Making an good game

[CygnusX]

I've touched on this topic in several other threads,  but wanted to summarize here and ask for input.

Idea
The more I research game design, the more I believe that making a good game starts by designing the game to be addictive, then adding a genre facade to it all.  For example, though I personally would never be caught saying Farmville is a good game, many people are highly addictive to it and claim it to be lots of fun.  I believe the formula used in farmville's creation was to focus on making it addictive, then adding the farming concept.

So, now that I've confused everyone, let me elaborate.  The classical psychological approach to creating and keeping a behavior revolves around positive and negative reinforcement.  Ie, rewarding for the good, punishing for the bad.

Example
In farmville, you are rewarded with all sorts of prizes, new buildings, new crops, animals, etc, just for doing simple tasks (point and click type stuff).  You don't have to be exceptionally smart, you just have to play.  And if you fail to play regularly, your crops wither and die (and you lose the stuff you've worked so hard to obtain).

In the day of BBG games where profit comes from having many players that play for long periods of time, its no longer about marketing to get people to buy your game so much as getting people addicted to playing it (and getting them to invite their friends).

Discussion Point
So, here is my starter list for natural ways of incorporating addictive design elements.

Constant Drops - a reward (positive reinforcement) that's easy to implement, though as not as effective as random drops.  gaining xp or gold based on every enemy killed makes sense and is an easy reinforcement mech to incorporate.

Random Drops - random rewards produce the greatest frequency response of all reward mechanisms.  Its easy to incorporate semi-valuable items (heal, cure, etc) every 7-15 attacks, with more valuable items (sword, etc) on every 200-500 attacks (exact numbers subject to change)

Discovery - discovering new parts of a map, a new dungeon, etc, lets a player feel like they are progressing.  It is also acts as a random frequency reinforcement.

Quests - gives the player a task they know will result in (you guessed it) a reward.

Negative Reinforcement - like rotting crops in farmville, subtracting xp for not logging in will help modify the behavior.

Friend Rewards - spreading a game through word of mouth is the best means of advertisement.  Setting up a reward system for inviting friends, and rewards for having your friends log in every day will help get the word out about your game.  This could be done through rewards at sign-up, as well as being able to give karma (or some other item) to your friends every day through clicking that results in some sort of reward.  Perhaps based on the amount of karma you get built up in one day, you can win some sort of prize (gold, item or other).

High Cost Items - perception is key in bbg games.  As graphics are usually very lack luster, the only thing you have going is perception.  By showing a sword for sale at the merchant that cannot be bought, it sets a carrot in front of the user and gives them a goal to work for.  The key here is to make the item almost impossible (20 days worth of playing?) to obtain.  And once they buy it, put another item out that takes another 20 days to get, etc.

Anticipation - this one I haven't started to master yet.  in a turn-based fighter (or one where you have to send in your troops and wait 6 hours for them to attack), there is a breif moment where you have to wait to see the outcome (what move will the opponent make next, etc).  I believe this gives a bit of an adrenaline rush which helps perpetuate reinforcement  (though I'm still thinking about this one).  In auto-resolve combat, i'm considering adding a short animation (or at least a short stall after choosing to fight) to try to simulate this anticipation period. 

Extinction - the problem with all of the above is that even positively reinforce behaviors can suddenly stop.  This term is known as extinction.  I've known many people to stop playing games (such as maplestory, farmville, mafiawars, etc), because one day they woke up and realized that the time they had invested in these games (vs. the rewards they were getting) didn't add up.  I'm still working on theories of how to combat this.

Is this evil?
I submit that it is not.  People seek out games to play.  They want to do these tasks even though they may not communicate it in this fashion.  I've never heard a gamer admit to being addicted to a game, but they do justify their addictive tendencies by saying the game is just 'really good'. 

[133794m3r]

if you've not already read this read it.

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/3085/behavioral_game_design.php

And it's more than that to keep the game going. Look at farmville as you have. They're losing numbers in themillions now. Sure it's addictive for a few, but it's not going to last because even the addicted will get bored. If you wish to design your games like that then you're more htan welcome to. All i've got to say about that is, though, is that need to stop reading up on game design and begin reading up on behavioral psychology. Since the things you're targetting are not the parts that make a game fun but rather make it addictive and no amount of game design studying will help you wiht that. For that, you must go and learn psychology. Ever game has built in parts to make it addictive, it's just about you deciding how far that you will go.

[Harkins]

I don't think Farmville's losses can be blamed entirely on design; the changes to notifications and wall publishing have hurt every game. Though I do wonder what their churn rate is, it's entirely possible they've been losing people like crazy all along but the ease of acquiring new customers disguised this by keeping their MAU up.

[CygnusX]

Farmville players are undergoing extinction.  I understand this.  However, WOW players seem to be going pretty strong.  Both systems utilize random rewards.  They also utilize fixed ratio / scheduled rewards.  Friends can assist you in both games.  If WOW's system caused you to lose xp for every 48 hours you failed to log in, I'd argue the hook for the two system would be nearly identical.

So whats the difference?  Even though I've only played it for 10 minutes, I consider WOW to be a rather 'good' game.  It has good art, a decent story, and in general, the user can become immersed into another world.  It also has the appearance of a tangible ending (something farmville is missing).  

Both games are highly addicting by the people that play them.  But the major difference is the rate of extinction.  Farmville doesn't have, and probably never will, have that 'it' factor that keeps users playing.

My purpose of this thread is to point out and discuss a very real aspect of game design.  Namely, producing the behavior you want from your users.  A lot of designers (including myself when I started) focus on content.  They want to have a map, certain resources, a tech tree, or whatever.  And while these things are good, many designers include these ideas only to see their player base stuck at around 500 players.  This happens because the game was not built on the foundation of behavioral modification.  

You can include all the features, story and content you want.  I'm completely for this.  But I've seen too many games where the creator focused on what they wanted content wise, and never looked into what would make a player addicted.  I see this as a problem which is why I'm asking for more discussion on this topic.

[dsheroh]

Before you can meaningfully discuss how to design a good game, you must first define what "a good game" is.  As 133794m3r said, your Skinnerian laundry list reads like a list of techniques for making an addictive game, not a fun game.  I define "a good game" primarily in terms of fun; it appears that you consider "a good game" to be one which is profitable for its creator, all else be damned - which may be why you're having problems with extinction.

Now, yes, you already mentioned that many of Zynga's thralls self-report as having fun while playing those games, but what about ex-players?  Someone who used to play a fun game will say, "Yeah, those were the days...  I may have burned out on it, but it was great while it lasted."  Someone who used to play a game engineered to be addictive (but without regard to fun) will say "Dear god, what was I thinking to keep with that for so long?"  I wonder which one players are more likely to stick with for a longer time and to return to after being away from it for a while...