Week 11: The Science of Choice – League of Legends

As Sid Meier is often quoted, “games are just a series of meaningful choices”. Choices in games are found everywhere, whether it be choosing a game character, game mechanics, avatar appearance, a type of weapon or dialogue options. Having a multitude of choices in games are fun, however, having too many choices can also have a negative impact on games.

Barry Schwartz (2005) carried out a study with regards to the Paradox of Choice. After extensive research, Schwartz concluded that having too many choices can be detrimental and when a person faces too many choices, this can lead to what Schwartz describes as option paralysis. In games, this could lead to the disruption of flow, because it gives the player too many options and make the task seem more difficult. Furthermore, humans tend to make worse decisions when too many choices are presented and will likely feel regret no matter which option they pick, since they think that better choices could have been made.

Playing the game League of Legends felt very overwhelming when I first tried it out. The game had a lot of characters to choose from and a lot of different item builds that could be applied. Furthermore, it had runes and masteries as well which were different for each champion. Since I first started playing League of Legends back in 2010, the game has come a long way and made some great updates to minimize the paradox of choice.

The first technique LoL used was to provide recommended items for each champion which acted as default options so that users would have the ability to buy from the recommended items when in doubt. Secondly, LoL items have little permanence (the idea that an option has very long-lasting impact) and after each game, all items are reset which allows for players to experiment with different builds in the next game and not feel anxious about it.

Recommended Items tab in-game

In 2017, LoL came up with another great idea to reduce the paradox of choice. They made an update so that runes and masteries would be combined together into one mastery tree and they renamed these to Runes Reforged.

Runes Reforged

To conclude, choices are an important part of games, however they need to be balanced with simplicity and having moderation is a good principle to follow to keep the game at a good flow level (Guerrero, 2013).

References

Guerrero, M., 2013. Design Better Games! Flow, Motivation, & Fun. [online] Calhoun.nps.edu. Available at: <https://calhoun.nps.edu/bitstream/handle/10945/49711/Guerrero_Chapter5_Flow_Motivation_Fun_chapter.pdf?sequence=3&gt; [Accessed 1 June 2018].

Schwartz, B., 2005. The Paradox of Choice: Why More is Less. [online] Swarthmore College. Available at: <https://www.researchgate.net/publication/291786346_The_Paradox_of_Choice_Why_More_is_Less?el=1_x_8&enrichId=rgreq-cebb1b5aecb485dca2f6d2356081886d-XXX&enrichSource=Y292ZXJQYWdlOzI2NjA1MjkwMDtBUzoxNTI5NzkyMzE0ODE4NTZAMTQxMzQ4NDQ5OTkxNQ==> %5BAccessed 1 June 2018].

 

Week 10: Narrative Engagement – Alan Wake

Research shows that the extent to which one becomes engaged in a game narrative, influences the narrative’s potential to affect subsequent story-related attitudes and beliefs.

According to Rick Busselle and Helena Bilandzic (2009), similarly to flow, for someone to be narratively engaged in a game, the player him/herself must lose awareness and enter the story itself. The author breaks this concept down into four factors which are important for narrative engagement:

• Narrative understanding – This means that the game is easy to understand and that the audience should be unaware of the comprehension
• Attentional focus – The viewer should not be aware that he/she is focused
• Emotional engagement – Developing emotions for the characters of the game
• Narrative presence –  This is the sensation of being present in the game and being involved in the story

In his paper, Raymond Mar (2004) also talks about the neuropsychology of the narrative which is the story comprehension, the story production and their interrelation, and Mar states that both the comprehension as well as the production of written and oral narratives are fundamental for our experience.

