Today I will try to examine more closely how player experience fits into the framework I have build so far. Consequently we will turn away from looking at how a game exist in our real world towards the subjective experience of a player who is faced with a game. In the second part I'll present a flaggy quest design for the first Assassin's Creed game.
The Experienced Game
Unplayed games would be pretty boring to examine, if they were never played. In order to be played, we need a player: Someone who is able to do the player actions that I mentioned in the last post. The played game (e.g. the running video game software) has an interface through which certain inputs of the player are recognized and processed.
But describing these dynamics would still not account for the fact, that there is an inner view onto playing a game. Even if we trace information processing and decision making of the player back to the brain, we do not appreciate, what is going on in the inside: Describing what the player feels, thinks, recognizes etc. is (as far as I see it) not sufficiently doable with physical reality as we understand it right now. Another name for these "individual instances of subjective, conscious experience" is qualia. I will us the word experience, since this is the name which many designers use to denote the same (or a similar) phenomenon.
What does this mean for games and quests? It means that we have to differentiate between the played game as a system that is running in reality and the played game as it is perceived and acted upon by the player.
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| Neither designer/player image nor computer image are my own. |
In this beautiful graphic I tried to visualize some of the terms I introduced. The game "LEGO® The Lord of the Rings™" as object in reality exists in an unplayed variant on a CD (and as installation on my hard disk), but may also also exist in its played variant as a process in my computer's operating system. The informations and action opportunities presented to the player in the played game are one of the two pillars constituting her experience of the game. The other pillar comprises everything the player brings into the game herself - her current mood, her own goals concerning the game, her knowledge, her abilities, previous experiences, how she interprets the actions and informations that happen during play etc.
Let's return to my quest definition:
A quest is a series of connected events and goals, where subsequent event(s)/goal(s) are only revealed, when previous goal(s) have been reached or some event has happened.
It now shows that I defined quests as part of the game object and as part of the experience of someone who reads/plays/designs them: While seriality, some events and goal-inducers may be issued by the running game object, events like player input or a change in mood and goals themselves are created in the player's head.
With these thoughts I proceed to Assassin's Creed.
An "Assassin's Creed" Quest:
The first installment of the Assassin's Creed series famously includes several types of flags which could (optionally) be collected. Besides being needed to archieve full synchronization these flags had no obvious meaning at all for playing the rest of the game. I will try to build a quest around (some of) these flags.
In the game the flags are distributed all over the maps, but every flag type appears only on one map (or even a specific district in it) exclusively. Many of them are placed in special-looking corners or places that aren't usually traversed by the player. According to the Assassin's Creed Wiki, the flags can also be interpreted as symbols of power: The different factions planted their flags in order to express their dominance.
This led me to the idea of local flag-quests: In this conception some districts/areas, which are controlled by certain factions, have a quest associated to them which tell a story of that area while letting the player gather those flags. I want to follow the idea of flags as symbols of power here: Main narrative of each flag-quest shall be the further dismantling of "evil" powers by removing the flags and thus reducing the faction's presence in the area.
However, looking at the current flag types and their numbers, some changes need to be made.
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| Source: Assassin's Creed Wiki |
First of all, since we're playing an assassin, removing assassin flags doesn't seem very sensible. Maybe an alternative narrative could be constructed around that, but this shall not be the concern here. Secondly, most of these numbers seem way to high for a small story-quest to fit around them. So either these numbers (and the associated areas) need to be split up, or the number itself is reduced. For a game that is centered on its run and climb mechanics, 10 to 30 flags seem to be reasonable. Lastly the "Kingdom" is a bit of a problem for my concept: It consists of many different loosely connected areas. Maybe here, too, smaller areas with local rulers may be constructed but dealing with this shan't be of importance here either.
Now how could these flags be a more interesting gameplay mechanic instead of just being something to collect? Idea: Since the Assassin's Creed maps are essentially open worlds, quests would have the problem of guiding the player in the right places. One could place the flags of each flag-quest in such a way that they give the player an easy spottable hint of where the quest proceeds next.
I will stop here, and continue next time with building a concrete narrative in a concrete location using this basic idea.
Ideas for Feedback
- In what points might my analysis of the place of quests in relation to (un)played game and player be not valid or imprecise?
- Are flags suffiecient as a means to guide a player through an open world quest?
Conclusion
When I talked about player experience, I added the last piece of my understanding of how design, play, game and player relate to another on a bigger scale. These relations are, as I realized today, inspired by Jesse Schell's The Art of Game Design and Don Norman's Design of Everyday Things.
I also tried to make flag collection more interesting in Assassin's Creed and the approach of using it as goal-inducers with light narrative connotation seems promising so far. We (or I) will see next time, whether a concrete quest can be constructed to that in a sensible way.
Until then, have a good time!
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