Tag: Fullerton

Papers Please or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bureaucracy

There is a saying: “one person’s trash is another person’s treasure.” I feel an adjusted version of this proverb could accurately describe my time playing Papers Please: “one person’s nightmare job is the same person’s dream.” You see, I am an ex-bureaucrat. For a year and half I worked as a paper pushing, permit checking, document stamping permit intake specialist for a county level Planning and Development Department. Yes it was just as boring as it sounds, and yes I am quite glad to be out of there. However, I cannot deny there is something I still find viscerally satisficing about a perfectly stacked, stamped, stapled, and checked pile of paper. This is one of the reasons why I enjoyed Papers Please, a game that can best be summed up as a Cold War Communist Bureaucracy simulator. Considering the popularity of Papers Please, I assume I’m not alone in feeling this way, but why?

It’s highly unlikely that all the 34,000 plus people who have given a positive review of Papers Please are recovering paper pushers. As I thought about it, I realized that the less than desirable aspects of my job which I previously described are not exclusive to permit specialists. So I assumed that at least some of the other players also have or had a real life job that somewhat parallels their role in the game. However, the question still remained as to why these people found the game enjoyable. After pondering it, the best answer I could come up with is simply Papers Please is a game, and games are something we willingly do with the intent of having fun. When we enter a game’s “magic circle” we know that we are abiding by it’s rules because the end result is fun. (Fullerton) This is in contrast with most jobs, which in a way involve entering a different type of “circle” (e.g. there are rules, accepted behaviors, and tasks that need to be completed). At a job things are done willingly but not primarily with the intention of having fun. It would seem that the main difference between Papers Please and a real life job would be that we go into one with the goal of having fun and we go into the other without trying to have fun.

As weird as it sounds, the ability of Paper’s Please to turn an unpleasant aspect of life into an enjoyable game is a skill I would like to emulate. So often in real life we get annoyed or stressed out by tasks that are tedious. By showing players that the same constraints they are put under at work can produce an enjoyable experience may help make those real life situations less stressful. At least for this player, should I ever find myself working a less then pleasant job in the future, I’ll try to channel some of the same intention for fun I had going into Papers Please.

Sources

Fullerton, Tracy. Game Design Workshop: A Playcentric Approach to Creating Innovative Games. 4th ed., Taylor & Francis Group LLC, 2019. PDF.

Papers Please. Lucas Pope, 2013.

Game Objectives: A Reflection

While reading Chapter 3 of Tracy Fullerton’s Game Design Workshop: A Playcentric Approach to Creating Innovative Games, I found the section that explores game objectives to be particularly eye-opening. I was surprised by how many games have multiple objectives, and especially how often these objectives are very different from one another. For example, The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim has relaxing exploration, logic-based solution (e.g. solving puzzles to advance through dungeons), and combat required capture (e.g. clearing out enemy encampments) objectives. While at first this seems contradictory, it makes sense for a game to have diverse objectives. If a game had one just objective or all its objectives were achieved by similar means, then it would be boring.

I feel multiple objectives are especially important to consider when designing video games. This is because many video games are intended to be played for multiple years, possibly indefinitely. The more objectives there are, the more things there are to engage players and keep them entertained. In addition to expanding its playable lifespan, diversity in objectives can also help a game appeal to a wider market. For example, compare Stardew Valley with Animal Crossing: Wild World. What makes the objectives in Stardew Valley more effective than those in Animal Crossing are their diversity.  Stardew Valley’s objectives include managing a farm (a construction objective), developing relationships with NPCs (a narrative based objective), and advancing through dungeons (a capture objective). Objectives in Animal Crossing, on the other hand, are mostly limited to collection, hence limiting gameplay options. In contrast to this, a player in Stardew Valley could choose to ignore the NPCs, or spend their time fighting in a dungeon instead of farming.

That said, it is important that objectives make sense within the context of a game. Just like Fullerton’s example of having sushi being an object in Diablo III, certain objectives do not make sense (or would be hard to pull off) in certain games. Consider, for example, an FPS that also had a social farming element (a la asking friends for help in FarmVille), or a team competition style game that had individual players renovating their own house. Granted such features could improve immersion or allow players to feel they are influencing the narrative (e.g. a war shooter where you have the option to repair a village you’ve captured), but it is important not to lose sight of or stray too far from the main gameplay experience players are there for.

This post is based on Chapter 3 of Game Design Workshop: A Playcentric Approach to Creating Innovative Games by Tracy Fullerton.

