لطفا منتظر باشید ...
Interaction and Choice
The careful crafting of player experience through a system of interaction is critical to the design of meaningful play. Yet, just what makes an interactive experience "meaningful"? We have argued that in order to create instances of meaningful play, experience has to incorporate not just explicit interactivity, but meaningful choice. When a player makes a choice in a game, the system responds in some way. The relationship between the player's choice and the system's response is one way to characterize the depth and quality of interaction. Such a perspective on interactivity supports the descriptive definition of meaningful play presented in chapter 3. In considering the way that choices are embedded in game activity, we look at the design of choice on two levels: micro and macro. The micro level represents the small, moment-to-moment choices a player is confronted with during a game. The macro level of choice represents the way these micro-choices join together like a chain to form a larger trajectory of experience. For example, this distinction marks the difference between tactics and strategy in a game such as Go. The tactics of Go concern the tooth-and-nail battles for individual sectors of the board, as individual pieces and small groups expand across territory, bumping up against each other in conflict and capture. The strategy of the game is the larger picture, the overall shape of the board that will ultimately determine the winner. The elegance of the design of Go lies in its ability to effortlessly link the micro and the macro, so that every move a player makes works simultaneously on both levels. Micro-interaction and macro-interaction are usually intertwined and there are, of course, numerous shades of gray in-between. Keep in mind that "choice" does not necessarily imply obvious or rational choice, as in the selection of an action from a menu. Choice can take many forms, from an intuitive physical action (such as the "twitch" firing of a Time Crisis pistol) to the random throw of a die. Following are a few more examples of designed choices in games.
The choice of whether or not to take a hit in Blackjack. A Blackjack player always has a clear set of choices: the micro-choice of taking or not taking a hit will have the eventual outcome of a win or a loss against the house. On the macro-level, each round affects the total amount of money the player gains or loses over the course of the game. Playing each hand separately, according to its probability of beating the house is like tactics in Go. Counting cards, which links all of a players' hands between rounds, is a more long-term, strategic kind of choice-making. The choice of what to type into the flashing cursor of a text adventure. This is a more open-ended choice context than the simple hit or pass of Blackjack. The micro-choice of typing in a command gives the player feedback about how the player moves through or changes the world. The choice to type the words "Move North" takes the player to another location in the game where different actions are possible-perhaps actions that will eventually solve the multi-part puzzles that exist on the macro-level of game play. Even when a player tries to take an action that the program cannot parse (such as typing "grab rock" instead of "get rock"), it is meaningful: the outcome of bumping up against the limits of the program's parsing ability serves to further delineate the boundaries of play. The choice of what play to call in a Football game. This moment of game-choice is often produced collaboratively among a coaching staff, a quarterback, and the rest of the offensive players. There are a large number of possible plays to call, each with variations, and the choice is always made against the backdrop of the larger game: the score, the clock, the field position, the down, the strengths and weaknesses of both teams. The most macro-level of choices address the long-term movement of the ball across the field and the two teams' overall scores. The most micro-level of choices occur once the play is called and the ball is hiked: every offensive player has the moment-to-moment challenge of executing the play as the defensive team does its best to put a stop to it. As these examples demonstrate, choice-making is a complex, multi-layered process. There is a smooth transition between the micro- and macro-levels of choice-making, which play out in an integrated way for the player. When the outcome of every action is discernable and integrated, choice-making leads to meaningful play. Game designer Doug Church, in his influential online essay "Formal Abstract Design Tools," outlines the way that these levels of choice transition into a complete game experience. In a fighting game, every controller action is completely consistent and visually represented by the character on-screen. In Tekken, when Eddy Gordo does a cartwheel kick, you know what you're going to get. As the player learns moves, this consistency allows planning-intention-and the reliability of the world's reactions makes for perceived consequence. If I watch someone play, I can see how and why he or she is better than I am, but all players begin the game on equal footing.[7]
As Church points out, the macro-levels of choice-making include not only what to do over the course of a game, but also whether or not you want to play a game, and against whom. If you are beaten in a fighting game that doesn't contain clear and meaningful play, you will never know why you lost and you will most likely not play again. On the other hand, if you know why your opponent is better than you are, your loss is meaningful, as it helps you assess your own abilities, gives you ideas for improvement, and spurs on your overall interaction with the game. [7]Doug Church, "Formal Abstract Design Tools." <www.gamasutra.com>, July 16, 1999.
