A really good video game is like a magic trick.
As players, we buy into the experience of a game with some expectations. The game has a hefty responsibility to meet those expectations. Depending on genre; a game acts as storyteller, teacher, challenge, tour guide, and reward. And in the best games, the developers are completely invisible until the credits.
But sometimes the illusion breaks. A disruption causes us to pull the problem out of the world of the game with exclamations of “What were they thinking?”.
I’ve taken to calling this phenomena DPD.
Developer – Player – Dissonance
Developer-Player-Dissonance, or DPD, is when the developer and the player are no longer in sync. Have you had a moment where you’re not sure how you succeeded? Or you’ve come to a dead-end looked like it should be the way through? Or perhaps you’ve been befuddled by a puzzle for hours only to discover it wasn’t meant to be solved? These are moments of DPD.
A game is a piece of art and thus has to stand on its own. You, the developer, are not going to be able to stand behind every player to explain how the game works. So you have to be very deliberate in making the game so the players can always find what they need to know.
Expectations and Causes
In my experience, the base cause of DPD is a mismatch of expectations. At any given point during play; the developers expect that the player has a certain skill or piece of information for the current situation. The player expects that the game is fair and has presented them with all the tools they need.
Trouble is, both sides are human. We all make mistakes or forget stuff. So our job as game designers and developers is to make sure that mistakes and forgetting stuff won’t kill the game experience. We have to get on our players’ wavelength to make it easier for them to get on our wavelength.
Next Page: A List of Causes