Gamasutra Article Du Jour
Feb 27, 2006
There’s an interesting article today by Tom Heaton at gamasutra.com. There’s a lot of navel-gazing in the ‘theory’ of game design that you read out there, and this article is no exception (the graphics are particularly silly). But Heaton has an interesting idea (probably the idea he should have themed his article around) which is about the importance of scaling the effort (and time) behind an interaction, and its corresponding level of effect on the game state.
I’d like to see an exploration of this in general...especially because I think that rules are probably not very helpful. Heaton singles out Diablo as an example of a game where the “crap” picked up is sometimes not fun because the resultant inventory management does not provide an adequately large tweak to the game state. OK fair enough, but how do you explain then the addictive qualities of Animal Crossing, where no act ever seems to have more than the most trivial effect on the game state. At least - not in the immediate term. I think it has more to do with player expectation, but I’m not sure.