Something I’ve gotten from long, long chats on MSN with like minded friends is that often when something applies in one form of art, it can apply in another. I remember sitting up until 3:00am one morning with a friend trying to find a way to write a song that would be in accordance with the Golden Ratio (generally applied to art, I believe) somehow. Nothing came out of it – this does not mean the discussion was not enjoyable.
I’ve been thinking about something lately, and it is converting techniques from song writing into game design (see the post about Judas Priest ;)). One thing that I notice come up when people talk about music a lot is ‘Dynamics’ which is, from what I can tell and have read, putting contrast into the song. This means going from loud to soft, going from fast to slow, that sort of thing, I think.
Personally, I think this could be a very important thing to keep in mind for when building a game and designing the sections. Wouldn’t it keep the player more interested in playing if you threw them from a section where you have to use your powers of observation and such into an action sequence, and from there into a dialogue heavy sequence, instead of having a bunch of item combining puzzles?
Sure, this has been done heaps, via minigames and action sequences, but what if it can be expanded further? I’ve yet to play Spore, but I’m interested in the idea of gameplay style changing as the game progresses. It’s certainly something to keep in mind, even if I’m yet to have a clear grasp on the full extent of what can be done with this technique in game design.
4 comments:
To test how simple dynamics and a subconsciously chosen difficulty level can alter a gaming experience, look no further than here: http://intihuatani.usc.edu/cloud/flowing/core.html
Spore's first game stage is clearly based on this, and the theory behind it is a) laughably simple and b) totally true. ;)
Your insights are starting to do something to the way I look at games, Mr. Ben. Do carry on!
You do realise you're in danger of having more blog entries than days in the month? I'd actually like to see you reach 32 by the end of October.
The golden ratio has been used in classical music (Satie has used it consciously) but in popmusic it does seem a tad more difficult.
There are things to be learned from a good popsong in terms of sequencing:
the most common form for a popsong is:
intro - verse - chorus - verse - chorus - bridge - chorus
You can use this skeleton when designing a game:
- Start with a short (and easy) sequence to draw the player into your game.
- The verse can be seen as a level or a bunch of puzzles;
- The chorus as the end of one thread of your story (or perhaps a boss).
- The bridge in my analogy would be a bonus level.
If you're making frogger or space invaders, you'd have more use of slowly increasing the difficulty, but in a story-heavy game (like graphical IF/Adventure is) this sort of sequencing can really improve the player's response to a game.
Ghost - Heh, interesting and fun (until it crashed my poor, weak internet). I'm interested to hear that my 'insights' are having an effect - I saw this journal more as a place to develop my own thoughts than other people's, but your welcome to share :D
Ian - Not likely to happen this month, man, as I'm trying to keep it to 1 a day to save you from getting bored too quickly. Maybe next month ;)
Twinmoon - Yep, I was sure people had used it in music, but yeah, I meant easy to compose music :D
I like your popsong analogy, it works quite well, and is probably a fairly effective guide to designing levels pacing and balance wise. Then again, some cool songs buck this trend completely (Bohemian Rhapsody, anyone?) and still work very well... Thanks for sharing the thought anyhow :D
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