لطفا منتظر باشید ...
Goals Within Goals
The goal is not the only source of pleasure in a game. In addition to the thrill that the pursuit of victory (or the agony of defeat!) can provide, games offer many pleasures that are parallel, or even tangential, to winning. Just as important as the final win condition, the macro-level goal, are the tiny moments of directed play, the micro-interactions that move a player though a game. These smaller moments of play emerge as the player engages repeatedly with the core mechanic, the same-but-different experience sustaining the interest and desire of the player. If the macro-level of a game's pleasure is the player's pursuit of the goal, and the micro-level is the player's engagement with the core mechanic, then what is it that links these two levels of play? The answer is short-term goals. A game never simply provides a single long-term goal. Along the way, a player struggles toward short-term goals, each one providing a kind of pleasure that is less immediate than the instant gratification of the core mechanic, but more rapidly obtained than the long-delayed ultimate outcome of the game. Even in a simple game like Tic-Tac-Toe, there are short-term goals that help players gauge their progress through the system. Placing an "O" in the same row as another "O" to form two-in-a-row is a short-term goal that must be reached before one can achieve three-in-a-row (and victory). This short-term goal may sound uninterestingly simple, and for adult players it usually is. But for young children struggling to comprehend the strategic complexities of the game, understanding short-term goals and the way these goals link the core mechanic of mark-making with the long-term goal of three-in-a-row is crucial to their enjoyment of the game. The kinds of short-term goals that a player can achieve depend on the nature of the game and the way the goals are suspended between the core mechanic and winning. In a wargame such as Tanktics, the short-term goal might be outflanking the enemy's ranks in order to weaken their defensive position on the battlefield. In SiSSYFiGHT 2000, it might be making a social alliance with another girl to shift the wrath of the player mob onto a particular player. In the digital trading game Dope Wars, a short-term goal might be saving up enough cash to move up from selling pot to selling heroin. A game can explicitly provide short-term goals, such as the medals a Pokémon player periodically earns by beating the best trainers in particular gyms. However, it is also very common for players to generate short-term goals themselves, in response to their current situation. A Pokémon player might be concerned with earning every medal in the game, but perhaps he invents a different short-term goal, such as capturing every species of Pokémon, or moving his Pidgeotto up to level 50. Encouraging players to conceive and achieve goals gives them a sense of control in the game, as Doug Church points out in his essay "Formal Abstract Design Tools:"
There are many ways in which players are encouraged to form their own goals and act on them. The key is that players know what to expect from the world and thus are made to feel in control of the situation. Goals and control can be provided and created at multiple scales, from quick, low-level goals such as "get over the bridge in front of you" to long-term, higher-level goals such as "get all the red coins in the world." Often players work on several goals, at different levels, and on different time scales. This process of accumulating goals, understanding the world, making a plan and then acting in it, is a powerful means to get the player invested and involved.[15]
The way that players engage with goals as they play is a complex process. As Church mentions, at any moment during a game a player might be working on several nested, interrelated goals. As players construct and work toward short-term and long-term goals, they are actively charting a course through the space of possibility of a game. In the landscape of a game defined by the space of possibility, short-term goals are navigational beacons that help orient players through two related experiential functions. First, players use short-term goals to make plans. Short-term goals allow players to plan ahead, scouting out future actions, generating hypotheses about how they should play the game. (I'm playing Risk. What happens if I focus on conquering South America next turn?) Second, short-term goals are sources of satisfaction for players. It is one thing to take on a short-term goal, but it is another thing to actually attain it. (I did it! Now I'll get bonus reinforcements for controlling a whole continent.) Short-term goals generate pleasure through both of these functions: making plans as well as achieving them. Short-term goals are necessary because without them, a player can get lost in the landscape of a game. Are your players confused about what to do next? Perhaps you need to adjust the design to encourage the creation of short-term goals. An open-ended, massively multiplayer online role-playing game such as Ultima Online has an intimidatingly vast space of possibility, but it also provides innumerable opportunities for short-term goals. Are players trying to work their way into a guild? Trade up for an impressive suit of armor? Or just explore a particular section of the world? The game structure encourages each of these short-term goals, and the fact that players can author their own experiences in this way is part of the reason why UO provides such intense pleasure to its dedicated players. The pleasure a player experiences in a game arises from many simultaneous factors: from the moment-to-moment core mechanic to the short-term accomplishments of play to the final outcome of the game. Each of these interrelated factors generates pleasure in its own way. The core mechanic might provide sensual entrainment, the short-term goals the satisfaction of gradual skill mastery, and the pleasure of winning the spoils of bragging rights. But what links these levels of pleasure is meaningful play. Without meaningful play, a player will never be able to take actions that have predictable outcomes, to choose this over that with a sense of how the choice plays out. Without the ability of players to progress, to have a sense of achievement and accomplishment, to know when they are moving toward or away from victory, your game's play experience will be dead in the water. The play of pleasure may seem free and spontaneous, the farthest thing from a careful, conscious design process, but creating a game that can nourish deep pleasure-that can truly entrain and enrapture players, that can lead to new forms of pleasure and meaning-is always a matter of sensitive and detailed game design. [15] Doug Church,"Formal Abstract Design Tools." <www.gamasutra.com>, July 16, 1999.
