follow-up learning curve. New thoughts; more nitpicking :)

[Amirilys]

I split IQz3r0's learning curve into: learning curve (in the game and feature of game) and learning period (can be outside game, and is dependent on abilities, knowledge etc of gamer). Now I have a few problems.

Learning curve offers challenge for basic knowledge and physical abilities to complete basic challenges throughout the game. Challenge can be repeating one challenge over and over again (learning curve of arcade games??), or providing more difficult challenges every time. (Perhaps last option is learning higher order actions??)

Learning curve can be:
- Learning curve has two parts. First part is tutorial before playing game. By completion of tutorial, the player can get basic knowledge/physical abilities to *start* game succesfully. Second part is in the game itself: by playing the player gets basic knowledge/p.a. to be able to *end* game.

- Learning curve and progressive tutorial are both stretched out over the game. Again, two options:
(1) When progressive tutorial and learning curve are the same, the tutorial has the goal to provide player with basic knowledge to finish game. This is a problem: I think additional knowledge and physical abbilities must not come from tutorial. Tutoring implies guiding someone till they can figure something out for themselves. The player would be able to finish the game by completing the tutorial. I think the player must learn by him/herself to finish game, and play more than just finishing tutorial.
(2) When they are NOT the same, how to distinguish between the two, if there are two anyway?? One will be offering easier challenges, the other more difficult. But mingled.

Which option can be solved?? And which one is best??

Now learning period.
Each player has his/her own learning period, dependent on physical abilities and previous knowledge. Learning period has two phases.
First phase: time to get to know the game to start playing succesfully. Second phase: time to develop physical abilities and learn more about rules through playing. So second phase can make learning period extend time-to-complete, because the gamer can learn something the next time he plays.

Second phase of learning period has partly the goal of learning more about game rules to make a better informed choice. For casual players this is to get basic rule knowledge and some more to create scripts and complete game. For core gamers this strive to get as much knowledge as possible/all knowledge (is only theoretical possibility I think) to create and use templates to *perfect* gameplay. Now someone said I was creating non-existing Power players by this, what do you think??

This is nice to note: eventhough core gamers need less time to complete first learning phase (or don't if they skip tutorial at beginning), they do have a longer learning period than casual gamers who limit their learning second phase with strive towards another goal and thereby learning less.

One more point, but funny
Some time ago, academics quarreled, ahum, had an "open exchange of ideas" about this at The Ludologist, because one said DDR is just hitting arrows and not making interesting choices what so ever (Sid Meier says game is series of interesting choices). So this doesn't require *skills*. So they started argument about what interesting choices/skills are.

In media theory you have:
input-> processing/interpretation -> output

Player makes decisions. Player acts. But at high pace playing, this distinction is not really there, more action/reaction.

Actions can be of different orders. Lowest level: action/reaction. Highest level: plan of action. As said above, Plan of action doesn't have to be conscious. First tactics is conscious, after that tactical decisions may become conditioned reflex, right? (If I understand correctly, not strategy as this setting a goal and not planning actions bit)

Now, what is/are *skill (s)*:
- skill of tactics, the planning skill
- skill of implementing tactics, the motor skill
- planning of higher-level tactics can also be a skill

[Zergul]

Tutorial should reveal only basic information about HOW TO INTERACT with the game. In the perfect case, the player don't need this information because he can naturally use the game and give commands.

Also the tutorial mission(s) should be called "tutorial" only if the game genre is totally new on the market (as Thief I was). Otherwise you should transparently teach the player through basic missions/quests. In the every first mission of any RTS Blizzard produced you have the same quest: "build x houses, one barracks and y troops". They teach you the game by giving goals.

I have to go now...urgently! ...i'll be back.

[Amirilys]

OK I get it

[h0stile]

Interesting..let's annalyze facts:

1. Learning curve.

My opinion is that you can split that in general and particular. Let me explain. General means player's abilities to interact with any kind of game and hardware support for that game. It's about the ease to use a keyboard and a mouse or a game pad or a mobile phone. For example, I have three games on my Nokia (Racket, Backgammon and Sky Diver). At first I couldn't play racket at all. Moving up and down (by pressing 2 and 8 keys) and shooting with 5 in the same time seemed impossible to me. I played a little sky diver and after a while I got used to the keyboard and now I can play Racket. So this is a general learning curve. You get used with the new kind of challenge (what ever it implies, hardware and software).

