We Don’t Know What We Don’t Know

The Power Of Research

When you are working on a game or a new feature there will always be unknowns. You can’t be sure how things will work out and how your game will look like at the end. Often the first decisions you make will be the most important because they will give the biggest impact on the direction of your game or feature. So these decisions shouldn’t be too arbitrary. But how can we reduce the arbitrary and improve the basis of your decisions before designing and prototyping?

The answer lays in research.

The following article will try to show why and how you should do game design related research.

Why we should do research

Deleting unknowns as soon as possible

The most important reason why we should do research is because we often don’t know what we don’t know. A lot of people think that they already know a lot about a specific topic when in fact they don’t. We can never be sure if we know enough about a specific topic, but we can raise the chances that we have all important information to make the right decisions by doing good research.

When you do research chances are high that you’ll find out that other companies may did something that you thought would be unique in your game but in fact has already been done by other companies. Now you have a lot more opportunities and information than you did before.

Raise innovation

Research can also be a huge innovation driver. You can jump right to the status quo of the latest games and improve on what is already there. Don’t miss this opportunity, otherwise your may good and innovative game isn't that good and innovative in comparison to games that are already out there and may did better than you. But be warned: Do not copy a feature just because you think it is fun in another game, games are complex systems with a lot of dynamics, so you can’t expect that a copied feature will work in your game as it did in another. Adapt a feature for your specific needs and try to improve it so your players will have the best possible experience.

Keep conventions

Another good reason to do research is due to the fact that a lot of players are used to specific thinks. When you don’t know about specific conventions you may design something that annoys a lot of players because they are constantly confused about the way how things work differently in your game. That doesn’t mean that you are not allowed to break conventions in your game design but you should have better reasons than your lack of knowledge.

More authentic experiences

Good research can give your game a more authentic experience. A lot of information that humans know about specific things are hidden deep in their  subconscious. When you have elements in your game that are related to real existing things that look and behave authentic,  your experience becomes more credible and the immersion will be increased. Players can feel if certain things are just wrong, do not try to fool them just because you didn’t know better. Again, of course you can drop authenticity whenever your desired experience requires it but not because you didn’t know better.

Building confidence and trust

The last good reason in my opinion for research is confidence and trust. The other developers should be able to trust you as a designer. So you should try to know as much as possible about the specific things that are related to your game. A good research can build the confidence you need for a clear and strong communication that is based on knowledge and not personal taste and assumptions. You will never know anything about all games that were made and are related to your game and that’s alright, but the more you know the better it is. A well prepared designer is much more respected than a game designer that makes decisions that seem to have no real foundation. It builds trust and shows that you really care.

When to research

Now that we know that research is important we have to ask ourselves of how we can increase the value that we can get out of our research and make it more efficient. So the next part will try to point out when to research to make it as efficient as possible.

Research soon enough

This may sound like a no brainer but I have seen this way too often to not mention it. Research as long as you can react on the new information. There is no use in research when there is no more time to make use of it. So do it in the beginning when you approach your design problems. For example when you have to design a new feature, make changes on an existing feature or work on a vision for a game.

Research as often as necessary

Things change. You can’t expect that all the information that were legit a few years ago are still work the same way. The market changes, the technology, the users, the platform, almost everything can change. So do your homework whenever you run in danger that your information could maybe outdated. If it’s not the better you just saved a lot of time and maybe refreshed your memories on a specific topic. Well done!

How to research

The next part is on how to research, there are different ways to help on making research more efficient.

Make it a task with a result

Research is something that has a high value in production, so your production plan should handle research as a task that has to be performed and should lead to specific results. Arrange enough time and ask for a result that can be shared with the other designers so you can increase the value of the information you researched. Make a presentation and discuss the results. Maybe some information is interpreted by another designer in a different way than you did. Discuss the results and take appropriate actions on how to involve them in your design in the best way possible.

Playing good games is useful...

Some games can work as a prototype for you. Play the top and most successful games that are related to your game. Try to find out why they are so successful. Check the forum of these games to see the player feedback on specific features. This will not necessary tell you if the feature was successful but it can lead to valuable insights.

Playing bad games too.

