Atmosphere

[Amirilys]

Hi everybody,

It's been almost half a year since I posted last here. But I've been a very busy girl. I found my definition of gameplay (Thanks again for your help Zergul, you're definitely in my credits) and wrote about 40 pages about it. Now, for finishing my thesis, I have new questions.

Game designer Overmars says that the gamer feels present in the game world because of:
- the story
- the way the character looks and behaves. Most characters do not have strong personalities so that the gamer can identify with them sooner. Only FPS, adventures and rpgs have strong personalities, because they are heroes. This is contradictory, because you cannot see the avatar in FPS, so you wouldn't need to identify yourself with the avatar in that particular way.
- surroundings
- changes in the game world in response to gamer's actions.

Because gamers feel present in a game, they can see/hear its 'atmosphere' ( as in that game has a "scary atmosphere"). Atmosphere is
- surroundings
- view (1st, 3rd, god-view etc.)
- changes in the game world in response to gamer's actions
- controls

Question in relation to view:
I think the gamers I asked to describe "atmosphere" were unconsciously talking only of FPS games. They say "Doom 3 has a great chill factor" or "Residence Evil mad me jump from time to time". Can I assume that other games also have atmosphere, even if you can see your avatar onscreen?

Question in relation to immersion:
The gamers didn't talk about being an avatar or the story. So maybe the character doesn't count for anything other than entertaining. The story might only be information and a motivation factor.
Or do character and story count in feeling present in a game, but were these gamers just so immersed that they were unconscious of this fact?

[Zergul]

It's for sure that we are making a good team. I welcome you Amirilys. Every time you come here and post something the "neurons" begin the run wild. Good problems, good questions. Let's move on!

Let's define atmosphere.

Definition 1: atmosphere = feelings or/and reactions "felt" by the player when playing the game. Let's call them simple EMOTIONS. An atmospheric game/movie/book creates emotions. Emotions cannot be felt without "living in the other world". If other definitions comes to my mind I'll be back with no. 2.


"Bring answers man! a voice shouted from the dark"... Who/what creates atmosphere?

1. Environment (style = colors + arhitecture + familiarity hook + music + special sound effects)
2. Feedback (game response to player actions = story delivers another unknown-surprising-chapter, objects reactions, familiarity hook again).

I'll use examples further.

1. BIG BAD ENVIRONMENT
a) Colors. I quote (from memory) from Blizzard Artist Job Description "an excellent eye for color and shadows". Colors usually are connected with an idea: white = purity, surrender, yellow = sun, red = blood, danger, action, fire, green = relax, nature, black = evil and so on. The more colors we have together on a texture, level or efects the more complex (and less predictible) emotions we can create.

Colors have two classes:
- warm = white, yellow, pink, red (i'm not sure, research if you want to mentions this), green (i'm not sure too)
- cold = black, blue, magenta, brown.

Warm colors are used to express beauty, purity, nice things, happiness, honour.

Cold colors are used to express the evil, danger, tension, sadness.

Tones are also important. In paiting, tones are obtained by mixing the original color with white for bright tones or black for dark tones. I cannot tell you to much about this as I'm not a painter nor an artist (just hand drawing). Please read a course on color tones, I'm sure you will find it useful. Here is where you need "an excellent eye" . Keep in mind there are dark and bright tones. A cold color with a bright tone can express something good while the same color with a dark tone will express sadness. Best example: color = blue. Dark blue means tension (most action movies are made on this pelicula) while bright blue could have the meaning of a clean summer sky.

An interesting thing: Tirael, the angel who advice you in Diablo II, is made of pure white light but the face and his "inside" is mate-black. Here is a philosophic idea i think, the light take life from the original "VOID" which, by default, is black. The contrast and the idea made from him a shocking piece of art when the people saw the movie.

Thief, the game who made "the shadow" the principal element of gameplay. The colors are "dots" on the dark, almost black, world. Most of the colors was made of dark tones (both cold and warm colors) and a lot of shadows to create tension (we will discuss later other tension elements).

Quake 2 is made mostly of brown and gray colors. Its action takes place in a robotic alien environment which, as a fact, is not friendly.



b) Arhitecture
The level designers have always been looking for great big places but engines (and computers in the end of the pipeline) were not able to display them at good speed. Human beeing like big places. The like open wide places. This creates the idea of greatness, temples were made like this in ancient times to create the feeling of meaningless in the minds of poor peasants and even nobility. "The god is great, you're nothing!". Cathedrals are made like this. Castles are made like this.