The particular learning curve applies to one particular game and this why it includes the tutorial (if any). My opinion (contrary to zergul's who mentions a perfect case...lol...is anybody or anything perfect?) is that any game should have a tutorial (or at least a part where you're learning the interface) as it can be very frustrating in the beginning when you have to do something and you don't know how. Or you can simply die because you didn't know where was your health meter (what was its visual representation). When he said that tutorial "should reveal only basic information about HOW TO INTERACT with the game" he was referring to the interface. There are a few things to be mentioned here. There are lots of types of interfaces. Blizzard's ones are intuitive, but not all of them are this way or should I say, most of them are not this way, unfortunately. This is why such a game should always use a tutorial to explain interface (visual elements, player controls). Of course you can achieve that by giving simple goals but you must explain how to achieve that goals or the player won't be able to achieve them. So, what does a player think? I couldn't finish the tutorial and they expect me to play the game? Bleah, this game sucks. This is the common attitude in such situations. They give up. There are plenty of games out there to choose from. Of course I'm talking about casual gamers here. One golden rule is that in the beginning (it doesn't matter if it's a tutorial involved or not) you as a player have to deal with simple goals. Take any RTS. The most powerful units or the most advanced structures are not available right from the beginning so the game gives you time in order to adapt. You said "Tutoring implies guiding someone till they can figure something out for themselves." and it's true. It's like solving math problems. You have the formula and you must apply it to solve a problem. They give you the formula, not the solution or the result. You must process the information and produce a result. It's the same thing here (just the content of the problem is different). The usual way in any game is that in the beginning you're given a set of formulas (which is usually NOT definitive as other formulas may be added later). Then you must apply them to solve simple problems. When you get used to them you can solve more complicated problems. Other formulas are added and so, the game varies the kind of problems you have to solve. This is why you find a game interesting, because of its dynamics in problem solving.


2. Learning period

I mentioned adaptation earlier. Let's say that you've learned the rules of the game. Now what? Adaptation is closely tied to the learning curve. It's all about how you adapt to the new environment conditions. Let's consider each game as a new environment. It's doesn't matter if it's virtual. Basically, game designers are inspired from reality when they produce challenges. Everything must be familiar to the player so he could process the info exactly the way he does in reality (peasants gather food in order to have smthing to eat). The degree of adaptation is given by the succes of the game designer in producing familiar challenges. A player must apply formulas he already knows to elements of the game he is familiar with. If he doesn't know either the formula or the elements, the tutorial must teach him, but it will be harder for him to adapt.

Most of the gamers will choose a gun, when having to choose between a gun and a psi-amplifier of some sort if you don't explain and let him play in the tutorial with the psi-amplifier (it was just an example). In the worst scenario (where the player is not familiar wiht the formula or the elements) he must be allowed to practice the needed period of time in order to get used to it. Another example. In a RTS peasants gather meat, cereals, wood and gold. In another RTS mechs gather X, Y and Z. It's easy for anyone to say what is wood good for and why a peasant needs to gather food. But what is a mech? What does a mech need in order to function? What is X? What is Y and what is Z? Most of the players are not familiar with X, Y and Z (most of them at least know what a mech is as they already played mechwarrior but some maybe don't know) so you must explain all these things. You must say that X is good for producing other mechs, Y is good for building structures and Z can be used for upgrades and weapons. It takes time for the player to develop a natural link between all those. The time needed is the time required for adaptation mentioned earlier.

PS I'm at work now and it's very hard for me to structure all this into a coherent answer. I'll post later if anything else comes to my mind.

[h0stile]

Btw, I did some search to clarify the difference between skills, abilities and choices. Abilities are considered natural (genetical), choices are processes (conscious deliberation), skills are developed over time by practicing. A few nice links:

http://www.naturalstrength.com/featu...&ArticleID=475
http://www.bbsonline.org/documents/a...bs.shanks.html
http://www.psychology.org/cgi-bin/li...mp.cgi?ID=4175

So, you need abilities in order to make the choices which in time produce the skills a few psychology studies are really necessary here. Read the links. A coolection of links is here:
http://www.psychology.org/links/Envi...hips/Learning/

there are links for behaviorism, constructivism, control theory, observational theory or Piaget's development theory which is a very interesting one. Also learning by punishment is very interesting as a player may be penalized for a wrong choice/action and the degree of the penalty depends on the choice/action.