Take a look at games that are related to your game and failed. Why did they fail? What kind of risks can you recognise from their failure and do you run in danger to make comparable mistakes? Avoid theír mistakes and find out what you have to do to make it better.

Read Wikis

A lot successful games have some kind of wikipedia. This can save a lot of time when you want to find out about specific parts of the game that would take too much time to get to by playing it by yourself. I’m pretty sure that you will find valuable information there.

Read Blogs

It may sounds crazy but some guys write articles about game design or write analysis about specific games. They work for you for free. Great. If these guys are good it saves a lot of time. They did research and even analysed the information for you. Say thank you and take consequences.

Reflect your information

This is the by far most important aspect. Think about the information you gained.  Even if 10 other guys wrote an analysis with 100 pages about a specific game or game design topic, they could be wrong. So don’t be a lazy designer and think about it. That’s what you get paid for. Do it. But do not question the things I wrote. Don’t do that. Just kidding, do it too. Ask yourself how did a feature work out in the other games? Will your feature be exactly the same or can you think about improvements to the solutions the other games already used. Even when you know that other games did something that you also want to have in your game it may be a good idea to take a closer look to their implementation. You may will realise problems that you didn't think of before and have to make more drastical changes. There can be a lot of dynamics in video games. Research is all about erasing unknowns with the least possible effort. So use your brain and try to gain as much value out of your research. The information may save you some prototypes that would have failed now that you know how a comparable feature worked in another game. Great isn’t it? So use the gained time and go for the prototype that is closer to your final solution and improve on that.

Conclusion

Research is work, has value and can be done well or poorly. It can save you a lot of time and the information should be shared and conclusions should be drawn. Plan time in your production and reflect on the gained information. Start by sharing this article and reflect about it.

Let’s Raise the Stakes

Did you ever wonder why some games are so thrilling that they exhaust their players on a physical level? Today I want to talk about what components in your game can create such such intense experiences.

The Ingredients

When creating exciting moments it’s all about the player’s expectation of specific outcomes in certain situations of your game. The outcomes do not have to be the final result of the game to be exciting. Excitement can also emerge around every gameplay loop that your player faces in the game. The situation doesn’t have to mark the end of the game it can also be something like a boss fight, an encounter with a hostile player during a Counter Strike match or a randomized reward that the player is going to get. The possible situations can vary a lot but it will always need at least two of the following three ingredients.

1. Uncertainty (This one is always needed)
2. Investment
3. Rewards

Uncertainty

This ingredient is a must-have if you want to create exciting experiences. Without uncertainty, there is no excitement. Your players need to lack a certain amount of information that determines the outcome of the specific situation in order to be excited. Let’s take Tic Tac Toe as a counter example. This game is solved / mastered by most adult players and as soon as a game is mastered the result will always be the same (a draw). This game does not have any uncertainty because adult players know how to play in an optimal way. As long as both players play with the desire to win, the game will most likely end up in a draw. Uncertainty can emerge through hidden information, chances or situations that are so complex that the human mind can’t process all possible outcomes in the given time.

Hidden Information

One tool to provide uncertainty is to hide certain but relevant information from the player. The fog of war in strategy games is one of the best known tool where hidden information comes into play. Another famous example is Poker, where players can’t see the opponent's cards and of course in a lot of shooters the level environment is a huge factor when it comes to hidden information. Hiding information from the players is a well established tool but great games tend to give players tools to reveal hidden information. An important factor when it comes to hidden information is the amount of information that is hidden or revealed to the player. Too much hidden information gives the player too little to work with when it comes to making his decisions and they become arbitrary. You need to find the right spot between hidden and known information or at least give the player tools to reveal hidden information. This adds a strategic layer where players can influence the game’s state to get information and make more educated decisions.

Chances

Chances come in two kind of forms.

Random Chances: When there are almost no relevant information the player can use to make his decision he has to rely on his luck to make the right choice. Gambling games heavily rely on this dynamic but they don’t seem to be great games. Of course they provide excitement but their excitement comes from the possible rewards not their “gameplay”. A lot of casual and f2p games also make use of random chances to provide excitement with uncertainty. It is a well established tool and comes in almost infinite forms.

