I've never really enjoyed The Sims but I think it's worth discussing from a notgame-perspective. It clearly has some of the mass-appeal that games usually miss out on. And even though it has goals they are placed on a story-level (even more in the The Sims 3 I think) so that you can deliberately choose to not fulfill them as part of deciding how the lives of your sims turn out.

So... what do you think? What can be learned from The Sims and what is bad about it?

Hi and welcome!

This way one adds tension without the need to have a win/loose mechanics since the player will think that they barely escaped at each choice.

Ah, that's really nice!

Regarding forced choices, what you wrote remembered me of when I made a little game called World of Pong. The game is a (fake) MMO and in the beginning the player has to choose what side to fight for, left or right. I only had the energy to program the logic for playing on one side though, so I pulled a little trick: no matter what you choose you end up playing on the right side. I figured right would be the most popular, it's just feels "right"

To make it a bit more sure-fire I also added a text under each button, telling how many people were on each team. I made the right team be quite a few people less, my hope was that most players would want to make the two teams equal in strength.

I have no scientific proof for how well this worked but all my playtesters choose the right side

This is an interesting topic! It reminded me of something I've been wanting to write an article about for a long time, so I thought I could share my thoughts here and see if it makes any sense to you guys.

I have some background in performing close-up magic and to me guiding the player kind of translates into what magicians call misdirection. When performing magic tricks it's usually used to be able to do something fishy with one hand while everyone looks at the other, but in games the same psychology can often be used in a much more subtle and nice way.

What misdirection really is about is to get into the mind of the audience and make them think what you want them to think. Since no one falls for that trick if you say that's what you're doing, it all has to be done through very small and unnoticeable "clues". In a performing situation that often translates into for example looking at something (i.e. your left hand) which makes everyone look there (apparently that's how the human mind works). That's something that in a way have been used in adventure games where characters look at important objects in the environment, but I think there are tons of more interesting methods left to explore. I have been trying a little but I have no usable, practical advice so far.

Another, arguably more interesting kind of misdirection is the use of "story" as a way of making people think what you want to think. A close-up magic example would be me taking a coin and making it look as if I move it from my right to left hand, while in reality I'd keep it in my right hand. The story in the mind of the audience here would be that the coin has moved and if I keep my left hand closed you would not argue with that. As long as I pretend the coin is there I can do all other kinds of things (like move my right hand to the pocket to get my wand, while secretly dropping the coin) without anyone suspecting anything. The point is that I have planted an idea in the head of the audience and as long as that idea is not challenged it will stay there, affecting their thinking in very noticeable ways. In Blueberry Garden I tried to make the whole first 3-5 minutes "scripted" through this kind of mind control, planting one idea that lead the player to a place where another idea was planted, and so on. Of course a lot of players get "dropped on the way", that's the beauty of freedom and interactivity. Still, a great deal of people follows the planned path, not only through the game world but also in the mind. I have heard this described by a person as the game "mind reading" the player, which apparently was a very cool experience (ironically the truth is more of the reversed).

Now I don't claim these ideas to be very original, I guess everyone dabbling with level design (or writing) comes up with similar ways of working and thinking. Architecture and cognitive psychology are two areas that might hold way more useful knowledge for making people do certain things in a game world. To me the secret tricks of the magicians will always have a special place in my heart though.

I'm sorry if all this seems a bit ill thought out or off-topic, I just wanted to share it with people that might be interested, since I haven't really had the chance to discuss this with anyone (except briefly with Petri Purho who also performs magic).

Wow, that's awesome.

OK, that's very nicely put!

Michaël, I think I understand what you mean, but it would be nice if you elaborated some more.

I would say that kind of a lot of games have authors too. The more visible and personal these authors are, the better (that's by far the greatest strength of indie games to me).

Can you explain more what difference you see between the creator of a normal game and a notgame, in terms of being an author?

Regarding the getting bored part:

I agree that it's a fallacy to believe that interactive systems simply are better the more they suck us in... still that's usually the no:1 criteria for judging their quality. I think that's primarily because systems don't tell us anything immediately, they need tedious exploration. In other words they usually fail to communicate unless we spend a lot of time with them.
In that sense I think Electroplankton might have a problem; if it engaged people more they would probably spend more time learning about what music that could be created, which in turn would lead to a more profound experience.

I have been thinking a lot along these lines too.

Using plot twists and revelations as the main type of award worked out reasonably well in my game Blueberry Garden. This way of motivating the player made the playtime become very short (exactly like you say). There simply isn't much more to do when the story comes to an end. In that context it feels very weird to try to prolong the happening of events by adding "puzzles" or "challenges", it would just destroy the rhythm (still that's what most gamers would like, of course).

Me and a friend have been planning for a while to explore some other kind of motivation... more specifically the one that makes us humans want to travel. It almost seems like games about traveling would be the most basic form of notgames, right?

No matter if we go for a walk or travel by train through Europe there is something very goal-less about it.  The motivation is too see things (surroundings, places, people, culture) and experience events (sleeping at the floor in some strangers barn, etc), not really to get anywhere. Also, there is something silly and playful about the whole thing: usually we just try to go far away half of the time and then home the rest of it.

[Qualities]

Maybe it's worthwhile discussing some existing works more in-depth (seemed weird to do this in the reference-section, please tell me if I'm wrong) to see what they offer us as notgame designers. The first thing I came to think of was Electroplankton for the Nintendo DS. Even though it's far from the grand visions that Michaël has talked about I think it offers refreshing ideas regarding interactivity and software. Here are some of my thoughts:

Qualities
Electroplankton is the DS-cartridge that has captured my mom's imagination the most, by far. It's also what I usually feel inclined to play around with when looking through the games I have for the system.
The experience is very free and up to the user to shape to his or her liking. Nothing is locked away from the beginning and there are no goals to fulfill (except the ones you set for yourself). You get rewarded proportionally to the effort you put into exploring the different planktons, the more you learn the better your music sounds.
One of the most beautiful design choices to me is the lack of save function. It forces you to appreciate the fragility of your musical constructions. Also the very vague story that is suggested (happy little sea creatures playing music all day long?!) is fun. I get the feeling that there must be something more to these characters, they are not purely functional.

Problems
I guess the main point is that the program could be described as a music program or tool rather than a world or something telling a story. It certainly have characters but do they act?
A lot of people playing with the program also get bored after a while (after trying out all of the planktons..?)


I think the main question is what parts of Electroplankton are worth continue building on and what is not. Any thoughts?