introduction
Townscaper has created its own full and pure motivation to play in the most concise form, meeting the spiritual needs of players. This article will provide a brief analysis of the game's design and a discussion of the additive design that prevails today.
Game Description
The game provides an area where the player is free to build buildings. There are no goals or restrictions in the game, and the experience is similar to a sandbox.
Motivation to play
Motivation is what makes players open and play games. Players open games and play games often to meet spiritual needs. The motivations for Playing Townscaper are listed below. Because there is no formal, systematic theory of play motivation, the following will briefly explain the reasons for playing motivation while giving the motivation to play.
1. Relaxed experience
There are often various pressures in human life, and the relaxed experience relaxes the player's spirit, so it can become the motivation for the player to play the game.
2. Satisfy the desire to create
Human beings have the instinct to create and express. The freedom to create expressions in the game satisfies this basic human need. Therefore, it can be used as a motivation for playing.
Motivational design implementation
This section analyzes what designs Towncaper designed to achieve the above motivations. Because each design point tends to add to each of these motivations, the following design points are not categorized.
1. There are no restrictions on the player
There are no target requirements in the game, no resource limits, and players will not feel any mental stress.
2. Relaxed game atmosphere (art, music)
The cartoon art style, looming music and clean and simple sound effects affect the player's mood from both visual and auditory aspects, providing players with a relaxed play atmosphere.
3. The threshold of creation that has been lowered
Thanks to the game's excellent art and programming, the threshold for achieving excellent creation in the game is very low. Players can easily achieve what they want, and even those who do not have a foundation in content creation can create beautiful buildings.
4. Start quitting at will
The game does not have any restrictions on exiting the game, and all progress is saved. The casual withdrawal means free game time, so the player will not have any play time and progress requirements when opening the game, reducing the psychological barrier before the player opens the game.
Addition and subtraction in game design
Today's game designers always want to add to the game and add a variety of play elements in an attempt to increase the player's motivation to play.
Without considering that the various gameplays are not well combined, I think that even if the combination is good, such an additive design has the following problems:
(However, in fact, most games just stitch together all kinds of gameplay roughly, and all kinds of gameplay mechanics are combined into a mess, and the imaginary all-encompassing has become four different)
On the one hand, the cost:
1. Increased costs in development
Adding various mechanics and experiences to the game inevitably requires more time and effort, and the investment will become even higher when considering the compatibility with the previous game design.
2. The increased learning cost of the player
The addition of game design is often accompanied by an increase in mechanics and a increase in the complexity of the system. Correspondingly, the player's learning cost will also increase, and the pressure on thinking will be greater.
On the one hand are the benefits:
I think in the vast majority of cases, the above increased costs do not bring corresponding benefits.
The reason is that the player's motivation to play the game is not so much (the length of the reason does not discuss the motivation in depth), some simple mechanics, the experience brought by the content is all the player needs, is the reason why the player opens the game. For example, the creative experience of "Townscaper", the adventure experience of "DQ", the competitive experience of "DOTA", these simple experiences can fully meet the player's spiritual needs (desire to create, desire to explore, gain the recognition of others, etc.).
In today's many, many games, their complicated system mechanisms are often not designed from the perspective of the player's spiritual needs, but for commercial considerations. For example, the classic "others have me to have" thinking (abused battle royale gameplay, Devil May Cry 5 inexplicable online), addictive design (draw cards, pass rewards) and so on. Because these designs do not meet the reasonable emotional needs of players (excluding unhealthy vanity, illusory in-game wealth, etc.), they often do not become the motivation for players to open the game, but will become the motivation for players to go to the liver and krypton.
brief summary
Townscaper shows us a way to design games, a more rational way of thinking. This kind of idea and boldness is precious to designers in this era of additive design.