Execution Chances: Games that required certain twitch skills to execute specific tasks have this kind of chances. Of course these chances feel a lot less random than the random chances created by the software but they are still some kind of chance. The hit ratio in ego shooters is a perfect example to explain this. Let’s say a player’s hit ratio is about 30% (a lot of games track and inform the player about this information). When he encounters an enemy his chances to hit the player depending on the current situation is about 30%. Even if there is a good chance that the player may miss with his two first shots the perception varies widely from explicit random chances. The other great difference between these two chances is that the player can invest time to increase his chances by training his precision and thereby his hit ratio.

Complex Situations

In some games every player knows everything about the current game state. These games are games of perfect information. Those games take their uncertainty of the complexity in their possible outcomes. In chess both players know everything about the game’s state but there is still a lot of uncertainty about the future moves of the other players. The possibilities that both players have and the resulting consequences create a huge possibility space. It is so huge that players can’t process all possibilities and make the perfect move in the given time frame. This way the game is capable of creating uncertainty without chances or hidden information.

Investment

Players can develop a huge intrinsic motivation when they invest enough time and energy during a gameplay loop. The perceived gameplay loop by the player often consists of many small gameplay loops. To evaluate the result of a gameplay loop  and perceive it as finished the player needs a feedback that communicates the outcome of his actions and enough time to evaluate this feedback. As long as there is not enough time or clear feedback and the players keep investing through their input the excitement keeps rising. Players can celebrate a kill in a League of Legends match during the laning phase but they don’t if the kill happens in a huge teamfight that is far from being over as there are still plenty of things to do that determine the outcome of the current perceived loop (the teamfight). The more actions players have to perform and the more difficult these actions are the higher the stakes of the loop in terms of investment. Street Fighter matches need a lot of input that is hard to execute and don’t give players time to evaluate their performance until the very end of the fight. The newly added “magic pixel mechanic” that only allows winning through direct- or critical art chip damage keeps the uncertainty up until the very end (Remember: uncertainty is needed in order to create excitement). This way the amount of actions / investment keeps rising for a long time and this way the excitement also keeps rising. As soon as the perceived gameplay loop is finished the player is released and able to relax until the next exciting loop is perceived.

So if you want to increase the excitement of your players via the needed investment you have to increase the amount and difficulty of the required actions to achieve their perceived goal. But beware, of course there’s a spectrum of how many actions your players are willing to do in order to achieve their goal. Games that involve a lot of difficult challenges with no clear reward in between so players can relax and feel released are normally more suitable for a core audience that is really engaged. Less engaged players could lose their interest for your game when facing these kinds of exhausting loops.

Rewards and Punishment

As soon as the result of the situation has the potential of a meaningful reward for the player excitement can emerge. Play Rock Paper Scissor and the winner gets 100,000$. This will make the game exciting. You don’t have to invest a lot to play this game but the potential reward of receiving so much money makes it exciting. The higher the reward for the winner in comparison to the losers penelisation the more excitement can emerge through the reward of the gameplay loop. Now let’s say that you play RPS and the winner gets 100,000$ but the loser still gets 95,000$. Of course it is still pretty cool to get so much money but the excitement will fall because the difference between both outcomes is much smaller.

It is important to note that the reward doesn’t have to be the final reward at the end of the game. The gold you get when killing an enemy champion in League of Legends is also important even if it is far from securing the win of the game. The reward of a gameplay loop is a big help for players to evaluate the outcome of the situation. As soon as they perceive a reward it is much more easier to perceive the gameplay loop as finished. This way the excitement can cool down and start rising again as soon as the player encounters the next gameplay loop that has an uncertain outcome.

League of Legends vs. Starcraft 2

I don’t want to compare these games in terms of their quality I just want to compare them in terms of their gameplay loop constructions and the resulting excitement. Not every player likes the same amount of excitement. Especially when the (time) investment was big and a gameplay loop ends without the desired outcome players can feel a lot of frustration and may churn forever.

