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Enter. Play. Stay.
Why go to such lengths about the non-utilitarian nature of games? In order to make a larger point about the challenge of bringing players into a game and keeping them at play. Because games are premised on needs intrinsic to the game, it is necessary for game designers to both entice the player into crossing the boundary of the magic circle and also keep them there until the goals of the game have been met. Beginning a game means entering into the magic circle. Players cross over this boundary to adopt the artificial behaviors and rituals of a game. During the game, the magic circle persists until the game concludes. Then the magic circle dissolves and players return to the ordinary world. These two actions, crossing into the magic circle as well as maintaining its existence, represent two of the chief challenges of designing meaningful play. The two actions require a carefully orchestrated double seduction. First, players are seduced into entering the magic circle of a game. Second, players are seduced into continuing to play. Both events are challenging to design. The first seduction, bringing players into the magic circle, requires players to cross a threshold that will take them out of their ordinary lives and into the world of the game.The difficulty in making this happen comes from the formal quality of game play. It is much easier to slip into and out of ludic activities that aren't games. Are you eating peanuts and feeling playful? Just toss one up and see if you can catch it in your mouth. How about those building blocks on your desk? Stack them up, knock them down, or just let them be. In The Magic Circle, we looked at the way a child might play with a doll, at how smoothly a player can slip in and out of play, at how permeable the borders are between playing and not playing. In games, however, the transition between not playing the game and starting to play the game is more clearly defined. Games usually require formal preparation: finding players, reading the rules, opening a saved game file, shuffling cards, setting up the board, and so on. Players must learn the system and "officially" enter into the game and begin play. This is a genuine hurdle for players of your game: they must attend to the initial set of chores that lie on the border of the magic circle; they must properly perform the rituals of entry. What does this mean for game designers? Designers create not just the game itself, but also the ways that players enter into the game system. This event involves consideration of not just the formal elements of the game, but also the way that the game interfaces with external contexts. How and when does a player enter into a game? Where does the initial seduction begin? Does it begin the first time a player sees a commercial or reads a review of a game that encourages or discourages the player to make a purchase? Does the seduction emerge from peer pressure and social values (Barbie Fashion Designer is for girls! Quake is cool! Everybody is playing P.O.X.!). Does it begin with the installation of a downloaded game, the first reading of a game's rules, or the menu screen of a console title? Does it start the moment a newbie shoots his first monster?
Clearly, there is no single factor to which the act of seduction can be attributed and no single, isolated moment when the player decides to begin play. Designing the seduction of a game means understanding all of the formal, social, and cultural factors that contribute to the player's experience. It is important, for example, to understand how marketing, promotion, and distribution work in the game industry. It is important to scout out what other game developers are creating and how it may impact the game you are designing. It is important to understand how the culture at large perceives and regards games and how new audiences might be brought to your games. There are no simple answers to the question of whether or not a player will decide to begin playing your game. This is one more challenge game designers face. On the other hand, once players start playing your game, they have stepped out of the world at large and entered into the magic circle of the game's design. As we will see, keeping players in a game, understanding and sculpting their experience of pleasure, offers at least as great a challenge as getting them to play in the first place.
