|
Vision
Every game is different. Sometimes the most visually spectacular game becomes a boring activity after 10 minutes.
And sometimes, the simplest game have us inmersed and engaged for hours.
¿How do you design a game that achieves a maximum level of entertainment?
Every game designer has its own vision on this subject. Our vision when designing a game is:
- Study your audience
- Few rules that allow a great space for decisions
- Maximize inmersion and usability
Designing a game IS NO GAME. It's nots enough to be an active player!
There is a lot we can discuss about this. If you can read spanish, we recommend you the lectures of Alejandro in his videogame course here.
About usability
One of the topics that gets easily forgot when designing games. Usabiltity has many components, that overlap and sometimes face each other. In general, we associate the usability of a game to the following attributes:
| Learning curve |
How easy is to learn how to use the system |
| Satisfaction |
the subjective level of satisfaction obtained. |
| Efficiency |
Waste a minimum of time. |
| Errors |
Number of errors made by the user and severity. |
| Memorable |
How well does the user remember the use of the system when he/she comes back.. |
Example
A very important domain of usability for mobile games is the control issue. A good game will need few buttons, honor the game UI "style tradition" and change it only when is reasonable.
Let's see an example. In our game Poncho Balón the action is divided in 2 parts:
- at the beginning of the level you thrust Poncho up, so he can jump higher.
- once you are jumping high enough you move to the right trying to jump over the evil guards.
As we can see, the game only requires you to press a single button at any given time.
|
