In my definition, a gameplay is a structure consists of the following two elements:
• A play, which gives you instinctive pleasures.
• A set of rules, which puts some restrictions on you.
It's that simple, but there are huge differences between just a "play" and a "gameplay".
Let me give a few examples.
Seeing stars twinkling in the night sky is a "play". If you have someone to love sitting by your side, it'll give you a lot of pleasure.
However, if you have someone about whom you know little, this kind of situation will create an awkward atmosphere.
So, you'd better transform it into a "gameplay" by adding simple rules like "whoever finds a shooting star first wins". Sharing a gameplay will break the ice and bring you two closer together (unless you really hate each other).
To construct a game, you need at least one gameplay. So, it's possible to make a game which contains only one play and one rule.
You say such primitive games are too boring and trivial?
I don't think so, because I know a global sporting event which attracts billions of viewers by hosting games belong to this category. During the event, people around the world get excited every day and even shed tears of happiness when their favorite players win medals.
Of course, I'm talking about the Olympic Games.
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Among the sports competitions held there, traditional track and field sports are the most suitable examples. For the purpose of this argument, they can be divided into following four groups:
(A) sprint races, long-distance running races, hurdle races, steeplechase race and relay races
(B) walking races
(C) long jump, triple jump, high jump and pole vault
(D) hammer throw, javelin throw, discus throw and shot put
As you can see, the sports in the A group are evolved from maybe one of the most basic and oldest kinds of play for human beings, "running". Similarly, the ones in the B, C and D groups evolved from "walking", "jumping" and "throwing", respectively.
Each of them contains only one essential rule. For example, the only rule behind sports in the A group is "whoever reaches the goal first wins". Although they vary in distance and the hurdles require dedicated skills, they share the same substantial characteristics.
And the important thing I want you to notice here is, all of these plays are personal, not social, activities. That's the key to understand the difference between a play and a gameplay.
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You may argue that running with friends must be a social activity, but that's not true. I'd like to explain it by introducing the concept of "internal factors" and "external factors".
Both internal and external factors can affect the outcomes of a play. But the big difference is, while a play can also affect its internal factors, it has no direct influence on its external factors.
In the case of running, its primary internal factor is your physical health. And its outcome can be represented by the level of mental pleasure you gain from it.
Naturally, the outcome constantly decrease over time. You must feel very good for a while after beginning the activity because the pleasure it provides should easily surpass the physical pain.
But the difference will eventually be shrunk to zero as your legs get more and more tired. At the point where its outcome is zero, you can either keep running or stop it immediately since it makes no difference to you. However, if you are a rational person, you'll always choose the latter because it's obvious the level of pain keeps rising until you break legs.
In short, running is a play activity where you gain mental pleasure in exchange for losing physical health.
Like this, a play (running) and its internal factors (your physical health) have very tight interactive relationships.
External factors are equally important. The primary external factor of running is the environment surrounding you, which includes things such as:
• the weather
• how scenic the running course is
• presence of friends to run with
As you know, running on a sunny day is more pleasing than running on a rainy day (for most people). Similarly, you should feel less tired or bored when you are running through beautiful forest trails with friends than running on a plain straight road alone.
Thus, external factors also can change the outcomes of a play by enhancing the pleasure and mitigating the pain you get from it. But it's a one-way street - the play has completely no influence on them.
Obviously, you can't change the weather and natural landscapes. Although it's possible that your running partners' behavior be affected by you, it's not directly caused by the play itself - other communication means like verbal and physical languages make it occur.
Therefore, a play is a personal activity. It may produce some experience to share, but it's impossible to share the play itself with other people.
On the other hand, all gameplays are born to be shared between people.
In a game, you can directly alter other players' outcomes by changing your own ones, because each player acts as an internal factor for other players.
So, the outcomes of all players are completely integrated, which means every decision and action you make inevitably changes other participants' fates.
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Probably, the most primitive and ancient game for human beings is hunting. Although its types of outcomes vary according to what kinds of animals to choose as targets, let's think about the simplest case.
When you hunt a bear with a primitive hunting tool like a spear, you eventually reach one of the following two outcomes:
• If you win the game, you'll get his (maybe her) meat as a reward.
• If you lose the game, you'll be eaten by him.
From his viewpoint, your win means his death, and your death means his win. So, in this simple game, the two players' outcomes are completely linked in a symmetric way.
Since there's no way that both players achieve positive outcomes, increasing your chance of winning the game means reducing that of your opponents. He'll swiftly notice the change and make retaliatory moves - and you'll fight back soon.
This chain of actions continues until one side wins.
Like this, participating in a game means linking your fate to others' - every single action you make more or less changes all players outcomes.
So, you don't need any words to communicate with others.
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In the world of games, words are useless. There, "decision" is the common language, with which you can express your thoughts and preferences.
Sid Meier, who founded the "Civilization" franchise made a great speech titled "Interesting Decisions" at the Game Developers Conference 2012.
Link: "Interesting Decisions" on GDC Vault
https://www.gdcvault.com/play/1015756/Interesting
There, he expressed his belief : "A game is a series of interesting decisions".
In his theory, a "interesting decision", which is important in creating fun experiences, likely to have some of the following four characteristics.
1. Tradeoffs
Each choices should have both pros and cons.
In RPG games, equipments like swords and shields are priced in accordance with their strength. So, its a tradeoff between cost and benefit.
In racing games, while fast cars tend to have less handling, easy-to-handle cars tend to be inferior in speed. Therefore, choosing a fast car can increase your chance to win, but the car may crash before it reaches the goal. So, it's a tradeoff between risk and reward.
2. Situational
Decisions should interact with game situations in interesting ways.
In racing games, you should choose an easy-to-handle car when you run curvy race tracks. But you'd better choose a less manageable but powerful car when you run race tracks with plenty of straight stretches.
