FIGURE 14.1 Milieu adds another dimension to MDA.
It’s not the game that’s sacred,
It’s the people who are playing.
—BERNIE DE KOVEN
Mechanics are defined by the creators of the game, but the dynamics and aesthetic reactions are defined by the players. This leads to a problem: If the individual player can react to the mechanics in a number of ways, then mechanics do not deterministically lead to dynamics. If dynamics are generated specifically from the mechanics, then the dynamics should be the same if the mechanics are the same. But you often see differences in how the same game is played by different players. Some other factor must influence the game. I call this factor milieu.
Milieu is the set of personal, social, and cultural assumptions that players bring to their play experience (FIGURE 14.1).
Many “gamers” share a similar milieu, so they act and react to game mechanics in the same way. To help you really understand how milieu affects play aesthetics, it may be helpful for me to use an example of a player from a different milieu. Imagine a grandmother who is playing a first-person shooter. If she is as unacquainted with modern video games and is as squeamish about violence as the stereotypical grandmother, the dynamics that are generated from her interactions with the game system will be different than those of the target player. She’ll never reach the targeted aesthetic responses of challenge and sensation because there is little chance that she’ll reach the targeted dynamics of using cover and exploiting choke points.
A salient example is from Raph Koster’s Theory of Fun for Game Design, which he calls Genocide Tetris:1
1 Koster, R. (2013). Theory of Fun for Game Design. Newton, MA: O’Reilly Media, Inc.
Let’s picture a game wherein there is a gas chamber shaped like a well. You the player are dropping innocent Jews down into the gas chamber, and they come in all shapes and sizes. There are old ones and young ones, fat ones and tall ones. As they fall to the bottom, they grab onto each other and try to form human pyramids to get to the top of the well. Should they manage to get out, the game is over and you lose. But if you pack them in tightly enough, the ones on the bottom succumb to the gas and die.
I do not want to play this game. Do you? Yet it is Tetris. You could have well-proven, stellar game design mechanics applied toward a quite repugnant premise.
The mechanics of Tetris and Genocide Tetris are similar. The rules are the same, but the display of those rules through play is different. Yet many would react with outrage to the very concept of the latter without qualms about the former. Someone with no knowledge of the referents would probably play this much differently than would a Holocaust survivor, who would likely dismiss it in disgust and walk away. Both players come from different milieux.
Imagine a game with a top-down perspective and sprite-based exploration, where a player walks around a world battling foes using a menu-based fighting system. Hopefully, you are imagining something like the 1990s-era Final Fantasy games. Many folks have great nostalgia for these games, and they make many “top games of all time” lists. Now keep the mechanics of the top-down perspective, the sprite-based map exploration, and the menu-based fighting system, but change the artwork and the story.
In 2005, one game-maker did just that, creating Super Columbine Massacre RPG!. Although the gameplay tropes are similar to those in 1990s-era Japanese RPGs, the story and the art relates to the horrific massacre of students in the Columbine High School shooting (FIGURE 14.2). Mass media picked up on the title and lambasted it as a disgusting exploitation of a tragedy.
IMAGES USED WITH PERMISSION.
FIGURE 14.2 Super Columbine Massacre RPG! was controversial not because of its mechanics, but because of its framing within the milieu of mid-2000s Americans.
Although the theme gives people the willies, it’s only the context of the decisions being made in the game that cause this. The actual options available to the players are strikingly similar between Final Fantasy VI and Super Columbine Massacre RPG!. Choosing to attack students with a handgun is mechanically identical to choosing to attack a kobold with a sword. But reskinning the game so that the players make the same decisions against kobolds and orcs makes it an entirely different game, even though the options given to the player and the rules governing those options are the same. Players are sensitive to the subject/framing. The massive media reaction of horrified spectators cannot be explained by its mechanics in isolation.
But Super Columbine Massacre RPG! is obviously an extreme example. Milieux can have subtle effects on players’ behaviors.
At its peak, Farmville had over 84 million users in a single day. However, it could not have created the same aesthetic responses for all 84 million of its players, despite every user sharing the same mechanics. For some, the happy pop-up rewards were a nice distraction from their rote day-to-day activities. For others, the game’s constant handholding was boring and tedious, but leveling up and sharing that success helped foster their desire for mastery. Farmville brought in nongamers from a completely different milieu than traditional games. These players found challenge, sensation, and fellowship from the game’s dynamics that many gamers, with their preconceived notions of gameplay, could not duplicate.
In the book Laws of the Game, Max Eigen quotes Abraham Moles in saying that the subjective aspect of information “cannot be translated. It does not draw on a universal repertoire but on a repertoire of knowledge that the sender and receiver have in common.”2 Because the receiver of a game’s information (the player) is a highly variable entity between players and indeed even over a factor of time within the same player, the milieu activated by a game’s systems is a moving target.
