Why does the game come with a sense of emptiness

I believe many people have had a similar experience: in a period of time addicted to a game, and after the game feel empty. What the hell is this about? The high vote under the title answers that the reason for this state is that the game "is useless for most ordinary people", is it really? Li Ji of the University of Southern California reading the game design Professional from the perspective of Game design analysis of this matter.

"Useless" is not the root cause of emptiness.

You see a movie, read a novel, what "use"? At least a bad movie, you will never feel useful, but also not feel empty.

Do you go to play football basketball table tennis, or watch these sports events, what is "use"? Most of the time, you can't find the real value of the event, or you're not doing it for this so-called real value (like exercising), and you're not going to be thinking about it in your head. I exercised my body so I did not waste time, I am not empty.

About the game "useless", the Dutch human cultural scientists Johan Huizinga in the "Game of the People: Culture of the game component of the study" said: "The game and the interests of no direct relationship" after the game out ... The illusion of the game (illusion) is gone. "The game's people have a clear sense of self-awareness that differs from ordinary life," but he also said that "real and pure game is one of the foundations of human civilization".

This is about the futility of the game, and the time he wrote these words (1938) is decades ahead of the birth of video games. But why don't the games that he studied give people a sense of emptiness?

The desire for fulfillment and the false gratification of fulfillment

Chen in the GDC, "groceries" ("Wind traveller" designers to share the process of team development game), the film has been very mature, precipitated a different emotion. And most games offer a sense of achievement, because it's a feeling that the movie can't provide (only the feedback you give will give you a sense of accomplishment, so only the interactive experience can do it), probably because of this, this is the emotional direction most early game explores.

Because when you enter the "League of Heroes" (hereinafter referred to as LOL) this kind of game, the pursuit of a sense of achievement, this desire in the game is satisfied, and after the withdrawal of the game this satisfaction disappeared.

Compared to doing other things:

· If you play "groceries", you may not like it, but if you are finished, you won't feel empty, because what you get in "groceries" is not a sense of achievement;

· Play a horror game, unless you are not scared to feel bored, otherwise will not be empty, and will only feel frightened is not light, need to root spicy bar pressure yajing;

· Even you play MMORPG such growth fun game, your growth process is long, you in a single exit game, there will be no such a strong sense of emptiness, because you do today, tomorrow, the day after, one months later, still have your recognized value. By contrast, the value of ladder scores is much smaller, it is the auxiliary of this game experience, and MMORPG in the one months after the value of your pursuit is the core, today's experience is more auxiliary;

· Participation in sports, although also have a sense of achievement, but exercise brings physical feelings can transcend the sense of achievement. At the same time the movement itself, compared to sitting there one day, after all, is a healthier way of interaction, your body is healthy, the mood will naturally be better. An article in the Harvard Business Review (the power of Sgt Wins) says one of the most important tasks of mental worker satisfaction is continuous progress (of the things that can boost inner work life, the most Important is making progress in meaningful work), perhaps also because they sit all day;

· Play Mahjong with friends, and even a DotA, LoL, sense of emptiness will be much less, because there is social, someone and people's emotional connection. Ted's weak power, when you do 10 years of sociological work, you realize that connection is why we. With a friend of DotA, you may win a happy loss to fight the pig teammates, but you rarely feel empty.

· While the boring brush with brush to brush the circle of friends, brush may also have a sense of emptiness. Because social networking is hard to generate real social connections. Content on social networks, interspersed with a little bit of meaning, makes you feel smart about yourself, because when you look at the content, you're looking for a sense of accomplishment that proves you're smart. You are satisfied with this feedback, constantly repeating the brush. When you exit, you will feel that the content provides a false sense of accomplishment.

Emptiness is a feeling of longing to be fed, the more you feed it, the stronger it is. You are not out of the game has a sense of emptiness, but before entering the game there is a sense of emptiness, you play the game is feeding this emptiness, in exchange for a period of time it pan up.

The intensity of the sense of achievement comes from the feedback strength of the result, and the degree of fidelity is largely due to how much is paid in the process. So you go to gamble and win a lot, you're particularly high because it's a very strong result. But the high doesn't last because you know you haven't paid much for the result. And you do a very challenging job, every day to do your best, even if only to get a meager remuneration, you still feel that this feeling is very real.

A plate of LOL can give you a strong degree, but it's hard to give you the truth. But if you train yourself to be the world champion of LOL, that's a real sense of accomplishment.

The design of a game like lol

Lol Such games can be defined as "replayable game", a game that can be played again.

Including chess and cards, sports (especially athletic), RTS, "Stone Legend", "threes!" and "2048", "Flappy Bird" and so on, are counted this type. This type of feature is that each time the single game is not the same, can be repeated play, and its pleasure is largely based on the repetition of the process of playing their own level of improvement.

