A Very Brief Set of Notes

A Very Brief Set of Notes

Hey there, mortals, how go things?

So, I just wanted to make a quick blog, partly to get some notes about the week's reading from Rob, but mostly to kill time while I wait for my Steam sale purchases to download.

First of all is Space of Possibility and Pacing in Casual Game Design by Marcos Venturelli. I wonder if this link will work?

https://learn.ucs.ac.uk/bbcswebdav/pid-195672-dt-content-rid-353466_1/courses/IMDCGD110-12YRD/Week%20By%20Week%20Module%20Readings/Week%20By%20Week%20Readings%20Readings%20for%20week%207%20Space%20of%20Possibility%20and%20Pacing%20in%20Casual%20Game%20Design_A%20PopCap%20Case%20Study/Space%20of%20Possilbility%20and%20Pacing%20in%20Casual%20Game%20Design%20_%20A%20Popcamp%20Case%20Study.pdf


Venturelli first defines a casual game as a game which you can "pick up and play", which can be enjoyed in small bursts, and can be put down with little to no penalty. He also mentions that the complexity of the game is less important than how the complexity is presented to (or hidden from) the player, as well as noting their general family-friendliness and accessibility.

Next, he defines Pacing as the overall rhythm of the game, the relative speed at which different parts of the system are introduced. For example, how often one receives a new plant in Popcap's Plants Vs Zombies.

Some related concepts to pacing include Movement Impetus (the player's will or desire to move forward with the game), Threat (perceived danger overcoming real danger), Conflict (contest of powers), and Tempo (time between each significant decision made by the player, setting the intensity of play).

Next, possibility means all the possible actions and outcomes within the game system; all of the available moves in a game of Chess, for example, or position choices in Tic-Tac-Toe (Noughts and Crosses). Patterns of gameplay are created through a series of different possibilities being selected for their outcomes, which is where strategies of gameplay come from. By instinctively identifying patterns of gameplay, the player increases their overall chance of winning.

Possibilities directly affect the pacing of the game, and therefore the Player Impetus; by restricting the number of possibilities, the player has to think less, and will make choices more quickly, reducing any frustration and making the gameplay generally smoother.

However, reducing the Scope of Possibility too much leads to a game which is too easy to master, and which will consequently become boring faster; a good example is Tic-Tac-Toe; Tic-Tac-Toe has so few choices, the game became masterable by most children.

On the other hand, Chess has far more choices, an almost infinite amount of patterns and possibilities are available to each player. Of course, this does not mean that more possibilities make a game better, especially in the case of casual games; as previously stated, too much Scope of Possibility forces the player to stop and think, which takes away their momentum, and therefore reduces their Player Impetus.

The solution to levels of possibility is to take the problem from the "Lower Arch of Pacing" to the "Upper Arch of Pacing", or to take the learning curve and curve of the Scope of Possibility from a single or a few levels to the majority of the overall game. Again, Plants Vs Zombies is an excellent example of this; rather than having all of the Plants to play with, with all of their possibilities, the game gives them to you over the course of the entire game, so that you have time to learn about them before being given another one.

I think that's all I'll write about for now. I really like the way this article is written, with all of the terms (such as "Scope of Possibility") making a great deal of sense to me. I might have even enjoyed reading it if it didn't take me so long, and I wasn't so damnably tired at the time. Looking back now, it all makes good sense, and can be fairly easily applied from a design standpoint.

Praise be to the Emperor, I'll talk at you again next week or so.