I think that League of Legends with it’s laning, last hitting and champion kills/respawn dynamics achieves something special as those elements work as small gameplay loops players can experience while being in the game’s big gameplay loop. Both actions give a very clear feedback in form of a reward (gold & xp) and can be evaluated due to the game’s pacing because as soon as the hostile champion is dead the player’s champion is mostly save. This way players can experience excitement and relaxation on a regular basis, even if the game’s whole gameplay loop itself is much bigger and longer. The perceived gameplay experience consists of a lot small gameplay loops, each of them features the possibility for excitement and release. At the same time all those loops build towards a big loop whose goal is to destroy the enemy's nexus. Here is an example for a typical League of Legends game in terms of its excitement-curve:

In Starcraft 2 even if it has a similar structure the feedback during the game isn’t nearly as clearly as in League of Legends. All your actions are much harder to evaluate in terms of their contribution towards your desired outcome of the game because the whole gamestate is much more complex and the rewards are much more volatile than in League of Legends. You may have won a fight in the middle of the map but your opponent may already build a second base without your knowledge. The perceived gameplay loops are much bigger than the small loops during the League of Legends laning phase and because of this the amount of investment and with it the excitement raises on a much higher level during a Starcraft 2 game. At the same time the stakes of each gameplay loop in Starcraft 2  are much higher. Losing one of them can cause the loss of the whole game in League of Legends you may give the opponent player some gold, XP or lose a tower. Only after the team has lost several towers it has to fear losing of the whole game. Here is an example for a typical Starcraft 2 game in terms of its excitement-curve:

There are a lot less perceived gameplay loops but each loop has a huge excitement value. This way players are thrilled for a much longer time. In my opinion this is a result when you combine high stakes with high investment loops.

I hope that this article helped you to think about your games excitement-curve.

Good and Great Possibility Space

Hello, today I want to share my opinion about great possibility space.

First I’d like to explain what I mean when I talk about possibility space.

The possibility space is the amount of choices and the different results of these choices a player can experience when playing your game. These number of different outcomes can be high, which leads to a big possibility space or it can be low, which leads to the opposite.

I like games with a high possibility space. For me, making decisions is the unique attribute that differentiates games from other entertainment media. That's why I think that good games embrace player choices and aspire a big and great possibility space that keeps players engaged for a long time.

Causes that create a great possibility space

Number of choices

You’re may be able to increase the possibility space of your game by increasing the number of choices your players can make. Unfortunately it’s not that simple. Increasing the choices doesn’t have to create a bigger possibility space. The number different outcomes is what defines the possibility space. If nine out of ten decisions always lead to the same outcome your game effectively provides only two decisions and has a much smaller possibility space than you might think. But having choices that lead to different outcomes do indeed increase your games possibility space, which makes this tool a valuable asset.

Dependencies between mechanics

Players can interact with certain game mechanics to influence the game state which may lead to different outcomes. Good mechanics that have a certain depth should be able to influence your system in more than only one meaningful way due to their relationships to other mechanics in your game. This way your player can make decisions that can lead to a wide number of new outcomes due to the complexity of your system. Players can use different mechanics in different ways which lead to even more different outcomes and by this to a much greater possibility space.

In theory this is a very strong tool to increase your games possibility space but some games push this emergence of possibility space a little too far. Often game systems can become so complex that even the designers do not know all the different outcomes can be created with the provided systems. This may lead to an emergence of possibility space that you want to avoid. I try to give an explanation where a mechanic is used in a great way and in a less good way when creating possibility space with an example from a game I really like a lot: Heroes of the Storm.

Most of the time you can see where Blizzard wants to give their players choices that lead to a great possibility space. These choices are very obvious and it’s clear to see where players should make these choices. For example the talent system in Heroes of the Storm that affects the skills and attributes of the heroes. The different combinations in relationship to the different use cases on the different maps, combined with 4 other heroes already lead to an almost immeasurable possibility space. It is easy to grasp and players can think about the different possibilities as soon as they start to play the game.

But there are also mechanics that lead to a not so obvious possibility space but were definitely intended by Blizzard. In Heroes of the Storm heroes can block other heroes movement. The path finding algorithm tries to find a way around the other heroes but it seems that Blizzard tuned this algorithm in a way that makes blocking other heroes possible as they tend to change their direction a lot of times when trying to pass another hero.

