[Veteran designer Pascal Luban (Splinter
Cell: Chaos Theory) continues his series on the "megatrends" of
the gaming industry, taking on accessibility and games as a teaching tool
in this installment. The previous article in the series can be read here.]
In this second chapter of my series on the megatrends of game design I
shall address two new trends: the search for accessibility, and the use of
gaming as an educational tool. Enjoy.
Megatrend IV - The Search for Immediate
Accessibility
Games are
increasingly easy to grasp. This is one of the trends which has most affected game design in recent
years... and it's not stopping. Remember those games without tutorials and with
documentation as thick as a phonebook, or those first levels where you could
barely understand what you had to do, let alone how to do it?
The progress made in
this area in recent years is impressive: The progressive introduction of
features, the simplification of interfaces, and the inclusion of levels created
for the discovery of the game itself are the most obvious examples.
Even so,
this exemplary effort probably won't stop here, as new needs for immediate
accessibility are emerging.
New needs in terms of accessibility:
1. Market
growth and the increasing numbers of casual players. Video gaming has long lost its status as a
hobby for a small number of addicts and is gradually joining the other
mainstream media. The loss of influence of the core PC market is a good
illustration of this trend.
This arrival of gaming into the mainstream should
be seen as a good thing. Small, niche markets cannot attract massive financing.
However, it also means that traditional gamers no longer constitute the
majority of games users.
We must therefore simplify
the accessibility of a game for users, if we want to support the current growth
of the number of games players.
2. The
development of multiplayer modes. Multiplayer gaming generates particular
accessibility problems. In a single player game, the
player learns to face challenges progressively.
With difficulties introduced
one at a time, giving time for the player to master them at his own pace. In a
multiplayer game, however, the player is directly confronted with the
most formidable of all challenges: other players.
Even if the
player has had the opportunity to master the single-player game through the
single player levels, he will inevitably run into those players who have dozens
of hours of practice and who possess much more cunning than mere bots.
Thus we
have a rude awakening for the player, who will have to accept the humiliation
of accumulating multiple defeats in order to learn effective strategies for
this game mode.
The problem of accessibility is thus no longer merely an issue of
mastering the controls or knowing the game, but understanding all the aspects
of the game at once.
The development of
multiplayer gaming will create new accessibility challenges, as we will have to
accommodate for a growing number of novice players.
3. New
habits of gaming. In parallel
to the growing number of casual gamers, there is an increase in those
"traditional gamers" that now find themselves with a family or a full
time job and therefore have to cut back on the gaming.
This category
of player with less leisure time will demand games offering immediate
playability and that are playable in smaller gaming sessions.
This need to
develop games that are accessible, yet not lacking in depth, largely explains
the near-disappearance of flight simulators -- despite the doubtlessly large
number of fans that they have accumulated.