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The Gamer's Brain, Part 2: UX of Onboarding and Player Engagement | Game Developers Conference | YouTubeToText
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Video Transcript
[Music]
all right here we go
good morning everyone thank you for
being here today this early and for you
interest in us and the brain my name is
Celia I had a PhD in psychology and the
director of user experience at Epic
Games and I had previously worked at LucasArts
LucasArts
and Ubisoft this session is meant as a
follow-up to my last year gdc+ you talk
about how neuroscience and UX can impact
design since it seemed to generate some
interest I wanted to go to do a deeper
dive on one of the critical aspects of
the games user experience the UX album
boarding and player again Schmidt last
to do is I'm gonna speed up a little bit
as an introduction I would could be
reintroduce some on your science notion
as well as UX notions that I tackled
last year just to make sure everyone is
on the same page so I apologize for the
repetition here but the user experience
entails how a person perceives and
interacts for the product and the
satisfaction and emotions elicited by a
decent direction it takes its roots in
cognitive science human factors and
human-computer interaction you access or
DES makes an umbrella discipline whose
objective is to evaluate and improve the
experience of the targeted users of a
product in development includes UX
design interaction design user research
u.s. strategy etc all those UX should
now be the concert should be the concern
of everyone on the team I'll just a us a
quick reminder about how the brain
learns discovering and mastering a video
game is a learning experience for the user
user
it requires mental efforts this is why
it's important to understand how the
brain learns to craft a compelling
onboarding experience one worth putting
effort into one that will matter to your
audience anything the brain processes
and learns originated from a perceived
input and changes the memory the subject
the quality of the processing therefore
the quality of the retention
depends highly on the attentional
resources applied which are also dependent
dependent
the emotions and motivation felt by the
players and some to improve the
experience of the players video game
developer reason was taking to account
the perception memory and attention
limitations of the brain as well as the
emotions and emotion motivation felt by
the player disclaimer this is highly
simplified the brain doesn't work in
that sort of buckets the brain is even
more complex than game development so
imagine so we got a perception I'm going
to quickly remind a little bit of each
perception Evils involves all the mental
processes that allow us to sense our
environment and construct our own mental
representations of it perception is not
a passive window to the world it is a
construct of the mind into meaningful
patterns perception is highly influenced
by previous knowledge expectations or
like in in this example context the
input at the center can be perceived as
a B or as a 13 depending on the context
you read it
another example illustrating that
perception subjective contrary to all
the people like me the save icon doesn't
mean anything to the youngsters as they
do not have a mental representation
based of previous experience with this
object from the past until they learn
what it symbolizes when using a computer
so designers have to keep in mind that
what they perceive might not be what
their audience will proceed exactly upon
memory memory allows us to encode store
and retrieve information there are three
components of memory have the sensory
memory it's part of perception it
retains sensory information for a very
short period of time such as a fraction
of a second without it being consciously
processed for example the persistence of
vision is due to sensory memory and
allows us to perceive a 24 image for
certain display as a uninterrupted
animation it requires attention for the
invite for the mission to go to working
memory which is a short-term component
that allows for temporary storage and many
many
of a very limited amount of new or
already stored information this system
maintains active mental representation
necessary to perform a task the working
memory requires heavy attentional
resources and therefore is very limited
it is also easily disturbed so please
put your phones in silent mode long term
memory is a multiple system component
that allows us to store knowledge of
events and facts as well as skills the
know-how and conditioned responses the
long-term memory has known on limits in
space and you can potentially store
information for a lifetime
however memory lapses are fairly common
talking about memory lapse here's the
forgetting curve illustrating how memory
retention declines exponentially with
time retention of information especially
if not engaging emotionally or
meaningfully can be very fragile some
variables have an impact on the strength
and quality of the encoding and storage
of information such as the level of
processing and the amount of repetition
over time only the brain is prone to
memory lapses but it can also distort
memories because of these limitation
developers cannot really rely on players
memory the student about attention our
senses are continuously bombarded by
multiple inputs for an from our
environments attention Intel's
allocated more cognitive resources to
process selected inputs while the others
will be ignored that selective attention
the brains attentional resource is being
very limited we do not methodically
process all the invaluable information
from the environment we don't scan the
environment instead attention works like
a spotlight focusing resources to
process and retain particular elements
and neglecting the other inputs such as
and when you're in a party is called the
cocktail effect cocktail party effect in
a loud party can focus to just listen
one conversation and ignoring all the
rest and as the fire alarm rings and
it's going to draw your attention away
