@Article: Neat! Very cool to see someone picking up the structure I'm thinking through and applying in in their own way. Especially in terms of Context, this is exactly what I'm talking about. I've often thought that MMO designers don't understand the implication of making a vast empty world with avatars who have to slowly crawl through it. They feel this compulsion to make the world ever larger but lack the resources to populate it. The result is a large, empty, lonely world without the possibility of ongoing engagement. Also, Josh Sprague...from Tempe? Jeremy's brother?
So, I'm actually writing a book for Elsevier on the topic of game feel. I'm getting a little more in depth with all of these topics; that article was necessarily abridged and brief. Here's kind of a snapshot of where my thinking is now:
http://www.steveswink.com/images/GameFeelModel.jpg
I'm leaning towards seeing games as a sort of surrogate perception, where the feedback from the monitor, the speakers, and the push back of the controls takes the place of the feedback you normally get from the physical world. At least, when you're experience what I'm defining as game feel. This would give at least a partial explanation for why games have the potential to feel so "immersive" - you're literally substituting your everyday, physical perception for a new set of senses, those of the avatar. To me, this seems to be a powerful tool for creating a role for players to play and for giving them a "real" experience of playing that role. The avatar becomes your organ of expression in the game world. And the sensation, the perception flows both directions - you both express yourself through and receive feedback from the avatar. You feel as though your body and identity expands to encompass the avatar, much the same way that it expands to encompass a car when you drive it. You have a sense of the position of the car in space, as an extension of your senses. You say "he hit me!", not "his car hit my car!", right?
And to quickly set the record straight, I'm not much of a casual designer. I worked on a canceled Xbox title called, ironically, "The Unseen" that would have been a really neat action/RPG. We actually had the lead designer of Starcraft, James, as our lead. After that, I worked as a designer on Tony Hawk. Now my company, Flashbang Studios, does some training stuff to pay the bills and sells casual games as an affiliate portal at www.flashbangstudios.com. But we tend to make stuff like this nowadays:
http://www.raptorsafari.com
http://splume.flashbangstudios.com
...with more interesting experimental stuff en route (raptor safari is kind of an inside joke taken way too far) We're going to launch a separate website for our own games in the next few weeks. There may be some wiiware kinds of things in our future as well.
Thanks for reading; loving the discussion here. Don't be surprised if you end up getting quoted in the book .
Swink's analysis is good stuff but doesn't go far enough for us, because there's more to these games than just steering yourself around and interacting with whatever's there. Unlike the others, your identity in an RPG should feel like a life. There needs to be a lot that's beyond your control.
So, I'm actually writing a book for Elsevier on the topic of game feel. I'm getting a little more in depth with all of these topics; that article was necessarily abridged and brief. Here's kind of a snapshot of where my thinking is now:
http://www.steveswink.com/images/GameFeelModel.jpg
I'm leaning towards seeing games as a sort of surrogate perception, where the feedback from the monitor, the speakers, and the push back of the controls takes the place of the feedback you normally get from the physical world. At least, when you're experience what I'm defining as game feel. This would give at least a partial explanation for why games have the potential to feel so "immersive" - you're literally substituting your everyday, physical perception for a new set of senses, those of the avatar. To me, this seems to be a powerful tool for creating a role for players to play and for giving them a "real" experience of playing that role. The avatar becomes your organ of expression in the game world. And the sensation, the perception flows both directions - you both express yourself through and receive feedback from the avatar. You feel as though your body and identity expands to encompass the avatar, much the same way that it expands to encompass a car when you drive it. You have a sense of the position of the car in space, as an extension of your senses. You say "he hit me!", not "his car hit my car!", right?
And to quickly set the record straight, I'm not much of a casual designer. I worked on a canceled Xbox title called, ironically, "The Unseen" that would have been a really neat action/RPG. We actually had the lead designer of Starcraft, James, as our lead. After that, I worked as a designer on Tony Hawk. Now my company, Flashbang Studios, does some training stuff to pay the bills and sells casual games as an affiliate portal at www.flashbangstudios.com. But we tend to make stuff like this nowadays:
http://www.raptorsafari.com
http://splume.flashbangstudios.com
...with more interesting experimental stuff en route (raptor safari is kind of an inside joke taken way too far) We're going to launch a separate website for our own games in the next few weeks. There may be some wiiware kinds of things in our future as well.
Thanks for reading; loving the discussion here. Don't be surprised if you end up getting quoted in the book .
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