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Designing Frustration (Part 3)
Part 3 In the first parts of this discussion on Designing Frustration I suggested that frustration can lead to player satisfaction by enabling them to resolve difficulties (frustrations) in their game. Effectively if a frustration is implemented correctly and in a solvable manner, more gameplay is introduced. Emotional Narratives and Frustration I’ve touched on this previously but an offline conversation prompted me to explore the mix of a strong emotional narrative with frustration. By emotional narrative I’m referring to a game story that is built with the intention of a player reaching ever escalating moments of emotional involvement with a storyline. To summarize it more simply… a game experience that…
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Designing Frustration (Part 2)
Part 2 In my first post on Designing Frustration I suggested that some frustrations (in life or in games) are good things. Well-designed frustrations compel us to remove them. In this post I’m going to focus the discussion on game design, specifically role-playing game (RPG) design. What are Frustrations Game frustrations should lead to in-game player choices. Frustrations that the player cannot remove are not good design. I think an example might illustrate effective use of game frustrations: A common feature of old RPGs is the idea of a limited inventory. Basically the player can only carry a limited amount of equipment. Certain RPG designers, in an attempt to make…
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Designing Frustration (Part 1)
PART 1 I don’t know about the rest of you but I have tried multiple digital-task management solutions, from Excel to Outlook to Google Tasks and more. Currently I’m using Excel sheets again to keep track of which blog posts need writing, what projects I want to tackle next and so on. But tasks written there continually accumulate. Beside my laptop I also have a pile of ever dwindling sticky notes. Thing is, for many tasks I still find myself jotting notes down on paper. And those tasks I accomplish! Likewise I have hundreds of unread books stored digitally… and these I do read. But my progress through them is…
