GDC Day Two: Jesper Juul and sandbox play
So, I wasn’t actually at this session, so I missed what Jesper actually said… but I have a bone to pick with him, based on what GameSpot reported he said.
Juul first presented a common explanation of why goals make sense in games, based on the writings of designers like Firaxis’ Sid Meier and Sony Online Entertainment’s Raph Koster. As summarized by Juul, the two game vets say that players are happiest somewhere between the states of boredom and anxiety, when they are making progress toward an objective.
I do believe that in the book, I specifically say that fun and flow (which is what he’s referencing here) are not the same thing. There are many circumstances under which we are in flow but not having fun, and there are many circumstances when we are having fun but are not in flow. Having fun while in flow does seem to be a sort of peak experience, but they are not the same sensation, to my mind.
A better way to frame my take on fun is that it comes from mastering patterns (interdependencies, stimulus-response, topologies, etc) in the models that games present to us. The critical point here is that the pattern the player masters does not have to be the one that the game was intentionally presenting.
Thus, his comment
Today, however, Juul suggested that the reward of more flexible gameplay is attracting a wider audience. “Players come to a game with a set of experiences, a set of expectations. One of the points about having open games is that you can let the player select their own difficulty on the fly, so if they want to try something really hard they can go for a hard problem, or if they want to try something easy they can go for the easy problem.”
is to my mind just saying that allowing the players to have greater choice as to which patterns to work on is more broadly appealing. To which I say, “hear hear.”
More bluntly, the goals that a given game set up for you have very little to do with whether you have fun. That goal and the player’s goal have to actually align. And the player’s goal is almost certainly going to be reflective of mastery of some sort of pattern (often, a subversive pattern, even: trumping the game’s rules with some sort of meta-move, for example, or doing something in the game that wasn’t supposed to be possible, both of which are signs of mastering the fundamental warp and weft of what the model allows and disallows).
In other words, I don’t think we actually disagree. 🙂
19 Responses to “GDC Day Two: Jesper Juul and sandbox play”
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Sorry about the shameless self-promotion, but this kind of open-ended games is the main subject of my website, nongames.com. I would like to invite you to take a look at it.
I am particularly interested in how the player sets his own goals given how the game works (and proposes a series of goals).
By the way, I am still waiting for your book to arrive (these amazon international shippings can take ages). I guess it contributes to this discussion.
Raph: When you refer to “mastery”, what do you actually mean? The first sentence appears to be defining your usage of “mastery” as an event that occurs when gameplay satisfies the player’s expectations (e.g., people tend to enjoy arguments when the debate continues in their favor.) I don’t think this is what you mean; however, the problem with that definition is that emergence and immersiveness enable gameplay to surpass the requirements of the player.
The parallel you do between games difficulty, greater player choice and “sandbox” games is interesting. They seem to have so much in common that the concrete distinction between each is a blur.
Which could bring to the conclusion that fun in games is always subjective. Exactly because “the pattern the player masters does not have to be the one that the game was intentionally presenting”. What is fun for you could be boring for me, the game could communicate something to me that “doesn’t tick”. That doesn’t have a common ground.
And then. “That goal and the player’s goal have to actually align”. Which actually means that the player must be “preventively” interested in the pattern offered.
And what if this specific pattern comes in the form of a metaphor that the player is trying to “roleplay”?
To chico:
If you go on the site of the book, there’s a pdf linked which contains already all the premises of that argument (open ended games and player choice).
To Morgan:
I think “mastery” means the acquisition of a competence. It’s always an idea of fun strictly tied to “learning”. When you have mastered a pattern (meaning you know it thoroughly) you stop having fun, it becomes boring. Which is the idea of the “losing battle against the human brain” that tries to optimize everything and make everything “boring”.
The “jump” in the discussion is when we deal with games that are subject to an interpretation. So where what the game “teaches” isn’t strictly codified but that allows the player to interact with less “filters”.
I discussed about this point here, but it’s where I start to have different ideas than Raph. From my point of view the immersion becomes a fundamental element because it removes the filters and allows the player to explore and determine the game and its patterns from a personal point of view. Adding subjectivity.
Well, ths is very much a short form of what is in the book, but basically, I see games as models, as abstracted versions of reality. (Though the reality they simulate is often highly abstract itself, such as lines of force projection in arbitrary topologies).
