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 Features
Principles of Virtual Sensation
 6. Impact and Satisfying Resolution – Defining the weight and size of objects through their interaction with each other and the environment.
A good virtual sensation creates a powerful sense of weight and mass in the player’s mind. After observing the interaction of objects in the game for a very short time, the player extrapolates an entire universe worth of physical laws, from the relative weight and mass of every object in the environment to the way that light works in this world.
This extrapolation becomes a kind of self-referent “sense” unique to the world of the game – the player, without having to actually test out every possibility, has a very clear idea what the result will be for any given action. This sense, the subconscious understanding of the underlying laws that govern the interaction of all objects in the game world, is a huge part of virtual sensation. It’s useful in learning because it means that any object can be relied on to act in a certain way (predictable results) and it’s another form of good feedback: it helps the player make good, educated guesses about the results of a certain action.
Also, when objects don’t interact properly, it breaks immersion, what Csikszentmihalyi calls “flow.” When an object clips through another object, or if you shoot something and it disappears without reacting, you think “oh wait, I’m playing a game and they programmed it wrong” and flow is broken. Snap the player out of flow too many times, and they put the game down. Another foundation for good virtual sensation, then, is a world where all object interaction is clear, consistent, and feels satisfying.
Much of our knowledge about the way physical reality works comes from watching objects interact. If you knock over a stack of books, they tumble to the floor in a certain way. Throw a tennis ball against a wall and you get a different but equally complicated result. A huge number of small, subconsciously processed variables affect how much that tennis ball will rebound, where it will go, and how long it will bounce or roll before it stops. The fact that we can play a reasonable game of tennis speaks volumes about the human ability to observe, process, and adapt to the dynamics of the physical world in real time. As Chris Crawford is fond of noting, there aren’t any animals that can shoot hoops. This is what makes satisfying resolution of game interactions difficult to achieve: humans are sharply and subconsciously tuned to the way things are supposed to work at a very cognitive level.
One way around this phenomenon is to simplify your representation. If a character looks photorealistic, it is perfectly reasonable for a player to expect that their interactions with objects in their environment will perfectly mimic reality. If a character is stylized or simplified, it will not defy the player’s expectations if their interactions are also simplified. In many games, there seems to be a constant battle between the representation of an object and the virtual sensation underlying it. Things look ever more realistic, which creates an ever-widening gulf between player expectation and game reality when things continue to clip through one another or otherwise fail to interact properly. Object interaction shouldn’t be a hindrance or constraint on representation. Rather, it is a powerful tool for creating compelling virtual sensation.
To use object interaction to effectively convey information to the player about the relative weights and masses of objects and the nature of their interactions, remember one thing: you’re faking it. The goal is only to create the perception of weight, mass, and force in the player’s mind. This is different from the way things “really are” according to physicists, or accuracy in a simulation. This is more like Aristotle’s naive physics, a theory of physics that, while quaint and amusing to today’s physicists, corresponds much better to everyday, physical observations than later theories. Stuff just has to seem right, which makes it easier to fake.
The way to effectively fake object interactions is by looking at how people perceive things. It’s a well-known fact that exaggeration in an animation can make it more convincing to the audience. Squashing and stretching an object in ways that when viewed as individual frames seem bizarre and unnatural makes them read much better when animated:
 
Likewise, by exaggerating interactions between objects in a game, we convey physical properties more effectively. For example, in Mario Kart DS the karts scale up and down in a bouncy way when they bump into walls and other karts, but only if the impact happened above a certain speed. In addition, if a big kart hits a little kart it doesn’t just nudge it, it sends that sucker flying with a faked, amplified force. In Cube Movement 4, the interaction between objects in the ‘plain’ setting is very basic. Switching to ‘scale’ adds a faked scaling effect to the interaction, as well as an exaggerating force. Notice how much more satisfying the interactions feel. The best virtual sensations exaggerate the interactions between objects in this way, taking care not only to emphasize the different interactions but to convey only what’s important about them to the player.
Cube Movement 4
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