In the other place there is the narrow-claustrofobic Doom or Quake corridors. Small places mean little place for manuevering in battle, mean dangerous enemies can appear right next to you and damage you hard.

Arhitecture must sustain the gameplay and the game intended feeling. (we are talking about the atmosphere only).

c) Familiarity hook
Every game must inherit something from some "already known content" to look familiar enough to prevent player become discouraged. We talked about this in the gameplay thread. Even it's an alien environment player should be able to recognize functions and things purposes without help. "This is a control panel, this is a weapon, this is the throne room, this is exit door, this is toilet". Player already have a vocabulary. Make use of it! Dont come with names like Dsks, Skr'Hajda or other impossible things. Inspire from real things, everything must have an "already-known meaning". Dont use green light to transmit an alarm when red is already associated with it. Dont force player to "rename" his feelings to corespond to your code. When facing a red intermitent light he will know he is in danger.

d) Music
e) Special sound effects
I'll discuss later. I wanted not to lose the idea with vocabulary. Now i have to go.

f) Vocabulary
I talked about colors, familiarity, arhitecture. Every piece of them must be associated with a reflex. Like Pavlov dog (the experiment - if you dont know about it search on Google) and conditioned reflex. Player hears a certain rage - he knows the enemy is close. "You town is under attack" you can hear in most RTS games. That means enemy is siegeing you base. In Painkiller (a recent FPS) you hear a specific voice when there are no more enemies. You suddenly relax. In Doom 3 you look after everycorner because you know that there are 80% percent chances to hide an ugly non-friendly monster who will backstab you if you pass it too quickly. If you attach a timed mission to every round yellow button in game the player will learn this and press them only when he will be prepared. Or the square yellow will bring danger close (everytime it is pressed).

[Zergul]

d) Special sound effects & speech

I'm back. I dont like "unfinished business". Like Jagged Alliance . A good game. Characters have strong personalities because of their speech and less because of their appearance.

A good example to create tension. Chaingun in Quake 2 is a lethal weapon in the hands of a good player. He also has a special sound effect. You can hear it and you know somebody in a multiplayer game will die shortly after. You hear a rocket launched. You stop because it can hit your head right after you pass the corner.

Assign sound effects to everything "it is supposed in real world to make sound". Watch movies and try the art of creating good sounds. We spoke about color tones and color warmth. Sounds have high frequencies (alto) and low frequencies (bass).

Go to opera. Close eyes and listen. Be inspired.


e) Music

Music creates atmosphere. Coral (group) music is perfect for fantasy games. Fast rock will make adrenaline to rush your blood when running from an angry big bad monster. Orchestra will raise tension while walking slowly on a dark corridor. Tribal sounds will be perfect in a rts game in the stone age. Hip hop music is must in illegal races of NFS:Underground. But music never make a game. It only sustains atmophere which is an important thing .

I wait for future disscutions. I think there is still a lot of room for debate.

[Zergul]

Ah...i forgot to mention again... gamer feels in the game if he has EMOTIONS.

[Amirilys]

Thank you maestro!!

The thing about colors didn't even cross my mind before.
I'm going to think everything over...I'll be back

[Amirilys]

First very basic question:
Is "immersion": the way a game draws you into into itself (by environment, perspective, character, interface and game response) which gives the player a feeling of presence in the game world), the same as "atmosphere": the emotions/feelings felt by the player while playing the game?
I have the feeling it is not so, but a lot of the same methods are used for these different things.

[Zergul]

Very good meaning difference between immersion and atmosphere. I'll come back tomorrow or later with an answer. I'm very busy right now. I have just taken a peep for you oppinions .

[Zergul]

Immersion vs Atmosphere.

In the last post I talked about atm.

Immersion = how strong the player lose contact with the reality and live only in the game world.

Atmosphere = how much the created world fits (in the player's eyes) with the intended world.

Thief wanted to create a medieval-tech world with stealth as principal gameplay element. This created tension and further it create immersion. The player is "caught" in the game and all his attention is on the guards and his moves. He panics when guards are alerted but feel when he fire off a torch. He is "immersed in the game" because he PERMANENTLY HAS TO DO DECISIONS WHICH CAN AFFECT HIS AVATAR AND THE COURSE OF THE GAME.

