In Tuesday’s class we delved deeper into Jesper Juul’s five categories fiction, usability, interruptibility, difficulty and punishment, and juiciness for casual games. Some of the focal points discussed in class and in the posts were the level of difficulty of games, the interruptibility of games and the overall juiciness of games.
In terms of preferring a game to be too easy or too difficult, according to the survey taken in class the majority of the class found that a game being too easy was worse than a game being too difficult. I myself, although not an avid gamer, completely disagree. I think that if a game is too easy, you and your level of gaming skills may be what prevent you from playing. I think this definitely speaks to how much weight a gamer feels the usability of the game should have. However, if a game is too difficult, the game itself is what prevents you from playing. I also think the purpose of why one plays factors into whether the degree of difficulty is of a significant importance. Since my personal goal of playing games is to be distracted for a short period of time and then return to the real world, a game being too easy does not deter from playing me all that much.
What I have realized is that the above truly relates to the interruptibility and the juiciness of the game. Interruptiblity as discussed in class pertains to how easy it is to stop and start a game. Given that my own goal is to quickly get distracted from the world for a short period of time, interruptibility is an important factor. Similarly when playing the two casual games infront of the class we see that the juiciness helps in whether or not one desires to interrupt the game. I noticed that juiciness may in fact have a correlation to the flow or getting into the zone of a game. The author of the blog Escape from Reality in Virtual Simulation said, “I think that almost all gamers begin a game in order to escape from reality…The better a game simulates an alternate reality, the more of an escape it can offer. Angry Birds and Left for Dead both provide an escape, but Left for Dead is a better simulation of an alternate reality, therefore it draws in more hardcore gamers.” Hence I relate this idea of good simulation to our discussion on juiciness. Yes, juiciness is described as excessive positive feedback but if you are looking for an alternate world and the graphics progressively feel more and more like a virtual reality, do graphics not then serve as a positive feedback? Perhaps you may argue that the fiction valence is more appropriately connected? I would question then where does the argument hold when one considers the players autonomy to choose as the this author says, “The type of reality a player wishes to engage in is their preference for a positive or negative game world fiction.”?