Today we learn about the parts of games that compel people to play them. A game needs to be compelling to play otherwise no one would play it. There are many different factors that go into creating an engaging game.
Challenge
Challenge is important in any because it creates suspense, tension and excitement. It can also get the player interested and invested in trying to overcome the challenge.
An example of a challenge in a game would be if you're trying to get from point A to point B, but to get there you must complete a task. The task in the situation would be the challenge, and the player would need top complete it to move on.
Play
The overall play style is important to help engage the player as well. The play style in a game should fit the tone of the game. For example, a happy game for a younger audience shouldn't be using a dark and gritty play style, full of different operations that make it complicated.
It is always important to balance the play style, and it has to match the game as a whole. However, a bit of difference could work if the game is going in that direction, or another reason. So long as it doesn't stick out for the wrong reasons, the play is important.
Premise
The premise of a game in short is a brief description of a game that the narrative will stick to. Games shouldn't have simple premises, or ones that are overused because most people want something new in a game, and get excited by the unknown.
An example of an overused premise would be 'First person shooter in a military setting'. There are so many first-person shooter games that not a lot of people get excited anymore. A more interesting premise would be something more original, or unseen. For example, a single-player story game about paradoxes and blackholes would be way more interesting.
Character
Characters are very important in a game, whether you can customize them or not. They create the narrative of the game, and the player should be able to project themselves into the character as well. Customization makes this easier because the player can choose what the character looks like to some degree in most cases.
An example of a bad character would be an overdone cliché. Like the typical adventurer, tall, athletic, male. There are other body types other than male, and the majority of people aren't overly athletic. Having an option to change the physical body type would fix this problem (but also mean you'd have more animations to sync up). A good idea of a protagonist for a game with a low budget (no customization) would be a character with a unisex name, wearing unisex clothes, who looks like they could be either gender.
Story
A story is where the game evolves from the premise and gains its own identity. Most games are more story based, with goals directly linked to the story, with logical reasons for everything little thing. Other games, however, are more focused on the gameplay half of the game, and have goals that are slightly more abstract when linking to the actual story. Some games, like Super Smash Bros, don't really have a story (with exceptions to this) and are all about fighting, completing challenges, or something of the same caliber.
An example of a game without a story would be a lot of card games, like Uno. In Uno the objective is to win, and there is no story behind any of it because there is no need. An example of a game with a story would be the Legend of Zelda series. These games all have roughly the same story, but with twists and turns to make it unpredictable.
All of these are needed to create a good game, but learning to balance all of them is the bigger problem. If there was too much story in a game, the actual play would feel like a waste. And if the challenges were too frequent, the player might get bored or uninterested in the overall outcome.
We had a go at creating a game concept using these five categories. It was a lot harder than I thought to balance all of the parts of an engaging game. On top of that, the eight principles of game design would also have to be used, meaning game design (in a way) is a lot more restricted than it looks at first glance.
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