[Amirilys]

I have again something to think about concerning learning curve/period

At http://www.gdconf.com/archives/2004/index.htm Why We Play Games: The Four Keys to Player Experience
Nicole Lazzaro (XEODesign)
They say a game has "assignments" (not challenges). The challenges are how the abilities/skills of the player meet up to these assignments. The less the ability of the player, the greater the challenge.

I make the same division again between (1) what is a requirement from player - this is a feature of the game, the assignments (2) what is a skill when talking about a human being - this is psychology as you say.

I found following assignment type skills at the same url

• Skill at mastering the basic controls (moving the character or vehicle)
• Skill at accomplishing objectives/interacting w/ opponent w/ game world
• Skill at special/advanced moves
• Development and testing of strategies
• New levels and power ups, character advancement

Sounds right, eh?

[h0stile]

by assignments he means goals or objectives. and yes, a challenge may be harder if your abilities/skills are not so developed to face the goal. you have two sides here: player abilites/skills vs objectives/goals (called assignments by them which IMHO is a very unfortunate word usage).

About your division:

1. goals or objectives are required to be completed by the player in order to advance further in the game

2. a skill is not natural, an ability is natural (genetical). A skill is developed in time with practice. The mechanisms of skill development are explained by psychology and you can find many useful links there.

About the assignment type skills: (i couldn't download the word document from your link, bad connection maybe)

Skill at mastering the basic controls (moving the character or vehicle)

In this case the ability is the hand-eye coordination and the skill which is developed in time is the mastering of the basic controls.


I said in my previous post (and it can get very confusing):

Basically, game designers are inspired from reality when they produce challenges. The degree of adaptation is given by the succes of the game designer in producing familiar challenges.

Here, challenges means goals. A game designer thinks about goals and how they affect the gameplay and the player. But a goal is in fact a series of smaller challenges for a player because a player must use his abilities or skills to fulfill it. The game designer sees it as a goal which, once fulfilled, will allow the player to advance. The player sees it as an obstacle which doesn't allow him to advance until it is overcomed.

Let's annalyze an example:

Goal (or objective or assignment): You must produce 5 peasants and 2 baracks.

If you split this in smaller actions the player must do, these are his challenges. He has 2 peasants and he must produce 5 more which should build 2 barracks. He puts those two to work to gather the resources for producing more peasants (food). He produces 2 more peasants, one goes to gather food one to build a barrack (if there are enough resources for a barrack). If not, he goes to gather wood. Now the player has 3 peasants gathering food and one for wood. He will gather more food faster so maybe he can produce 3 peasants instead of 2. This micro-management of the resources and the peasants are small challenges that added help the player fulfill the objective.

[Amirilys]

My head is spinning. I'll reply when I processed it myself

EDIT:
The actual description is: challenge is the balance between player skill and difficulty of objective.

[h0stile]

do be very carefull about this...it's easy to mix up words and meanings.

[Amirilys]

The learning stages part at the first link is very useful. But the second link is way over my head. I may understand what is written, but I'm not a psychologist so I can't place the method or school of thought. I leave this to psychologists.

What do you think about this. You have 'skill' as used in psychological research. I think in this understanding, the mastering of controls as a 'skill', doesn't say all there is about gameplay. Why is this so?

People have abilities as you say, and they learn skill. See the first link you mentioned. It explaines skill of athletes; take dodging a ball.
Now compare with what is a skill in relation to games. While playing games, a player is mentally and physicall active. But how much is this physically active comparable to the dodging of the ball. The player is "only" holding a game pad. It's frantically pushing buttons.
The complicated physical stuff is in the hand-eye coordination, true, but the player never reaches these open skill types where they have to "adapt to the environment". This is very debatable, but in the beginning gaming is more about eyes/brains and using perception to act with a virtual environment. After that, gameplay is more comparable to mental activity than dodging balls.

Something else: your developers "goals" and players "challenges" are really good. But again, how do I know when I'm playing a game, what the developer's intentions were? Because challenge is player related, the knowledge a player will have of the challenge possible in a game (as said before, you can win without knowing all about the game) is also player-dependent.

[h0stile]

Originally Posted by Amirilys

But again, how do I know when I'm playing a game, what the developer's intentions were? Because challenge is player related, the knowledge a player will have of the challenge possible in a game (as said before, you can win without knowing all about the game) is also player-dependent.

The goals are obvious. They are stated in the form of objectives like search the exit, kill all enemies. The question is how will you do that and how can the designer help you do it in the easiest way.

