Q: How do you guide players’ behavior in games?
A: A lot of those ideas you learned in Psych 101 like reinforcement schedules are fundamental to game design. People are subject to the same behavioral influences as pigeons and rats. You can influence the players’ behavior by attaching a meaningful reward to the actions you want them to take. For example, say you’re designing a card game and you want players to try to collect three 3’s. You could force them to do that by making it the winning condition — there’s your reward. Or you can make people pursue that same goal less aggressively by saying that three 3’s are worth 3 points, while all other collections of cards are worth one point.
The most powerful reward you can give a player is a social reward. Intrinsic rewards are nice, but adding in a social component exploits people’s basic competitive nature. If someone else has something that you don’t have, you’ll work really hard to obtain it. There’s also a element of inclusion, of being part of an in-group that’s tied together by the game experience.
To get to the Others’ side.
“One of the things that I didn’t think about before I started my first startup were all the parts of the infrastructure that weren’t product. They’ve also consistently been the things that other entrepreneurs forget about when they come to me with their “ohmygodIhavethisidea” ideas. They’re also vitally important because they allow the founding team to actually execute the pivots you’ll need to execute quickly, intelligently, and without sacrificing development of the actual product that you’re trying to pivot.”
(via fillup)
Nice. Competition = good for all.
This is a clear and concise rundown of video codecs and its application within the HTML5 spec.
BBW TRIBUTE!
Someone at Bath & Body Works marketing should be fired.
“Apple’s iPad is an early (but big) step toward the future of personal computing. But you can’t move into the future if you are weighed down by the past. So it’s possible that many of the technical limitations in the current iPad are actually deliberate design decisions made by Apple to ensure the future of personal computing arrives without the issues of today.”
Although Rousseau’s compass isn’t drawn with geometric precision, we can still use it to create a more detailed compass rose for The Island. The variance marked on her map is very close to 23 degrees. This, of course, makes perfect sense in the LOST universe, given that 23 is one of the Numbers.
This compass rose also contains notations for two important bearings, 305 and 325, which have been mentioned several times in dialogue. We’ll discuss the significance of these bearings in the next post.
1. Go to Apple Store.
2. Purchase Apple iPad.
3. While in store, AFTER purchasing, open iPad.
4. Start up.
5. Go to hulu.com.
6. Attempt to watch Family Guy episode.
7. Show people.
8. Show to “Genius” and say, “Hey, it looks like my Apple iPad is broken. Can I get a replacement?”
9. … ?
10. Profit.
“If you’re designing your own interaction, keep in mind some of the good practices seen here: minimize visual noise particularly in a task-based scenario, provide incremental confirmation to users filling in forms to verify their actions, generate real time error messages to allow users to reverse and correct their actions. Be careful not to inundate users with more information than needed to complete the task, and be selective in choosing feedback mechanisms which should be easy to interpret at a glance.”
“Once upon a time, Apple made the machines that made me who I am. I became who I am by tinkering. Now it seems they’re doing everything in their power to stop my kids from finding that sense of wonder. Apple has declared war on the tinkerers of the world. With every software update, the previous generation of “jailbreaks” stop working, and people have to find new ways to break into their own computers. There won’t ever be a MacsBug for the iPad. There won’t be a ResEdit, or a Copy ][+ sector editor, or an iPad Peeks & Pokes Chart. And that’s a real loss. Maybe not to you, but to somebody who doesn’t even know it yet.”
I really love Steam. Best game distribution platform by far.
“Sales were up as well. The service now boasts over 1,000 games from more than 100 different developers and publishers. Unit sales grew more than 205 percent in 2009. That’s the fifth year running that Steam sales have grown more than 100 percent.”