Sources

Animal Crossing: Wild World. Kyoto: Nintendo, 2005.

FarmVille. San Francisco, CA: Zynga, 2009.

Fullerton, Tracy. “Chapter 3: Working with Formal Game Elements” Game Design Workshop: A Playcentric Approach to Creating Innovative Games. 4th ed., Taylor & Francis Group LLC, 2019. PDF.

The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. Bethesda, MD: Bethesda Game Studios, 2011.

Staredew Valley. ConcernedApe, 2016.

What is a Game?

At the beginning of the second chapter in Tracy Fullerton’s Game Design Workshop: A Playcentric Approach to Creating Innovative Games it’s foreshadowed that later in the chapter a definition of “game” would be presented. “Oh great, another lengthy description of a simple word,” I thought, jaded college student that I am. Near the end of the chapter the anticipated description was given, but I was pleasantly surprised to find it was not only brief, but relevant. Fullerton describes a game as having three elements: “[1] a closed, formal system, that [2] engages players in structured conflict, and [3] resolves it’s uncertainty in an unequal outcome.” (48) Though they are separated into three parts I feel that each of these elements share some similarities.

One of the most striking similarities was the connection to the player. In a game, players agree to and are aware of the challenges that come with each of these three elements. Players willingly choose to enter a formal system, to engage in conflict, and accept an outcome that is unequal and uncertain. Taken out of context, this seems like an irrational thing for someone to agree to. However, players agree to it because they are conscious of another similarity between the elements: their relevance to the game’s world, or “magic circle.” (37) The closed, formal system establishes the game world as distinct and unrelated from the real world, while the later elements set up the rules by which the game world is governed and what the players will do while in it.

After reading this chapter, I have a far greater appreciation for how the different elements that make up a games are interconnected. It’s almost as if a game is an amalgam of multiple interconnected symbiotic relationships. Fullerton sums it up best (albeit in less flowery terms): the elements that make up a game rely on each other, and a game is really the sum of its parts. (47)

This post is based on Chapter 2 of Game Design Workshop: A Playcentric Approach to Creating Innovative Games by Tracy Fullerton.

Sources

Fullerton, Tracy. “Chapter 2: The Structure of Games.” Game Design Workshop: A Playcentric Approach to Creating Innovative Games. 4th ed., Taylor & Francis Group LLC, 2019. PDF.

Game Designers & Playtesters

While reading Chapter 1 of Tracy Fullerton’s Game Design Workshop: A Playcentric Approach to Creating Innovative Games, I was pleasantly surprised with how she described the role of a game designer. Being a textbook, I was expecting a technical description of the various duties a game designer carries out. Instead, I found it focused not so much on what a game designer does, but on how they should do it. Fullerton advises aspiring game designers take a playcentric approach. This approach puts emphasis on playtesting, which should begin early in the development process so feedback can be taken into consideration before the project gets too far along. (Fullerton) Overall, I agree with Fullerton’s recommendation of using a playcentric approach and the emphasis she puts on holistic teamwork. However, the chapter is not without flaws.

One critique I have of Chapter 1 is it does not go into the specifics of what it takes to execute a playcentric approach. For example, who should be the playtesters? My initial thought was playtesters should be members of the demographic that are most likely to buy the game. Identifying that demographic, however, is not clear cut. Many gamers play multiple genres, and the gaming community is increasingly diverse. Singling out only one group would be logistically difficult and possibly hinder large scale commercial success. An argument could even be made for using playtesters who prefer other games or were picked randomly, as this could help tap into new markets. Who the playtesters are will have some influence on their feedback. Consider what would happen if someone who had never played an FPS was a playtester for a new Call of Duty title, or someone who has never used a console playtested an Xbox exclusive. With the significant role playtester feedback has in a playcentric approach, the selection of playtesters is important.

How my dad (who had only played mobile & PC games) held the controller the first time he tried to use an Xbox. Photo by me.

Chapter 1’s advice to future game designers is good, but it could have gone into more detail. That said, I am hopeful in later chapters Fullerton will expand on what has been presented.

This post is based on Chapter 1 of Game Design Workshop: A Playcentric Approach to Creating Innovative Games by Tracy Fullerton.

Sources:

Fullerton, Tracy. “Chapter 1: The Role of the Game Designer.” Game Design Workshop: A Playcentric Approach to Creating Innovative Games. 4th ed., Taylor & Francis Group LLC, 2019. PDF.

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