2 Eigen, M., & Winkler, R. (1981). Laws of the Game: How the Principles of Nature Govern Chance. New York: Knopf.
A commonly cited game element is polish. However, in many instances saying that a game is “polished” is just another way to say that a game is good. In many cases, polish is a meaningless word like “gameplay.” However, Steve Swink, in his book Game Feel, provides a fantastic definition for polish: “Polish is any effect that creates [nonessential] cues about the physical properties of objects through interaction.”3
3 Swink, S. (2009). Game Feel: A Game Designer’s Guide to Virtual Sensation. Amsterdam: Morgan Kaufmann /Elsevier.
For instance, in the original Resident Evil, when a player chose to use a stairway, the game trigged a loading screen while the upstairs or downstairs level was loaded into memory. This could have been served by a simple black screen that said, “Loading,” as many games did at the time. Instead, Resident Evil showed a simple first-person perspective animation of a character walking up or down stairs slowly. This masked the loading times and helped preserve the eerie aesthetic of the game. This was polish because it was nonessential to the play experience, but it served to enhance the game’s environmental cues. The player was no longer sitting in a living room somewhere waiting for a game to load. He was instead slowly walking up the stairs in a zombie-infested mansion where danger lurked at every step. It was effective polish.
Although Swink was talking about polish in digital games, analog games also have room and expectations for polish. In Dead of Winter, for example, each character has a role, and that role thematically and mechanically coincides with that character’s ability, which helps players better role-play as the characters. There is no essential reason to include a role for each player. However, knowing that the character Gabriel Diaz is a firefighter helps you understand why he would have an ability that helps him search for survivors. Similarly, if you know that the character Bev Russell is a mother, this partially explains her ability to care for the helpless. These roles provide nonessential cues for players to understand the mechanics of the game.
Polish is not necessarily a determinate of quality, although many polished games are quite popular. Many consider The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time to be one of the greatest video games of all time. Yet for some reason, the designers included a few odd quirks that serve as disconnects from the game world. For instance, the designers made the main character able to move up to 50 percent faster by rolling rather than by running and also made it so the character could roll an unlimited number of times in succession.4 In other words, the player’s character never gets tired of rolling. Most players figure this out early and spend the game (which largely consists of traveling long distances by foot) rolling from place to place. This makes no sense in the context of the physical properties of the world.
4 “Ocarina of Time—Movement Speeds.” (n.d.). Retrieved July 7, 2015, from https://www.zeldaspeedruns.com/oot/generalknowledge/movement-speeds.
Polish can be thematic and/or mechanical. In ideal cases, it’s both. In any case, polish is an expression of the personal expectations of a player with regard to a world’s nonessential elements, which puts it in the category of milieu.
For many years, designers and theorists have tried to classify players to help target games for specific types of players. One of the earliest classifications was done by designer Richard Bartle, and his grouping is still used today by many.5 Bartle was one of the creators of MUD, which was a kind of precursor to today’s massively multiplayer online (MMO) games. Bartle classified players of MUD-like games into four categories, which he named after the suits of the standard playing card deck:
5 Bartle, R. (1996). “Hearts, Clubs, Diamonds, Spades: Players Who Suit MUDs.” Journal of MUD Research, 1(1), 19.
• HEARTS (or Socializers)—Hearts play games to share in experiences with other players. The most obvious example is the guild organizer who brings together friends to achieve multiplayer objectives in modern MMOs. But Hearts can be found enjoying single-player games as well; games such as The Walking Dead and Skyrim that are filled with moments that can be discussed around the water cooler are often compelling to Hearts.
• DIAMONDS (or Achievers)—Diamonds play games to beat them. If there are 100 dungeons, the Diamond is not be satisfied until she has defeated all 100 of them. If there is a special badge or a helmet she can display to show that she has completed her tasks, then that is even better. Diamonds need leaderboards or some other representation of their progress to represent their superior achievement.
• CLUBS (or Killers)—Clubs play games to win as well, but they want to show their mastery by defeating opponents or otherwise changing their worlds. This is the player type that is most easily sated. Give them a monster to defeat with their superior skills, and they are quite happy. Given enough boredom or sociopathy, Clubs focus their efforts on denying others a good time just to show their superiority.
• SPADES (or Explorers)—Spades want to explore. They want to know everything there is to know about a system. They want to find the secrets and, in extreme examples, create maps and spreadsheets to show that they have completely conquered their world.
