Thank you all for attending. Here are the unstructured notes for those who couldn’t make it. I’ve bolded the key points. This is a conversation about AI quality and not AI ethics
Panel
Paul Stephanouk - Design Director of Candy Crush. Previously EA, Zynga, Bossfight, Schell Games, Big Huge Games. 20 years experience building and running creative teams.
Kelly Tran - Cofounder at Nucleus. Former Game Design Professor researching games and players. PhD in learning and tech. Personal Twitch - Group Twitch - Website
Dan Cook - Chief Creative Officer at Spry Fox. Writer lostgarden.com. Thoughtful essays on game design theory, art and the business of design.
Xelnath - Game Designer World of Warcraft, League of Legends, Ori and the Will of the Wisps, Snackpass Tochi. Founder Game Design Skill.
Mike Sellers - Professor of Practice at Indiana University. Previously, Lead Designer, Creative Director, and General Manager in AAA game companies, producing MMO, social, and mobile games.
Tim Ambrogi Saxon - Design Director at Giant Squid Studios (ABZU, The Pathless). Formerly of Final Form Games (Jamestown).
Mohamed Abdel Khalik - Co-Founder Karnak Studios, Game Director on Tut Trials, an upcoming high action 3D platformer.
Notes
Everyone’s a gamer.
Designers need to think how can this game just be fun by itself.
No designer should make games for “everyone” but instead think of lots of different kinds of “someones.”
Intersecting motivations is the key to achieve that.
As a designer thinks of an experience they have to consider who would enjoy that specific experience and they need implement it in a way to include as many people as possible who can enjoy what they’re working on.
There is already a threshold for what people have to know from the get go and even Candy Crush can be complicated for people.
Early usability work and user research is so important. If you skip this step then as a designer you’ll make lots of assumption and the output will be horrible.
Even if you’re experienced. Imagine putting inventory in Candy Crush and teaching people what it is.
We even take things like WASD for granted.
An interesting test for UX is to showcase certain functions and ask the participants which icons would they pick for each one.
Another test is to measure time it takes players to press the Z key.
Story Time: During the development of Rise of Nations, a player played the game for 10 mins as the wrong side as he kept selecting the AI and still loved the game.
In academia students play other student’s games then they go find friends outside the game design program who will have issues. Then they round up faculty members who aren’t gamers and see how they play the game.
How I got my mom to play PVZ - recommended GDC watch.
Do what I mean damnit is a concept where Big Huge Games invested our units with autonomous behavior as they wanted approachability. Player’s organic motions would result in what the player meant and not what they did.
Designers can’t outthink players.
For Lost Viking’s Silicon and Synapse (Blizzard), the player fell in a hole and died in the beginning. They learned from the harshness of this experience and the result was that enemies in WoW’s starting zones are neutral and will only retaliate if they’re attacked, creating a safe environment for players.
“Can we normalize easy mode in videogames”
Venn diagram - people who want to give you money, people who are good at games. People want to play games but intimidated difficulty levels.
Designers can move players from “I don’t play games” to “I enjoy these games”
With Candy Crush, it’s not about the challenge, it’s the brain candy of moving objects around.
Challenge is not the universal motivator for playing games.
Some games are flow state machines.
The reason is not for challenge but it’s easy to enter the desirable state of flow.
Challenge is not what the game is about.
Add progression to the flow. Designers feed many motivations and mix and match in different proportions.
Candy Crush is strong but has an accessible progression system and good kinesthetics resulting in the game feeling good.
Don’t spent time overly challenging the player but you need to still challenge the player. Don’t emphasize challenge but have it.
One perspective is that a lot of this is about knowledge of genre and UI conventions. So it is about testing with people who don't know those conventions intimately. Because 'intuitive' is 9 times out of 10 about 'triggering existing mental schema' vs actually being somehow inherently 'intuitive’. - Dan Cook
Naïve vs. sophisticated vs. decadent audiences
We are aging as people and as an industry and we’re seeing that it’s not all about beating Dark Souls.
Collections work very well to enter a desirable flow state
Puzzles work well too. in The Pathless if players follow a hidden path, gems pop out.
Logic puzzles can be defined as a long chain of logical steps to execute to solve puzzle. People get fatigued of those but they didn’t fatigue from seeing something in distance, wondering if there’s something to do and doing it.
Interaction as engaging.
Explore the negative space, no reason to go, no info to go on yet the best moments in game are built around those experiences.
Exploration and discovery as a motivation. Tied strongly into agency without a strong need for competence.
BoTW is a good example of such a game.
Some genres have more resistance to me approachable than others.
Failure in public with another person is a type of resistance. It Takes Two is designed to push the player back but it’s just 15 seconds, the pressure is on the player to perform.
How close to the breaking point can a designer push the players before they ease it and make them feel confident to double their efforts?
Designers need to Oscillate high state, low state, and mid state. When the oscillation is too frequent then players get exhausted but if it’s too infrequent then the game feels flat.