The atmosphere consists in a dark shadowed medieval arhitecture, supra-realism (I think this is the word) mechanics and machines, guards with personality and the idea of beeing a stealth thief.

Talking about the aspects we disscussed in the last post (music, color, sounds, arhitecture etc) we can say that their form creates atmosphere (gothic, medieval, sci-fi, post-apocaliptic, fantasy etc). The actual implementation creates immersion. If the game atmosphere is equal to the atmosphere the game designer intedent (conceptually and technically) to create AND the game ASKS FOR PERMANENT WISE DECISIONS the game is immersive.

I think I've made a lot of spelling mistakes...... it was not part of the atmosphere. When I will refine all these elements in my mind I'll come back with a better answer.

[Amirilys]

Thanks for replying Zergul

Your definition of atmosphere ties in perfectly with a problem I had. I got a lot of responses from gamers who said that "style" had something to do with it: they didn't want a happy song while playing a murder game. Now I have a definition of style to work with.

For me it's decision-time. I make 2 decisions:

1) I am only going to describe the gameplay of single player games. Not multi players because I haven't done any research on player-players relationships and communication. Social studies would hang me for it. Maybe another time.

But this part is the best :
A whole new thought Zergul! You say atmosphere comes before immersion.
This I have to think about, because I thought it was the other way around.
I thought that once a player is immersed in a game, he/she would let its atmosphere come to him/her to experience.

There are two theories on this:
- the player imagines the game world as a whole, eventhough it is not a whole. Game worlds are levels, or platforms or worlds like Everquest. only in the last case they are a whole.

- the player accepts the game world as it is. This is Suspension of Disbelief. for example: Players do not question the use of magic in role playing games. They accept that the game world exists out of levels etc.

2) second decision: I thought Suspension of Disbelief was right. But now I'm not sure. When atmosphere comes before immersion, the first theory must be right. What do you think about this?

Also, how do I know what a designer intended? The game needs the right cues to keep the player immersed, but it is a personal opinion to say a concept worked.

I am very interested in your opinion.

[Zergul]

You exposed you idea very good. You gave me two choices and my task remains to choose one and argue on it.

Let's begin from the shop shelves. You see the game box, a nice picture giving you as much information as it could to ignite you IMAGINATION. The box creates atmosphere.

I'll talk a bit on the side of the issue: the imagination. It is demonstrated that the brain and the imagination in the end of the line is the most important part during a sexual relation. You don't see what you actually see but you see what you think. Now let's point this to our box. Nice picture, great echilibrum mixture between the colors and the characters/effects. You have already started to think about the game world without playing it a second. If you saw a trailer or a adsvertising TV spot you already have more information and the world it stronger in your mind.

Age of Empires (www.ensemblestudios.com). The game that used history and education to build a part of his succes. On game box there are three warriors with their specific armors, each of them belonging to one race (in the middle there is a mixture of greek soldier with roman civilisation - the glorious shinning gold armor, the heavy melee units of Phalanx, in the left there is an asirian archer - the ranged and harassment units, in the right the hipnotic pharaon of Egipt - the mistic and mistery of unknown). There were so many movies so it is impossible to know none of these symbols. They (Microsoft and Ensemble) took the model and used in the whole Age serie. Here we used FAMILIARITY to create a HOOK in the game world. A link between the multi-million dollars movies and the game world. The Ancient World! With epic battles and history heroes.

I see the game. This is my peasant. This is the town hall. Nice, I built a house. Yeah... now my civilisation will expand more (more population). I built a barracks. Military units. Hunt. Fish. Bring raw meat home. Like in stone age (the game begins in the stone age). Upgrade to another age. Build archers. Wow, I play with the greek and their famous Hoplites... I upgrade to the almost-invulnerable Phalanx or Centurion. Or the Yamato cavalry. Or Assirian archers...they shoot so far... I've read a book about them; with their 2 Meters long bows (there is a unit Longbow Man) were able to shoot very far and they won a battle like this. I'm in the game universe. There is athmosphere through units names, units history, possible activities (fighting, fishing, hunting, gathering bushels), architechtural style. These created atmosphere.

The rushing to create more villagers, more troops, expanding, attacking and so on immersed the player.


"There are two theories on this:
- the player imagines the game world as a whole, eventhough it is not a whole. Game worlds are levels, or platforms or worlds like Everquest. only in the last case they are a whole.

