Exploring Game Design

This study will explore the implications of prior experiential knowledge upon the design and implementation of digital immersive systems, investigating areas of real world experience and cultural values upon user interaction within digital game environments and virtual worlds

The commercial development of interactive digital environments for games and simulation has led to a race for visual systems to represent real world experience, attempting to match human cognitive and sensory capabilities. Game developers have equated player immersion and sales, with realistic visual and sensory simulation. This direction has been questioned with the release of Nintendo’s latest game console, the Wii, effectively withdrawing from the race with other game consoles for visual realism, and estimating its profitability on the selling points of game play through other sensory inputs.

It is true that today’s virtual reality provides very limited tactile feedback, almost no proprioceptive feedback (as would be provided by walking on a sandy beach or on rough terrain), rare opportunities to smell, and little mobility. However, it is just getting started. Kreuger (2001)

Myron Kreuger, recognised as a pioneer of virtual reality and as a designer of interactive environments questions the use of only the visual sense to engage with both the physical and the virtual environment. In the physical world we utilise all our senses to engage with the surrounding environment but we also bring prior knowledge and experience to bear on our understanding of the possibilities for interaction with other people and with objects.

Human-computer interactions become the potential basis for an altered experience of the real, give a heightened sense of the virtual, and provide a genuine example of how the real and virtual are inseparable. Burnett (2004, p.95)

Digital worlds for gaming and for socialising have become ever more prevalent as communication technologies improve and facilitate virtual worlds where millions of users may be online at the same time. To users these virtual worlds they inhabit can become as immersive as the physical world they live, breath, eat and sleep in, both existing in a symbiotic relationship with the user as the conduit between them. The skills they learn in a virtual world become as important to them as their real world skills and the intellectual stimuli transfers between the real and the virtual worlds both consciously and subconsciously. Within games and communication environments communities have evolved and social structures have appeared, whether anticipated or not, by the worlds designers. Some of these structures relate to real world systems while others are particular to the digital environment. Levels of emergent behaviour by users, unforeseen by game designers, lead the area of design for virtual worlds into ever more complex situations.

Global game differences in taste and game play are becoming apparent to the industry. According to Herz, J.C. (1997, p.119) Nintendo’s policy is to change the pace and difficulty of a game to suit the market with differences between the Japanese market and the American market recognising different cultures require different forms of game play and are seeking different values from the experience. The cultural sales trends of digital games are also evident when comparing game sales in the US and Japan where some games for the Asia Pacific market are never released in Europe, yet the same concept of game play is inherent in all cultures. If cultural influences are evident within game play choices then it may be questioned what is happening in virtual worlds, where players from diverse cultural backgrounds meet and play with only national time zones to affect the diversity of online player culture? If a player brings their cultural values and prior experience to the shared virtual world then this knowledge may be factored into the design process for virtual worlds and their inherent game play.

Therefore, let me argue that the actual dawn of user interface design first happened when computer designers finally noticed, not just that end users have functioning minds, but that a better understanding of how those minds worked would completely shift the paradigm of interaction. Kay (1989)

Digital game design is struggling to develop its own design language and hampering this development is the fast paced evolution of digital gaming technologies and the profit led nature of the industry stifling levels of creativity and the time for critical reflection. With game development now costing millions of dollars, games developed from other media such as movie licenses, providing guaranteed international success, have become ever more apparent.

The computer games market is becoming ever more hits driven. CTW estimated that of the 3000 games reported to have been released in the UK in 2000, the top 99 titles (3.3% of development) accounted for 55% of all sales.Department of Trade and Industry(2002, p.12)

Publishers are refusing to take risks on more innovative and creative projects, as their marketing departments have no material to assimilate the potential of a project that is unique. Digital games are a billion dollar global industry within which the UK games industry has long been recognised for its innovation and creativity but the area of digital game design and that of building virtual worlds remains a relatively new field.

The population of game worlds is increasing daily and the term massively multiplayer role playing games (MMRPGs) is now used for games such as World of Warcraft (2005) where 8 million players worldwide; over 2 million in North America, 1.5 million in Europe, and 3.5 million in China interact within its virtual game world. These initially small digital territories have now grown into large virtual countries with their own economies and law and order systems that in some cases rival the wealth and structure of physical nations. Ultima Online (1997) has been estimated to sit in the top thirty wealthiest countries worldwide if it was recognised outside the digital domain.

The installed games console base for the US, European and Japanese markets is over 150 million consoles, and with online technologies becoming standard in the latest consoles and broadband access becoming readily available, these virtual game worlds are steadily increasing their international audiences. Spatially the world is shrinking and virtual worlds are a new method of digital communication that has opened up the possibilities of interacting with people from different cultures. These worlds have removed some of the perceived burdens of geographical and cultural boundaries but have yet to recognise or investigate the possibilities for their design within the context of the player’s experiential learning.

Even the most sophisticated science fiction writers know that the worlds they are creating refer back to the worlds of their readers or viewers. Burnett (2004,p.101)

This study will address the design of multi-user digital environments and the gaps in design knowledge due to these rapid developments and the ever-increasing global audience.