from it
so when elements are unattended they are
likely not perceived at all in a
phenomenon called inattentional
blindness this phenomenon was best
illustrated in the well-known gorilla
experiment in which you have to count
basketball passes of the white team
leading you to not see the gorilla
passing by I usually show that video but
now everybody knows it so it's not fun
anymore but even though a lot of people
now understand that multitasking is a
myth there are still a lot of games that
fire multiple inputs at the same time
during the onboarding my games were an
NPC is talking to you while you learn
how to drive a car for example when
multitasking or cognitive overload
occurs it affects engagement focus and
therefore hinders the quality of
learning which can affect your players
engagement so I did my session last year
showing some UX Furious 6 or guidelines
for Musa bility and from what I like to
call the game flow it can help you
remember what elements are important to
were confusing the players and to
increase the fun potential of your game
today we are going to look more deeply
into the onboarding the first time user
experience so what isn't boring
important here's a chart showing the
cumulative play time in warframe note
that the data is compressed on the
x-axis so the hours are not linear it
shows that 80% of all players ever kept
playing after one hour which means that
in a free-to-play game you will lose
about 20% of your audience during the
first time user experience the
onboarding and this is a pretty good
example warframe is exists X successful
after P game so imagine how this curve
looks like for less successfully I
didn't want to poopoo on anyone so just
to show dramatic chart but I do
encourage you to go to steams by to
figure it out by yourself if you haven't
done so already engaging the audience
within the first minutes of play is a
delicate endeavor and has become a
critical aspect of developments in the
area of free-to-play games if your game
fails to captivate the audience
attention quickly there won't be any
retention challenges to even care
don't get me wrong a great onboarding is
not a guarantee for success after the
short term engagements mid and long term
engagement will be tremendously
important too but where our focus more
on the first hour play here so during
the onboarding part of your game you
need to get your message right when the
players are discovering the game and
remove barriers then you have to make
sure players can quickly learn the main
mechanics of your game and engage them
through clear goals and progression
paths that you need to take to often the
transition from the tutorial part to the
real game is not engaging because it
lacks meaning so these elements are not
really separated and they're not even
leaner the player can discover learn and
get immersed at any time even long after
they are learning part of course so it
doesn't mean that you should not be
preoccupied with motivation mechanisms
during discovery part very first steps
or that players cannot be immersed
within the first minutes of life also
learning is a central part of the
onboarding here but it happens in all
these steps all the time because playing
a game is a learning experience that's
why learning principles are going to be
at the core of this presentation that
she's developing effective materials
that facilitate learning requires an
understanding of the principles
underlying how people learn which our
first one is the behavioral psychology
principle it's basically conditioning
which affects implicit memory so Pavlov
Skinner Thorndike you've heard these
names they only looked at stimuli and
responses input and the output without
really bothering with what happens in
mind the black box dominance of
behaviorism began to wane in the
seventies and cognitive psychology took
over they wanted to look into the black
box with an information processing
approach perception attention memory all
the stuff we just talked about they also
introduced the notion of an executive
control lastly according to the
constructivist viewpoint learning is a process
process
of people actively constructing
knowledge so that's people like Jean
Piaget if you've heard of them or see
more papers research with mobile you
remember the liberal programming
language with the Turtles
yeah I'm not that old I mean I guess you
are old like me
so that's active learning sorry for the
lame picture here would just try to
google search active learning there's
pretty lame pictures in there anyway so
these different learning principles will
be used as perspectives throughout this
presentation so the first part of the
talk will emphasize on one of the most
important aspect of the brain with
respect to long boring managing the
players attention learning to play a new
game resuscitates a different cognitive
effort and mastering again a new player
is not necessarily deeply motivated to
play and has many new things to
understand so the game must engage its
audience quickly and efficiently every
point of fiction can turn the player
away at that stage especially again with
free-to-play games since they don't
require your previous commitment you
don't buy the game so to remove barriers
you need to manage the players attention
to do that you need to understand how
working memory works the component that
stores and manipulate information it is
composed of two slave systems one system
is responsible for processing visual
spatial and lower tasks another is
responsible for processing phonological
tasks so it's really impossible to do
two tasks from the same size system and
usually to show that I bring people from
one onstage as this person to sing a
song while trying to spot verbs in a
text can't do that GDC here but my
colleagues are Ubisoft
I've been experiencing that painfully
and this is where you can actually see
that it's very difficult to do two tasks
from the same bucket in that case
phonological tasks you can do one of
each so I
so as a person to sing a song with
lyrics but instead of spotting verbs as
a person to draw a picture in that case
