Why Games are Designed to Leave You Wanting

okay at this point I think everyone knows I really like food analogies so follow me on this one for a moment look back to a time in your life where you've just had a really good meal right it's just perfect and then after it's over you sit back stretch out your legs and feel just satisfied you know you don't want another bite you don't need a dessert or anything else to hit the spot you're just full and done and exactly where you want to be feel like I'm chasing that feeling my entire life but no contrast that with the times that you're really hungry or you're craving something specific but all you have is some junk food and not the specific thing you want in the end of that scenario you've probably eaten too much of that but you keep searching for the thing that's actually going to satisfy you because at no point in that process do you actually feel like you've had the thing that you've really been wanting in that scenario which I am also very familiar with satisfaction was just never achieved and turns out that very human behavior also creates a huge dilemma when it comes to game design [Music] thanks so much to trade coffee for always satisfying my need for an amazing cup of joe so let's talk about this Paradox of satisfaction because one way or another referenced obliquely or referenced under a more neutral sounding name it's been coming up a lot lately in James's game design discussions this idea that if you give someone a truly Rich meaningful experience that fulfills their needs and States their desires but then they're done they don't need another course or a second helping and we all know that media companies can't have that can they because while a truly satisfying experience is something you might remember all of your life at least in the short term something like that isn't going to get you to open up your wallet again and one of the closest non-gaming examples I can give is the film Logan versus any of the stereotypical other Marvel movies released these days to put it simply Logan just moved me it gave me exactly what I wanted from a superhero film left me with things to think about and discuss and offered a catharsis rarely found in the genre in short I walked away from the experience of watching it emotionally and intellectually satisfied now you contrast that with most of the phase 4 Marvel movies many of these look have been fun in the moment I found him exciting slick and honestly who doesn't love an undead doctor strange but in the end most of them left me wanting other than wakanda forever that was a banger they most certainly didn't have me walking out of the theater feeling like I was truly done or like I'd gotten everything that I was craving from the movie and y'all this is intentional Logan ended a franchise whereas the current MCU films are designed to never let that happen but how does this translate to games you might ask well it's pretty simple actually as games have become more of a Perpetual experience and as companies have been just throwing money at AAA games they also began needing you to buy the sequel pick up the season pass or throw down some money on microtransactions aka the Temptation has become stronger and stronger to provide you with an experience that is almost but just not quite exactly what you want okay to explore this further let's hop back on the old Logan Marvel example for a moment superficially Logan and other MCU films are similar they feature iconic recognizable characters you already love doing heroic things and of course while there's an arc for characters in both at the end of a current gen MCU film the characters tend to revert toward the template that they're built off of and while the characters may appear to learn and grow over the course of the film by the end Iron Man will always have his suits despite Shane Black's best efforts of course and Peter Parker will always go back to being the lonely and poor friendly neighborhood Spider-Man these films don't actually move the main character's narrative forward rather they're really good at taking us on a journey for a few hours then dropping us off pretty much right where they started and then teasing the real change that's totally coming next time in a post-credits scene or whatever then since it's not really over we keep coming back for more again and again and this exact phenomena is built into almost every multiplayer game today besides these standard treadmills XP bars and Skinner box type progression there's an emotional high-end release that players are chasing that often just isn't there and to illustrate this let's not think of the experience in terms of individual matches instead let's examine the X experience of a player sitting down to play a session of multiplayer matches in a multiplayer game environment after any individual match in most PVP games things seem to reset and you start fresh and from here as a player you can divvy most outcomes into four possible results one you get absolutely rolled this is unsatisfying and you want to play again two you lose but barely you think if things had gone a little different you would have won or you know where you made a mistake and you can do better next time so you want to play again three you absolutely stump your opponent which comes with none of the feelings of struggle and Mastery that you're playing for and since that match kind of feels like a waste of everyone's time and is unsatisfying you queue up to play again or four you win a hard-fought match now this one is a bit more tricky this should feel satisfying you got what you want and it's time to walk away for the day but many modern designs actually try to drive you back into the game after such a match sometimes it's with crude methods like win streak Rewards or a new toy to play with that you'd want to try out right away but some sometimes it's a bit more subtler than that sometimes built into the game itself is an unachievable goal that it wants you to be reaching towards and never feeling satisfied because most likely you'll never actually get there performance measurements that told you you got an A plus instead of an s or four out of 5 Stars can all do this so can showing you your time versus the best time or where you rank amongst all players and of course that's not to say these things shouldn't exist or shouldn't be visible but notice how they're usually stamped at the end of a match that my friends is intentional it's meant to take away the feeling of satisfaction and drive you right back into the game even when all other emotional points are telling you that you've completed your task but this happens in PVE games as well for instance have you ever noticed in an open world game you'll say to yourself you