energy-mechanics
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Rise and Shiny: Dawn of the Dragons
There's no way for me to describe Dawn of the Dragons without it sounding a bit like the old Mafia Wars-style games that were so massively popular on Facebook years ago. The truth is that, yes, games designed around clicking a button a few times or even several hundred times (depending on your tolerance) sound like they cast some sort of spell on the playerbase. Surely these people cannot behaving any sort of fun and instead are trained animals, responding only to the bit of food that drops out of the chute. I'm the first one to admit that much of the gameplay in a game like Dawn of the Dragons by 5th Planet Games pays out the most to those who hit the buttons the most. But I'm also the first to defend the design and to say that it can be a lot of fun. Let's not pretend that even the most immersive, realistic, epic MMO in the world cannot be turned into a series of button-smashings. We've all known a player in almost any game who has reduced her electronic adventures down to an efficient science. Does a game like Dawn of the Dragons just do away with all of the mumbo-jumbo to get to the meat of the gameplay: the button mashing?
MMO Blender: A real-time Farmville MMO minus the Zynga
Let's talk about FarmVille for a minute. Yes, I mean the Zynga-produced FarmVille, the one that helped social gaming become what it is today. There are a lot of things that have been said about the game, like "it's not even a game" or "it preys on gamer's addictive natures" and all sorts of sufficiently evil-sounding things. Say what you want about the evil monster that is Zynga and make all the jokes that you can about FarmVille and other social titles, but I want to tackle it from a different view. Let's look at it as the sandbox game that it is and use that example to invent a brand-new MMO, although I'm sure ours would not meet with even a fraction of the success that FarmVille has. FarmVille is arguably the most popular sandbox title in the world. We've defined "sandbox" a million times on this site, but it's easy to see just how open and flexible FarmVille is. Is it limited to the confines of its unique set of tools and designs? Of course, but so is every sandbox. FarmVille has successfully introduced the wonders of sandbox gaming to people who might never give a similarly described game a chance.
Behind the Mask: Pushing buttons is fun
Last week, I teased that this week's column would discuss Champions Online's energy mechanics. That, however, is only half of it. This week, we're going to discuss energy mechanics in general, player perception of resources, and the core central idea key to all video games: pushing buttons is fun. The actual concept isn't hard to explain. Doing things in a video game is entertaining and not doing things is boring. This is a simple, fundamental concept that anyone can understand. Resource mechanics like mana, energy, or Vespene gas limit the things we can do before those resources have to be replenished. Running out isn't fun, so we reduce our resource use or maximize our resource returns. The issue of CO's dreaded energy mechanics is only partially the developers' fault. The rest lies with us.