Individuals can fall into many categories at once or use different categories for different games. Bartle wants designers to use this taxonomy to look at their features through the lens of these four different types. Do you have something that appeals to Socializers? To Explorers? Why or why not?
In the book Beyond Game Design, Bartle recounts the story of the development of GoPets.6 The developers of the game focused almost solely on social gameplay because it was a light, free-to-play, virtual world for children. However, the metrics revealed that a single item in the store (a fruit tree) attracted players who ended up spending money. Fruit tree buyers were 44 times as likely to be profitable players! The difference in that one object was that it had goal-oriented behavior built in; if you looked at the tree for an hour, it would bear fruit. This appealed to the goal-oriented Diamond players and gave them something that the rest of the game did not. As a result of this new information, the design team started developing features for Diamond players, and when they were added to the game, their revenue skyrocketed.
6 Bateman, C. (2009). Beyond Game Design: Nine Steps Toward Creating Better Videogames. Boston, MA: Cengage Learning.
Of course, Bartle’s taxonomy is incomplete. Many motivations are not covered or strictly defined in his taxonomy. Dozens of others have followed Bartle (including Bartle himself7) in creating more appropriate taxonomies. The important issue is not to have the completely correct taxonomy, but instead to understand what kinds of players appeal to different dynamics.
7 Bartle, R. (2005). “Virtual Worlds: Why People Play.” Massively Multiplayer Game Development, 2(1).
One of the follow-ups to Bartle’s taxonomy was proposed by designer Jason Vandenberghe.8 His model was inspired by the work of psychologists who study motivation (motivation itself is covered in more depth in Chapter 25). Psychologists have done decades of research to narrow down personality to a five-factor model. These five dimensions, they propose, fully explain the personalities of any player you may encounter. The five factors can be remembered by the mnemonic OCEAN:
8 Vandenberghe, J. (2012, March 8). “The Five Domains of Play.” Game Developer’s Conference. San Francisco, CA.
• OPENNESS TO EXPERIENCE—A person who is open to experience is imaginative, independent-minded, and curious about new endeavors. Someone low on this scale would be content with what he already knows.
• CONSCIENTIOUSNESS—A person who is conscientious is “on top of it” and can easily control her impulses. She is organized, disciplined, and eschews spontaneity. Someone high on the scale is dependable; someone low on the scale is aloof.
• EXTROVERSION—This is one that most people are already familiar with. An extrovert needs stimulation from interaction with others. The opposite, the introvert, seeks solitude.
• AGREEABLENESS—A person who is agreeable seeks to avoid personal conflict. An agreeable person is apt to compromise and “play along.” Someone low on this scale is not afraid to ruffle a few feathers to get his way.
• NEUROTICISM—This is the toughest one. Neuroticism is the tendency with which someone experiences negative emotions. A neurotic person is anxious, worries a lot, and generally is tense. Someone low on this scale wouldn’t let any negative experience bother her.
Vandenberghe did qualitative research with many subjects to compare their scores on these five axes along with the games that they enjoy. He was able to make some clear parallels, which he calls “The Five Domains of Play.” Here are the parallels along with the OCEAN factor they match up with:
• NOVELTY (from Openness to Experience)—Players who score highly on their Openness to Experience like games with highly open and imaginative play (Minecraft) versus games where the player aims toward mastery of conventional repetition (Madden NFL Football).
• CHALLENGE (from Conscientiousness)—Players who score highly on their Conscientiousness like challenge (Dark Souls), whereas players who score low like less-challenging experiences (Lego Star Wars).
• STIMULATION (from Extroversion)—Where does the stimulation lie? Is it “in the head” or more physical or social? High-scoring extroverts enjoy more physical and more social experiences (Just Dance) whereas low-scoring introverts enjoy more calm and solitary experiences (Flower).
• HARMONY (from Agreeableness)—Players with a low Agreeableness score enjoy highly combative head-to-head play (Street Fighter IV), whereas high scorers look for more cooperative experiences (LittleBigPlanet).
• THREAT (from Neuroticism)—This is the toughest of the five to relate. Players with high neuroticism let games “get them down,” so they avoid games with that possibility. For instance, a highly neurotic player would glom toward Peggle before he would try something unforgiving like League of Legends.
These set of five dimensions explains the personalities of players better than any model or framework ever studied before it. Your personality trait scores largely stay fixed throughout adulthood.9 Also, each trait falls on a normally distributed spectrum. For every achievement-seeking Challenge player, there is a potential equal and opposite Anti-Challenge (or Contentment) player who just wants to experience a game without the high skill requirements.