Furthermore, in another paper by Rick Busselle and Helena Bilandzic (2008), the authors state that the probability of enhancing our emotions and feel for the characters or the plot is increased when we know that the narrative is fictional and that the story and its characters are invented for our entertainment. (Toivio, 2016)

While playing Alan Wake, I experienced most of these elements. I became emotionally engaged to the protagonist and his wife in the first 30 minutes of the game when Alice (Alan’s wife) was dragged by an unknown force into the lake just after they had a fight and Alan jumped to save her. He ends up blacking out as he submerges from the water and finds himself in his broken car off-road with no recollection as to how he got there.

Alan makes his way to town to alert the authorities of his wife’s disappearance, but the sheriff tells him that there had been no island or a cabin for years, after it was engulfed by a volcanic eruption years before. At this point in the game, I felt involved, wanting to know how the story was going to unfold and the game had my full undivided attention. I also enjoyed the fact that the story brought into question Alan Wake’s sanity, which made me want to know more.

The narrative of the game was also quiet easy to understand and follow along. The game had a lot of cut-scenes, explaining the story as the game progressed and Alan himself would occasionally narrate his feelings to us or explain a new revelation he had found.

HOWEVER

Halfway through the game, I started to lose interest. I felt the game started to become repetitive and most of the story took place in the woods. The story and actions also became somewhat predictable, mainly because the manuscript pages that had to be located would pretty much reveal what was going to happen next.

While playing the game, I also failed to understand one major concept. The darkness wanted Alan to finish his story so that it could escape (whatever Alan wrote came to life), so what was confusing for me was the reason as to why the “Taken” (the ones controlled by darkness itself) were trying to kill Alan Wake. It was very contradictory and by knowing this, it made the game feel narratively disengaging.

Rick Busselle and Helena Bilandzic (2009) states that there are a number of factors that can interfere with engagement, including plot flaws, inconsistent behaviour, inconsistent portrayal of the real world or even the genre of the game.

 

References

Busselle, R. and Bilandzic, H. (2009). Measuring Narrative Engagement. [online] Hypermedia468.pbworks.com. Available at: http://hypermedia468.pbworks.com/w/file/fetch/80687372/measuring%20narrative%20engagement.pdf [Accessed 28 May 2018].

Mar, R. (2003). The neuropsychology of narrative: story comprehension, story production and their interrelation. [online] Yorku.ca. Available at: http://www.yorku.ca/mar/mar%202004_neuropsychology%20of%20narrative.pdf [Accessed 28 May 2018].

Toivio, O. (2016). PSYCHOLOGICAL TRIGGERS IN VIDEO GAMES. [online] Jyx.jyu.fi. Available at: https://jyx.jyu.fi/bitstream/handle/123456789/51380/URN:NBN:fi:jyu-201609164128.pdf?sequence=1 [Accessed 28 May 2018].

Reflective Writing – Post 12

I would like to dedicate my last reflective blog post on how far I have come in those last two years and reflect back on the good things and the bad things I done, mainly with regards to my time management.

It is safe to say that I have always managed to finish my work and assignments on time up to this point which is a good thing in itself, however I still feel that for the most part, I could have done more and eventually would have gotten a better grade in most of the assignments.

The reason why I think so is because I manage to finish my assignments always one or two days before, sometimes even on the same date as the submission, and this gives me little to no time to double check my work and make necessary arrangements or improvements.

This reminds me of the importance that MCAST can’t seem to stop stressing us about, with regards to managing our time. I tried making use of gantt charts, but I always end up ignoring those eventually. I do not take them seriously enough to be committed to them. There is however an alternative which I have not yet tried.

This year, one of our lecturers introduced us to an application called “Habitica” which is basically an application used to build habits and achieve one’s goals and motivate an individual to pursue them. It is a way of gamifying one’s life.

Screenshot taken from Habitica 

I could use this app to set daily goals such as:

• Finish one blog of Psychology of Play every week
• Finish one blog of Critical Thinking every week
• Write 200 words each day for the report of Task 2

For my next assignment/project I could make use of this application which might make my life easier knowing that I have a goal to reach, so that I could get experience points and this would in turn keep me from procrastination and have enough time to double check and improve my work.

