Useful hints for Gaming

[andrewducker]

I'm currently reading a fantastic article on AI design that has some great tips that apply to pretty much any kind of gaming experience. Here's my favourite so far:

The most useful data we got from our playtests was a list of things to avoid
At the top of that list is Subtlety
If it isn't totally obvious, it's too subtle
Even if you make something as obvious as you can possibly make it, half the people will miss it the first three times they see it
In Halo the Grunts run away when an Elite is killed
Initially nobody noticed so we had to keep adding clues to make it more obvious
By the time we shipped we had made it so not only does _every single_ Grunt run away _every single_ time an Elite is killed
but they all have an outrageously exaggerated panic run where they wave their hands above their heads
they scream in terror
and half the time one of them will say "Leader Dead, Run Away!"
I would still estimate that less than a third of our users made the connection

I wish people had told me that 10 years ago. I never would have bothered with half the intricate plots that were completely wasted until I hammered home what was going on.

GM (Jumping up and down): Evil McNasty then stabs the player's friend in the back while twirling his moustache.
Smarter than the average player: Hmm, I'm sensing that Evil isn't as nice as he seems. From now on I'll keep a closer eye on .... Ooh! Gold!

Comments

[rollick.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I tend to run things so if the players miss a clue, it comes around again with the situation escalated, so it's harder to miss, both because it's bigger and because it should remind them of the previous clue. That's worked reasonably well – at least, I haven't had to kill them all off yet.