Saturday Discussion Week 10/26-11/2 & Stuffz

Hello all! This week I talked about the Golden Ratio, Fibonacci Sequence, Game sociology and Bartle's Player types. Today, I will try to discuss further into these topics. 

You can find the articles here:

Golden Ratio & Fibonacci Sequence
Game sociology & Bartle's Player types

Random Fact: Giacomo Casanova was a librarian.

Grab a cup of tea and let's get started!

Golden Ratio, Fibonacci Sequence & Applications to Game Design.

The Golden Ratio is a good guideline when making interfaces. Twitter's interface is based on the fibonacci spiral, which is based on the golden ratio.

You can flip it to any side you want, but it's genuinely better to follow the way people from your side of the hemisphere see things.

In the western hemisphere, people see pictures from left to right, top to bottom. This is why you always see the company logo in an ad, bottom right.

One other big application the fibonacci numbers have in games is in pacing. You can create a virtual scale for your game, using the fibonacci numbers. For example. you have a scale of 1,2,3,5,8.

When creating pace in a level you can use these to determine it's intencity, time and type.

This is gonna get complicated, but bear with me:

In a platformer game for example:

Intencity (int): Number of monsters the player faces in an area, or risks he has to take.

Time (s): The expected time the area would need for the player to finish it.

Type (t): Killing monsters (mon) or doing parkour over hot lava (par).

A good level would be:

1. int: 5 s: 3 t: par
2. int: 1 s: 1 t: mon
3. int: 2 s: 3 t: mon
4. int: 8 s: 5 t: par
5. int: 5 s: 8 t: mon

And so on.

As you might have noticed, this level would be made for a seasoned gamer. It always comes down to your target audience, so try to decide on it first thing on the drawing board.

This blog encourages personal research. Find a good game that you are playing/played and a bad one. Then, try to determine the types and combinations of types of gameplay both games have, and how much time it takes to switch between these types. You might find out that the good game's times are very close to the fibonacci numbers while the bad game's aren't.

Let's try it out.

Ill do a good game for the purpose of explanation.

League of Legends.

Depending on the role of your team, you get different types of gameplay. For the purpose of this example let's pick the top-laner, as it's the most unsubtle one. A typical gamer's experience would be:

1. 00-02: Get to lane/Leash blue/red for jungler
2. 02-04: Farm minions and try to get advantage over opponent
3. 04-05: Rechieve gank from his or opposite team
4. 05-06: Go back to fountain after dying or killing opponent to get items
5. 06-12: Try to expand or minimize advantage/disadvantage
6. 12-20: Protect or engage on objectives (Towers, Dragon)
7. 20-30: Join up with your team to engage or protect more objectives
8. 30-45: Engage on teamfights and end-game objectives.

As you can see, the diffrences in minutes between types of gameplay are really close to the fibonacci numbers. This is a macroview of a typical game, ofcourse. The game itself is much more complex in pacing as there is a great amount of variables to consider.

Multiplayer Game Types and Player Types

Game types:

• Competitive
• Cooperative
• Conjugate of both

Player types:

• Killers
• Achievers
• Socializers
• Explorers

You can find more information about these in this post.

A proper commercial game, would want to make a game that has mechanics that all player types would enjoy. But what if there are mechanics made for player types that make people detest each other? (looking at tnt in minecraft) Absolutely good things. There is no thing as negative conflict between players in a multiplayer game. Conflicts provide an activation of social interaction which is the basis of a social experience.

So which game type is the best?

Competitive? Cooperative? No. Game history has showed us that a balance of both is the best to include all 4 types of players.

Competitive games would create an audience for:

• Achievers
• Killers

Cooperative games would create an audience for:

• Socializers
• Explorers

Conjugate of both games would create an audience for:

• Killers
• Achievers
• Socializers
• Explorers

That means it creates space for the players to:

• Act on their own
• Interact with each other
• Act in the gamespace
• Interact with the gamespace

whereas competitive games mostly support the first two and cooperative games the last three.

But why are there still competitive and cooperative games? They tend to do one thing well, but the audience is limited. It's not a dealbreaker, though. Counter-Strike for example. The typical player would simply run around and shoot people. It's one thing, and it's being executed by the game well. Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon Phantoms on the other hand, does a lot of things well and supports all player types.

This is all for this week. I hope you guys enjoyed. I am currently trying to get better at writing so if you guys find any problems or care for some constructive criticism, comment below.

Bonus

This week I've been watching this anime called Sora no Otoshimono. It is enlisted as an ecchi or harem anime, but I thought it was pretty plot-based. Any nudity (even though there was non) that might have occured served the plot well. It is a lovely love-story that I won't talk about further as there is a great amount of good reviews of it.

See you next week, all! ☺