Meeting with Lisa Wong of Playstation R&D

I had the pleasure of spending an afternoon picking the brain of Lisa Wong, a designer at PS3 R&D, on the future of game and how to design fun. After nearly 3 hours in a great little tea shop off Van Ness (Leland Tea Company) I came away with a head full of random threads that I’m now going to try and summarise.

On game design and Interaction

Fun is Emotional: What are the emotional triggers of the intended user. Get inside their head. Enough said.

Player to Player Interaction = Emote: The strongest online interactions come from people able to project their “voice” and personality through the medium. Text alone is only effective if the person has a strong command of written prose. Often abstractions such a emotacons can bridge this gap and allow for the subtler nuiances to come through. Find ways to condense the key interactions into their simplest forms. Can it be made into a button press.

Take Existing Behaviour as Inspiration: Investigate how your target audience interact offline. Which are the strong themes and the hook points that people “gather” around? Once identified these can be abstracted within the online space to create a more natural experience. No need to reinvent the wheel, use existing strong interaction points to inform your game design. For example taunt features in multiplayer games.

Nerd-Elitism in Gaming: Traditionally gaming has been the realm of the committed fanatic, typically male 14-25, and who see clunky interface and steep learning threshold as the price for entry to the gaming experience. These people make up the current generation of game designers and producers, and often bring with them prejudice towards inclusive gaming for all. As a result most of the games on the market still come from this limiting mindset that games should be hard and the reserve of an elite. Designers must be aware that whilst they do what they do because they were the 1% that grew up drawing/coding/building in solitude, they are creating with the 99% that were outside playing in the sun. You’ve got to like the people you design for and not see them as inferiors whom you are helping.

You are Not Everybody: These two demographics have vastly different motivations. The introspective, technical and creative individuals are more driven to compete with themselves. They were the ones that grow up wanting to “fly aeroplanes”, non-competitive achievements that were an expression of personal competence. Those on the otherside of the coin are attracted to competition, beating others often manifested in team sports. Designers must be conscious that their definition of fun is often vastly different from the majority. They must design for them.

Limited Game Modes: Just as dramas fall into a limited number of categories, we find the same with gameplay. All games, even going back to ancient board games, revolve around the same elements of game play e.g. collecting, destroying controlling, building. Games can be a combination of these game modes, but when broken down will always be fun because they appeal to these elements (Lisa describes them as actions that appeal to OCD facets of our personality – Especially true for the “nerd gamers”). Role-play games for example are simply an extension of children playing with dolls (the amount of time people spend customising avatars is testiment to that).

Good UIs are Satisfying: Skillfully operating a complex machine like a plane has it’s own kind of satisfaction, but the most successful interfaces give the user a quick gratifying sense of statisfaction. The iPhone’s success if largely down to sheer fun of swiping, tilting and shaking. Feedback to reward these actions can also play an important part. Good UIs should have a sense if flow.

Other Random Thoughts

Social Networks Weaken Relationships: By introducing more chatter from those with whom we have little connection, we are drowning out and diminishing the value we place on our closest friends. Whereas before you would call to wish happy birthday, now we add a wall post along with the dozens of other acquintances and half friends. Can we build social networks that build better friendships.

Games bringing strangers together: Games are often seen as the reserve of the isolated. Is there a way of games such as Football 3’s, which have a strong established real-life social network, be used to bring people together in public. Perhaps there is a space for F3’s parties in the same vein as Guitar Hero Pub parties?