Game Decisions

Reading Week 6
Source: pixabay

Hi!

For this week, the reading was all about 'interactivity' or we can also call it decision-making. Describing decisions as the essence in games and they also write about the flow theory for games.
So, let me get right into it!

The first article that I've read titled "Decisions, decisions!"
This article was all about decision-making, specifically what is good decision-making and what is bad decision-making. Like the article states, here are some of the common kinds of 'uninteresting' decisions commonly found in games.

• Meaningless decisions 

          This type of decision making involves having to make a choice, but it having no effect on the
            gameplay. This is perhaps one of the worst ones because it gives no further direction.

• Obvious decisions 

          As someone who played and plays games, I'm sure you have too. Knows that the fun of the
          comes from showing off your skills and with obvious decisions there is a clear one right answer
          that has no effect on the game.

• Blind decisions 

          This is a pretty bad one too. Just like the others this type of decision has no effect on the game
          but this time the answer is not clear and this create an additional problem. Players aren't
          provided with the needed information/knowledge on which to make the decision, so its all
          essentially random.


Here are some of the more 'interesting' decisions. These decisions mainly involve some kind of tradeoff.

• Resource trade - Giving up one thing up for another, where both things are valuable.

• Choice of actions - Here the player must choose the actions they feel are the most important at the time.

• Dilemmas - In this case players have to give up one of several things. This forces the player to make a decision on what they feel like they can leave behind.

The second article I've read titled "Cozy Games" written by Daniel Cook discussed on the topic of, you guessed it cozy games. You're probably wondering what are cozy games? Coziness itself refers to how strongly a game evokes the fantasy of safety, abundance and softness. Even though coziness is an ingredient that can be applied to a wide variety of both casual and core games, it can help your game appeal to a broader audiences. Here are some things that I've read on cozy games.

• Safety - There is no impending loss or threat, the game has an absence of danger or risk and nothing is at high-risk.
• Abundance - A cozy game shouldn't have anything lacking, pressing or imminent but have a sense of quality.
• Softness - Cozy games use a strong aesthetic signals which tell players they are in a low stress environment. There is a gentle and comfortable overall stimulus, players are still highly present but not feeling constant / high fear level.

The last article I've read titled "How To Design for Coziness" written by Rebekah Valentine. I choose this article because I wanted to read a little more about the concept of games, specifically cozy games. In this articles Rebekah writes about other developers and how they make their games "cozy"

Thanks for reading