it's much easier but still less
efficient as just doing one task it can
be trained but only to a certain limit
when attention is divided for example
when driving while having a conversation
over the phone it requires more
cognitive load to process the different
information therefore leading to more
fatigue and mistakes the more demanding
a specific task is in terms of cognitive
load for example mental calculation the
less people can allocate mental effort
to accomplish another task in the simple
such as pressing a button when a red
light goes off by the way this is the
real experiment from Kahneman in 1973
succeed subsequently the more attention
is allocated to a task or information
the better it will be retained so if you
want to teach the players something you
really want to avoid divided attention
all right so here's an example divided
attention or when we try to require it
if it divided attention prior from
fortnight for an eye is an action
building game with RPG elements it's
currently in live alpha stage disclaimer
the footage shown in this video is from
UX testing so it's super compressed
because we don't need to have high
resolution images and of course it's
very early in development and in all the
videos I will show you you will see a
red red circle overlay this is eye
tracking so it's showing where the
players are looking at which is super
important for attentional resources so
in this video I'm going to show you the
player chose to play as a constructor so
his role is to stay close to the
fortifications to repair them and
reinforce them however he's running
around because we're all smashing the
zombies it's pretty fun so you'll see an
important message popping at the top
telling the player that the fort is
being attacked that it should go back to
repair it but the player does not even
look at this information
which is a Newtonian mechanics should be
successful in the game he is not
dividing his attention with he's dealing
the enemies is taking all his
attentional resources expecting the
gorillas experience therefore it is
critical during the discovery part of
the game to draw the players attention
to the elements that they need to learn
to enjoy their first steps given that
all of our mental processes are using
the same limited attentional resources
the developers must mind the cognitive
load the game demands from the player
especially again during the onboarding
part when the players have a lot of new
information to process so according to
the cognitive load Theory learning can
be hindered if it requires cognitive
resources exceeding the working memory
limits the working memory span is three
more or less items on average an item
and B an action or a thought process
that requires effort it's very vague I'm
sorry I cannot be more specific than
that but three items processed at the
time at the same time is really the
maximum when in learning mode so
discovering everything because new tasks
has a much higher cognitive load that
familiar or automated ones think that
about the efforts it took you to learn
how to drive the first time you have you
really had to mentally process
everything to fill a lot of attentional
resources but once trained like later
when you really have that going and you
can just sing along while you drive it's
automated so you don't have to really
allocate too much resources in there so
the same thing for the player the first
time he learns about a mechanic it's
gonna require a lot of cognitive load
loitered down line when the player
really had that gone
it's trained to doing it it's more
automated it does not require as much
cognitively so three items could be one
using an ability to react to an enemy
attack recognising enemy movement
while three dodging enemy poaching tile
that's what are you sorry
so the controls of your game are
peculiar that would count as another
item so to this year UX test video from
Paragon so Paragon is our new MOBA again
very early it's UX test footage and
check out that so this is the very first
game that the player is playing and so
it starts it's entering in the arena
right away even though we had that big
flashing red thing telling the player
hey you should you know you can't
actually have an ability right now you
can upgrade one here but the player
doesn't even look at it it just jumps
right into the arena it's fashioning
we're really trying to draw attention to
that and is trying a few things all
different than me there
who's running towards the enemy trying
to figure that out
aiming dodging and attack minions
sometimes gonna pop down we were looking
at the thing that's going I just not
so during onboarding mining the
cognitive load is straight on so the
challenge will not be seen as mastery by
the player somebody seen as an audience
or words the player would be put in a
failure this is likely going to three
stress that now we can capture with
biometric controls and that can lead the
player to simply stop playing and he's
gonna blame it on the game so f2p game
must mind the cognitive load in working
memory there are many ways to reduce the
cognitive load here such as distribute
learning over time which we're gonna see
you later you can also use affordances
to limit the cognitive load what is
intuitive does not need to be learned
therefore requires less attentional
resources to process in design and
affordance gives that provides something
that helps a user to do something now
four kinds of affordances in your design
I'll give an example of it right after
you had a physical affordance that's a
feature that helps users and doing a
physical action in the interface for
example a button that is large enough so
that you just can click on it accurately
you have cognitive affordance
it enables thinking learning
understanding knowing about something
for example a button label that helps
use your know what will happen if they
click on it form follows function is the
cognitive affordance
you have sensory for this has a design
feature that helps users send something
for example label font size large enough
to be discerned and you have functional
affordance the design feature that helps
