Responsible childs and lazy adults

Hi you all! Time to try and put some of the stuff I’ve been thinking on here. Warning: this might be a bit all over the place; my apologies, that’s the state of my head at the moment. 

So, who’s responsible, huh? 

Why do I stop caring about jumping around in Mario’s world? Is it simply the lack of novelty in its challenges? And if so, why aren’t I making up my own challenges? What is stopping me?

(Jack, in What (or Who) is responsible for the Resolution Problem?)

I think there’s a reason why some languages have a different word for playing a game with rules, and playing in free-form, like play pretend, like what we do when we’re kids, or when we’re creating (or playing -with- an instrument? Uuhh languages, again! I have two distinct words for that). When we’re kids we find it simpler to play just for the sake of it, why is it more complicated later in life?

Story time! I remember watching Beyblade anime when I was 11. I’d have killed for a proper Beyblade, but they hadn’t arrived in my country yet, so I had to content myself with other, less-cooler tops. It didn’t matter, I’d spin those things everywhere, creating my own circuits and challenges. A year later, I could finally get some true Beyblades. And… I couldn’t play like that anymore. There is a point in your life when lifting a toy-plane and playing pretend just stops being fun, but we don’t realize it when it happens. Still, I could compete at school: social play. High school passed, and at uni I befriended a guy who told me ‘I still have my beyblades and arena and all’, so I went to his home to play, and… again, that wasn’t fun anymore. We realized it was just chance, and I think adults only find chance enjoyable when there’s money involved. 

Achieving things

Anyway, I’ve been thinking a lot about missions and achievements, and what makes me play (and, like, do any other thing actually). This post was very helpful in that (I’ve never been diagnosed with ADHD, but I have two friends that have it -one of them is here among us- that told me I probably have it too hahaha). So like. Achievements are really cool to me, cause they give me reasons to play when the gamefeel content (or the novelty) is washed away. And/but, they can change the feel of the game. I thought in particular about Mujo and Wombat’s Ord, and Brin’s Binary Quest. Both are narrative, story-driven games. But because of the achievements, (outside and inside the game itself) they suddenly become a puzzle: how do I get the remaining endings? What could I do in this story to get a weird outcome? 

And I thought that was great, but, is it? If that’s gonna make players play your game more, but not for the wonder of the game itself but for completing a checklist… is it really desirable for every game? 

This Mark Brown’s video has some very good quotes and shines some light into this query. 

In structuring the game as a series of explicit tasks to be completed, we taught the player to depend upon those tasks to create meaning in the game.

(Jamie Cheng, from Don’t Starve)

That one in particular reminded me of what droqen was talking about:

Perhaps the act of giving systemic legitimacy to developer-designed meta-goals has the potential to detract from the perceived value of non-developer-designed meta-goals. 

(droqen in What (or Who) is responsible? Whoever takes responsibility.)

Is that it? Maybe as adults we need… validation? Feeling useful? Is this also capitalism’s fault? I realize that I make more and better art when I have an extrinsic goal, like Inktober or a jam, than if I do art for myself (which I very seldom do). But many people love sandbox games, it clearly depends on the player person.

So…

I think overall, achievements can be of five types:

• The ones you get for doing exactly what you’re meant to, “finish level 1”, yeah, sure, I was gonna do that anyway.
• The game-breaking ones, “spend 10 hours playing this silly minigame”, UGH, why.
• The pro-player ones, “finish the game in a speedrun, without dying, and blindfolded”, whoa is that possible?
• The collectionist ones, “GET ALL THE STUFF”, pokedex-like.
• The funny surprise ones, “feed the NPC’s cat”, ah, lol, great!

These last ones I think are the best ones, especially if they are hinted at but are not explicit, because they split the responsibility in both the designer and the player, and make it a shared task. Because you’re prompted to check the list, but it’s still a slightly different way of playing, and it’s up to you to engage. And it’s you who have to imagine what they could be about, explore your possibilities, mess around with the game and play with it.