Refreshing Game Design Ethics

Unknown

Toxicadam wrote:

The PACman wrote:

How does being forced to stop playing a game forge a deeper commitment? Thats just backwards thinking. Like many, many others I had a much deeper commitment to MPQ when i could play when i wanted to. Now I play more of other games.

Because game playing is essentially ritualized behavior. Or at least, it taps into that part of our brain that gets relief from ritual. A ritual is more deeply ingrained/satisfying when repeated over a long period of time rather than a short one.

A timer can also function as 'a life', like in traditional gaming. Losing 50 stamina in PAD (when you fail) raises the stakes of the game because failure has a value. If you could just mindlessly keep repeating the same quests without repurcussion, then it doesn't have the same kind of engagement. You won't get the same kind of endorphin rush when you do succeed.

(This is all said with the caveat that yes, timers can ruin a good game (look at EA's Dungeon Keeper) and people will have wildly different tolerances of what they deem acceptable or not.)

Psychobabble alert!!! LOL
Ritualised behaviour? If you mean i do things more often because I enjoy them then, yeah, but I dont think thats what you meant. I think you are saying that I will continue to play the game more if it forces me to do things I find unenjoyable, and that is total bull, just like most psychobabble. In the real world we dont use psych-analysis and we just play for fun (or try to).

Of course failure has a price, it has had a price in every game I can think of, back to the Space Invaders and Pacman and I am not aware it has changed now. Dr Who has a price for failure in that your team dies and you need to try again, I dont think there needs to be any further price for failure than that.

And those old arcade games had a timer too in the amount you could play before your money ran out. When consoles were released and people could play those same games over and over with the removal of the 'timer' I cant imagine any of them thought that was a bad idea. In the modern world, just how popular would Call of Duty be if players were unable to play for 5 hours every 30 mins? Would anybody buy it?

atomzed

The PACman wrote:

In the modern world, just how popular would Call of Duty be if players were unable to play for 5 hours every 30 mins? Would anybody buy it?

Well, freemium games *is* the modern world gaming structure. Look at how successful Clash of Clans and Candy Crush are.the company are earning big bucks with the "timer" system and "free to play, but pay to play more" system.

I will point out that not all games can adopt the freemium structure. But there *are* games that can adopt that structure.

You may not like those games, then avoid them. Much like in any business, the bottom line is the most important. If the company don't earn a profit, they will have to change their monetization structure. So vote with your wallet.

Unknown

atomzed wrote:

The PACman wrote:

In the modern world, just how popular would Call of Duty be if players were unable to play for 5 hours every 30 mins? Would anybody buy it?

Well, freemium games *is* the modern world gaming structure. Look at how successful Clash of Clans and Candy Crush are.the company are earning big bucks with the "timer" system and "free to play, but pay to play more" system.

I will point out that not all games can adopt the freemium structure. But there *are* games that can adopt that structure.

You may not like those games, then avoid them. Much like in any business, the bottom line is the most important. If the company don't earn a profit, they will have to change their monetization structure. So vote with your wallet.

I disagree the Freemium IS the modern gaming world, it is certainly a large part of it but there are still more proper games out there too.
Clash of Clans and Candy Crush are popular, most people either play them or at least know someone close to them that does, all the people i know that play Candy Crush are frustrated by the timer not enthused by it. I dont think any Candy Crush player would be less willing to play if they could play for longer. And thats my point, not that games shouldnt make money but that they can make money by still being a game that lets you play and have fun. It is just the easiest way to con the iPhone generation without having to put much effort into game design, but it doesnt have to be that way.

Unknown

I don't think the frustration argument is valid for Candy Crush and similar games. When do you see the timer? When you lose. Thus the source of frustration can be ambigious. How many people rage when they see "you died" in Dark Souls? You don't have to wait or pay anything to continue yet the frustration still exists.

