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The Development of Braid
Gamasutra sat down with Jonathan Blow, creator of the successful independent game Braid. He talks about going through the three-year-plus development cycle as a one-man team, and how his concept of the game changed as he worked on it. He also discusses what he feels is the difference between "natural rewards" and "artificial rewards."
"... for the most part, when you're playing Tetris, you're enjoying it because you enjoy fitting the blocks together. Whereas when you play World of Warcraft — and what I'm about to say is a generalization, since different players enjoy different things, obviously — a lot of the appeal of playing World of Warcraft is not in the core gameplay mechanic, because it's boring, a lot of the time. ... I think what keeps them in there is, at first, the level ding, because it's very addictive to get that. 'Okay, I've got more gold. Whatever.' And eventually, they've made this huge time investment and they've got a character there and they know what that level ding feels like and the next one is pretty far off, but they can get there! And it's not any better, because this is like number 67. It's got to be better than 66!"
He doesn't really seem to understand what drives people on WoW...
In earlier levels, yes, leveling up is the *big thing*; however, at higher levels, the questing becomes more involved and people play to read the lore and, more importantly, get better armor or weapons or a flying mount. Anyway, leveling up cannot be what keeps players there; that wouldn't explain why so many people play at endgame.
I think it's more of an ego thing. Having better weapons/armor, being in a top raiding guild, or being the best arena team, is what truly drives people. Leveling up is only one portion of that.
...I don't know this guy or this game, but the idea of independent production of games (1 guy etc) or things like animation is perhaps one of the most important and interesting IT concepts around, yet is hardly ever exploited and perhaps, and I'm not sure Slashdot know this, but it remains one of the most taboo topics around the established industries for these things.
I mean obviously time is a factor, no one will disagree with that but there's a huge interest in this, yet very people have ever brought anything to market so to speak. And the attitude against this from the traditional industry side of it is enormous and ferocious.
Great that this guy got his project made. But he's not the only one, but you hardly ever hear about them and it's even difficult to talk about this subject around some people.
Oops, context typo (yes I should have hit preview):
"Those artificial rewards, even though I have not played those games in quite a while , are still important to me, and I feel a sense of accomplishment"
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Call Mr. Blow, that's my name, that name again is Mr. Blow!
Mr. Blow is a loser and I think he's a boozer.
So you better make that call to the Blow King!
I don't see how someone who has received so much acclaim for his game design can completely miss the boat on a VERY popular game.
I've actually never played WoW (just don't have the time), but I imagine that the experience is much like Diablo on a grander scale. The enjoyment in a game like Diablo was far more complex than leveling up. The biggest driver for me was the social aspect of the game (playing together online, seeing how friends/others used resources to develop their character, etc).
I understand that the whole "RPG-style" of games like WoW/Diablo just isn't appealing to some people, but I don't see how a developer like this can completely misunderstand it.
When you are by yourself hunting in other MMOGS and you run across a rare item, it is fun. When you play WOW and have 39 other players around when you win the roll for a rare item, people congratulate you. It is a bigger reward to find your rare in front of a group of people.
It reminds me of Asheron's Call 1 with server wide messages when you did something big. Everyone on the server got to see your character's name. It made the person who got it more famous, and it makes people who saw it think to themselves,"Someday I may be able to have my own server wide message." I'm just now realizing the psychology of having a reward in front of other people makes the reward even better.
God spoke to me.
So, people are driven by virtual materialism, as if the real world equivalent isn't already our generation's soma.
How depressing is that?
Ad free, single page...
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/3786/jonathan_blow_the_path_to_braid.php?print=1
Yeah, I know, I know... how is the web going to survive without ads, my servers are down, karma whore... who cares, I just don't want to click Next six times.
^[:wq!
Why must every reasoned discussion of games devolve into debating the true nature of WoW? "Game X is really nothing like WoW, but let me spend a half hour explaining why people play WoW so you can truly comprehend how it has absolutely nothing in common with Game X." Give me a break! I lose confidence in the author when they demonstrate how stuck they are in the mainstream. It's as if every review of a television program started out with a detailed critique of Dragonball Z.
Find me someone who plays Tetris just because they enjoy fitting blocks together.
This is the kind of thought that is almost true, yet subtly totally wrong, like what someone who had read about or seen the game would come up with.
The best gear and status in the game does not come from "random drops". That category is called "World Drops", and it is the lowest end of the upper end tier loot. It might be purple, but no one takes it seriously Sort of like how a Mini-Cooper is technically a BMW but at under $20k is the entry-level one.
No, the very best gear in the game comes from two sources- the top end 25 man raids (T6 gear) and the very top of the Arena (S4 gear). Neither of these is random and in fact niether is particularly time-consuming in and of itself. T6 is gauranteed in that Illidan, Kil'Jaeden, Mother Shazzrah and all the rest are GAURANTEED to drop 2 or 3 pieces of T6 each per kill, plus two other good things. Exactly which version of the two T6 pieces they drop is random per week, but guilds totally abstract this randomness with internal DKP systems that tell you when you'll get the next thing you want based on your contributions. The point here is a good team clears Black Temple, and the gauranteed 32 pieces of loot in about three hours. Once it is clear, you can't run it again for a week. So Operant Conditioning driving people to play 100 hours a week simply doesn't apply to Black Temple. Guilds clear it and say "Ok, see you guys next Sunday."
The best S4 pieces are gotten by being in the top 1% of arena PvP teams. Again, there is a fixed point schedule per week. Playing every waking hour is not optimal. Actually, you are only required to play a minimum of 10 games a week at a few minutes a game, and playing more than that could easily become a non-optimal strategy.
In both cases, the meta-game is recognizing, seeking out and socializing with people with elite skills and gaming with them. The payoff is that joining an effective team has a payoff 100x greater than an ineffective one. Being part of that effective teamwork dynamic is an amazing thrill. A well-oiled team can defeat Illidan in one shot without anyone dying. A poor one won't be able to get past his fourth or fifth outer guards in ten hours.
Most people who play WoW will never be on a Super Bowl-winning football team, in an award-winning choir or orchestra, on the management team of a Fortune 500 company. But people naturally seem to like being part of greater whole. Even the most basic 5-man dungeon or 10 man battleground team can give a player this. Each character has strengths and weaknesses that make it so they can only succeed by complementing the abilities of others. If they do their part of the job, the entire team will shine and they'll feel like maybe people really can work together sometimes. And this experience is magnified again if some of the people in game are your friends and family. Anyone who understands the social experience can share it with others. WoW is good at making little stories that are a fun shared social experience with anyone else who plays. "Oh man last night I accidentally pulled three mobs..." "So THEN this rogue decides to sneak up on me..."
You can ding 68 in a million other single player games. There are plenty of operant conditioning games that aren't as addictive to people. But as fun as Braid or any Operant game might be single player, fun in-game mechanics aren't the only reward. WoW shows us that social mechanics are a desirable reward unto themselves.