- the player accepts the game world as it is. This is Suspension of Disbelief. for example: Players do not question the use of magic in role playing games. They accept that the game world exists out of levels etc."

Comming later with this

[Zergul]

About the above theories... the two options are adiacent and not exclusive.

1 - The first one is about reproducing "fragments" of the whole world, still keeping all it's global features and rules. Due to gameplay reason and technical possibilities the wold is represented like this. We actually interested in action so we play a quest map (in MMORPG and action-RPG like Diablo), a map (in FPS and RTS games). The whole world image is constructed by global story and local (map) story (see all Warcraft III maps avaible for download on www.Blizzard.com - they all have a story of their own). The immersion is created by the gameplay (rules - as we talked before).

2 - "the player accepts the game world as it is... here everything depend on implementation and the new rules/elements/characters MUST EXPAND AND SUSTAIN the already known world. Players have expectations (a part of atmosphere is already created in their mind) about your game and if the new rules (let's say magic in a tech world) doesnt have a solid integration and credible back-story they will say...what a BAD MIXTURE OF FINE INDIVIDUAL ELEMENTS ...there are a lot of games with good ideas implemented in a unproper mood.

Note how I made the rules adiacent and not exclusive. More to come... I wait questions

[Amirilys]

Great accomplishment making both theories work. I didn’t look at it that way before. Sometimes I think about problems for days. In the end I can’t think clearly any more. More brain power and discussion is a great help

"the player accepts the game world". How about I make it: the game must have *a unifying logic* not to make individual elements look out of place. A nice quote of Adams (Gamasutra) to other designers: "If you've taken me to away to a magical place where I'm a heroic knight on a glorious quest to rescue the fearsome princess, don't make me sit down and play Mastermind with the dragon"

Again, I made some decisions:
Decision 1 : I can only describe games with game worlds. Game worlds (the imagined/created rather than topological term) can be levels, platforms or whole worlds. Rather have atmosphere as strong argument for few games, than a theory for all games with a very weak argument in cases like Tetris.

Decision 2 : Atmoshpere comes before Suspension of Disbelief. After Suspension of Disbelief, immersion can take place if the player wants to.
Decision 2 leads to interesting questions, as promised....


Problem: what is a quality game

Adams says hardcore gamers want challenges. They create their own challenge by trying to beat their own achievements. Casual gamers want to be entertained. This has implications on game design: for casual gamers gameplay must be not frustrating, otherwise they stop. Gameplay must not be just motor skills (that's the way core gamers like it), but also mind games.
Atmosphere is for casual gamers important than for core gamers.


Adams says that for multi players it is important that players have the same chances. For single players it is important that gameplay is not too hard or too easy. So there are three balances that make a quality game: balance in gameplay*, balance in tactics (more tactics can be used to win) and balance in design (have surprises to reward exploration).

*Balance in gameplay is divided in three balances: player-game (the game must help the player but leave room for real decisions), player-player (winning must not depend on luck, everybody must be in equal positions), balance between gameplay items (the game musn't give the player a stronger weapon when a stronger enemy appears: the player must learn to defeat it).

Now, a game can sell with bad gameplay, because of good atmosphere.
The reason is perhaps because that there are more casual gamers than core gamers. And casual gamers think atmosphere important.

So the quality of a game is determined by gameplay AND atmosphere. Which one is more important, varies per game AND per gamer.

So, there must be a balance even without considering the gamer. A game has quality when:
- atmosphere and gameplay are very good
- the less important element is very bad and the most important one is very good (games can be targeted at marketing groups. So beautiful design/bad gameplay is for casual gamers, and hard gameplay/bad graphics is for core gamers.
- when both are mediocre, the game is mediocre.

The last assumption is funny, and I think something is not right but I don’t know what.
Also, casual/core gamer is a fake dichotomy, because I'm assuming all core gamers don't care about graphics and all casual gamers give up very easily when 'the going get's tough' How can I fix this?

[Zergul]

I know how is "brain off"... I have just returned from work.

"...the game must have *a unifying logic* not to make individual elements look out of place..." That's omogenity = one or more design aspects are common to all game elements (or a subset = class of them).

Examples of different aspects related to omogenity:
- all locks from Thief III: Deadly Shadows are made from one or more "sub-locks" that are opened with the same method.

