In our current massively multiplayer online gaming space,
emotions are often subdued, only emerging when players achieve victory
in an intensely difficult raid or facing certain death in a Leeroy
Jenkins-sque group wipe. However, they do exist in these games, and
this was the topic discussed in Nicole Lazzaro’s presentation
on the “Four Most Important Emotions of Game
Design” where she presented the key
“emotions” necessary to create an award-winning,
revenue-generating game. As the president of XEODesign, Inc., Lazzaro
has over seventeen years working in the player experience field, and
her lecture was both enlightening and raised some red flags about the
current gameplay development in upcoming MMOGs.
Lazzaro stated in her lecture that if a game can achieve
“three out of the four emotional states at the same
time”, the developers have an award winning game. By
developing the Player Experience (PX), games can achieve emotional
states without relying on the “relief” moments of
beating a level or the “story” moments involved
with a cut-scene.
Nicole Lazzaro, President of XEODesign, Inc.
While Lazzaro does want more emotions in games,
she’s wary about taking the interactivity away from the
gamer. Cut-scenes and theatrical visions are not her idea of
“emotional” gameplay development, and
she’s more focused on designing games that are original and
fun-to-play. Some of her most pertinent examples were videos of Wii
players, where the players interact with each other and the game as
well. Throughout the rest of this article, we’ll discuss the
four “emotions” she covered in her lecture and what
MMO developers could or should do to integrate these emotions into
their titles.
Hard Fun
In Lazzaro’s presentation, Hard Fun was what
described the sort of gameplay that is inherent to most MMOs; the cycle
of boredom, frustration, and relief when getting through a particularly
difficult section of a level or an encounter. MMO gamers are probably
the most notorious enjoyers of Hard Fun, especially anyone who has
encountered a massive grind necessary to achieve a new level.
Lazzaro actually used an MMO – World of Warcraft
– as an example of Hard Fun, showing a video where a player
finally beats a high level raid and throws her hands up in the air in
exhilaration. That is the sort of response Hard Fun elicits.
However, MMO developers often skimp on some of the actual
“meat” of Hard Fun: the opportunities for
challenge, strategy, and problem solving. Most of the challenge is
actually working out the need for players of different time zones to
get online or dealing with one character that isn’t pulling
his weight, rather than actual in-game elements.
Easy Fun
Emotions involved with Easy Fun are often those that involve
player curiosity and intrigue. Exploring a level or developing an
underhanded tactic to take down a coporation are some examples of easy
fun. MMOs tend to have some easy fun, but often curiosity and intrigue
are not as rewarding for the players as their Hard Fun or Altered
States emotions are.
Easy Fun, as far as gamer emotions go, is often expressed with
a contented feeling of delving into a world you’ve
never experienced before. Many gamers encounter this emotion when they
finish a level and finally have the freedom to explore the whole of
their boundaries.
Incentivizing exploration and intrigue is something that many
developers are looking into these days. For example, EVE Online
actually encourages players to be underhanded in their schemes, hoping
that political intrigue makes players want to delve into the seedier
side of their environment. Lord of the Rings Online also encourages
exploration, giving players titles after they explore a certain amount
of the game world. A vast majority of older MMOs, however, do not
include these rewards or incentives in their gameplay.
Altered States (Serious Fun)
When players try to achieve armor or weapons of
this caliber, they often are experiencing Altered State emotions.
According to Lazzaro, Altered State (or Serious Fun) emotions
are when “players treasure the enjoyment from their internal
experiences in reaction to the visceral, behavior, cognitive, and
social properties. These players play for internal sensations such as
Excitement or Relief from their thoughts and feelings.” In
layman’s terms, this is when a player enters a world with a
specific goal or emotion in mind.
For example, an Altered State might be when a gamer enters
World of Warcraft to blow off steam after work, or if a player plays a
few more rounds in the Arena because he needs to be able to keep his
team alive when he’s playing. These are Altered State
emotions.
There are very few games that don’t have some level
of Serious Fun in them, but MMOs are often great sources of Altered
States, because there is a level of social complexity in an MMO that
isn’t prevalent in all genres of games. When a player sees
another character with an amazing looking sword, they enter into an
Altered State, because they may want to get that sword and be on the
same sort of pedestal that they put that other character on.
However, MMOs can also advance in this field by making their
games less about the “work” of getting through the
game. A player may want to be in an Altered State, but he is forced to
grind through sections of the game that might not even be Hard or Easy
Fun.
The People Factor (People Fun)
Last but far from least, Lazzaro discussed the People Factor
(or People Fun). When players compete, socialize, roleplay, and harass
each other, that is people fun. Anytime a player feels an emotion
towards a player, whether that’s a heated rivalry or friendly
compassion, they’re engaged in a People Fun emotion.
MMOs, in general, have a degree of People Fun almost
automatically built in to them. With chat channels, guilds, and groups,
people are almost intrinsically drawn to each other in the folds of
MMORPGs.
However, MMOs should continue to work on creating easy ways
for people to interact beyond simple typing. Voice-over IPs –
like Vivox – or other means of communication (emotes, message
boards, etc.) should continue to expand so players have the opportunity
to form communities both large and small. Some MMOs, as they developed
their solo-play experience, really took the community away from the
MMO, making these worlds a much more sterile atmosphere. MMOs should
always keep the community in the forefront of their minds, so they can
keep creating People Fun.
Concluding Remarks
In her final remarks, Lazzaro wanted to emphasize the need for
all games, not just MMOs, to begin looking for original ideas and means
to develop them. Her two favorite examples – the Wii and the
Sims – are ideas that derive some old gameplay experiences
from the games of the past, but they do a lot of fresh things as well.
People are looking for new ideas, and if a developer can create a new
game while including the four emotional states, they have a winner.
MMOs should take this into consideration as well, as a
majority of the gameplay in MMOs features the four emotional states,
but rarely in conjunction with one another. If MMO developers can blend
the four together at the same time, they’ll have something
more entertaining than what is currently on the market.
Make sure you check out the
rest of our OGDC
'07 coverage!
