Designing Interactions: Play

Chapter Takeaways

• Take lessons from game design into the greater interactive sphere.
• Hire people who are crazy about what they do.
• Sometimes it's alright to design for yourself as the user.
• Determine your audience and talk to them.
• Provide a smooth transition from novice to expert user.
• Children don't need your toy, but will play with it if it is fun and their parents buy it.
  
• Creative must merge with market demands, including price and timing.
• Girls also like to play, just with a different kind of game.
• Think about how people will perceive your design tools, perhaps that can be your product.
• Support your teams, and the bottom line will follow.
• Enable your users to pursue their goals.
• Fit the design into the contemporary world.
  

Bill Gordon

• BA in Literature and Drama at Yale.
• MBA at Stanford.
• Joined EA in marketing, is no CCO and Executive VP.
• EA first video game publisher to treat game developers like rock start, made it easy to attract best designers.

Starting Electronic Arts

• EA presumed interactive entertainment was going to be as big as music and video.
  
• Driven by belief that "play" is a core human value.
• 1982, Tim Mott became 9th cofounder to join, as VP of technology.
• Chose name, Electronic Arts, carefully. Wanted to represent the developers as artists.
• Only hired people who were crazy about games.
• Spent a lot of time with avid game players in order to understand likes and dislikes.

A Taxonomy of Games

• The interests of the players (car, simulations, war etc.)
• The age of the players (i.e. preadolescences , teenagers, adults).
• The gender of the players (girls are more likely to play w/ boy characters, but boys are beginning to open up to girl characters).
• Interactive formats (PC, Mac, handheld etc.)
• Brands (tend to excel at different types of games).
• Number of players (multi-player is getting increasingly more popular).
• Input Devices (simple for novice, complex for expert, specific for some types).

Brendan Boyle

• Part of creative design at IDEO.
• Sit close together for better communication, also leaves space for workshops.
• Kids come in weekly to try new toys.
• BSME, and then went to Goodyear.
• Product Design program at Stanford.
• Started Skyline to develop ideas for toys and then brought it back to IDEO.

Inventing Toys and Games

"[Children] may have more fun with pot, pans, and a wooden spoon than the latest hot toy or game. In a market sense, the words "toy" and "game" mean a plaything that an adult is willing to purchase, rather than just an item that a child wants to play with, which would include almost anything." - Brenden Boyle 2004

• Brainstorm game ideas and then make prototypes to show kids.
• Must be below a specific pricepoint in order to sell.
• The turnaround is typically 6 months, with the target being Christmas season.
• Despite having sold 125 concepts, still surprised when a new one sells because everything has to line up.

Examples of Brendan Boyle's Designs

• Aerobie Football: inspired from Charlie Brown.
• Finger Blaster: build from existing materials, but for a new use.
• Fib Finder: include technology to compete for notice with Mattel and Hasboro.

Brenda Laurel

• Bringing theater and computers.
• Show people for to use enactment to inform design.
• Researcher, designer, writer, teacher.

Games for Girls

• Trying to understand the difference between the sexes.
• Wanted to create a world girls could affiliate with.
• Girls prefer a narrative construction.
• Built Purple Moon.

Will Wright

• Best-known guru in game design.
• Designer of Sims, best-selling game of all time for personal computers.
• Thinks through his design decision and present an analysis in simple, accessible terms.
• Games with a reputation for intelligent and creative design, with a sense of social responsibility.
• Acquired by EA.

Models

• First game in 1983, Raid on Bungling Bay required Will to create cities for players to bomb in the game. Loved the city planning so much, that it eventually led to SimCity.
• The publishers got impatient for SimCity, not understanding that is was more of a toy, and less of a game.
• Will met Jeff Braun, an entrepreneur, who loved the idea.
• They started their own company, Maxis, to make the game.
• Started slowly, but took off when Time write a full-page article about it.
• Went public in 1995.
• The pressure led to the release of several poor games.
• In 1997, acquired by EA.
• EA cut top-management and re-focused on best-selling products, saving the company.

The Sims

• Luc Barthelet, new general manager for Maxis under EA, set Will up with the best possible talent to develop his ideas.
• Was excited to focus on his idea of building a game based on contemporary life. Books were about contemporary life, why not software?
  
• The game that would build on the processes and strategies that people use everyday.
• Got a lot of casual players who did not normally play computer games.
• Ten to fifty yeard olds - grandparents would play with their grandkids.
• Anyone can customize, regardless of computer knowledge.
• Game is adaptable and adaptive.

Designing Games

• Starting point for designing a game is to engage players in deciding what their goals are.
• Designer has choices about speed and scope at project start.
• Concentrate not just on the successful interaction, but also on the failure of it.
  If you can make failure a big part of the entertainment, people will get a blast from it.
• Every game has overlapping loops of interaction.
• Weakest element is now less likely to be graphics and must more likely to be behavioral - these technologies are going to be a big focus over the next 10 years.
• Lessons to Interactive Design:
  
• Must be enjoyable.
• Engage the imaginations, and users successful a little bit at a time.
• Controls must be fun and easy to use.
• Path from inexperienced to expert.
• Our design should relate to the designs around us.