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The Anatomy of a Head Shot: A Reading |
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Game Design for Social Networks: Part 1 |
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The emotional game design space of address book contacts: Case Dr. Awesome |
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Game Design for Social Networks: Part 2 - A Design Framework |
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Stargazing at Left 4 Dead: Glow Matters |
Hi Andrew,
Thanks for your thoughts. I do believe the aspect of social gaming you bring up is interesting and important - yet, I feel that it falls outside the focus of this book. However, I plan to discuss the online vs. offline dynamics of game play from a broader perspective, so there might be something worthwhile for you there in any case.
Best,
Aki
Hello Aki,
I am very interested in following the progress of your book, and reading the final copy in my hands!
For me as a gamer, when I was 13 (ten years ago), I discovered the power of online gaming. Playing against a human, particularly when it came to reality-based armed combat (at that time in Rainbow Six: Rogue Spear), was much more challenging and unique than against an AI-opponent. I can hardly tolerate AI opponents anymore.
I took that passion and designed the Half-Life 2 modification, Insurgency. It was designed with the reliance upon social interaction amongst team members in mind. When a team does not communicate amongst each other, it typically will fail against an opponent that applies their communication with their tactics and strategy.
However, much of the framework for the out-of-engine player experience that I had designed was not implemented (being an independent, volunteer-driven team), and was also integral to the overall game experience. I am now designing a new project to take social war-gaming to the next level. The social networks exist on their own, however they are designed to integrate into the game, rather than the games integrating the networks.
I have had a thought that could become a potential ethical issue. My designs revolve around the organization of contemporary armed groups, both conventional and unconventional. If social games simulate the organization of militants, what would stop the use of the games as a simulation model for actual militant groups? (i.e. any group from street gangs to guerrilla armies)
Would there be room for a chapter on such ethical concerns of the use for social games as tools for social interaction away from games?
Cheers,
- Andrew
I am ready to read it
You bring up some great points which helps make games more social. I think the sillyness one example can be seen with Fat Princess....everyone kept talking about it because it was so ridiculous. Can a network be one big game? We are trying to redesign our social network for gamers and your insight would be invaluable.
http://gamefriends.com
Matt
Hi Dr. Järvinen we are a group of student who are working in something related to social games for our undergraduate title. We are very happy for finding your work and we'll be very honored to show you as one of our basis to continue working and studying themes related to games in social networks. You have there in this comment one of our mails so we should be very honored if you write back and tell us how we can communicate to you so we can have better bassis and understood of your projects and ideas and how you can help us to improve ours....
if wanna know us this is our facebook page
and our most recent product if you wanna see it, you can download it from here. And make yourself a fan of our site we need people to play our game.... and we need an expert like you to improve it...
From the beautiful Colombia
Apoteosis Games
Well said,
Those outlines are critical to such a twitch game as L4D. Players need that information to make quick decisions as fast as possible.
Side note: apparently it was one of the details they had the most trouble with on the engineering side, I guess the design team really pushed it :P
I see your point, but I sort of wanted to let Bogost off the hook, as he was writing before the Facebook phenomenon, and was actually pointing out many aspects that have become hallmarks of gaming in social networks. Your four-fold framework is highly interesting, I'll give it a closer look once I get to Part II, hopefully by the end of the week.
Good read, I'll be waiting for the part II.
I could, would and will nit-pick about Bogost's idea of asynch gameplay as he claims that it "supports multiple players playing in sequence, not in tandem". Playing in sequence refers to turn-taking basically and I don't think asynch gameplay should be limited to turn-taking only. Of course, one must first define what type of asynchronicity is under the spy-glass (PvP interaction, client-server architecture...)
The way I see "asynchronous gameplay" (kinda poor term maybe as it could mean a great load of things), it can be supported by four different aspects, from which some are the same as Bogost suggests.
1. Asynchronous interaction (player avatars/chars/entities can be in interaction regardless of players status, being online or offline)
2. Persistance of the game world (persistant preferred, how could non-persistant work btw?)
3. Possibility to enter and exit the game indepentently (logging off from the game does not affect on other players' gameplay experience)
4. Temporality of gameplay (real-time, turn-based and tick-based... Tick-based favored as it does not require constant attention like real-time play and it is not dependent whether the other players have made their moves or not like in turn-based play)
Oops, kinda long comment but I hope its better than ever-so-often "good post!" or no comments at all :)
Cheers
I'd like to mention the Geometry Wars achievement "Pacifist", which challenges the player to refrain from shooting at the enemies. Of course the mechanic is quantitative (a clock runs down from 60 seconds), but it introduces an intriquing possible world to the player: what if this wasn't a shooter but a game where I simply had to run away to try to survive?
I'd love to see more achievements that change the player's perspective of the gameplay for the duration of getting the achievement.
It's really pleasing for me to read about your realizing that your knowledge and ideas and thinking as such are not self-evident. But what is even more pleasing is that as a result of this discovery we are now able to share your ideas. Thank you kindly for that.
It is not at all uncommon for people to think that what they know, is known by all. The sad consequences are that people tend not to explain, justify or document their visions and expert knowledge: as 'it is known by all'. We continuously suffer from this phenomenon in education, work groups, and especially in systems design. It is a well established - and always forgotten - fact, that IT systems design most often fails because of failure of elements that were supposed to be self-evident.
What is self-evident for you, is not self-evident for me. - I full-heartedly thank you for acknowledging this fact.