9 McCrae, R. R. & Costa, P. T. (1990). Personality in Adulthood. New York: The Guildford Press.
You can take the OCEAN test yourself and find out where you fall on the five spectra. When you do, you’ll find that what I have listed is only a small part of the story. Psychologists have broken down the five factors into 30 facets, and these are even more instrumental to understanding player desire. Here are the 30 facets and the particular aesthetic/feature that Vandenberghe believes is affected by that facet of personality:
• Openness to Experience
• Fact-Orientation versus Imagination (Fantasy)
• Practical Interests versus Artistic Interests (Artistry)
• Unemotionality versus Emotionality (Melodrama)
• Desire for Routine versus Adventurousness (Predictability)
• People and Things versus Intellect (Abstraction)
• Traditionalism versus Liberalism (Message)
• Conscientiousness
• Un-Self-Efficacy versus Self-Efficacy (Difficulty)
• Disorganization versus Orderliness (Order)
• Resistance versus Dutifulness (Obligation)
• Contentment versus Achievement-Striving (Achievement)
• Procrastination versus Self-Discipline (Work)
• Impulsiveness versus Cautiousness (Caution)
• Extroversion
• Reservedness versus Friendliness (Expression)
• Nongregariousness versus Gregariousness (Crowds)
• Receptiveness versus Assertiveness (Role)
• Low Activity Level versus High Activity Level (Pace)
• Excitement-Aversion versus Excitement-Seeking (Thrill)
• Inexpressiveness versus Cheerfulness (Joy)
• Agreeableness
• Skepticism versus Trust (Trust)
• Guardedness versus Straightforwardness (Integrity)
• Non-altruism versus Altruism (Help)
• Competition versus Accommodation (Competitiveness)
• Immodesty versus Modesty (Glory)
• Indifference versus Sympathy (Compassion)
• Neuroticism
• Fearlessness versus Anxiety (Tension)
• Calm versus Hostile (Provocation)
• Resilience versus Depression (Gloom)
• Lack of Self-Consciousness versus Self-Consciousness (Humiliation)
• Temperateness versus Immoderation (Addiction)
• Poise versus Vulnerability (Danger)
This may seem to be an interesting intellectual exercise without application, but Vandenberghe has found it to be otherwise. In his studies of players, they tend to make their play choices similarly to what their personality reflects. For instance, if I am achievement-seeking in the real world, I tend to choose games that let me scratch that itch. We all know counterexamples of folks who are shy introverts until they get onto Xbox Live and unload a series of toxic insults, but the research has shown that this is generally an outlier.
If you are interested in finding out your own scores, you can take two versions: a 120-question version (www.personal.psu.edu/~j5j/IPIP/ipipneo120.htm) and a 300-question version (www.personal.psu.edu/~j5j/IPIP/ipipneo300.htm). The 300-question version should give you more accurate results.
As a game designer, being aware of the players’ different motivations lets you pair those motivations with mechanics to create targeted dynamics that produce desirable outcomes. It’s not as easy as saying “Players like conflict!” That is true, but only for some players. Just as many potential players eschew direct conflict. Depending on the target aesthetics for your game, you may reach the most audience by trying to accommodate both sides of each personality facet.
Let’s take a look at a game that uses its players’ milieu to its advantage.
Spent puts players in the shoes of someone living at the poverty level and, through a series of decisions, asks them to “make it” when they are given hefty problems and a low amount of resources (FIGURE 14.3).
IMAGE FROM SPENT © 2011–2015 MCKINNEY.
FIGURE 14.3 Spent offers lessons on poverty through procedural means.
The result is a game that could be seen as mechanically similar to Lemonade Stand or any other light economic simulation, but because the decisions offered lead the player to act desperately, the play aesthetic is particularly poignant. The game is an advergame of sorts. Its purpose is to get you to donate to the Urban Ministries of Durham, a charity that helps those at the poverty level. Players do not just read about poverty, they make the same poor decisions that lead real families to disaster. It’s best if you play it for yourself; you can find it at playspent.org.
The mechanics of Spent are straightforward: Choose this or that and gain or lose money accordingly. But thanks to the milieu of your own experience with the topic of poverty, this leads you to making more conservative or more morally questionable choices. Only when reflecting on those choices, do you experience the aesthetic that Urban Ministries of Durham is aiming for: that of sympathy with their mission.
• The personal, social, and cultural assumptions that players bring to games are the player’s milieu.
• A game can have different dynamics for different players based on how they act given the preferences generated by their milieu.
• Polish helps “fill in” a world by creating nonessential cues between objects.
• Richard Bartle was one of the first to have a functional taxonomy of gamer types. Others have since elaborated.
• The OCEAN personality traits help explain the domains of human personality. Designers can use those domains to help understand what humans look for in games.