In some games you have hints. You don't know (realize) they are hints usually. You can also call them signs. They can take any form. An object, a colour, music or other sounds. For example.....you go along a corridor and rooms appear on your left side and right side. You continue going and hear screams. Where do you enter? The room with screams. Another example: the same corridor. you walk and you reach a point where it divides in two. one corridor is dark and another one is lighted. you have no weapon. where do you go? towards the lighted one so search for something. Each scene tells the player something about his path ahead. These are choices we make based on models we already have stored during our life experience. It was an example from cinematography (i can't remember now). a dude said once that if you sow an audience a guy with a knife in a room and then a woman dead in the same room they will link the man with the murder. the same concept functions here in an altered form. Signs suggest ideas/actions and you might not be aware of it when playing a game. in fact this is if you want one key element of what is called player immersion. when he is fascinated by the universe unfolding in front of his eyes and by the nice gameplay then you've got perfect immersion. Imagine a magician doing a stunning trick. U freeze for a while and only then you ask yourself how's possible. this is why the best game is always the best mix of tricks.


"I think in this understanding, the mastering of controls as a 'skill', doesn't say all there is about gameplay."

I'm not sure I understand u here. u ask if it's possible that gameplay is reduced to mastering of the controls as a skill? or what?

[Amirilys]

I understand ideas/goals better now thanks. I was thinking in different direction. A really bad player will never discover all the aspects of the game, because he/she does not know how to read the signs, I thought. This in contradiction to a really good player. So if either of them was to write about their experiences in the game, even the facts would be different.
About the motor skill I wanted to suggest the opposite. (Please remember I'm brain storming. I might change my mind if there's too many arguments against it.) I think gameplay is not so much about motor skill in a psychological sense: I think dodging a ball is different and more complicated than button pushing (gamers don't get all offended before i explain), because of two reasons.
(1) in gameplay the player only has limited posibilities (closed skill at first link). Dodging a ball, is using your whole body and all its possibilities (open skill at first link).
(2) I even want to suggest that the real hard thing about gameplay, the actual skill, is not the button pushing (body-game pad) but the thinking process in relation to what the player sees on screen (eye-application). It's not about physical movement of player himself, but his/her spatial insight and timing (??).

[h0stile]

Originally Posted by Amirilys

I understand ideas/goals better now thanks. I was thinking in different direction. A really bad player will never discover all the aspects of the game, because he/she does not know how to read the signs, I thought. This in contradiction to a really good player. So if either of them was to write about their experiences in the game, even the facts would be different.
About the motor skill I wanted to suggest the opposite. (Please remember I'm brain storming. I might change my mind if there's too many arguments against it.) I think gameplay is not so much about motor skill in a psychological sense: I think dodging a ball is different and more complicated than button pushing (gamers don't get all offended before i explain), because of two reasons.
(1) in gameplay the player only has limited posibilities (closed skill at first link). Dodging a ball, is using your whole body and all its possibilities (open skill at first link).
(2) I even want to suggest that the real hard thing about gameplay, the actual skill, is not the button pushing (body-game pad) but the thinking process in relation to what the player sees on screen (eye-application). It's not about physical movement of player himself, but his/her spatial insight and timing (??).

I understand you better now. that link about the motor skill was just an example for you to see how they annalyze that skill. i never meant that gameplay is all about the motor skill, don't get it wrong. of course you're right at points 1 and 2.

ps...when you're done with your research/work i would be really interested to read your paper/thesis/book (whatever you write). it must be very interesting.

[Amirilys]

My thesis (I will graduate in games studies, what a crazy beautiful world !!) will be published online in August, but in Dutch . You will be able to see your nick mentioned several times though . If I get a good evaluation, I will make an article (in english) about it, and hope game study journals like enough to publish.
By the way, your article about skills is definitely in there. I think it will get a discussion going.

[h0stile]

there are some dutch-english translators online like the one from altavista......i'll be able to understand it

[Amirilys]

Are you sure you would want to invest that much energy in it (though I'd really like to hear your opinion), because my thesis is already about 60 pages . This is without the additional pages with research results (about 40 pages).

If you know German however, it will be a lot easier to relate to Dutch since they are very much alike. One big difference is that Dutch has a lot less cases.

Good luck!!

[h0stile]

i know just english, french and a little bit italian but maybe I can understand with a help of an online translator (they can translate entire webpages so when it gets published online I could try).

[Amirilys]

Good idea!! Having the thing translated in english cost a lot of money (i checked, it would be about 500 euro to have it done). So I'm gonna try online translator as you said. I'll send you english doc