Reflective Writing – Post 11

In today’s post, I would like to reflect upon the research question I came up with for my thesis proposal.

The first and most important thing I learned during my course at MCAST was that any work I did, whether it be a project or a one thousand word write-up, the subject that I choose should always be one that I like and am passionate about. If the subject that I choose to work on is one that I dislike or feel as if I am not good enough in it, it is probably going to be a recipe for disaster.

This was a very valuable lesson and one which I believe everyone should learn from. I decided to use this idea for my thesis statement as well, and the first thing I did before coming up with my research question was to list down my favourite school subjects. This helped me create a mind map of different areas I could explore and research.

Knowing that this was going to be a one year long project, I had to carefully evaluate my options. One of my favourite subjects that I listed down was 3D modelling, however I did not feel as if I was ready and skilled enough to base my dissertation on this subject, so I opted for my other subject, which was psychology of play. I started looking for variables that I could associate psychology with and finally decided to also include other digital technologies, focusing mostly on AI. Giving focus to these three keywords; psychology, AI and digital games, I found a topic on EBSCOhost which was related to smart homes which helped me bring out my final thesis statement:

“Enhancing the well-being of the elderly with the use of digital technologies through smart homes and digital games.”

Throughout my years at MCAST, I have also learned about the importance of research and getting to know the subject as much as possible by using reliable sources to find articles. This has helped me significantly in conducting my literature review.

Having applied what I have learned in my proposal from previous units, I feel good and ready for my thesis. I am also aware that my statement may have some changes as the year progresses, so I must learn to be flexible with this. The thing I fear the most is that the subject may become complicated and difficult to understand at times, especially where complex science may come in, in which case I would have to simplify things and not deviate from the subject.

Week 9 – Frog Fractions in relation to Mental Models

Mental Model [Definition]:

“A mental model is a person’s internal representation of external reality, based on their learning and experience”, and the key principle of a mental model is the way of how one thinks something will work based on his/her learning and experience.

The first thought that occurred to me when I first started playing Frog Fractions, was that the game was somehow related to mathematical fractions (1/2, 1/4, 1/8) and so on and that it would be educational. The word “Fractions” in my experience always related to math and learning. When I started playing the game however, every bug I was killing was giving me random fractions that meant nothing and the score was also shown in fractions which was not something I was used to and the numbers weren’t making any sense. I had no idea what zorkmids and indignity meant in the game and the only thing that was making sense was the fruit that I was collecting which allowed me to upgrade my skills.

In the game I started off on a lily-pad killing bugs which made sense considering that my character was a frog, and with upgrades I moved on to a turtle which was weird but acceptable and then all of a sudden I found myself riding a dragon which was a whole new level and left me perplexed. After continuing to kill bugs and collecting more fruit, I searched for more upgrades and one of these upgrades required 25,000 fruit, which was a lot for the progress I was making. It went from beginner mode, to highly advanced in terms of fruit collection in a very short time. Now for someone who plays a lot of games, progress usually builds up slowly over-time. I later found out that I could take my dragon-rider frog to another screen when moving downwards and in the bottom I found a lot of fruit and when collecting them, the status changed to “Fruit: Like a billion”, so now not only did I have enough for that 25,000 fruit upgrade skill, but could also upgrade ANY skill. This game went from extremely easy to extremely hard and back to extremely easy again in just a matter of seconds.

The game goes on like this for a while and at one point, in order to progress, one must enter user commands, similar to coding your own frog to do stuff, after which the frog character morphs into a person with a very cringy animated head (the developer’s) which simply put, left me speechless.

Conclusion: The game went against and broke down my mental model of how a normal game is played which in my humble opinion, I found distasteful and not to my liking.

References

Nichols, Jamal (2017). UX Design Basic: Mental Models [online] Youtube. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9gM8K4ooavY [Accessed 13 May. 2018].

