Game decisions

Game decisions 

I learned a lot from this reading such as that there is a lot of problems associated with making a massively multiplayer online game and it is tricky to build due to technical issues involving server scaling, design issues involving scaling economics, politics, level design, pacing, persistence and progression but also many multi users dungeons are successful such as Minecraft and Fortnite. I also learned how we can borrow from social psychology, an overview of friendship formation, Dunbar's layers and the constraints they place on social system design, social group and the constraints they also introduce, big design insights, opportunities for fulfilling the social motivations of players and conclusion. 

Borrowing from social psychology

Social game design operates within the physical and mental constraints of the human animal so it pays to understand these constraints and build them into our design. A friendship is a singles bond between two people friendship formation is a distinct process involving proximity, similarity and disclosure. Dunbar's layers is about structured relationship bonds most people have a maximum of 150 total friendships. This web of relationships can be modeled as an egocentric network with the individual at the center the paper focuses on the implications of Dunbar's layers for human scale social design in online games. A social group is a collection of people brought together for a shared task or interest groups contain multiple overlapping individual networks. Human scale game design is about creating strong relationship bonds between individuals You would need to create activities, incentives, spaces, and social structures that actively build friendship in order to enable even the most basic of trust-based activities.

proximity, Similarity, disclosure and reciprocity are the basics of growing friendships. Opening, opportunity, response and acknowledgement are the micro designs of social systems. Escalation and rejection are common variations.

Friendships in an massively multiplayer online games tend to start out with parallel play two people simply see one another’s name while fighting monsters in the same area. This then escalates to helping one another heal, an emote of celebration, a dropped item. The two players may start chatting in order to take down harder monsters they may also friend one another and start talking more about who they are and what they are interested in.

At each stage, interactions take increasing time and effort. And involve richer communication. Each micro-loop is not very expensive, but over long-term repetition of many such loops, the relationship accumulates meaningful amounts of trust.

Almost every stage of these reciprocation loops involves consent. Each party must consent to both starting, continuing, and escalating the relationship. At any point, it is totally fine for one or both parties to pull away, either to slow down or move onto some other relationship opportunity.

Multiple layers

Friend layers:

1.5 people: intimate couple or individual.

5 people: intimate friends or family.

15 people: best friends.

150 people: casual friends or acquaintances.

Non-friend layer:

500 people: Nodding acquaintances.

1500 people: recognisable.

Close friendships have a strong influence on quality of life and high trust relationships take time and the right context.

Social group

There are different types of social groups such as social identity perspective, self categorisation perspective and social cohesion perspective. There are three types of group sizes small friend groups, large social group and huge impersonal groups there are different rules, trust, goals and relationships depending on the size of the group. 

I also learned how to minimize designs that require huge impersonal groups, the belongingness motivation, the desire to form relationships waxes and wanes, two social game design opportunities which were games for friends and games that help make friends, what players need and best practice.

cozy

I also learned about cozy which is how strongly a game evokes the fantasy of safety, abundance and softness.Coziness is an ingredient that can applied to a wide variety of both casual and core genres, Coziness can help your game appeal to broader audiences, Coziness helps retention by giving players control over pacing while still maintaining engagement during periods of rest, Coziness is a subversively humanizing design practice in a society built on monetizing base animal needs. I also learned about negating coziness, cozy adjacent, patterns of cozy aesthetics, why make a cozy game, general cozy design principles, patterns of cozy aesthetics, cozy visuals, cozy audio, cozy location,cozy items and the mechanics of cozy.

Example of multiplayer game-Fortnite

Decision making and flow theory - I enjoyed learning about design making and flow theory.

Social design-  I enjoyed learning about how social design effects game play.

decision based game play design - I liked learning about decision based game play design.