I also think the cod argument is flawed. People don't buy Candy Crush. If they "buy it" they effectively bypass the wait times. If cod was free with wait times, yeah, I would think a ton would "buy it". Tekken Revolution and Soul Calibur Lost Swords both have energy systems and both are successful despite there being paid alternatives, TTT2 and SC5.

Unknown

Games like Candy Crush Saga are more like fads and that negative reinforcement works. There's really no much point to try to emulate fads because if you could know what fads are going to be successful you'd already be super rich. At any rate the usage of the word 'timer' should be confused with the classic notion of 'lives'. Lives is a limiting factor via difficulty. You have effectively infinite lives in Super Mario World but just pushing buttons randomly isn't going to let you beat the game no matter how many times you tried. To contrast most games with a timer mechanism you can usually indeed beat the game if you've infinite timer by pushing random buttons. In MPQ the health packs function far more like lives than timer. You can get a lot further on the same number of lives with a strong roster and by playing better, even if luck does have a significant impact.

Teamup would be an example of a 'timer' mechanism. I got a PvE node in Heroic Oscorp that had Daken with 2 charges of World Rupture, and while I beat the node that could've easily gone very bad if Daken wasn't at less than half the level of my characters. Imagine Daken at level 250 with 2 charges of World Rupture. Your chance of winning that fight is certainly pretty low, and yet if you have enough tries you'll definitely win because he won't have 2 charges of World Rupture each time and eventually you'll get something tame like Lethal Recon + Murderous Aim plus a good board. Sure, skill and your team strength matters, but the dominant factor now would just be doing the encounter enough times until Daken doesn't get something like World Rupture for his teamup.

Unknown

ihearthawthats wrote:

I don't think the frustration argument is valid for Candy Crush and similar games. When do you see the timer? When you lose. Thus the source of frustration can be ambigious. How many people rage when they see "you died" in Dark Souls? You don't have to wait or pay anything to continue yet the frustration still exists.

I also think the cod argument is flawed. People don't buy Candy Crush. If they "buy it" they effectively bypass the wait times. If cod was free with wait times, yeah, I would think a ton would "buy it". Tekken Revolution and Soul Calibur Lost Swords both have energy systems and both are successful despite there being paid alternatives, TTT2 and SC5.

The frustration isnt ambiguous at all. The number of times i have heard my daughter or my ex say something like 'well, thats it for me now, gotta wait for lives' makes it clear where the frustration lies. Yes, people still get frustrated and angry when they die in other games, esp one where you have to repeat a large section of a very challenging game but, if added on to that was the notion that you were unable to try again for an hour it would be worse dont you think?

Yeah, I realise my CoD argument is flawed, I was just going for an extreme example to make my point. People woudn't play it if it limited their play-time, that kind of game environment couldn't function in that way. It is possible for mobile games to function that way and indeed the people that have posted pointing out that it is the norm and it works are 100% correct. People are willing to drop a few pennies now and again on a game to continue playing. I am merely asking if there is another way, esp as with MPQ it is not a case of dropping pennies occasionally, the costs involved can be much higher than that.

Unknown

The PACman wrote:

ihearthawthats wrote:

I don't think the frustration argument is valid for Candy Crush and similar games. When do you see the timer? When you lose. Thus the source of frustration can be ambigious. How many people rage when they see "you died" in Dark Souls? You don't have to wait or pay anything to continue yet the frustration still exists.

I also think the cod argument is flawed. People don't buy Candy Crush. If they "buy it" they effectively bypass the wait times. If cod was free with wait times, yeah, I would think a ton would "buy it". Tekken Revolution and Soul Calibur Lost Swords both have energy systems and both are successful despite there being paid alternatives, TTT2 and SC5.

The frustration isnt ambiguous at all. The number of times i have heard my daughter or my ex say something like 'well, thats it for me now, gotta wait for lives' makes it clear where the frustration lies. Yes, people still get frustrated and angry when they die in other games, esp one where you have to repeat a large section of a very challenging game but, if added on to that was the notion that you were unable to try again for an hour it would be worse dont you think?

