and-seek activities. We enjoy navigating so that we can locate objects, and we gain greater pleasure when we are racing the clock to do so.

Donning masks or disguises, i.e., role-playing, is yet another significant form of play. We see this with the advance of Halloween as possibly the most popular holiday of the year (Christmas time, with its onerous shopping and entertaining duties, becomes something we must do; Halloween is something we want to do.) Centuries-old Carnivale, particularly in places like Venice and Brazil, is also more popular than ever.

Janet Murray identifies this mask donning and role-playing with “transformation,” another key element of successful interactivity. Transformation again empowers the user, allowing him or her to “be someone else” and loosening the usual bonds of inhibition that are part of our daily personas. These activities (exploring alternate personas and behaviors) are pleasurable for the user, partially because no cost is associated with them. In addition, transformation may grant the user new powers, which may aid the user in navigation, puzzle solving, object interaction and other crucial gameplay elements.

Interestingly, even quizzes offer some degree of transformation, since at the end you become a quiz winner or quiz loser, or, according to the Cosmo quiz, you are crowned a “great lover” or a “lousy lover.” Momentarily, you have a title: you are something you weren’t (or weren’t aware you were) before.

During their transformation (particularly when they fully assume a role, e.g., the newbie company commander or a union shop leader), users are more easily able to learn, because they see the environment and their belief system in a new light. Here again, if we can create a story space that aids users in undertaking transformation (by role-playing or promotion, e.g., a new employee becomes a company VP), we enhance the opportunities for training and transference of pedagogy.

Beat-the-clock, solve-the-puzzle, hide-and-seek, ace-the-exam, kill-the-enemy, don-a-mask . . . if you think about it, most gameplay will fit into one of these categories, and all of them involve some combination of navigation, decision making, and object interaction and manipulation.

You may look at your simulation as one involving complex interactions (between individual users, or between a user and nonplayer characters, or between a user and the environment), informational transactions, dialogues, and high-level decision making. But when we look at the basic actions, we still have a lot of puzzle solving (we’d like outcome Z based on situation Y and problem X—how do we do it?) and ace-the-exam gameplay, often with a beat-the-clock component.

When we think about the pedagogical content we wish to impart, we begin to see that much of it dovetails with these pleasurable play functions. Our goal is to impart knowledge, guidelines and experience so that a user can solve problems, locate information, recognize new facets of a situation, eliminate potential threats and function in a timely manner (even under pressure). From this standpoint, the more we can incorporate effective and engaging gameplay into our simulation, the more likely we are to succeed in the delivery of training and pedagogy.

CALIBRATING GAMEPLAY FOR EMOTION AND INVESTMENT

We can begin to use gameplay elements such as time and pressure to calibrate a user’s emotions. Think of these elements as sliders to move between maximum and minimum parameters while we step through a typical interactive process.

(The above discussion on calibrating gameplay elements is largely drawn from a seminal Ben Calica game design article, cited in the bibliography.)

GAMEPLAY DESIGN RULES

Game design veteran Noah Falstein is assembling an ambitious compilation of game design rules he calls “The 400 Project” (http://www.theinspiracy.com/400_project.htm). These rules run the gamut from “Make the Game Fun for the Player, not the Designer or Computer” to “Add a Small Amount of Randomness to AI Calculations.” For anyone serious about designing compelling gameplay, these rules are a good place to start. Check out the website.

In these brief sections, we have only begun to explore gameplay and ludology. But the more we understand how gameplay works, the more engaging we can make our interactivity. Ludology without technology won’t get us very far, however. As we begin to conceptualize the interactivity we deem necessary for our simulation, we need to ask which media and delivery platforms will best serve our gameplay.

MEDIA: TEMPERATURE AND DELIVERY BANDWIDTH

In Chapter Twenty, we’ll more thoroughly examine media through the prisms of “temperature” (as originally defined by Marshall McLuhan in his groundbreaking book Understanding Media) and “bandwidth.” These two principles will affect our gameplay. Media that is cooler and requires lower bandwidth will often be more appropriate for more strategic, turn-based, cerebral gameplay (see the complete media temperature/bandwidth matrix in Chapter Twenty). However, there are exceptions, which we’ll see momentarily. In general, 2D visual media (e.g., webpages, slideshows, charts and spreadsheets, documents, still images) will support puzzle solving, ace-the-exam, hide-and-seek, and beat-the-clock. However, the style of game here may be slower and more contemplative: something akin to fantasy football, where the pleasure is derived from the study of player statistics, the weighing of potential player combinations, and the anticipation of the next big milestone.