I really like this mechanic as it provides gameplay to a mechanic that is easy to grasp and very essential to the game: Moving your hero. On the other side, this mechanic is very natural as you can see this kind of behavior in other games like football and soccer.

But the same mechanic is used by professional teams in a not so obvious way as it also can be used to block your own minions (units controlled by the AI). Most of the time it is useless to do that because minions have a much smaller hitbox than heroes and it is very very hard to block their movement in a meaningful way. Nonetheless in professional games the teams tend to block the first minion wave with all their five heroes so the first combat emerges closer to their defending towers which is an advantage.

This emergence of a strategy may seem to be something good but in my opinion it is not due to three reasons:

1. Both teams will make use of this mechanic and can’t influence the other team while doing the same. This leads to the situation that it doesn’t matter that both teams know about this “strategy” as it’s a dominating strategy that has no counterplay. It doesn’t offer a choice it only offers a dull task.
   
2. The blocking of such a small hitbox feels pretty random. It looks arbitrary how the heroes try to block the minions and how the minions react to the movement of the heroes. That way both teams will achieve almost the same results and if they don't, the outcome seems to be pretty random. The cause and effect between the movement of the heroes and the movement of the minions is too loose to provide valuable feedback to the player.
   
3. Blocking heroes so they have a harder time to escape from or chase other heroes feels natural and has clear parallels to other games (e.g. Football). Blocking your own group of minions so they are slower and arrive later on the battlefield is a much less natural and a very counter intuitive strategy and doesn't serve the fantasy of the game.

I think as a Game Designer you should really know where you want to create the possibility space in your game with the different mechanics that your game provides. Players should be able to guess where they can explore the different strategies and outcomes of your games possibility space without being completely surprised by artificial and absolutely non obvious and counter intuitive usage of mechanics.

Sometimes the reason for emerging strategies is even out of the designers control (e.g. technical).

World of Warcraft has an Arena Mode where players can fight against each other in small teams. A lot of characters need mana to use certain skills. Mana can be regained by drinking but drinking can only be done when players are out of combat, which means that they didn’t participate in any combat action for about 8 seconds. There was a time when players (especially players that played a healing class) were able to abuse the out of combat / drinking mechanic in the arena to regenerate their mana even if they were in combat. The only thing they had to do was to wait until their character was out of combat and then started to  cast their biggest and strongest heal spell of their character with the longest casting time. Channeling the spell didn't count as a combat activity, only as soon as their target which was in combat gained the healing of the spell they were flagged as “in combat”. By spamming the drinking button while casting the spell they were able to drink after they have healed their partner because the server recognized too late that their character participated in a combat activity by a few milliseconds. They started drinking after the spell and as were flagged a short time after they have started to drink which didn’t interrupt the drinking. This behaviour led to combats where people that waited until they were out of combat, used a spell, spammed the drinking button and then started drinking even if they were in combat had an advantage because they could regain mana without renouncing to heal their partner. It was a strong strategy and every top team had to make use of this mechanic to be able to keep up with the other teams.

I hope this article helped you to get a better feeling of possibility space in games and the problems that you may face when designing your game.

The Action in the Loop

Today we’re going to take a look at a specific element of the so called gameplay loop. The gameplay loop contains a goal, an action, and a reward. It describes how the player plays the game in a very superficial and basic way but at the same time it is important to know because every game will feature this loop.

Usually the player has a specific goals that he wants to achieve, he has to perform one or multiple actions and when successfully done he gets a reward for doing so. This makes the gameplay loop look like this:

Some games can be finished after one loop. Rock Paper Scissors can be played with only one loop for example. Usually a game is made of a lot more gameplay loops that have different goals, actions and rewards. It may look like this:

When a player has achieved the final goal of the game it is finished. Some games do not have a final goal so players can play as long as they want to. In this situation the loop just continues until the player quits playing and churns.

In this article I want to take a closer look into the “Action” segment of this loop. I will describe the meaning of the action segment and provide a list of the different kinds of actions that can found in a gameplay loop.