This is very similar to the iconic, summarized “chunks” that the brain uses to handle information. I believe that fun is actully the process of rewarding the brain for figuring out and storing chunks, so to speak. A given person’s definition of “mastery” may differ from everyone else’s — it’s a question of whether they have built a chunk that works for them or not. So on person might come to an FPS, say “I get it” immediately, and not find it fun, and another might build a very complex mental model of how an FPS works over months of play, and find it deeply satisfying because they are still learning.
Yes, of course. It all depends on what the natural learning aptitudes are of the player, what past library of chunks and knowledge they have to draw from, what things they find easy or difficult, what their aspirations are…
Then the underlying game patterns that the player wants to learn likely aren’t mechanical, in the rules sense… they may be social.
It’s also common for players to intentionally choose patterns in pairings: new content with familiar game system, or familiar content with new game system. Learning two new things at once can be too much.
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Which could bring to the conclusion that fun in games is always subjective.
When have they ever been objective?
From my point of view the immersion becomes a fundamental element because it removes the filters and allows the player to explore and determine the game and its patterns from a personal point of view. Adding subjectivity.
I suspect that you’re being more specific than Raph intended. I can’t imagine how you’d immerse yourself in a game of chess, for instance. Immersion becomes a factor only in a specific type of game: the roleplaying game.
“Fun” in games implies a degree of freedom.
Tangential thought when I read this: Four Freedoms.
The reason we can do what we can do is because we have specific restrictions. Ballet is beautiful, because it is a very free expression constrained within a very restrictive ruleset. Games are fun, because they are free expressions constrained in a restrictive ruleset. Most of these rules are necessary: you’re interacting with the screen using the controller; you have a finite number of buttons to press, and those buttons mean something specific on the screen. But beyond that, you usually have the freedom to do as you wish. When a game locks down into cinema mode, for instance, you lose most of your freedom–less buttons–but you gain a different enjoyment, which I think was called aesthetics in Raph’s book, but I don’t remember.
I was reading 37signals earlier today and found this choice quotation: “Simple rules, as with the birds simulation, lead to complex behavior. Complex rules, as with the tax law in most countries, lead to stupid behavior.”
Stupid behavior isn’t fun for the person doing it?
I agree that the pattern mastered by the player does not necessarily match the pattern intentionally presented by the game. Which is why I found it fun (for example) to wall-walk for hours along the mountainsides of various zones in WoW, filling in unreachable parts of my map with a low-level character, and trying not to slip and fall to my death.
There are some really odd things in the seams between the zones. There is content which is only meant to be seen from the air as you fly over on a gryphon. There are even some places where content was contemplated but never finished (for example, there is a deserted little village between Dun Morogh and Wetlands where the building entrances are all bricked up, and there’s a three-way signpost there labeled “This Way”, “That Way” and “The Other Way”).
I’ve walked around on a featureless landscape underneath the city of Ogrimmar, and made insulting emotes at the horde players walking above in the air above me. I’ve been to the dwarven airport above Ironforge (and the frozen lake with the odd scripted skirmishes between trolls and Ironforge guards), and slid down the mountain into Menethil harbor. I’ve wall-walked all the way from menethil to westfall (at one point it puts you in the Stormwind chat channels even though you are notionally in a zone called “The Bitter Sea” or something). I’ve climbed over mountains to get into and out of the newbie zones on several continents. I’ve climbed up on top of the giant vines around RFD. And so on.
All of these things were great fun, though I’m sure they are not part of the “intended” way of playing the game.
Another thing I loved to do is get a Hydrocane (I played a mage) and swim around underwater for long stretches of time. There are some neat places down there waiting to be explored. Not as extensive as the underwater dungeons in Morrowind, but still interesting.
On ““Fun” in games implies a degree of freedom.” (I couldn’t find the original context of the sentence).
Maybe I am just trying to complement Michael Chui’s line of thought here, but I remember having fun riding (in first-person perspective) virtual roller coasters previously assembled in Roller Coaster Tycoon 3. A kind of fun that was not necessarily “free” in gameplay terms (although I could change cameras, quit anytime, etc).
I guess Roger Caillois would refer to it as a “Ilinx” – a way of play related to vertigo. Part of it’s fun could be exactly in loosing control over the experience.
Just a thought, anyway.
Raph – I was actually wondering if you could field a question of mine. I’m just a novice game designer (I hesitate to even use the term “game designer”), but I am working on an MMORPG for my Advanced Projects in Digital Arts class.
