Right then. Steph's in and ready. She's just shaken Sid's hand, apparently. We're just waiting for things to get moving.
Just waiting for it to start folks. Shouldn't be long now. Music is very eclectic. Trance. Goldfrapp, something that sounded like the theme from Queer Eye for the Straight Guy. Interesting stuff. Got to shake Meier's hand.
Getting a bit crowded here in the press section. The public area is packed - not an empty seat.
The stage is rather massive for one man. But he is larger than life you know. A legend. Three large sections of seating. Big screens on each end and middle where Sid will be, and I am third row right in front of him. Should be good.
Speaking of Meier, I got to see Civ V yesterday. Nice looking game.
Should only be about 5 more minutes or so guys. Hang tight.
If it starts on time. People are still meandering in.
Just got a laptop bag to the back of the head.
Announcement saying take your seats etc.
Megan, the GDC coordinator is up on stage to introduce Sid.
Meggan Scavio is her name.
Here comes the man himself. Loads of applause.
Great to be here he says. The title of the talk is the psychology of game design everything you know is wrong.
He was gonna call it something funny, but didn't. the premise of the talk is that gameplay is a psychological experience.
He like historical games with railroads, pirates etc. I never took into account what happens in the gamers head. But if you think of it as psychological, you end up with a better game.
Egomania is a concept he is gonna explore. Says if you play Civ you are an egomaniac.
Winner paradoxes are something he looks at. Using sports teams as an analogy, in the real world you dont always win but in games you pretty much always do - and gamers never complain about that.
This is true of movies like Rambo, Holmes, all winners and game designers are looking at that too as gamers require a satisfying conclusion to a game.
When you reward a player and when you punish one is also part of the winner paradox. You give a gamer something for discovering a map location- they are happy. You punish them they say your game is broken etc - so you have to be careful with how you set them up so they try another way so as not to get punished which comes into replayability.
A rule is the 1st 15 minutes of a game must make the player want to play, they are on the right track and more cool stuff is coming,. Thus give them rewards, and I dont think you can give them enough at first, although I am not adverse to difficulty.
Four difficulty levels are the perfect amount. One for always winners. One for experienced, one for casual, and one for vets. I was wrong. We need 9, and Civ V has 9.
Unholy alliance is something he wants to trademark - it defines the relationship between designer and player.
As designers we pretend you as gamers are really good. And example where this went off track was flight simulators. Early on they were fun, easy, and then it got more complex, and soon it got to where it was too hard and players didnt like it anymore and the popularity went out.
Players need to be willing to suspend disbelief and take on the role of the character.
Devs need to help players suspend the disbelief and old timers like me had to work hard back in the day to do this. That was helpful.
Moral clarity is part of the unholy alliance too (shows Civ Revolutions chatting with Khan).
These leaders were a bit cranky. You were winning, and did you want them to be anything other than cranky - or whiny about it - but it is more satisfying to win against cranky g. khan than sad khan.
mutually assured distruction - chatting about cold war -
We can liken this to designing and players too.
You have to not self destruct with design or gamers wont play anymore.
You have to give what you promise. You cant give dark atmosphere on a cover and inside its cartoon characters. You cant have light hearted music in a dreary place.
You HAVE to use music, atmosphere, and be consistent to keep players in your world with suspoension of disbelief.
With revolutions, we showed before the battle what the odd were. they used math, but players were going in thinking they would win these battles. Like: I went in at 3 to 1 and lost. So to cure this, they adjusted the battle system.
This time, the AI was 3 to 1 and the player (w/1) won. So I was like, doesnt that feel wrong? The player was like - no.
So we found that there is a 3 to one and 4 to one area where players like to win.
But there was one last thing. Here is a 2 to 1 battle - players are ok with loosing once in a while. Then they started saying well 20 to 10 (player with 20) lost. Why did I loose?
So we adjusted that too (laughter). Still, the gamer is not happy. Again with the 2 to 1 battles. So because of this we adjusted the battle system to look at previous battles.
So when something feels wrong to players, it kills the suspension of disbelief.
So the math and psychology really dawned on me with designing because of this.
My bad - times when I really screwed up because I was too logical and scientific -
First thing was the original civ being real-time.
What we found was that the player really became an observer - so when we made it turn based, they became the star.
Another bad thing I did with the original was the rise and fall.
What we found was the at the cusp of the crumble - most gamers would reload and never experience the rise.
another badness I did was the tech tree.
patlike
StephNunneley
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