users accomplish a task for example a
sort functionality in an inventory
there's a salty the perceivable part of
an affordance is a signifier so as a
designer you care about placing
signifiers to enable the players to
perceive the affordances so physical
affordance facilitates physically doing
something such as a handle on the door
physically helps you
operating the door so you want a button
to be large enough to tap on it to click
on it or you want two buttons to not be
too close to each other to avoid miss
clicks see the fit slow for these things
or on mobile interactive areas to be
comfortable to reach a cognitive
affordance if we saw facilities or
enables thinking about something they
help users to know what to do so the
pull handle offers both cognitive and
physical affordance because it provides
a physical means for pulling as well as
a visual indication that proving is the
required action and for tonight you have
three different symbols representing
three types of materials remember you
can build and craft and how many of them
of each the player has so that helps
players understand what they can do with
it cognitive of forints can go wrong and
basically false affordance it is when
the perceived affordance is not the one
intended given the functionality here's
the example of the acts in for tonight
so you had a lot of weapons and tools
you actually have one tool that is
really effective for harvesting just one
is to pick ax but you have all the other
elements we can have our melee weapons
so the axe is a miller weapon of course
originally it was not the intent the
design intention to put an axe and the
player's hand and say no you cannot
actually chop off trees with that
initially they wanted to have one
specific tool for each specific thing we
can harvest like the axe for the tree
the sledgehammer for a wall and stuff
like that but it was too demanding
reason like that it was not really Sun
so they removed that functionality and
there you end up with a false affordance
because of that because now players can
have an axe but it has to be used for
mailing and not for Chavez trees so
folks cognitive affordance misinforming
measly the players and then it makes it
much harder to teach them the right
thing and it's frustrating for the
players on top of it so you really have
to pay attention with that and then
that's leave the sort of things that
happen just it happens because the
design change so
have to stay focused on that sensory
affordance using one helps players since
in something seeing hearing feeling this
is what we call the perceptibility of
finds and feedback it includes no
disability discern ability legibility in
case of text and audibility in case of
self so in that case of course that's a
bug it's not by design the you when you
die you can click to respond the the
text is hidden behind a health bar and
so the fire dot cannot receive it also
isn't more someone and for tonight you
had the home base and you had buildings
and these buildings increase your stats
and see more you can even more increase
your stats by slotting workers in there
so when you click on the plus button
near to style worker it's so it was
showing the workers you could slot
including the ones already slotted
elsewhere subtly indicated by that red
corner mark I'm sure you saw it right of
course players didn't see it and on this
video you can see you'll see the player
going back and forth in the two
buildings tranches slot worker not
realizing he's sliding unloading the
same one over and over
Oh worker there
oh there's I I had one in the hospital
so we have to pay attention to that hmm
functional or affordance this is one
that is huge its usage to usefulness
this is when you add a functionality
such as sorting and categories to have
the player find something filtering and
that isn't for you
while there's filtering but there's also
a painting mechanism so it can help
player craft something faster you want
something and pin it on the head so you
don't have to do that again again so
designers have to make sure that this is
really useful but you have to make sure
that the functional affordance you're
designing is really going to be useful
to the player and not just add noise of
complexity refer you to the Pareto
principle is like the 80/20 principle
80% of the time people use only 20% of
the functionalities so be careful not to
add too much stuff that peers are not
going to use some interfaces feel easy
to use why all this drives us nuts and
requires manuals are sticky notes in
that example it will greatly help remove
barriers for your players first steps in
your game if you have good affordances
or should I say good signifiers because
if it doesn't you'll need tutorial texts
our players will have to make an extra
effort which they often don't go and do
it to figure out on forums how to use
so the key takeaway here for discovery
is you have to mind the attention the
attention limitations and the cognitive
load for the player your main objective
is to make sure that your games going to
be easy to make sense off and to remove
barriers and as this is my design if
it's not by saying remove all the
barriers at that moment use and this is
an example the usability principles we
saw a lot of UX design principles
all right so learning although learning
by doing is recognized as being one of
the most efficient ways of learning
especially when it comes to an
interactive experience tutorial texts
are still frequently used to teach them
in components of the game that's easier
research suggests that we learn best
when we are cognitively engaged and
active when learning experiences are
meaningful and socially interactive and
when learning is guided by a specific
goal so let's take a look at active
tutorials so we saw that last time like
it's really really important so I put
that here again but I'm using onion opal
the deeper you're going to process an
information focus your attention the
better you're gonna learn and retain so
that means you need to give context to
the player means the player should be
able to learn by doing and you need