Reflective Writing – Post 10

This week, I would like to reflect back on the debate that we had to do for our Critical Thinking subject and mainly point out what I could have done better.

Our debate that we chose was titled “Hacking is a good thing”. Me and Carlston both liked the title name and both of us find hacking an interesting topic, however the problem we had with this topic was that we both were mostly in favour of hacking, but one of us had to debate against it.

Finally we decided that I would go against hacking and point out the reasons for why hacking was bad, while Carlston argues against this. I felt as if I was cheating myself, however I decided to take this as a challenge.

I went in great detail and found some very good research from reliable sources. During the debate I also felt that I came up with some very good arguments, however at one point, during my rebuttal, I could not think of a way to argue against one of the questions that Carlston asked me and so I did not even answer it but rather came up with more questions, arguments and case scenarios to counter this question. I felt lucky at the time that Carlston did not pressure me into answering that particular question, because I would have probably froze.

I actually enjoyed myself during the debate and overall it went pretty smooth, however I still felt a bit uneasy about myself after the debate ended, because I knew that it could’ve gone south really fast had Carlston been more assertive during the debate and this could have easily been avoided had I given as much time doing research for my rebuttal and what questions might be asked by Carlston as much as I did research on my arguments.

One other thing that I felt was missing in my debate were the lack of visuals and/or interactivity to engage with the audience. Without these I felt as if I was losing touch with the audience and that they were getting bored. I also believe that visuals make more impact and also helps solidify an argument. Steven Pinker sums this up perfectly:

Having experienced my first debate, I now know that I need to be better prepared and think ahead for what questions might arise during a debate which may weaken my arguments. I also need to engage more with the audience and in my opinion I think that this would be best achieved through visuals (images, statistics, videos) using of course reliable sources.

Reflective Writing – Post 9

Update: After six weeks, MCAST finally got us a lecturer to teach us AI. Our new lecturer is much better than the previous one, but sometimes I feel that during explanations we would not understand each other fully.

When our teacher is explaining herself and the subject, it’s as if she starts to jump from one topic to the other without ever concluding one and most of the time I end up not understanding what the teacher expects from me for the class exercises because I lose interest.

I would then have to proceed and ask my other classmates on what it is that we should be doing. This is the only lecture where I find myself doing this and what makes it even worse is that I feel shy or embarrassed to ask the lecturer to re-explain the task. This is very unlike me because usually I tend to ask questions when I do not understand something. It could be that for some reason I feel intimidated by the lecturer.

Having experienced this in the past three lessons that we had, I now feel as if it is rather foolish to ask for an explanation from my friends. Perhaps the reason why I feel shy is because I feel as if I am wasting the time of my friends.

For next time, the best thing I should do, if I do not understand something the teacher said, is wait until she finishes speaking and then go and ask her in private. That way I would not feel as if I am wasting my friends’ time and would probably understand the subject better.

 

Week 8 – Player types in ‘Politicks’

According to Bartle, players can be classified into four categories when it comes to gaming;

• Killers – These are the kind of players that like player vs player competitions and thrives on destruction and causing havoc. They also like to be recognized even if it’s in bad form which is why trolls also fall under this category. Simply put, they enjoy beating and taking out other players more than actually winning a game.
• Achievers – These are the type of players that love goals and challenges (can be set by themselves or the game). They are interested in winning the game and receive rewards, points or accomplishments.
• Socializers – These are the type of players that prefer socializing with other players rather than playing the game. They are there for the community and constantly seek player interaction through game forums, clans and/or guilds and they simply love to meet other new players.
• Explorers – Explorers love discovery. They like to get to places where no other or only a few people have been before. They like easter eggs and trying out different ways and means to progress through the game. They are in my opinion the what if players, because they are always coming up with the what if question on how to do things differently in the game and these are the players who find glitches, shortcuts and tricks in the game.

