How to make a fun games
![[Deleted User]](https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar.php?gravatar_id=be924c3643ded517159bf97016e7e70e&size=50&default=https%3A%2F%2Fvanillicon.com%2Fbe924c3643ded517159bf97016e7e70e.png){kind=avatar}
Just a little something I think this forum needs.
How to make fun games.
Surely there has to be tips and tricks, certain "formulas" and theory one can try to come up with something that would be "fun".
The best way will be to do it yourself and see what works of course.
But one can dissect something like Flappy birds and come to a speculative conclusion why its fun, or addicting in this case.
So here goes...
I dissected it into simple element that define the game, they are...
Obstacles/threats - The player immediately realises the threat and challenge, to avoid the pipe obstacles by altering the
Yposition of the character that is constantly moving forward.
Player controls - By a simple tap, the player can make the character "fly" to avoid the obstacles. In this case the controls can be mastered by rhythm and timing.
Challenge/Goal - There are no real end or goal to flappy bird, but by adding a high score, the players feel competitive to improve his personal best or that of other people.
Conclusion: The game has clear obstacles/threats with simple controls that can be mastered, paired with a high score system that makes the player want to try again and improve.
This might not be that insightful, but I'm hoping to hear from the more experienced guys on this topic and hopefully help us all understand it a little better.
How to make fun games.
Surely there has to be tips and tricks, certain "formulas" and theory one can try to come up with something that would be "fun".
The best way will be to do it yourself and see what works of course.
But one can dissect something like Flappy birds and come to a speculative conclusion why its fun, or addicting in this case.
So here goes...
I dissected it into simple element that define the game, they are...
Obstacles/threats - The player immediately realises the threat and challenge, to avoid the pipe obstacles by altering the
Yposition of the character that is constantly moving forward.
Player controls - By a simple tap, the player can make the character "fly" to avoid the obstacles. In this case the controls can be mastered by rhythm and timing.
Challenge/Goal - There are no real end or goal to flappy bird, but by adding a high score, the players feel competitive to improve his personal best or that of other people.
Conclusion: The game has clear obstacles/threats with simple controls that can be mastered, paired with a high score system that makes the player want to try again and improve.
This might not be that insightful, but I'm hoping to hear from the more experienced guys on this topic and hopefully help us all understand it a little better.
Comments
The story of Flappy Bird as I know it:
Pewdiepie played the game, his fans thought it was hilarious watching him fumble with such a simple and oddly named game, the game was free so many of the 20 million or so people who watched the video picked it up and that propelled it to the top of the AppStore charts, beating out games like Candy Crush Saga and so making Flappy Bird even more notorious.
I guess I'm saying that Flappy Bird wasn't successful because it was fun, it was successful because, for a game like Flappy Bird, to be briefly more successful than Candy Crush Saga and Clash of Clans is interesting in itself, so the fact that it was successful at all became a massive contributor to its further success.
I'm not saying that Flappy Bird isn't fun either. People did have fun with it, though the experience most people would describe of playing it is much more likely to be "frustration" than "fun".
I think it's important to note that the aspect of "fun" had little to do with Flappy Bird's popularity, and the way that Flappy Bird did achieve popularity isn't possible by mimicking Flappy Bird (because the novelty won't be there the second time even if PewDiePie does play a game a lot like it, which he surely has already).
I'm also not trying to saying you're wrong about the insights about what is fun about Flappy Bird. I think there are better examples of games with tight controls that are all about the joy of mastering the controls and overcoming the goals the game presents (like say Super Meat Boy, which generally manages to hold players' attention a lot longer than Flappy Bird).
Fun is a complicated thing of course, and different people have different tastes when it comes to what they experience as fun.
The kind of "fun" you are describing often gets called "fiero" (though what you call it is obviously not important). People call this "Hard Fun", it is the pleasure we feel at overcoming a difficult challenge. Part of it is the joy of mastery, but it's not just about learning, it's about achieving something despite great adversity.
Games like Super Hexagon excel at delivering this (and I'd argue have been successful because they were fun). Personally I don't enjoy this kind of fun much, in particular when it comes down to a dexterity challenge. I get more of a kick from exploration, creation, transgression, mastery (in terms of understanding), imitation and domination (which are other kinds of fun feelings). I find relatively little satisfaction in skillful performance (but other people do).
And other members of this forum have been exploring this kind of fun (that you bring up) and are clearly bigger fans of it than I. @Kobusvdwalt has been experimenting in this vein for a couple games now. Check out http://makegamessa.com/discussion/3536/nagjam-thumbper ... if you're interested in this sort of fun then @Kobusvdwalt is probably the person on these forums to talk to.
Granted its success came from the right person promoting it, but as far as game design goes it is stupidly simple and was "fiero"
So I'm more interested in the game design specifically.
I'm pretty bad at getting my point across, coz I'm hardcore noob when it come to game design, but...
I dont believe that people whilly nilly just add sugar spice and everything nice and have a random chance of the game turning out good and this is probably where experience from making games comes in.
Ill argue that Super Meat Boy(and many others) can also be dissected into...
Obstacles/threats
Player controls
Challenge/Goal/Storyline
I don't know if these points are game design 101, but its from what I observed.
The link you gave me is a perfect example and also follow the rules above.
To me it seems like @Kobusvdwalt9 had a cool idea for the player controls and worked around that and added the scenario where the goal is to stop the threats from touching the centre.
This is speculation so I would really appreciate to hear his side.
jenovachen.com/flowingames/Flow_in_games_final.pdf
This was a thesis written by one of the designers at Thatgamecompany, the creators of Journey.