The action segment is the link between the goal of the player and the achieving of this goal with a reward. The action segment can have a challenge but doesn’t have to.  An action can fall into one of seven different sub-segments:

• Out of Context
• Strategic
• Random
• Twitch
• Strategic Twitch
• Social Actions
• Dull

Out of Context Actions

This segment describes actions that are out of your game's context but still can be done by the player. They usually don’t involve a challenge and the results do not feel rewarding most of the time. For example using the options menu to adjust the volume or pressing the start button to start the game. You should try to reduce the amount of actions that fall into this form as much as possible as players usually don’t feel rewarded when successfully completing these actions but feel very frustrated if these actions take too much time in their gaming experience. A good UI should be the solution to successfully manage these actions for your players.

Examples:

• Option Menus
• Dialog Boxes

Strategic Actions

These are the actions where the depth of your game comes into play. Making strategic decisions can be very entertaining for a lot players. Turn based strategy games rely almost entirely on these kind of actions. If you strive for a game that features this kind of actions make sure that your players have to think about what kind of actions they have to perform to achieve a specific goal and receive their rewards. Your game needs to have some dynamics so there are always different things to consider when making a decision. A decision where the answer is obvious and clear is no longer a strategic action but becomes a dull one. Strategic decisions are probably the most powerful actions if you want to keep your players engaged for a long time. Systems that are so complex that the actions in their gameplay loops keep being interesting even after thousands of hours are hard to craft but have the highest potential if you want to keep your players engaged for a long time.

Examples of games that rely heavily on these kind of actions:

• Chess
• Darkest Dungeon
• Final Fantasy Tactics
• Sid Meier’s Civilization

Random Actions

Random Actions appear if the player has no idea what he has to do to achieve a specific outcome. This often appears when the game offers too much information at the same time and players are so overwhelmed by the information that they can’t use it to make meaningful decisions. If my mom had to play a StarCraft 2 game against a professional player her actions would be probably pretty random. Her mental model of the causes and effects of the game is not evolved enough to make educated decisions in the specific time frame. Random Actions can also appear if the game offers too little information. If I would give you the task to tell me what number I am thinking of right now your answer would be probably pretty random. You should try to avoid these kinds of actions because most of the time the result will not satisfy the player and trying things out without any clou about how the different things could possibly work will probably lead to frustration. To avoid these actions you have to think about what information your players need to make educated decisions.

Twitch Actions

Twitch Actions offer a challenge on a physical layer. Quick Time Events are a good example for these actions as they only present a Twitch gameplay that offers no decisions. Jump’n’Runs rely heavily on these kinds of actions as their levels are often very linear and test the players precision, timing and reaction time. If your game involves this kind of actions make sure that the difficulty matches the players skill. You also need some kind of granularity to provide a broad range of possible outcomes. If you want to give your players the possibility to really show of in these kind of actions, have a score system that is able to show the difference between a bad, a good, a great and an awesome player. Racing games tend to measure the time of the players three to four decimal places because of this. If they would only provide the seconds as a result a lot of players would have the same score. So give your twitch gameplay results almost infinite range if your game relies on it.

Examples of games that rely heavily on these kind of actions:

• CSR Racing
• Mr Jump
• Flappy Bird

Strategic-Twitch Actions

These actions are a combination of both. Micro commands in Warcraft 3 have a strategic layer but also require a high apm to be realised in a proper way. Shooting an enemy that is about to throw a grenade in Uncharted is another example. Players have to gather the information that the game provides and decide whether they should run or try to shoot the enemy that wants to throw the grenade. If they decide to shoot the enemy they also have to hit him, if they don’t the action loses its desired outcome and reward. Raid encounters in World of Warcraft rely heavily on these kinds of actions as players have to make strategic choices on how to defeat the boss and still have to transform their decisions in twitchy gameplay challenges. As soon as the strategy for the boss is well known it gets reduced to a twitch gameplay. If the equipment of the raid becomes better and better raiding can even become a sequence of dull actions. The order is always the same in these actions. First players have to make the strategic decision what kind of action they want to perform and after that have to realise the desired outcome through a challenge that tests their reaction time, precision or other physical properties. Almost every FPS features this kind of action and if it’s done right your game may have a longevity like Counter Strike of League of Legends which are both highly strategical and also reliy heavily on twitch gameplay.