 

In this week we had to analyze a team mate we were paired up with and list down the player-type personality that the player had while playing the game “Politicks” in relation to Bartle’s player taxonomy. During the game, I took down notes of Paul’s (my team mate) actions of play. They were as follows:

• At first, Paul was mostly interested into getting to know the game better by carefully studying the cards in his hand, which is why he decided to pass twice before making his move.
• Then I noticed that he had a card where he could easily punish any player he liked, which he then decided to use on the player that was winning the round.
• While the round was being played, a player from the group which was at that time in second place, played a card which was going to give him a huge advantage over the group and so Paul used a reaction card to deny him from doing so to disable this from happening, and Paul had the grandest smile. He felt proud and recognized after he achieved an ovation from the others.
• During one of the plays, a player from the group played an event card that undermined Paul’s politician influence points, but soon after, Paul got back his revenge and eventually finished winning the game.

In this case, I would consider Paul to be a killer. Although he ended up winning the game, he was more focused on beating opponents head to head and even at times, while he was playing the game and made a mistake which hindered him from winning, his reactions were : “uwijja mhux xorta”, meaning that he didn’t make a big deal out of it which is not from my perspective an achiever’s way of thinking.

References

Tomek, Jordan (2017). Gamification 101: Richard Bartle Player Types [online] repignite. Available at: https://repignite.com/2014/07/richard-bartle-player-types/ [Accessed 01 May. 2018].

Kyatric (2013). Bartle’s Taxonomy of Player Types [online] envatotuts+. Available at: https://gamedevelopment.tutsplus.com/articles/bartles-taxonomy-of-player-types-and-why-it-doesnt-apply-to-everything–gamedev-4173 [Accessed 01 May. 2018].

Week 7 – Spatial and Self presence

INSIDE – a 2.5D puzzle & adventure platformer game which I felt present in up to a certain point while playing it.

According to Lombard and Ditton, The term “presence” can be split into six different concepts; presence as social richness, presence as realism, presence as transportation, presence as immersion, presence as social actor within a medium and presence as medium as social actor.

Would I say that I felt myself being present to a certain extent while playing INSIDE? The answer is – Most Definitely.

As the title of the blog suggests, presence has also been categorised as Spatial Presence and Self Presence. Spatial presence would be the term defined as the sense of being physically located in a virtual environment (Ijssellsteijn, de Ridder, Freeman and Avons, 2000) which I did feel at times during my gameplay, most notably during those moments where I was being chased after. Self Present on the other hand is when a user experiences their virtual self as if it were their actual self (Lee, 2004) which in the game I did not really feel. I was fully aware during the whole gameplay that the character in the game was just the character, and not me.

The part where I would say that I felt really present in terms of realism and immersion were those times where I was walking through the shrubs and the antagonists heard me, switched on their torch lights and came running after me or when the dogs came after me and even when there were sounds of machinery and other objects such as the sound of the truck engine. The audio of the game was so good, that it actually sounded like the real thing and would be very difficult to distinguish one from the other, which is why I felt really present during those times. It also got my heart beat faster at those times! What made it even more lifelike was when the boys’ breath became more laboured as he was running and even continued when he stopped running to catch his breath which is close to what happens in real life.

From my research I also found that the music track for INSIDE was recorded using a human skull. The reason for this was that Andersen (INSIDE’s composer and sound designer) was interested to experiment with how the track would sound like from inside one’s own head. (Websiter, 2016)

Would I say that while I was playing this game, I actually felt for the character? No, I wouldn’t, not even when the character died in awful ways (I didn’t even twitch), however playing the game through the character managed to give me this feeling of loneliness.

As the game progressed, I started to get a bit bored, mostly because I felt that the game was becoming a bit repetitive, with the only difference that the puzzles got harder. There were also a few times where I simply couldn’t figure out the puzzle and had to go through a game walk-through to solve it, which alternatively ruined my game flow.

Conclusion: I had fun playing this game and actually spent 4.5 hours straight playing it without taking a break, which in itself does show that I was really into it, however it was not a game that made me feel totally immersed either.