- human units from Warcraft III are all technological or human-like, some of them have a beard and mustache. Orc units are green-like coloured, wild aspect. Elf units have a mistical aspect and they are all ranged units (except Bears and Stone Giants). Almost all of them have a mythology story behind.

- in Thief III architecture, characters wears, weapons and "letters" are in the Medieval style.

I cant figure out some BETTER examples right now...

Kampmann says: playing (imagining) comes before gaming (acting within game system). Gaming is no longer imagining, but seeing only rules and manipulate them. Like Nemo in Matrix 1.

I agree. It's exactly the same thing I said about creating atmosphere. First, he reads the game-box, he starts to imagine the game world, he imagines himself a ruler or a super hero or else. He plays the game before actually be in the game.

Kampmann process of gaming:
You imagine a game world (graphics and sound help) -> you accept game terms -> you learn how deal with them -> you can anticipate on game (graphics and sound do not matter anymore)

PLAYER have expectations. You MUST offer something better or he will be dissappointed. First the sound and graphics are something new, a world to discover, he must be surprised any minute in a good way. On the long term sound and graphics became only a TOOL to express informations. That's why the game must be first functional and after this it must be beautiful. Here I contradict Kampmann because sound and graphics still continue to be very important. In the beginning they grab the player to explore the game. Secondly, they offer an exciting environment, the player must not be frustrated or he will quit the game. This is more important for hard core gamers who want to play the game over and over and over to master it.

Now I'll jump to hard core gamers and their style of playing but I keep talking about the above subject.

Hardcore gamers learn the basic rules very quickly. They start to think the game in terms of numbers, clicks, conditioned reflexes, timers. The "enter the matrix" like Neo and see only code. They dont read the tips anymore, the do not need more than one sound to know where the enemy is on a Quake map, they dont need more than 0.5 sec to overview enemies units in Warcraft III and designate a target.

I will tell you how hardcore gamers use graphics and sounds to play better.

Case study: Quake series
The level design respect the following rule: if player picks up a something there will be only one sound (or sound scheme if multiple objects are grouped together) associated. After hours of hard playing, the gamer will recognize "where could happen that succession of sounds". In a game where any second (translated in movement distance) counts you just can't pick up the rocket launcher, go to nearest ammunition pack and wait 2 sec before you pick them up because you begin to loose "ground". The enemy is already heading to you. Can you wait?

Case study: Warcraft III
Another high competitional game. All buffs have a distinct graphic effect associated. Ask a hardcore player if he can play with spell detail low - there will be no graphic effect associated. He wont notice instantly if enemy troops have Inner Fire or if his units are Cursed. Again seconds counts...


Does a player wants to be immersed?

YES! He dont want to play a game which is not immersing. He prefers to watch a movie instead. Even a movie is judged after "how much you felt there" - how much emotions created. As I said, you get immersed if the game use in a good way the scheme request-reward. The player starts to think in game terms about how he can complete the request. He founds the sollution, the game rewards it and ask for something more important growing player's ego

For hardcore players the numers and mathematics are a "must have" in game design to get immersed. Most of them like to "dig" for rules and stuff and apply better and better trying to find "the perfect strategy".

For a casual gamer atmosphere is enough. Good gameplay and atmosphere will certainly hold the casual gamer addicted to your game for a long time. For him it doesnt count complicated rules (in opposition complicated rules will just make casual gamers give out). I remember an evening, I was waiting for bus when I was in high school and two businessmen were talking: "I played that game with catapults and Roman Legions...Age of Empires. He (enemy) builded tower but I sieged his town and won". These words are perfectly relevant for casual gamer world. They didnt know statistics like catapult damage, siege damage bonus vs building armor or cavalry has bonus damage vs infantry. They know catapults rules vs towers and they must protects the with infantry vs proximity attacks.

Game learning curve... it is hard or it is easy?
You must ask for the same actions but more ofen.
Warcraft III: only one hero, one ability, only melee units. Simple tactics, no attack bonuses, one magic spell to cast.

Hero lvl 2: two abilities, more units. You have to choose among more options.

Hero lvl x: a lot of abilities, must maximize damage using attack bonus from attack types vs armor types, order to more units.

Autocasting is helping casual players to play the game easy with a lot of units and hardcore players to prevent wasting precious seconds from moving units (in fact it has a very developed tactical part) and giving more important orders.

Immersion is just the result of gameplay & atmosphere (less for hardcore player - for them gameplay is king).