meaning it has to be worthwhile now for
the player for his life for his mission
for his goal all right so here's an
example where you don't have any context
you cannot do the things you're taught
at that moment and there's no meaning so
this is again from Paragon alpha this is
the loading screen so look at the the
eye tracking so the player is waiting
for the game to load is not really
reading all the things and is especially
not ringing the match basics it is
really the most important information
frame is the first time we're going to
play the game so you need to understand
what are their the subtlety of Paragon
it's just like going back and forest not
really reading music you're just gonna
look at a few controls and that's it
here's another example when you have
context so it means that you can do it
while you'll talk but there's no meaning
so in four nights you can build and what
we saw is like figures we're building
goals all around them and then we're
like oh I can't get out
you can edit doors and for tonight but
they didn't know how to do it so they
were just like sliding down a door and
so we really needed to teach them how to
edit doors because it's really important
to enjoy the game
and so this is what they team did the
beginning so you have context and new meaning
meaning
listen to what the narrator says in that
example so you found the gate let's
close it press e to deploy your atlas of
storm suppression device don't like it
when you start closing that gate you
might want to build up some strong
defenses around it to slow the enemy
down then just this one time I'm going
to protect in an area you should build
in to protect your Atlas good wall is it
thing of beauty
but don't forget about doors yes doors
when there's a wall away choose doors
raju by the building submenu we're in a
he heard it it looks like they know
we're here until check your mini-map to
see what direction the enemies will be
coming from build your differences accordingly
of course you didn't do it you build
that box around the thing he had to
protect and then when the house the
enemies are coming is actually like oh
I cannot really see what's going so
what he did is he placed a stair stair
well so you could climb up vanities a
lot of players we're doing that so we're
like it's not working
still you have context here that's not a
really meaningful and there's a lot of
information going on here so when the
team did afterwards they tried to
impress me and this is how it looks like now
it's just beyond this wall let's use
success so now we know that the player
do it and so II really process information
information
it was actively doing it so this is when
you actually have meaning so you want to
avoid that as much as possible of course
you cannot avoid that all the time and
you want to try to have more learning by
doing and if you can add meaning even if
Samin better but sometimes it means that
you have to put an obstacle in front of
the player and it has to overcome it and
usually players they hate tutorials in
the length this is but the
promise if they don't have these
tutorials there are more likely to to
leave the game so even if they don't
like it you might you have to not make
them happy but at least they're gonna
learn the mechanics of the game and keep
playing another thing to remember here
please please avoid punishing States
during on boring during an importantly
and I'm talking to you blood-borne and
Dark Souls lovers out here if it's not
clearly the main pillar of the game
punishments you should never punish
while they are learning about something
you can finish later
it's really fine but not while they are
learning it why because players who die
or have are having difficulties during
the onboarding and less likely to retain
this is actually what we found out
looking into analytics data from
fortnight's alpha without hardcore
gamers out there so if they were having
too much difficulty dying too often they
were actually more likely to leave the
game again your hardcore players might
whine if they find the game too easy in
the beginning still they will more
likely keep playing so don't get crazy
with your difficulty curve learn about
the game learning about the game is
already challenging enough for the brain
but sometimes you just cannot provide
context for example in loading screens
if you use loading screens to teach
which you should because looting screens
are boring there are ways to make it
easy on the cognitive load this is a
screen again very very early a PvP
prototype and was the first time the
team was actually trying to do that you
access with it so
they put a loading screen there to teach
about have to do within that mode but
the first building streaming it was way
too much information to read and it was
going too much into details that didn't
make sense really to the players or
didn't know anything about this mode it
was too much about the what not enough
about the why or how fairs are actually
looking more at the cool art then about
the text so you want to have like so
again they just like hide that in last
minute to make to remove some text and
trying to make it easier to understand
because of the curse of knowledge we
have a tendency to explain that getting
too much into details probably doing
that myself today apologies for that
so explaining more about how to do all
the things instead of mining the
cognitive load explain more about how to
do the things because you have to mind
the cognitive load of the player they
are discovering all these things so they
care more about the why they're doing it
not all about the details so if you are
using the loading screens do not explain
more than three things remember the
working memory and try to focus on the
why rather than how what using loading
screens to occupy player is a good thing
though because waiting is painful and it
also it is also a matter of perception
for example waiting times will seem
shorter if there is a progression bar
that has animation on it
if this progress bar accelerates rather
than decelerates or stops us that's dreadful
dreadful
