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The Gamer's Brain, Part 2: UX of Onboarding and Player Engagement

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[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

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

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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