Rules of Play
A great intro to the more formal elements of game design
Game Design Workshop
A book more focused on using play testing and iterating to improve design. Also quit good.
I've heard good things about this book as well. I've currently got it on order, but SA customs doesn't seem to like me very much.
The Art of Game Design: A Book of Lenses
I liken game design to cooking. First, there are the ingredients (or the ideas). These everyone has lots of. And secondly, there is the chef (or the execution of those ideas).
Even though many people might have the same ingredients, no one would argue that the quality of the meal would come down to the skill of the chef. The chef is lucky every time a meal turns out well, but through constant practice and honing of their skills, they've raised the chances of that happening to almost 100%.
It is undoubtedly a valuable skill to be able to dissect a game into the ingredients (or ideas) it's made up of. But even more so is the ability to put those ingredients back together again to create the original game. This is the skill of a game designer, and this skill is only improved by making games. Lots of games.
Analyzing games gives insights.
Making games gives results.
So go make some games so we can taste them :) Then we can talk about the ingredients and execution and how they may be improved.
It broke farcry 2 for me because there was too much space. The game only felt fun on the few instances where my space was limited. I never even finished it because the fun was gone. Almost every encounter could be solved with a rifle and distance.
Compare that to the limited freedom of other fps like the upcoming doom. The enemy takes up a lot more real estate and the way you move becomes consequential. I learned how this impacted on fun when i made a less cartoony version of my meatball game. When the realestate was limited it felt fun. When the landscape was too big, and the monsters too small, it became pointless chaos.
Bottom line. Manage a comfortable realestate that keeps the interaction going. But don't let the player become ensaired without options.
This doesn't mean open world is a bad thing, but it adds complication to find ways to get the player to engage with enemies when a sniper rifle is so much easier. In other words. Why fight the random monster if you can just go around it?
Or
Why keep fighting if i can just run away and try again and again, chipping away until it dies.
Demon souls had a monster that was difficult for me. Trapped in low realestate, the monster could easily get to me and was overwhelming. I feel like the monster owned all the real estate. The only way i could beat it was by inverting the problem.
I found a large pillar and circled it for 30 minutes while continuously poisoning the monster.
That pillar became my real estate and was a very non-fun way to solve the problem of being ensnared.
Well. I'm sure you see the point. Size matters and bigger isn't always better, and while this isn't the only thing to consider for fun, it is certainly something I'll be keeping in mind. Players and opponents should play for real estate. I imagine this is why a chess board is as big/small as it is..
Link to cluster : http://makegamessa.com/discussion/2425/released-cluster-need-signal-boosting
When I participated in the NAGJam I had a "vision" of this dual analog control scheme that I wanted to build and test, but I also wanted to make something thats finished and polished (the last gamejam I did I horribly over scoped and at the end had nothing to show for my effort). So keeping this in mind I decided to use a design style I am familiar and comfortable with. In retrospect this isn't normally a good thing in a jam so next time I would like to go way out of my comfort zone. Maybe a narrative driven game :D
Anyway : Yes I basically just added stuff whilly nilly but I also had some knowledge/experience that helped guide me in the right direction. For instance at first the enemies came in random directions at random intervals with random speeds but this didn't support the rhythmic movement of thumbs that I had in my "vision". So I drew from super hexagon and added patterns. This achieved the effect I wanted. Another useful thing I learned from Cluster that I applied in Thumbper is the super quick respawn, which allows the frustration levels to be super low while having a sky high difficulty curve.
I think what @blackshipsfillthesky said in another thread makes a lot of sense : It seems like your looking for some sort of formula that you can apply to get better at game design. So I would just say that to become better at making fun games you should try to make fun games. This is backed up by people that are a lot more skilled than me. JW from vlambeer comes to mind. He basically just made a shit ton of games and is now some sort of immortal prototyping god.
Hope that helps. Sorry if its a bit too much about me.
*Edit*
Changed "to" to "too" to not come across as a language retard.
Seems like I found my next book to read.
I ordered a package from Canada once and after 3months of waiting I was certain it fell off the ossewae somewhere along the way. Then it showed up after I convinced myself it never would.
@pieter That is one amazing analogy!
But I feel like I'm only still trying to figuring out what the ingredients are...
Too often I find myself wanting to bake a (insert impressive pastry here). Which is also a mistake most new comers make.
To keep it simple stupid, I feel like only experimenting with the player controls, Obstacles/threats or Challenge/Goal and see what nifty concoctions I come up with.... Like taste testing the ingredients!
@Pierre I would go as far as to say Farcry2 had the extremes of too much and too little real estate
It was either the narrow jungle passages, where an oncoming AI jeep would basically crash itself trying to stop or turn. Then the wide open savannah fields where my solution was to just set the entire earth on fire.
I actually saw something similar happen recently, where a boss enemy that had to stop me from progressing thru a door, until I was at a high enough level to beat it in a fair fight. I simply ran around and past it and advanced to the next area regardless, but this might have been caused by a mixture of real estate, boss AI and its placement.
--This was a lot to read through and reply to and hope I didn't ramble too much, but doing so is helping me get better understanding on what I need to be focussing on, so thanks a lot.
As I said in my first post, I felt you were experimenting in a particular vein and honing your skills. Though experimenting outside of your comfort zone is important as well at accruing new skills and venturing into the unknown.
My rule of thumb at the moment is I have to make at least 5 games of a type before I can make an actually decent one. Recently I tried to make a horror game and it definitely felt one fifth as good as I'd like it to be.
Also @Kobusvdwalt9 , thanks for filling in the gaps that I left. Glad to have your insight on this subject.