so if players have something to do while
waiting it's better instead of looking
at the empty screen so do use the
loading screen to give information to
players but they won't read it if
there's too much or they do read it
they're not going to remember it so
remember the working memory limitations
start to stick to three elements to
process and focus on the why the why why
do want to do that the purpose of these
things is really meaningful to to us as
humans so think you on boring and
tutorial through player's lens it's more
important to tease to the player the
the why the purpos'd rather than get
into the details if you motivate players
enough then they will pay attention on
how to accomplish a certain goal then
they're gonna look at more into the
details and look at the interactive
elements they need to play with to get
to that goal and so when you test your
game also try to see the players get to
the why so sure what I already do for
example at they they play the onboarding
and in the survey at the end of their
experience I show a screenshot of the
game with an interactive element so you
know for example something the players
need to activate to do something in the
game so I show an image of it and I ask
them so what is this how did you use it
why was it important for your mission
so I also asked the players what was the
objectives of the mission did they get
why they were doing all this don't just
ask them did you find the objectives
clear because they're usually gonna say
yes but if you ask them okay so what
where the object is they usually don't
get it all right so always ask them
about the purpose of completing a
mission to verify that they actually got it
it
always make sure that the players get to
the why that's really the most important
thing so remember for all that you will
teach the deeper the process the better
the retention numerous studies in
psychology showed that learning is not
simply a passive registration of
information learning that sticks
requires active minds on learning
simply put the more the brain puts
efforts into something the more it
remembers and understands it so it's
nearly scientific but overall the more
you process information so if you really
practice by doing or teach there's about
something you learned it's going to be
way more easy for you to remember three
1090 formation that if you just read
about it so even with all that
the players are gonna be forgetting
about stuff so we need to understand
better how a memory lapse works so if
you remember memory ELO's allows us to
encode store and retrieve or recall
information therefore three factors can
detail oblivion it can be an encoding
deficit this is when the information was
superficially encoded because of the
lack of attention or because of a failed
elaboration process so workaround for
that is all attention maybe the player
process information and do it be emotional
emotional
it could be a storage deficit the
information was correctly encoded but it
weakens with time so you need to give to
repeat all the mechanics and try to make
them repeat in different contexts it's
even richer and lastly you can have a
recalled deficit this is when the
information is available in memory but
it's momentarily inaccessible we have a
broken link so to avoid that you can
give reminders to have the player
remember about something so here is an
example from for age deficit so for the
encoding deficit here's an example in
from for tonight in for tonight by
design you cannot repair weapons and so
we had we're alive right now in early
alpha and many players in the Alpha
population are asking how to repair with
us they pushed him down the forearms all
the time like how the hell'd he repair
weapons you can't so the team decided to
put the player in a situation where the
weapon breaks right at the beginning of
the game so we can tell them hey you
cannot repair weapons so this is what
you need to crack so that's the video of it
but your guns broken your drone can't
repair crafted items so we'll need to
craft a new gun let's search the cave
for the resources we'll need to craft a
new weapon all right so the prior
experience that the weapon is breaking
you hear it you see it you can't repair
it here's what the player was saying
after that experience on the surveys the
light I'm confused about you know how to
repair objects and forty nights there
was no easy way to find how to repair
weapons sitting like no work and
this is because of an encoding deficit
again it was not asking the player to
put too much not enough kanji loading to
that and so they didn't really include
it it was a beautiful sound that just
made the storage deficits at painting
functionality for example allows the
player to not store the information
about what he needs to craft I just said
always have it on the head so you avoid
the storage deficit that's a functional
affordance and we move from the remove
memory load when it's missing you don't
have that pinning functionality there's
actually have difficulty storing the
ingredients even if it's just that one
ingredient is just a few numbers to
remember period it's just hard to just
remember one number is not you know just
one so of course it's not that design
again it's something that the game the
dev team is hacking through so we can
test it but here's what happened so
that's a very new feature it's ugly it's
gonna be way better but all right now is
only for the dice that's the outpost
it allows you to upgrade your pickaxe
which is the harvesting tool so it's
super important for night and so to do
that you need to have ingredients and we
don't have the spinning right now so the
player has to actually hidden there's a
lot of problems here and you need to
look at these fields get it is goes back
it's always a third time and looking at
that you know it's not that much it's
just one you just needs one degree does
that get it that's me
so you can see like even this is just
one information to retain it's not too
much I know how to use that it's still
very difficult to retain the information
because you're running around you're