After spending a lot of time playing "threes!", I don't feel as empty as lol. Because I was thinking after the game, what should be the strategy for playing it? What did I do wrong?

As with the horror game above, if you play a game and some emotions and thoughts reverberate in your mind, you don't feel empty.

What can be left in the minds of a player in a game that can be played again?

1. The level of play: Thinking about strategy, reflection on skills

Keith Burgun, an American strategy-game designer, Gamasutra an article on "Randomness in Game Design" (Gamasutra:keith Burgun's Blog) about the gaming experience of the strategy game:

1.png

Among them, recording skill, skill acquisition, that is, players observe the causal relationship between their behavior and feedback, record in their brains, become his skills in this game, and apply it to the later game. This is the core fun of strategy games.

If the skill acquisition process is extended to the end of the game, it will reduce the sense of emptiness.

The difficulty with the skills acquisition in LOL is:

On the one hand, the game feedback is very strong.

People tend to do simple attribution, there is a thing, find a reason, the more exciting things, the more anxious to find a reason. With a five-kill thing in Lol, there's a lot of feedback, so it's a good way to find out what's going on right now, like "I jumped in and it was brilliant."

The reason for the strong feedback is that the Moba game introduced growth in a single bureau, past confrontational games, can be a game of play, in a single bureau your ability is basically constant, RTS in the Army and technology growth, and a you can put into the emotional individual role of growth, compared with a lot of weak, And RTS growth can be knocked out, and moba your growth is irreversible, despite the same combat effectiveness, relative value will continue to decline. So every feedback, in addition to the sound and light effect of the game itself, there is also a sense of achievement: I have grown.

On the other hand, there are too many uncertainties in lol.

A game of uncertainty, there may be three kinds of randomness (throw sieve, random number), the implementation (such as how to play a ball to where you want to be, how to effectively APM300), as well as the opponent's choice of operation. The uncertainties in Lol, from 4 teammates 5 opponents of the operating space is very large, each disk at each point of time can be very different, then you learn from a disk in the next set of the process becomes very vague, often have to go through a lot of games to find some feeling.

Similarly, in this design, you can change things in a moment less. CS in your marksmanship is very good, 10 times there are nine times you kill someone else. LOL you operate again good, the timing is not rushed in is also dead. But the ability to grasp the opportunity, more difficult to get accurate feedback and improve, while in the game is difficult to get strong positive feedback (five kill the subconscious attribution is generally I am quick enough to respond to a bit good skill hit, rather than countless times before the correct understanding of the situation).

"Randomness in Game design" is also mentioned in the article, the more random and the less the relationship between the game status and the progress of the game in a deterministic game. In Lol, there is no randomness, but there is another form of great uncertainty that leads to a similar situation where it is difficult for a player to relate a moment's situation to the events that occur before and after, and often only to connect to more recent events.

2.png

2. Story level: Dramatic experience

The architect of the legend of the Furnace said in GDC, Blizzard wants players to play their own stories, and they even design cards that create stories, such as the Mulhaus Fali storm, a cheap but powerful entourage that allows your opponents to use skill cards without cost, creating very messy changes in the scene. and create cool stories.

To play a story in a game requires dramatic experiences, especially dramatic tipping points. "I used this skill at that moment to make the whole situation different," he said. I've never played a wisdom card before, but I still remember the wonderful stories of a million-wise friend who told me about the wisdom card game.

But in the MOBA, there will be fewer such dramatic moments. Like a five-kill is not a dramatic moment, on the one hand because the five kill is not so rare, on the other hand because of the appearance of five kill this scene, only in a special game in the context of a sufficient theatrical effect, and the dramatic moment requires a single point of drama, if the contextual too dependent on, will become a long and tasteless story. At the same time, the player's winning, to a large extent, depends on the overall grasp, rather than a single point of extraordinary operation (within the level of normal operation, will help you win or lose the game, but it won't be a dramatic moment in your mind, so that ordinary players will have less chance to play a story and play a dramatic moment. , there are fewer things to keep in mind after a game.

The efforts of the gaming industry

There are also some concerns and efforts to solve this problem in the gaming world. For example, the author of "Game Change World", Jane Mcgonical, in a speech in 2011, "Gamer has" one of the biggest obstacles to industry substituting, proposed the concept of Gamer has , players will feel that they have wasted time after playing games, which hinders the development of the game industry.

Ways to solve this problem:

Design different emotional experience of the game, such as Chen in doing;

Discover and magnify the positive effects of the game, as Jane Mcgonical doing;

Design better ways to interact, such as the Wii experience must be healthier than the mouse keyboard;

Create a better gaming environment, such as what LOL has been doing, encouragement of positive behavior in the game, and punishment for negative behavior.

Wait a minute.