I've never been much of a gamer. The most up to date console I ever owned was a Nintendo 64 dating back to 1998 and on the rare occasion that I used a friend’s more advanced machines I would charge aimlessly around battlefields unable to look at anything other than my characters own feet or pass the football slowly, painfully, inevitably into my own goal. I therefore approached this project as someone who was familiar with the world of research but for whom the world of games was largely a closed book. In the next three blog posts I want to talk about my experiences of playing some of the most popular games available at the moment. I'll discuss what I thought about the game-play, whether the game drew me in and the trends I observed in successful games. These factors are of course of crucial importance when considering designing a game that bridges the gap between gaming and research. There are plenty of examples of serious games linked to a research purpose that have failed to consider the game-play components in sufficient detail. As a result they now reside in quite corners of the internet, unplayed, unloved and unsuccessful in achieving their goals. Later in this blog series there will be a post on how the successful games I introduce here capitalise on their success and how games that aim to generate a positive change might be able to learn from these winning techniques.
The first game I played as part of this project was Candy Crush Saga. This massively popular match-three puzzle video game was released by the developer King on April 12, 2012 for Facebook, and on November 14, 2012 for smartphones. It is currently available through Facebook, on smart phones and tablets across all operating systems.
The game play is extremely simple. Each level has a game board filled with differently coloured candies. By swapping candies horizontally or vertically the game player aims to make sets of three (or more) candies of the same colour, which will then disappear from the board. Levels contain specific objectives that must be completed in a given number of moves or with a time limit. Candies with special powers can be created by creating candy sets of 4 or more or purchased by the user. In essence this is the extent of the entire game.
Despite its extremely simplistic game play Candy Crush has proven to have a winning formula. With up to 500,000,000 downloads from the Google Play store I am not the only one who has explored the sugary sweet world of Candy Crush. If you've never played Candy Crush and have instead just read my brief description of the game-play then you might imagine it is a game that one could grow bored with very quickly. Yet as I sit here, I have it installed on both my phone and iPad, and despite having the information I needed for this quick overview long ago I'm now up to level 119... make that 120. WHY? Why am I still playing this game? Why are so many people hooked on this game that its developer, King, was recently valued at over $7 Billion, largely on the back of this single game?
Speaking personally I see four key reasons why the game has proved to be such a success.
1) It is extremely simple to start playing. Practically anyone can play the first few levels of Candy Crush and the game tutorial walks you through the simple game play in an interactive way. This lack of barriers to entry means that anyone with a device capable of running the game is a potential Candy Crush addict
2) The game play rewards simple actions with large "rewards". A single swipe of the finger across a touch screen is sometimes enough to cause a cascade effect of exploding candies whilst audio messages and words flashing across the screen emphasis how "tasty" your move was. These visually stimulating, epic moves occur frequently enough to be something obtainable but not so frequently that they become the norm.
3) The game difficulty progresses at a perfect rate. New challenges and obstacles are introduced into the game sufficiently often that regular players do not become bored. Whilst the movements the player must make do not become more challenging it does become increasingly necessary to think about the consequences of a move and to plan ahead in order to achieve the special combination moves. In this way a regular player continues to see value in playing just one more game...
4) the games are very quick to play. Completing level in Candy Crush can take seconds and rarely if ever takes more than two minutes. This means that there is always time for a quick game, and irrespective of whether you succeed or fail on the level there's always time (in ones head) to squeeze in just one more. Given that users have the platform on which Candy Crush is most commonly played (a tablet or phone) on them at all times there are hundreds of opportunities for a user to play in a single day.
The game play is extremely simple. Each level has a game board filled with differently coloured candies. By swapping candies horizontally or vertically the game player aims to make sets of three (or more) candies of the same colour, which will then disappear from the board. Levels contain specific objectives that must be completed in a given number of moves or with a time limit. Candies with special powers can be created by creating candy sets of 4 or more or purchased by the user. In essence this is the extent of the entire game.
Despite its extremely simplistic game play Candy Crush has proven to have a winning formula. With up to 500,000,000 downloads from the Google Play store I am not the only one who has explored the sugary sweet world of Candy Crush. If you've never played Candy Crush and have instead just read my brief description of the game-play then you might imagine it is a game that one could grow bored with very quickly. Yet as I sit here, I have it installed on both my phone and iPad, and despite having the information I needed for this quick overview long ago I'm now up to level 119... make that 120. WHY? Why am I still playing this game? Why are so many people hooked on this game that its developer, King, was recently valued at over $7 Billion, largely on the back of this single game?
Speaking personally I see four key reasons why the game has proved to be such a success.
1) It is extremely simple to start playing. Practically anyone can play the first few levels of Candy Crush and the game tutorial walks you through the simple game play in an interactive way. This lack of barriers to entry means that anyone with a device capable of running the game is a potential Candy Crush addict
2) The game play rewards simple actions with large "rewards". A single swipe of the finger across a touch screen is sometimes enough to cause a cascade effect of exploding candies whilst audio messages and words flashing across the screen emphasis how "tasty" your move was. These visually stimulating, epic moves occur frequently enough to be something obtainable but not so frequently that they become the norm.
3) The game difficulty progresses at a perfect rate. New challenges and obstacles are introduced into the game sufficiently often that regular players do not become bored. Whilst the movements the player must make do not become more challenging it does become increasingly necessary to think about the consequences of a move and to plan ahead in order to achieve the special combination moves. In this way a regular player continues to see value in playing just one more game...
4) the games are very quick to play. Completing level in Candy Crush can take seconds and rarely if ever takes more than two minutes. This means that there is always time for a quick game, and irrespective of whether you succeed or fail on the level there's always time (in ones head) to squeeze in just one more. Given that users have the platform on which Candy Crush is most commonly played (a tablet or phone) on them at all times there are hundreds of opportunities for a user to play in a single day.