This is one of the famous game designer phrases that gets slammed right in your face if you put your nose into the gaming industry.
It is primarily referring to game mechanics, but also can be put in relation to the overall game experience. Since your overall game challenge curve should also rise from the bottom up.
For me good games have game mechanics with depth but almost none intial confronting complexity therefore they are easy to pick up.
Example Street fighters:
Depth Layer 1: Hands on! You can just start playing the game by mashing some buttons, you don’t have to understand what a single button does and immiediet can start bash the shit out of opponents.
Depth Layer 2:The basics! You will get an advantage by learning what each button does and getting a feeling for the timing and the range of your moves.
Depth Layer 3:Mastery! Due the exact timed button combinations you can fire off powerful combos and transform yourself into a wild tornado of destruction, which rewards your time investment into the game.
Time Well Spend!
Beeing able to become better at a game, or to accumulate more virtual goods is an important key motivator for long term player engagement.
You want to be able to show off your time spent (very phylsophical).
My mother and grandmother testing out oculus rift with the roller coaster simulation running. Pretty intense reaction, unfortunately I missed the first once before I realized I should record that.
That’s obviously impact full and I really think they should combine Oculus Rift with Emotiv Systems the brain wave reading headset that let’s you map thoughts into commands, check this guy is moving his mini robot by thought.
So we should be able to create virtual realities where you can totally move by sight, head direction and thought by now.
And then we put our bodies in these floating tanks and drift off.
What are digital Games?
Games are nothing less as the total sum of the human achievement. They combine mathematics and logic with inspiring visual Art, Music and Sound and directly interact with the human psychology, they let us experience something which is beyond our reach and let us temporarily transcend our mortal deathly flesh to emerge with the experience itself. that let us transcend Digital games are the manifestations of our imagination, we become able to share our inner worlds in a form never possible before and this lets us experience „the other“. Games directly appeal to our psychological wants and needs and reveal them. Games have a major impact on the entire tree of technological evolutions and their influence will grow, Games are the number one reason to drive IT hardware performance further.
Urge to play – Testing Limits without existential risk The urge to play is the flip side of the coin to existential threats.
Species play to develop their understanding of their circumstances, meaning they develop skills and explore alternative options without running into a existential risk of doing something wrong which could result in death. So its only a game as long the result of failing isn’t threatening.
Dear Diary,
its around three months ago that I could let go into sleep around common times. Right now it is around 3 AM, I’m listening to some mediative music mix and try to relax my jaw and shoulder muscles. While my brain bombards me with thoughts about the uncertain future.
My self independence started off with a new found balance between work and rest. I meditated and did sport. Somewhere on the road I lost this balance again.
Right now I find sleep around 5 AM, I awake some when in the middle of the day.
I drink a few sips, shower and lie back on my bed to work on my next title and look through the digital window into the world. The last three days have reached a new extreme, I forgot to eat and ended up only eating 1 meal before I try to force myself to rest and sleep again.
Im about to encounter another cross road of my live, I handed in my business plan and the required documents to get a founder support from the government. The outcome financially decides if I will be able to do this full time for the next 6 months. Or If I either have to use all my savings to do this project or apply for a job and move this whole thing on the side again.
Welcome on my new blog!
I’m glad you found your way to this blog. I want to quickly introduce myself. I’m 28 years old. I’m working since 4 years in the gaming industry. Here a quick overview over the noteworthy pillars that lead me to my current situation.
„Grüetzi“ a brick layer from Switzerland I was born in Switzerland Dübendorf which is a part of Zürich, I wasn’t a very bright student in school and didn’t really knew what I will do for living. My parents paid me an expensive year in Art + Media Design and another one in Informatics/Math. Feeling spoiled through the intensive financial support of my parents I decided to start working as hard as I can, in the most basic job I could get. So I became a brick layer, highly motivated I wrote almost every examine with best grades. Unfortunately you can’t fake real handwork skills, so I ended my 3 years of hard work at any weather conditions, without the final certificate because I failed in the practical end test. I decided to move on and found the Games Academy Advertising in a newspaper. I moved to Berlin quickly.
Games Academy In Berlin I did the a brief Game Design Education at the Games Academy it took back than 1 year to finish it, I think this option is not longer available. It was kind of expensive and I’m thankful to my parents that helped me financial to follow my dream and surf on the rainbow to luck and happiness.
YAGER Development – As the young motivated Intern: Prototyping and Pitching
I worked for YAGER Development the guys that made Spec ops the Line I was responsible for developing future potential projects. Creating Excel sheets, Game Vision Docs, High concept and Mechanics Design. Sitting in meetings and talking with people that have done that stuff for years was a challenge for someone who has not yet the complete technical jargon absorbed. It was a good learning experience and a very open creative working environment. Unfortunately I got sick with Salmonella lost the job and my former girlfriend left me. A intense down phase of my adult age happened over 6 months, I rised out of that misery by doing a lot of sports.
Young Internet – Online Worlds for Kids: Quality Assurance and Game Design
After that I worked for Goodbeans a.k.a Young Internet which created online Worlds for Kids like Panfu and Oloko.
The working environment was not as professional as I was used with YAGER but it was extremely relaxed and I felt save in my role as an employe. I started as a Quality Assurance Manager, together with Programmers I assured the game world quality and hunted bugs and usability issues. I switched to Game Design after that and designed a few Weekly quests for the online Community and developed Features to improve the usability of the Game World.
Goodbeans – Mobile Monster RPG Game!!!!! Balancing, Content creation and Narrative Design Goodbeans switched from online gaming to the mobile market. I designed together with my Lead Game Designer Kyle Smith, a former employe of EA Canada, a Pokemon type game for the iPhone and iPad. Called Zuko Monsters, free to play with a bunch of in app purchases and timers to overcome. Creating 100 of abilities and Monsters was a lot of fun. Also developing Xp, Monster Attribute Profile curves and monetization values.
There is also a fancy Trailer to this one:
Independent Game Designer !??! Creating Games with GameSalad, Photoshop and my Mind
So the game couldn’t save the already sinking company, which it was supposed to do.
Goodbeans former Young Internet had been shrinking from 60 employes down to the half.
The last months, where I was a part of the company, there where around 15 survivers. And I decided to quit the work position before I also get fired and with this remain in psychological positive state because of the rationalization that it was my decision.
I work now as an Independent Game Designer and create Mobile Games with the tool Gamesalad. My first released Project I will show off next. Thanks for reading!
David Zobrist 