Dev.log Orange

When it comes to making video games, I always want to make a fun and immersive experience outside of the real world; because to me, video games can be an escape, a hobby, etc. One major aspect I had to consider was the audience for types of games I would be making; I also had to give some thought to how I should structure them. This leads into today's topic: difficulty. I personally feel this is one of the hardest aspects of a game to balance and implement because going too over or under the bar will ruin a game either way. There are a few exceptions though, which loops back to the audience.

I was making some game levels and play through over and over to get a feel of the layout. As someone who loves challenging and difficult games, I thought they were pretty fair. This was until I had to consider a fairly casual to average audience very late after the fact. I then had to remake these levels several times until I felt comfortable with the results. This was when I learned my mentality as a gamer conflicted with that of a game designer; I was making what I wanted and I felt was fun over what was appropriate and best for the game at hand. I managed to complete my tasks, but straying that far off the beaten path I had to follow is something I wouldn't want to repeat at the workplace.

My takeaway from this experience is that I should reassess how difficulty and challenge may appear in the eyes of my audience and that sometimes what I may want and find fun in a game won't be the same as said audience. Again, difficulty is a hard balancing act and one misstep can be bad; this isn't always the case though. The Dark Souls games are notorious for being soul crushingly difficult while Kirby games are known to be way too easy, but both games have found loyal fanbases that consider them to be manageable in their own ways. I know I can't make something everyone can enjoy, but I do know that if I focus on a specific group of people, I'll be able to get an audience one way or another.

Exercise 3.3: Interaction Patterns

For each of the interaction patterns, create a list of your favorite games in each pattern. If you can’t think of any games in a particular pattern, research games in that area and play several of them.

This exercise was very lengthy because of the requirements, but was fun nonetheless. I'll give an example of each interaction pattern and a game I choose from each list. It goes as follows: Super Meat Boy for Single Player vs Game, Diablo 3 for Multiple Individual Players vs Game, Mortal Kombat for Player vs Player, Evolve for Unilateral Competition, Fall Guys for Multilateral Competition, Nicktoons Unite for Cooperative player and Call of Duty for Team Competition. I made lists for all 7 patterns, but I had more trouble with other patterns than I was anticipating.

I had an easy time picking options for single player vs game, player vs player, team competition, and cooperative play. Growing up I played games in all these categories from a very young age until now, so it was second nature to me; this led me to having trouble with the rest. Multiple individual players vs game was a genre I haven't delved into since I played games on Facebook and mobile with games like the Bad Meets Evil game and Farmville. This isn't my regular cup of tea as genres like casual PvE games with friends lists components don't intrigue me much. Multilateral Competition was a brain teaser for a while, but then I remembered the most popular gaming genre right now uses this structure as a base: Battle Royale. Games like Fortnite, Apex Legends and Fall Guys have this every man for themselves strcuture to them, so it became manageable. Unilateral competition was the one I struggled with the most, mainly because the general gaming market doesn't make many games with this structure anymore. Even when they do, they either don't have longevity or they flop, like Evolve .Then remembered games like Mario Party and Bomberman, which again, are far and few entries in between.

I felt I had a reasonable list for each, some more than others. I do feel the ones I struggled with are also the more unique approaches to making a game and less traditional. This doesn't mean these patterns are any better or worse than the others, but I do feel they're less utilized, with the exception of Multilateral Competition. Another thing to mention is that not only did I have trouble making the lists, but the ones I had a tough time making are comprised of games I either haven't played in a long time or haven't touched at all. In that sense, I felt unprepared and I feel I should widen my palette and taste for games; this would give me more insight on more franchises and templates that would help me learn as I go forward with making video games.