We can imagine a political science simulation or macroeconomics simulation (either one of these offering an amplification of the solve-the-puzzle play instinct) that relies wholly on this sort of low-bandwidth media, which is highly appropriate for Internet or networked delivery, although physical disk distribution would work equally well. (In the next chapters, we’ll discuss delivery platforms in more detail.)

Conceivably, a simulation might consist solely of textual content and text input (something like our Cosmo quiz). This could literally be delivered via cell phone SMS messaging. And although this probably stretches the definition of a simulation to the breaking point, it illustrates the point that gameplay can be delivered using any media (cool or hot).

Audio and live action video require greater bandwidth, and their temperature is variable enough to support different kinds of gameplay. That said, their temperature is always higher than the media mentioned in the previous paragraph.

For example, we may use audio to simulate phone calls, voicemail, and news radio broadcasts that supply content to our poli-sci or econ simulation. Although the audio may carry almost purely informational/pedagogical content, the fact is that the audio will create greater urgency and “heat”: the inclusion of human voices makes the simulation more immersive, and radio broadcasts, voicemails, etc., are almost undoubtedly going to up the stakes in our simulation. (Voicemails are likely to request or desire actions; radio broadcasts are likely to convey troubling news or new developments that change the situation, etc.)

Similarly, video may be used to simulate newscasts, teleconferences, recorded presentations, etc. The human presence again adds greater weight and urgency to the content. (If a character tells me that a leading economic indicator has declined or that the nuclear seals have been broken, this will mean more than the same information delivered textually.)

However, audio and video can be used to deliver even more heat when used in conjunction with gameplay that emphasizes the tactical, visceral, and synchronous. This kind of gameplay is best served by a 3D environment that user avatars (first or third person) can navigate. The puzzle-solving, hide-and-seek, ace-the-exam, kill-the-enemy, beat-the-clock, and don-the-mask play styles will become much more immersive in a real-time navigable space, where the simulation is about making quick decisions within a specific environment.

Though unlikely, it could be that the only gameplay we need can take place in the 3D virtual environment; we can bypass webpages, images, audio, and live action video. Chances are, however, that gameplay we envision in a 3D space will also require the use of lower bandwidth media. The combination will enrich the experience—and the gameplay—even further. A printed Briefing Kit greatly enhanced the participant experience in the 3D virtual world of the Leaders simulation.

Because any simulation environment is costly and complex to develop, you’ll especially wish to avoid choosing an environment you don’t need, and which gives you gameplay features you’re not planning on using. For example, if user avatar spatial navigation isn’t critical to interactivity, then choosing a realtime 3D environment for development and delivery is inappropriate. If sensory stimuli are unnecessary, then you should stay away from any virtual reality considerations.

Ideally, you’ll exploit the appropriate media types—and the gameplay they deliver—for your platform of choice. The challenges that any platform presents in deployment should be challenges you need to meet. Choosing a platform because it’s “sexy” or “exciting” or “hot” is a first step toward failure. Not all gameplay and all simulations require real-time synchronicity. No game is more asynchronous than chess, yet its level of difficulty, its addictiveness, and its user immersion are enormous.

GAMEPLAY ISN’T EVERYTHING

Although gameplay is critical, it is not the only determinant for which delivery platform to select. Issues arising in building the immersive environment will be discussed in the following chapters. You may need to balance the needs of gameplay with production, budget and personnel needs. All these elements should factor into the final selection of media and platform.

SUMMARY

Gameplay will breathe life into any simulation. Without compelling and immersive gameplay, the best story-driven simulation will fall flat and fail to impart desired training and pedagogy to the user. Breaking down gameplay into basic components will help in designing and developing gameplay. Often, we overlook what really is at the core of good gameplay. The more we understand the components of gameplay, the better we can calibrate their use to create emotion and user investment, and the better we can synch up gameplay to narrative. Once we know what gameplay we’d like, we can begin to select the right media and the right platform for our simulation. Gameplay alone won’t determine the final selection of platform, but no factor should have greater weight.