References

Lombard, Matthew, Theresa, Ditton (2006). At the Heart of it All: The Concept of Presence. [online] Wiley Online Library. Available at: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/j.1083-6101.1997.tb00072.x [Accessed 28 Apr. 2018].

Daniel R Mestre (2005). Immersion and Presence [online] CNRS & University of the Mediterranean. Available at: http://www.ism.univmed.fr/mestre/projects/virtual%20reality/Pres_2005.pdf [Accessed 28 Apr. 2018].

Jones, Alyx (2017). INSIDE Game Audio Review [online] TheSoundArchitect. Available at: http://www.thesoundarchitect.co.uk/inside-game-audio-review/ [Accessed 28 Apr. 2018].

Webster, Andrew (2016). The soundtrack for INSIDE was recorded using a human skull. [online] The Verge. Available at: https://www.theverge.com/2016/10/6/13190982/inside-game-soundtrack-human-skull [Accessed 28 Apr. 2018].

 

 

Week 6 – Player involvement experience / Illusion Master

So what makes a game immersive? In the case of the game ‘Illusion Master‘, although the game does not make the player’s experience totally immersive, on some level it still manages to capture the player’s involvement and bring him in Johan Huizinga’s magical circle. How does the game achieve this?

At the start of the game, the player is introduced to the narrative and we are introduced to a magician who has just got his magic chest that holds the power of illusion stolen from a mysterious entity. The magician is of course disappointed at this news and would not simply let his magic chest fall into the wrong hands, so he decides to pursue it and bring it back. Clementine, the magician’s assistant explains how there are minions helping out to the cause and thinks it would be unwise for the magician to go after the chest, however the magician will not listen to reason and decides to go after the chest nonetheless.

At this point in the game I was intrigued and involved in the plot and narrative of the game (into the magical circle I went). I wanted to find out how the story was going to unfold, if the magician (which I was in control of) was going to be able to complete his quest and also who and what form or shape did the ghost-like entity and his minions take? The narrative itself played a good part in making me be a part of the game (immersed) and the game didn’t need to have high-quality graphics for this or any audio for that matter.

Another factor which also played into immersion was the fact that the game makes you feel affectionate for the character. There is an imbalance in the game because the protagonist has unjustifiably gotten his chest stolen and we (the players) want to set things right again and solve this issue.

There is also a pleasant flow to the game. The game takes us straight to the problem (without a lot of dramatisation). After a short cut-scene, the rules of the game are explained in a very simplistic manner and in simple English and provides the player with a clear directive and goal to achieve.

After finishing the game and defeating the boss, the game comes to an end and takes a webcam shot of the player playing the game, hinting that the magician is the player himself.

My conclusion is that Illusion Master is sending a message through playing it more than anything. It is immersive up to a point where the player wants to know what happens and how it happens. The flow of the game makes it engaging and it is not a simple game also. While I was playing it, I got confused many times on which correct key I had to press, especially when the keys were inversed. Feedback was immediately given when the player pressed a wrong key or didn’t press the key at the right time. The only thing I found lacking were the rewards/accomplishments, however it was still an enjoyable casual game.

References

Calleja, G. (2007). [online] Available at: http://www.digra.org/wp-content/uploads/digital-library/07312.10496.pdf [Accessed 23 Apr. 2018].

Ollero, C (2015). What makes games engaging?. [online] Ennomotive. Available at: https://www.ennomotive.com/the-power-of-engaging-games/ [Accessed 23 Apr. 2018].

McMahan, A. (2006). [online] Available at: http://www.phil-fak.uni-duesseldorf.de/fileadmin/Redaktion/Institute/Kultur_und_Medien/Medien_und_Kulturwissenschaft/Dozenten/Szentivanyi/Computerspielanalyse_aus_kulturwissenschaftlicher_Sicht/mcmahan.pdf [Accessed 23 Apr. 2018].