doing a lot of different stuff so this
is really showing how impactful it can
be to have these sort of reminders like
on the head to have the player not store
information about recall so and for
tonight in the first level we teach
players how to craft in a deep way we
they have to do it so it's learning by
doing a video of it let's craft a better
gun for Ramirez matter open your
exit learning good permission is encoded
I'm graphing reward um and then this is
what happened like about 20 minutes
later the players furniture is out
outpost he loses all his ingredients
because he's what heroes but anyway so
this is how it happens he doesn't have anything
anything
and so we drop because well it's in flux
your outpost is vulnerable to attack so
be ready to defend it but this you can
craft a lot of cool the players
just taking the greens not protecting anything
and so this is what the player said at
the end
the student said I could not remember
how to get to the crash screen he knew
he could do it it just did not recall
how to do it so we should have given a
reminder after like even dropping all
the ingredients we should have tell told
the player hey remember like press I to
get to your inventory craft and 11 so we
sell that repetition is important to
remember something
remember the forgetting curve so this is
projected forgetting curve so when you
teach a feature you actually don't need
to give repetition at at the same space
you can't actually space it out with
feature a you can give a reminder bit
later because each time you reach about
something the forgetting curve is
getting smoother so of course in between
these lapses you can teach another
feature this looks super ugly but you
get the look at the point so reminders
are more efficient with spaced out but
also when the context does not stay the
same for example to teach your players
how to use a new weapon first teach how
to shoot steel targets and then moving
targets and party included targets then
moving targets for dodging etc you need
multi contextual repetition and you
combine with more mechanics to learn all
right we talked a lot about country
psychology and active learning
principles so let's briefly tackle
behavioral psychology here to give you
an idea of how you can use it we're
talking about classical conditioning
it's when to evens have happen close to
each other repeatedly over time so you
hear the bell and I said food going on
and you repeat your pizza then you
salivate only when you hear the bell so
that's good associate learning you've
been conditioned so you learn two movies
how about this zone [Applause]
[Applause]
if you're conditioned so there's a lot
of examples of classical conditioning
game usually with the musical sang exam
for example the music stops in some
games when there are no more enemies
left to kill conditioning can be very
powerful to teach some mechanics it can
work very well like really too deep like
all especially by associating sound with
another event so be nice you're some
designers cuz you need them alright so
mind memory load mind memory lapse main
objective is to make it easy to learn to
do that deep context and meaning and use
running principle alright let's part to
truly immerse your audience beyond
removing the barriers need to mind the
game flow never too easy you know too
hard mind emotions including the game
feel and motivation today I only talk
about motivation since game studios are
increasingly interested in motivation
mechanisms so motivation is not only
cool because you're engaged and like you
want to do something it also helps
attention this is I'm from cognitive
psychology development psychology and
Jean Piaget is a development
psychologist who is trying to understand
how children learn and how you know some
cognitive mechanisms come to children
one of these examples is how number
comes to children so he was using a
bunch of tasks to test the kids one of
these tasks were to put like two lines
of tokens one line with more tokens but
it's more compressed and another line
with less tokens but more spaced out
anyways asking kids so which which row
has more tokens until 6 to 7 years old
children actually choosing the bottom
line because they say it's it's longer
so they think they have more numbers in
there so John page was like ok kids are
a bit stupid icon 67 years old that
don't really have a concept of number
until another psychologist called nether
changed a little bit the task intent
instead of tokens he used Candy's exact
same thing he said to the kids hey there
are two lines of candies which line has
been more candies and what you're gonna
take that line for yourself surprise it
succeeded at two years old so we learn
better when we are motivated because we
pay attention more so that's one of the
main reason why it's super important to
get your place motivated into learning
one of your mechanics of your game so
how does motivation works it's complex
of course like anything but you have
explicit motivation and implicit
motivation exclusive motivation is you
have extrinsic motivation the rewards we
know about that you do something get
something but you have intrinsic
motivation as well so fires engagement
is typically driven by extrinsic
motivation but players because players
want to achieve external rewards and
avoid the apposite typically the absence
of reward however intrinsic motivation
is even more powerful for long-term
engagement research seems to indicate
that games that satisfy basic
psychological needs for competence
autonomy and lateness this is a
self-determination theory will more
likely be engaging so people and players
are driven by an increase of their
competence a sense of progression
autonomy meaningful choices and
self-expression and relatedness the
social aspect intrinsically motivating
experience are known to be deeply
engaging for children and also like as
in the experience of flow in which a
person loses his or her sense of time
will engage in activity rings animals
but there's also implicit motivation how
a dirty little secrets such as life and
death drives and power seeking you
surely also have heard of the brain
