Good infographic

I like so much this infographic that shows the positive facts of gaming.

All information from http://www.grabstats.com/

Szia!

Kinds of players

What kind of player are you? It's a complicated question and in fact there are a lot of kinds of players. Just to give an example we can talk about the proposed types of players in a Massive Multiplayer Online Game. Schreiber (2009) citing Bartle (1996) says that in this genre of game it's possible to identify four types of players:

•Achievers >> find it enjoyable to gain power, level up, and generally to “win” the game (to the extent that an ongoing, never-ending game can be “won”).

•Explorers >> want to explore the world, build mental maps of the different areas in their heads, and generally figure out what is in their surroundings.

•Socializers >> use the game as a social medium. They play for the interaction with other players. The gameplay systems are just a convenient excuse to get together and play with friends.

•Killers >> (today we call them “griefers”) derive their fun from ruining other people’s fun.

I think it's impossible to categorize all kinds of players of all gaming genres but I really like the synthetic idea of the graph below:

The most important point in the discussion about kinds of players is: know your audience to know how to create a consistent difficult progression and a good experience to the players. The next graph (from Fundamentals of Game Design, p.345) summarizes this thought:

I believe this is another fundamental concept to apply in game design.

What do you think about that?

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References:

ADAMS, Ernest. Fundamentals of Game Design. New Riders: 2009

BARTLE, Richard. HEARTS, CLUBS, DIAMONDS, SPADES: PLAYERS WHO SUIT MUDS. Digital article (link here)

SCHREIBER, Ian. Kinds of Fun, Kinds of Players. Digital article (link here)

The videogame entertainment curve

The concept of cybertext

Last year (at DIGRA 2011/Netherlands) I had the honor to know personally one of my favorite authors: Espen Aarseth. Aarseth is a main figure in the fields of video game studies and electronic literature.

I really like some ideas from his book Cibertext and I want to share them in this post. I think that cybertext is an important concept inside the game design universe.

As Aarseth says:

The concept of cybertext focuses on the mechanical organization of the text, by positing the intricacies of the medium as an integral part of the literary exchange. However, it also centers attention on the consumer, or user, of the text, as a more integrated figure than even reader-response theorists would claim. The performance of their reader takes place all in his head, while the user of cybertext also performs in an extranoematic sense. During the cybertextual process, the user will have effectuated a semiotic sequence, and this selective movement is a work of physical construction that the various concepts of “reading” do not account for. This phenomenon I call ergodic, using a term appropriated from physics that derives from the Greek words ergon and hodos, meaning “work” and “path”. In ergodic literature, nontrivial effort is required to allow the reader to traverse the text. If ergodic literature is to make sense as a concept, there must also be nonergodic literature, where the effort to traverse the text is trivial, with no extranoematic responsibilities placed on the reader except (for example) eye movement and the periodic or arbitrary turning of pages. (page 1)

I believe this is a fundamental concept to apply in game writing.

What do you think about that?

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Reference:

AARSETH, Espen. Cibertext: Perspectives on Ergodic Literature. The Johns Hopkins University Press: Maryland, 1997.