Yeah, I realise my CoD argument is flawed, I was just going for an extreme example to make my point. People woudn't play it if it limited their play-time, that kind of game environment couldn't function in that way. It is possible for mobile games to function that way and indeed the people that have posted pointing out that it is the norm and it works are 100% correct. People are willing to drop a few pennies now and again on a game to continue playing. I am merely asking if there is another way, esp as with MPQ it is not a case of dropping pennies occasionally, the costs involved can be much higher than that.

People get frustrated with games like Candy Crush but negative reinforcement does work the same way slot machines work. Though for games like Candy Crush there's a very large component of social aspect where the only reason you play it is because everyone else is playing it. It's not unlike how if you go to any MMORPG people always want to know how many people are playing this game, even though statistics shows something like 90% of the activity in a modern MMORPG is done solo so that means if the game was actually good you could be the only person in the world that plays it and you wouldn't be missing out. But even guys who solo all the time still wants to be reassured that he's playing a game where everyone else is playing even if he has no intention of interacting with anyone else.

I think MPQ's financial model is actually pretty ineffective. If you're not PvPing there really isn't even much of an opportunity for the so-called 'nickle and dime' unless you count adding a new roster slot as one. When you invest in MPQ it's more like 'should I put $50 worth of HP into this new guy who might be overpowered and/or is a major boosted in this event that has really good reward?' and that investment is usually too much for the average person to consider. PvP has more opportunity for smaller expenditure but due to the ability to lose a very large number of points whenever your shield runs out, I don't really see anyone casual doing this on a persistent basis. If you have a 'one and done' shield approach you can subsist on the HP you earn, and if you shield aggressively that's far beyond casual spending and playing. I see no content in this game that costs in the $5-$10 range that gives you a meaningful advantage without requiring a hardcore amount of effort. $5 worth of shields requires you to play a lot in PvP and likely incurs some boost expenses as well because otherwise you're just wasting your money on shields.

Unknown

Thanks for the reply Phantron

As for the financial side of MPQ, that is what I'm saying, there is no way to drop pennies occasionally in this game. I am not a fan of paying to be able to play more as you know but i don't mind spending money on something worthwhile, something that I want and will be useful. Like a new character, or to add some levels or even a new skin for a character which i know wouldn't exactly be useful but is something i would want. Trouble with MPQ at the moment is the only stuff that provides a worthwhile and lasting improvement to your game is HP if it is used for levelling up your characters, and like you said it is far too expensive for most people to buy in large enough quantities (myself included). Other stuff like Health Packs, Boosts and Shields are consumables that can be gone in less time than it took to purchase them, because of that their cost just makes them not worth buying. It is an ineffective financial model, but i have spent far more on this game than i would have done had I bought it in a store. However that was all a while ago now and I refuse to pay more. I used to buy HP fairly regularly, not the big packs cause they are just silly amounts of money to spend on a game, but they are making it so obvious that they want me to pay at every turn and trying their damnedest to make it so i have to that my refusal is becoming more resolute. They earn a ton of money from the Whales out there but if they didnt price out the little guys they could have a lot more paying customers, they would still have me if things were cheaper and they werent so greedy.

You say negative reinforcement works and maybe is some instances it does, but all i know is that my play time in MPQ has dropped dramatically since True Healing and the other changes that just seem designed to damage my heroes and then grab for my wallet. It then dropped even more when i discovered that there were 'Free' to Play games out there that didnt try and grab my money all the time. So actively encouraging me to play less is not making me want to play more which it should if negative reinforcement was 'working as intended'. I don't even log on to collect my daily reward some days and a month or so ago that was unheard of! Lots of people have quit or have reduced play time in that time so i think it's pretty clear that negative reinforcement in this game does not work.

Your point about following the crowd with games like Candy Crush is totally on the money though, I do believe this is the main reason most people play games like that especially as it is linked directly to the evil Book of Face