pleasure centered triggered by learning
another novelty among other things and
the brain reward circuitry well known by
casinos so we need to buy all these
things and it's again we're just
scratching the surface of them but
here's example have you can do that
Nintendo is super
that you can tease the players because
it's more motivating motivating to get a
meaningful we will reward than just a
pat on the back or to unlock it out of
context achievements tutorial completed
Congress so an example of Zelda
this is from Phantom Hourglass MTS
before even learning about the existence
of a grappling hook the player starts
encountering these poles everywhere
sometimes you even see a pole next to
chest you cannot reach and then get the
grappling hook and then you have that
Eureka feeling yeah this is what the
bulgar for now I can use that new tool -
you've reached the chest I remember from
so that's really important in design and
this is the locks and keys show the
locks before giving the keys the locks
will tease and model big players to
figuring out give them agency and once
they get the key
it will feel way more rewarding because
it's a more meaningful and intrinsic
impact here's another way you can simply
choose your players let's take a look a
fortnight's head here so that's the new
head the previous Hudson from a year ago
you could actually do anything on the
head you can place your weapons and
abilities and gadgets anywhere you
wanted but we saw that players they were
gaining a new ability or new gadget and
there were not even using it so what the
so what the designers did they
redid the head and they compartmented
the different elements you have so you
usually don't see the names it's just
when you open the inventory but you see
you have one slot for harvesting tool
because this just one horizontal and you
have it for your weapons and stuff for
gadgets and slots for abilities and this
is where you can actually see that hey
there is another slot as empty it means
I can get something soon and once you
see that the slot is now full you are
more motivated to actually try this try
this new gadget so that's that
it's an easy way to get the players
motivated because you can see that it's
empty then you see that's full until you
try it so to get engagement and notaire motivation
motivation
you also need depth so this is an
example of character midterm and
long-term motivation with pokiman so you
see that at the beginning you need just
to win the match that's your short-term
goal catch more pokiman then midterm
goal is going to be to beat the next
trainer and to involve your postman and
you always have that long-term goal you
know we gotta catch them all and be ble
for so that's really important if you
had these to convey all these depth but
the risk is you don't want it to be too
complex and overwhelming so fire so
that's a bit complicated when you do
want to show the depth and the long term
goals last year to do a quick digression
on social impact on learning humans are
highly social creatures this is how we
get we got to survive overwhelmingly
research and education has found that
cooperative and collaborative learning
environments are optimal so games in
general and multiplayer games in
particular can really benefit from
social learning but simply having a
social partner is not enough though the
social interaction has to be the high
enough quality that is does not detract
from the learning situation so a good
way to do it is mentorship in mentorship
in games such as Eid and Team Fortress 2
so think about how you can meaningfully
enable social learning in your game or
even outside of the game after all
social learning with Minecraft happens
when the outside of the game on YouTube
on Twitch so to get to immersion mind
the emotional response the complexity
versus depth their main objective there
is to teach the player to show the
progression path and you can use
motivation principles again sorry I'm
just going through all that very quickly
but just to give you an overall
understanding of this so let's wrap this up
up
research research and science of
learning I would suggest that there are
three kinds of engagement behavioral
engagement it's like following the rules
destruction so in our case is very close
from removing the barriers to making
sure the game is usable car leaving
havens investment in learning active
learning an emotional engagement
effective reaction which is at the core
of motivation so each type of engagement
is critical for learning because they
all foster staying on task stay engaged
that's why you need to keep in mind
these elements as always keep in mind
also the limitations of the brain and
you can use York skylines as a checklist
but this is just a checklist these is
just ingredients it's not the recipe
I'm sorry sadly all this knowledge can
only get you that far what we saw our
ingredients again it's not the recipe
the recipe this is what you gonna have
to figure out by tweaking the
ingredients supercell recently said in
an interview that it killed 14 games
before it was able to successfully
launch its fourth game clash Royale 14
this is another example this is showing
League of Legends beta versus now you
can see like they had a very huge and
awesome uux team there and you can see
all the iteration that went through to
get there so at least with these
ingredients it's gonna save you time and
had the right message to right mindset
to progress faster through iterations to
good luck
that's it I hope this stuff was useful
to you and pulls these flies on my blog
ASAP and you will find the references to
all the research I was talking about as
well I like to warmly thank the 49
appearing teams following me show their
rough design and artwork special thanks
to Peter Elias our our director on for
tonight who I know is dying a little bit
inside each time I'm showing your own
the artwork yes he lets me do it a big
thank you for you all for waking up
early in to share some lyrics love with
me so thank you thank you very much you
you [Music]
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