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Principles of Virtual Sensation
State shifts are desirable because they tend to give rise to expressivity and improvisation and increase reaction sensitivity (described in principle four, “Low Skill Floor, High Skill Ceiling”.) As long as each state is easily discernable and switching between them is obvious, predictability is maintained. The down side is the possibility of overwhelming the player with too many states. This causes confusion, especially when switching between states is not obvious enough. Pressing a certain button no longer yields the same result so the result is no longer predictable and the feeling of control is lost. For example, inexperienced players trying to learn how to play Tony Hawk’s Underground become overwhelmed very quickly by the sheer number of possible states in the game. Especially if they’ve never played a Tony Hawk game before, players will fiddle around with the controls for less than a minute, quickly put the controller down, and say something like “I don’t like skateboarding games.” The large number of states in the game –grinding, manualling, airborne, running out, skitching, lip tricking and so on - made them feel like their inputs were random and unpredictable. In addition, the state switches are difficult to perceive and the skater moves at an extremely high speed, further alienating potential players by moving far more quickly than they can process. Unable to find any traction in the first few minutes, they give up.
In the Cube Movement 1 test, try pressing the 1, 2, and 3 buttons at the same time. You’ll get what is essentially a random result for what appears to be the same input. Predictability also means inference – from the first few minutes of a game, the player can extrapolate a strikingly clear picture of the structure of the entire game. This is a good thing, it gives the player traction in what is at first an alien and disorienting feeling of learning a new mechanic. In Super Mario Brothers, I know that if I fall into a hole, I will lose a life. It only takes one hole to figure that out; I’ll avoid holes for the rest of the game. This points to an important distinction: just because something is reproducible doesn’t mean it’s predictable. Just because doing action A will always produce result B doesn’t mean you can infer that if you want result D, you should do action C. A predictable result should reveal as much about the possibilities you haven’t tried as about the ones you have. |
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