know I'm just gonna go check out that landmark and then be done for the day but then when you get there you see three more landmarks and you really want to go check out all that other stuff all of a sudden or what about games that promise you an answer in its narrative to a a mystery but when you get to the end of that game instead of providing said answers they just hit you with a bigger mystery ahead that sounds like something we already talked about oh or have you ever replayed a game to get the good ending specifically because it was clear on your first playthrough that you got the bad ending that one gets me literally every time heck what about replaying a level to get all of the stars or whatever other macguffins the game has in it right I mean I know I've been in a Mario game where I would have played a level and said that was fun and then put it down but at the end it tells me I missed like three things and I gotta go back in to get them all of course all of this isn't always solely done out of a desire to keep you in a game there are actually many good reasons for some of these design decisions case in point The Landmark thing from before landmarks and open world games are positive we just actually did an episode about that but we can also clearly see that being helpful like this isn't the Soul Thing driving these decisions because again as AAA games get more expensive to make companies have simply become incentivized to make the player feel like they're so close together getting what they actually wanted from the experience while also not being truly satisfied so they can keep players in their ecosystems and keep them spending more now of course some companies have cut themselves on this blade making games that are so unsatisfying that well you just don't want to keep playing them but honestly as an industry games have gotten really good at giving us almost enough at giving us the feeling that the thing we actually crave is just right around that corner over there and if we just keep playing we're gonna get there someday and they've learned to do it in ways that don't ever make us realize that the game is never actually going to give us exactly what we want but y'all know me I don't want to end this episode on a doomy and gloomy note I mean heck I've gotten a lot out of games even ones that do all of the above I just like bringing up stuff like this because it's important for us as players to be aware of what's going on and on us as designers to learn from games like say Elden ring that are kind of master classes at giving you almost satisfying experiences until they finally do give you a shout for Joy sigh of relief and truly satisfying moment that lets you put the controller down and turn off the machine for a bit actually for me it was defeating Moog with our twitch Community got that felt so dang good yeah I'll put a link down below for you to see what I mean it just proved to me that moments like that are truly what make you want to come back again and again and that's what I've done I've put down album ring for weeks at a time but never really like put it down down you know I'm playing it months later because it is like a great meal you finish a session feeling sated but then days or weeks or months later you do want to play it again not because it left you unsatisfied but because it promises you that same satisfaction again whenever you're ready for it and of course that's much harder to pull off than creating a craving and never quite fulfilling it but as designers I do think it's well worth it to try and while that feeling of satisfaction can be hard to find one place in my life that I think I've actually achieved it is with today's sponsored Trade coffee now as some of you probably know by now I've got and pretty deep into what one could call The Infinity Gauntlet of convenient Commodities and okay actually hold on a second I'm gonna stop reading the script real quick do you all know how long I have wanted to actually work with Trade coffee because seriously myself and like most of the EC crew drink a lot of coffee and we're always looking for new roasts from independent Roasters right using ethically and sustainably sourced beans because that is something that is very important and then we finally got talking with trade and it was a match mated caffeinated Heaven I am so pumped and I'm going to tell you all about them so their whole thing is to enable you to make the best cup of coffee at home specifically to your taste every day case in point I am a down and dirty French Press boy for life so not only did trade help me select a great blend from a local New York roaster mind you but they also ground it to my preferred Brewing method and then delivered it fresh to my door so it was ready to make like the moment it arrived and it was so good whereas Jeff is more of an espresso guy with his fancy schmancy latte machine so he opted for dark roast whole beans from an indie roaster to grind himself and then actually when we got together to talk about which Brewing method was better it's the French Press by the way we actually just ended up talking about how well trade really did match our flavor palettes to the coffees that they sent us we were actually pretty impressed so look if you would like to join us in upgrading your morning routine with just a way better coffee right now trade is offering all y'all one free bag of coffee with any subscription if you use our link drinktrade.com extra credits and then once you sign up not only will you of course be getting the best beans in the business but seriously you will be making us look really good to a sponsor we've been wanting to work with for a while and that will Super help out the channel so thank you very much for that once again that's drinktrade.com extra credits the link of course is in the description or you can click right up there if that is easier for you and yeah thanks so much and seriously happy Brewing if you are a coffee lover I think you're going to really dig this a million big old thanks to Skylar Holmes kuya koi Joseph blame Dominic valenciana Casey muscha archolite games Angela valenciana and Ahmed Zia Turk for being fantastic legendary patrons [Music] foreign

Channel: Extra Credits

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Keywords: extra credits, game design, game development, game industry, games, gaming, video games, animated, game developer, game designer, video game, gaming industry, game design basics, video game design, game developers toolkit, animated stories, games industry, game design career, video game lover, game design tips, game design theory, game development for beginners, game theory, rpgs

Id: f-9Htus3AfY

Length: 11min 26sec (686 seconds)

Published: Wed Mar 01 2023