Game Design Origins - Game Design Essentials - page 6

There are also experimental games like Night Journey , which is a freeform
game conceived by artist and MacArthur fellow Bill Viola. The game is designed
to allow players the opportunity to explore the beautiful worlds based on Viola's
art, in an effort to gain enlightenment. This freeform game has been developed
at the USC Interactive Media Division.
Games with rules generally come with instructions for how to play. Often,
when a player is faced with a long list of rules to learn, they're put off. They
don't want to have to read so much just to learn how to have fun. This is simi-
lar to the phenomenon of people who buy an expensive piece of equipment and
then toss away the manual. They want to turn it on and grasp how to use it just
by working with the functions offered by the system; they don't want to have to
read and study how to use it.
Game designers often count on the ability of players to intuitively understand
how to play their games. For example, some gamers look at a game board, see
how it's laid out, and grasp right away how to play. Game designers like to count
on the intuition of players, because often, the more instruction provided up
front, the less fun tends to be had. In other words, when you design a game,
keep in mind that struggling with learning and following a lot of instructions
tends to be frustrating.
G a m e s a n d I n t u I t I o n
Game designers rely on players' intuition to understand how to play games.
Intuition associated with games can also come in the form of games that
help you improve your intuition, such as trying to guess what is hidden on
the game board. For example, the games at The Boundary Institute site, www
.gotpsi.org , try to determine whether humans can improve their psychic
abilities by playing certain types of games. The site's free online games let
you test your psychic ability, and many believe that the more you practice at
this form of guessing, the more heightened your psychic abilities become.
Of course, you need to be clear with the instructions; but many designers
have learned how to deal with players' intuitive ability by allowing the gamer
to turn off tutorials so they can learn how to play the game just by jumping in
and then sinking or swimming.
Rules define how to win. They can resolve dilemmas when players come to
loggerheads and explain how to break a tie. An interesting phenomenon is asso-
ciated with games that have rules (which is most of them): if there are rules,
then there are ways to break them. In other words, ways to cheat!