Examples of games that rely heavily on these kind of actions:

• League of Legends
• Street Fighter
• Counter Strike

Social Actions Social Actions are the actions where players engage with each other in some kind of communicative and social engaging way. Sending messages by chat, voice chat or some other kinds of messaging features. Also expressing some kind of emotes with your characters like “/hi” in World of Warcraft falls under this category. The “signal pings” that you can find in MOBAs are another example of social actions. Social actions are all about communication between players. Social actions can be part of the fiction but do not have to. If players give signals to each other in Counter Strike, this is clearly part of the fiction, as  real Anti-Terror units also do communicate in an operation. If a player uses the chat system to talk about the weather these actions clearly fall out of the game's fiction and context. Social actions can be very important in certain kind of games. Most of the time you need some kind of communication system in multiplayer games that feature a strategic layer where players have to communicate to reach a certain goal. But social actions can also be a strong engagement driver if players use them to form and strengthen their bonds between each other. A lot of players that play one specific game for years keep playing because they want to continue performing social actions with their friends that they made in the last years. Because of this a lot of F2P games reward players for engaging with the social systems and other players in the game by giving bonuses and rewards for doing so because they know that thos can be a strong retention driver. If you want to have Social Actions in your game you should try to make the act of communicating as simple as possible so players can concentrate on the exchange between each other. The more important certain Social Actions could be the faster your players should be able to perform them. Not every social action between players is a good one. Keep in mind that you need some kind of solution for players that abuse your communication system to grief other players because a toxic community is something that you definitely want to avoid as it drives a lot of players away from your game.

Examples of games that rely heavily on these kind of actions:

• Game of War
• World of Warcraft
• Rust

Dull Actions

Dull actions can be found in a lot of gambling games where players don’t have a challenge but need to do actions to receive a reward. For example pressing the button on a slot machine is no challenge at all. Still millions of players are willing to perform this actions a thousand times hoping for their reward. Claiming gifts in a social game is another example of a dull action that involves no challenge but leads to a reward. A lot of MMORPGS especially asian ones are well known to have a lot of grinding in their game play. Grinding is also a good example that falls in this category as it is most of the time a monoton experience that doesn’t contain any challenge. Sometimes actions that were once strategic become dull after the answer is clear to the player. Puzzles usually suffer from this phenomenon as they can be solved only once and after that offer no challenge due to their lack of dynamics.

If your game contains these kinds of actions you should try to make sure that your game keeps being entertaining on another layer. You can add a lot of value to these actions by providing a reward structure with a lot of variation to them. Even dull actions will be performed many times by a lot of players if they can’t be sure about the reward they receive from these actions. This also plays a huge part at mobile games these days as their audience isn’t always looking for a challenge when playing games. The feedback for these kinds of actions should be very juicy and a reward in-itself to higher their value as they lack interesting decisions or skill based challenges.
These kinds of actions can also be part of bigger gameplay loops that have some kind of strategic layer. Think about games that feature some kind of resource management. Maybe harvesting crops is a dull action but harvesting crops to balance a complex resource cycle for the highest and most efficient outcome can be satisfying.

Other genres that feature a lot of dull actions are narrative games like point’n’click and other narrative adventures. These games don’t rely too much on strategic decision but their players like to progress the plot of the game they keep talking to NPC’s, picking up items and walking through cities experience the story of the game even if the necessary actions to drive the plot are neither interesting nor challenging. An interesting story is of course the key to keep the interest of your players in these kinds of games.

Players are also willing to perform dull actions if it serves the purpose of an expression. In Minecraft a lot of players play with the infinite blocks modification and pile thousands of blocks because they want to express their ideas in that environment. The action to pile up cubes offers no fun in itself it is the context of expression that leads to their motivation.

So Dull Actions need a great context that motivates the players to perform them.

Examples of games that rely heavily on these kind of actions:

• Heart of Vegas
• Heavy Rain
• Pirate Kings

I hope that you can make use of this list to take a closer look on the actions in your game. If you’re not happy with the actions in your game you may think about the reasons why the players should be motivated to perform these actions. I hope that this list can help you realise possible flaws in your actions and raise them to a higher level. Good luck with that!