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 Features
Principles of Virtual Sensation
 2. Novelty – There are an infinite number of results from the same input.
While a virtual sensation must have a foundation of predictable results, it should also have novelty. That is, the same input (or what the player perceives to be the same input) should yield slightly different results to keep the player engaged, to avoid the fatigue of repetition, and to increase the overall appeal of the virtual sensation. While predictability and novelty would seem to be at odds, the two can coexist quite happily. When they do, you have the makings of a great virtual sensation.
One enemy of novelty is linear animation. Even in a game like Jak and Daxter: the Precursory Legacy where the linear animation is of uncommonly high quality and there are dozens of hand-animated variants for the animations, it’s very easy to tell that Jak is doing the same punch every time. The problem is that, once exhausted, even quality content gets boring. Watching Jak punch for the ten thousandth time is significantly less compelling than it was the first time. For a virtual sensation to hold the player’s interest, it needs to feel novel and interesting even after hours of play. Even repetitive actions should feel fresh each time you trigger them.
Many games attempt to solve this problem with mountains of additional content, running the player through a series of increasingly challenging and varied levels that give new and interesting context to the virtual sensation to keep it from feeling stale. Another approach is to introduce more mechanics – additions and modifications to virtual sensation – over the course of the game. For example, Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow does a great job of constantly adding new virtual sensations through different “souls” and weapons, each of which adds a different feel to the underlying movement or augments it with new states (such as the ability to jump twice without landing.)
Yet another approach is to use a deterministic global physics system, which keeps a virtual sensation feeling fresh by being accurate past what the player can perceive: the player will never be able to offer the same input twice. With deterministic physics, the same input will technically yield the same result. Games like Bridge Builder and Ski Stunt Simulator can accurately record a player’s input to the millisecond and feeding this input back into the system will always yield the same result. The feeling of novelty in these games exists, then, in the player, who can’t completely and accurately process the intricate subtleties of the simulation. While the player may be able to consistently achieve the same result in Ski Stunt Simulator – jumping a ravine then doing a backflip over a wooden hut, for example – no two runs will ever be the same.
This is because while the parameters that govern the simulation will react identically each time, the player can’t perceive some of the most subtle differences. It’s more sensitive than the player’s perception, much like the real world. This is one of many ways perception affects virtual sensation. Because our perception is keenly tuned to physical reality, we subconsciously expect certain things to happen when objects interact and move. One thing we expect is that no motion will ever be exactly the same twice. This is the nature of reality: messy and imprecise. No-one person can punch exactly the same way twice, or throw a discus or javelin the same way twice. So if we see the same action happening in the same way over and over again without some subtle variation, it looks wrong.
Finally, a great way to keep a virtual sensation feeling novel and interesting is allowing improvisation and expression (covered in greater detail in the final section.) If the player feels they have enough different states available and if those states overlap in many different and interesting ways, playing the game can evolve to become a form of self expression.
3. Traction – Enabling mastery, control, and learning by rewarding player experimentation.
In many games, most of your time is spent failing. Especially in the first few minutes of play, a game is pure experimentation. The player is flailing around trying to find some success amongst the inevitable difficulty of learning a new mechanic, a new motion translation. These few minutes are all we can ask of players, who by sitting down to play the game are giving the designer the benefit of the doubt. It is crucial that we give them the tools they need to feel immediate success, to gain traction.
Traction is the moment of dawning comprehension just after the player feels their first success in the game. In that first moment of feeling oriented and safe, the structure of the game unfolds for them and they understand the challenges of the game. If they think their skill is a reasonable match for that challenge and that it seems interesting, they continue to play the game. If they never gain traction, they put the game down very quickly. Traction is all about giving the player good feedback; good feedback is immediate, clear, and useful.
Without immediate feedback, there can be no virtual sensation. If rotating the steering wheel of your car meant turning thirty seconds from now, there would be no control or mastery. It is in the immediacy of result that the feeling of control and the ability to translate motion lies. In a game it is the same immediacy, enabled by the real time processing power of the computer, which creates that virtual sensation. There is no virtual sensation in a turn-based game. For example, using the delayed controls in Cube Movement 1 it becomes clear that there is no virtual sensation if the feedback is not immediate.
Cube Movement 1
Again in the Cube Movement 1 test, press the 1, 2, and 3 buttons simultaneously. Note once again that the result of your action is random. Now press the Enter button. You should now see an arrow corresponding to the current state of the system. Pressing buttons 1, 2, and 3 simultaneously still yields a random result, but now the game is giving you clear feedback on the outcome of your action even if it’s not correctly interpreting your intent. A better approach would perhaps be to have all mashed (ambiguous) inputs default to the normal control setting, which is the easiest to control. The most important thing, though, is keeping the feedback clear: as long as you know what state you’re currently in, even the negative impact of an ambiguous result can be removed.
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