My general concept is “Empire”, a web-based, open-ended “sandbox” game where players begin the game controlling a small sci-fi-ish empire. My vision is that after each “round” of the game, the events that have transpired are compiled into a novella – a history/chronology of the storylines that took place during the game. Whereas Spore is looking at procedurally generated content and verbs, I’m thinking about procedurally generated storylines.
I want there to be a strong sense of the world developing when the player isn’t logged in… the storylines will mostly be microscopic (as opposed to macroscopic) views of single characters – Heros (some of whom may be Villains, who are just evil heros) – travelling their heroic journeys.
Anyway… my class keeps griping at me because there isn’t a lot of predefined content, and that I’m putting the code before the concept. I think those are viable concerns, but I’m worried that focusing on a few discrete concepts will limit the flexibility of my code, which will make the “sandbox” element of the game much weaker.
I’m just wondering what your thoughts might be (since you posted on our blog and all, he he!). Am I travelling a doomed path of overabstraction, or is my game just misplaced in a class concerned more with fine arts than game theory?
Thanks… love your blog. – Max
That’s been my own conclusion for awhile, though I continually am debated against it by some who think there must be commonality because all these people are playing the same game.
Just because they are in the same game world though, that doesn’t always mean they’re actually playing the same game. What they’re playing, to themselves, could be different from what I’m playing. Therefore, the learning and the pattern mastery themselves could be different, as is the results of completion.
I’m not Raph (of course), but I do have a thought I’d like to offer:
It sounds like you’ve run into a fairly classic problem: convincing people of an idea without having a proof of concept example. While you feel like it would be a waste to create a few discrete concept examples, “a picture is worth a thousand words”. Typically I will “throw away” money on a few examples of ideas in order to sell that idea to others, and in turn, them to still others. This frees up the core team to pursue the overall goal the right way.
People won’t ask too many questions they’re not equipped to hear the answers to if they’re:
A) Satisfied they understand the concept in broad strokes.
B) Have faith in the person or team executing it.
🙂
That sounds like fantastic advice, Darniag, especially if I ever want to do something like this professionally. Sounds like it’s worth my while to whip up a few conceptual examples after all…!
Moo, I agree with what you said. I have this fear, stemming from my concern that game developers actually need to quantify “fun”, that entertainment isn’t being considered.
I suspect that you’re being more specific than Raph intended. I can’t imagine how you’d immerse yourself in a game of chess, for instance. Immersion becomes a factor only in a specific type of game: the roleplaying game.
When I was younger I found the rules to play some sort of chinese version of chess. After I found those I started to try to convince my friends to play that instead of the standard chess.
The chessboard had a “river” to cross in the middle and a “fort” on each side to defend the king. There were knights, cannons and elephants. I loved it. It was really a so much better and satisfying game. So much more fun. It seemed to be more complex with those added elements and while I was playing it I was imagining a battle as if I was reading a book. The standard chess looked so bland and bare. I was planning my strategies not thinking about how to use the rules at best, but about how the situation was coming alive in my imagination. As a story.
I think at some point we even linked the matches together to form a campaign.
Yes, I was roleplaying chess.
Oh, and I used to take a road map while in a car for a long travel with my parents and play wargames on it. Without anything, not even rules or opponents. I was roleplaying everything by myself, from modern to fantasy settings.
And then we used to play in the woods, when we were on holiday on the Alps. We ran around like crazy, using pieces of wood as machine guns and pine cones as grenades (not launching them directly to avoid the risk of hurting each other, and instead simulating a parabola) We ran, built refuges, sneaked around, climbed trees, created traps and ambushes, camouflaged, launched hopeless assaults. When we didn’t fight we were building stuff, like carrying around stones to build trenches and defensive walls, or treehouses.
We were always claiming spaces for ourselves and naming them as we wanted.
I think I passed the great majority of my youth daydreaming. I was always elsewhere.
*chuckles* Xiang Qi (literally “elephant game”) probably predates Western Chess… There are 3+ player variants, too, if you poke around for them.
So yeah. Immersion only becomes a factor when you add a narrative to the game. When you make it more than a pure set of mechanics. Take Chinese Chess, which basically moves the eighth rank into the middle and changes squares to intersections, and then changes the pieces and their movement capabilities to take into account the context they’re in.
Take a stack of 32 index cards. Write A on one, then write two of each consecutive letter until you’re at F. G gets 5 cards. That should be 16 cards. Mark them all with “Red”. Do the same for the other 16, mark them “Blue”.