At least one of them must be well developed for a good game. Almost all games are like this (with out AAA titles).

[Amirilys]

Thank you Zergul !!

Now I know enough to finish my work
If my professor finds it good enough I can let it translate into english. If it is, I'll post a link on the forum.

In the future if I have interesting topics, I'll post them. Let's hope I can get a job at a game company and I'll be sure to come up with stuff!!

[Jinxie]

Those who can, do. Those who can't, teach. Those who can't teach,counsel. Those who can't counsel, administrate.

Maybe I sound mean and full of myself, but game design is learned by doing it, not by writing theories about it. Good game design at least.
First do the game design, then write a book about it. Look at Chris Taylor.

End of story.

[Amirilys]

Jinxie,
True, I am not a game designer. And I don't know much about game design. But I'm also not writing a book about it So don't worry, theories are for other purposes.

You probably know about supposed game-violence relation (Doom-Littletown), and supposed game addiction? Not all research is good. This is one sociological method: let some children play Doom and others not, show them all a punch-ball, and if all gamers hit it harder than non-gamers, the game must have caused violent behaviour.

I think this is ridiculous. Something must be done. So I am writing theories to understand game-gamer relationship better and to go back to roots of gameplay.

[Zergul]

It was about me I think... Jinxie, I always play with the rules and even I learn and refine them on the fly it would be a good thing to commit on paper... this could be a good exercise to keep things organised in my mind. I hate games made without a plan or "think ahead".

Next time when we will talk I'll show my work... the "do" and not the "teach" ...otherwise I'm just another no-number game wannabe designer. And it will be a true end of story.

I'll take your post as an advice...

[Drakon]

Very interesting threads indeed. It's nice to know that at least someone IS taking serious thoughts before actualy helping in the process of game design. Unfortunately this is not the case of the majority of game designers, wherefrom the massive invasion of crappy, no good, waste of time games on the game market in the past couple of years. It's like game companies have no respect for good, old fashioned gamers.

I noticed you talked about 2 important elements: atmosphere and gameplay; in my opinion gameplay has a no. 1 priority in a game, but on the other hand, a game with a v. good gameplay and little to none atmosphere does not satisfy my entertainment needs. Take for example "Fallout 2"; this is ranked as one of the best (if not the best) RPG's of all times. Personaly I've yet to finishing the game, but the thing that made me act all reticent towards this game was the poor outdated graphics. Some people might say that the graphics don't count from the immersion point of view, but, at least for me, it does ruin the expirience. So i subscribe to the ideea of atmosphere creating the immersion, at least nowadays, when graphics seem to be in the headlights of every game review. I am not all the way into "graphics makes the game" thingy, but i have to agree to the fact that it plays a very important role in the successful immersion of the player in the game world.

Take note that I am aware of the of the release date of the above mentioned game and the graphical capabilities of game engines at that time. This example was given only to point at the direct connection between atmosphere and immersion.

From what i can see, by playing a various range of games, what game designers fail to achieve is a good ballance between the two (gameplay, atmosphere<--read here graphics as a specific case). By any means i'm not saying that games should be balanced as "mediocre gameplay/mediocre atmosphere", but nonetheless neither should be totaly ignored.

As for hardcore/casual gamers....u should define each of the terms so i can argue on your own definition, for people don't have the same conception about the above terms and that can be missleading and/or pure missunderstanding.

Just my 2 cents on the matter at hand and i hope i wasn't too rude barging in the discussion. Regards.

[Amirilys]

Drakon, I appreciate every comment. I stepped off the casual/core division because it's a fake dichotomy anyway; there are as many gamer types as there are gamers, right (quote Adams)? Instead I have two understandings of gameplay, backed up by following research on gamers' emotions at Games Developers Conference http://www.gdconf.com/archives/2004/index.htm Why We Play Games: The Four Keys to Player Experience
Nicole Lazzaro (XEODesign)
It depends strongly on games what emotions they evoke (emphasis on atmosphere and/or game mechanics). When a player describes gameplay, he/she describes mostly experience. Their definition depends on what their preferences are (again, emphasis on atmosphere or on game mechanics). I'm now making an model that equips both understandings with an analyzing tool.

[Drakon]

Originally Posted by Amirilys

there are as many gamer types as there are gamers

that is soooo true

btw you wanna check this out: http://www.gdconf.com/archives/2004/johnson_soren.zip just in case you haven`t yet....although i doubt it