3. Personal
Players should be given choices which match their own gaming styles.
In good strategy games, you can employ both aggressive and defensive tactics based on your preferences.
4. Persistence
Your decisions have effect for a certain amount of time. And combining long-term decisions and short-term decisions can create engaging experiences.
In the Civilization series, you have to decide your actions while considering both long-term objectives (to build a military-oriented civilization or an economy-oriented civilization) and short-term objectives (to explore new frontiers, to hire more soldiers or to invest in the economy). This multiple-layered structure creates the well-known "one more turn syndrome".
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Interestingly, another world-famous game designer, Masahiro Sakurai, who launched and directed "Kirby" and "Super Smash Bros." franchises, made a speech at Game Developers Conference 2004 titled "Game Design: Risk and Return", which solely focused on tradeoff between risk and reward.
Link: "Game Design: Risk and Return" on GDC Vault
https://www.gdcvault.com/play/1013537/Game-Design-Risk-and
In his theory, we can understand what makes games fun by analyzing their risk versus reward structures.
Unfortunately, we can't see the presentation slides he used then. But he recently published its Japanese version on a game news site. So, I'd like to translate some of his words into English.
Link: "What makes games fun?" on Den Fami Nico Gamer
http://news.denfaminicogamer.jp/kikakuthetower/171130b
[Start Quote]
What makes games fun? That's the theme.
In my theory, the fundamentals of games is 'risks and rewards'
Here, 'risks' are things which can worsen your situation. And 'rewards' are things which give you some benefits. As the result, some risks may disappear or you may be allowed to proceed to the next level.
This concept explains how games create fun experiences. Now, I'm going to prove it by applying it to various genres of games.
"Space Invaders (1978, TAITO)"
In "Space Invaders", a classic 2D shooter, the risk is being shot down by the enemy invaders and destroying them is the reward. Since your and the enemies' missiles can move only vertically, you have completely no risk and no reward when you stay at a safe horizontal distance from them.
Approaching towards them increases both your risks and the chance of getting rewards.
So, you have to voluntarily increase your risk to get some rewards. This is the most substantial part of games.
"Super Mario Bros 3 (1988, Nintendo)"
In "Super Mario Bros", a 2D platformer, you can clear out a lot of enemies at once by kicking a Koopa towards them.
When there's enough space between you and a Koopa, your risk is very low. However, it gradually increases as you inch towards him. And it attains the maximum level at the moment when the horizontal distance between you and him becomes zero.
To avoid the danger, you have to jump over him at some point before then. Interestingly, this dangerous moment is the first time you get a chance to get rewards.
If you successfully jump onto him, he'll be knocked out, which is the reward. On the other hand, if you miscalculate the distance and land in front of him, you'll certainly be in high danger, which is the risk.
This tight relationship between the risk and reward creates a thrilling and fulfilling experience.
The important point here is: by setting up a risk and a reward close to each other, we can create fun experiences. In addition, the magnitude of the risk and the reward have to be carefully balanced.
"Super Street Fighter II (1993, CAPCOM)"
The relationship between risk and reward is the very basis of fighting games.
Every action you make has a predetermined risk and reward structure. For example, in "Street Fighter II", using a special attack called Hadoken involves risks such as:
• You may fail to input the command.
• You lose the freedom to move for a certain duration.
• Your opponent may simply avoid it by jumping.
It meanwhile offers rewards such as:
• You can attack the opponent from a safe distance.
• It makes his next move predictable - he will jump!
• It act as a shield.
If your opponent makes an action like jump, he'll be constrained by another risk and reward structure. Therefore, the key in winning fighting games is to calculate your and your opponent's actions' risk and reward balance and to exploit his weaknesses with your strengths - it's not a simple tit-for-tat game.
In action puzzle games like "Puyo Pop", piling up blocks, which eventually kill you, is the risk.
Removing many blocks at once will clean up your accumulated stress. The amount of pleasure you gain from it is proportional to the number of removed blocks.
The important point here is: good games allow you to decide how much risk to take. Beginners will take low-risk and low-reward strategies. More skilled players will pursue big rewards by taking high risk strategies.
In this way, you can build a game which can entertain a wide variety of people.
[End Quote]
In a play, the only important decision you can make is, "to continue it or stop it". Actually, it's a no-brainer choice because the only two situations you should choose the latter are either when you find a more fun activity or when its outcomes sink below zero.
Moreover, your decisions produce no direct effects on other players. Therefore a play is, however enjoyable, just a personal pastime activity. You can enjoy it only when you don't have to worry about time, which explains why kids and animals love to play.
But, rules can transform it into a much more meaningful social activity, a game, by directly connecting all participants' outcomes.
It's so fulfilling that it makes you forget time - you must remember playing games through the night.
There are some more important differences between a play and a gameplay.
In any play, your outcomes are set to decrease over time and eventually become zero because doing single activity for a long time causes physical or mental fatigue. However, in a gameplay, your outcomes can at anytime change both upwards and downwards depending on your and your opponents' decisions. So, a decreasing outcome doesn't always mean bad because your next move can change it drastically.
Besides, to make a good decision, you have to make the most of your mental and physical abilities, which means your decisions vividly represent your personality. So, you can express yourself by just playing games.
Nowadays, sharing game-play videos on YouTube and Twitch became a trend. In addition, so-called eSports grew into a global industry. Personally, I don't watch both of them, but I can understand why they became large industries in this context.
By combining plays and rules, human beings uncovered and cultivated the secret power of games. But it doesn't mean any kind of rule can transform a mere play into a much more meaningful game.
Whether a play can goes well with a set of rules is a matter of chemistry.
So, in the next article, I'll explain it in a chemical way.