Take out a sheet of paper, draw a line down the middle. Draw two boxes at opposite ends. Arrange the cards (it’d be better if you used pebbles or origami or something 3d, but this is a thought experiment) like you would in Chinese Chess.
I did this, once, when I was on an airplane and wanted to play, but didn’t have a board handy. (Don’t breathe on it, by the way…) The game is the same, even though there isn’t really a river, and the pieces don’t seem to mean anything by themselves.
Meaning is added to gameplay. Narrative is placed on top of mechanics. You can play a roleplaying game like chess; in fact, that’s really what any RPG that lets you take your time making decisions is. Any one that doesn’t is just blitzkrieg. You can strip away an RPG into dice rolls over a massive world-sized grid.
Having removed that restriction, you have the freedom to do a lot more… but it’s more chaotic and less channeled. With a campaign setting, on the other hand, your creativity is focused into a specific path, and complemented by the idea of a story accompanying gameplay. The restriction of a ruleset, of code-enforced physics, of a lore and fiction, channel your creativity, creating something to be immersed in. That’s what a narrative does: it’s like a lens that takes an image and focuses it. It doesn’t matter, really, if you’re doing it or The Artist is doing it.
You can’t immerse in a game of chess. You can immerse in the story that you come up with to place onto the game of chess. It’s different. =P
So I bumped into Jesper, and we sorted it all out. 😉
@moo on wall-walking. Now that is a great example of the player making their own fun.
In many games it appears the designer has decided there will be one ‘route to the loot’. So he sits down and maps out the zone, places creatures, traps, blind alleys, etc. At the end of the route there’s the loot.
Player A comes along, sees the way ahead blocked by a monster and settles in for some hack and slash eventually, and maybe after several attempts, he gets to the loot.
Player B comes along, sees the big monster and immediately starts looking for a way round, under, over. He derives his ‘fun’ from not being in combat. If there’s enough leeway in the map (or he’s been given an appropriate skill like stealth) he gets in and gets the loot.
Player C comes along, see the big monster, gets on the guild chat and hauls in heavy support. They obliterate the monster, he gets to the loot.
In all of these instances the players had fun. Their own type of fun. Where it goes pearshaped is when the designer thinks “Hmm, somebody could sneak in, or they might bring friends. My way is the only way”. If that happens only Player A has fun, the other two think the quest is broke, impossible, boring because they’re being forced into a gameplay style that isnt’ theirs.
I particularly like games that are designed to allow the player to go hack and slash today if that’s what they want to do, to go all sneaky the next day or just to go all tourist and enjoy the sights. Now a ‘smart designer’, ie, one I agree with, is going to have things set up so I am able to progress as a character while doing any of those things. That way I’m having fun, I’m engaging with the game world on my terms and I’m far more likely to continue interacting with that designers game over an extended period of time.
I’m going to have to put that one in my notebook. Excellent illustration and take on the problems with the current MMORPG direction. Games in general too, I guess.
I really had a strong dissagreement with UO when they started taking choices out of the game. Your “wall walking” tag is perfect. WQe used to be able to teleport up on walls onto crags and things, out of reach of MOBs, and fight from there. Complaints were that it was an abuse, allowing attacking without being a target in many cases. True, if you look at it that way. So UO made it so that you couldn’t teleport to many of these places, and then so that you couldn’t attack from them. But it was fun to do things like this. Same with stacking crates to block off monsters. Or even players, for that matter. The better reaction would be to make some AI that said “hey, if I’m taking damage and can’t do anything about it, I’ll run fast away.” But no, instead of building a better game, they restricted players.
That trend, of course, has evolved to the point where you can’t do too much. The environment is more of a lifeless backdrop. It’s just there.
I heard his talk, and had a similar reaction. My biggest beef was his insistence that games without goals are a good thing in general because it lets the player choose what they want to do, and he of course referenced The Sims. Later Jesper was in my talk about design so I got to (politely I hope) offer a differing view (love that captive audience). Namely it is that games without explicit goals tend to fail unless players have a reasonable way to bring their own goals into play – The Sims and Sim City worked because people at large have a sense of how households and cities should run, or what you might want to do to change them, but Sim Earth and Sim Life did not succeed because world-building and evolution are too esoteric for the world at large. I also felt he had the concept of flow a bit too closely tied to fun – it’s the process of learning something effectively that elicits the feeling of fun, and being in the flow channel is a way to facilitate that learning – not quite the same thing.