Examples

Chess

Original chess did not include the rule that pawns can move two spaces on their first move. This resulted in a period before the game started where both players would simply be moving pawns in order to free up other pieces. This was boring, and the new rule was added to make the game faster and more fun.

Pokemon

In pokemon, and other RPG games, you may spend countless hours leveling up your pokemon. While boring, this provides a greater sense of accomplishment later in the game when you use the skills you built up to crush your opponents.

Punishment

Work can also be used as punishment, usually to great a sense of tension in the game. If you have to re-do a lot of boring parts of a game if you die, you are going to be much more tense and focused on the harder parts than if you can just retry it over and over. A game with too little of this may lose the player's interest, but a game with too much may make player's frustrated and quit (and also give your game bad reviews). What adds even more to the problem is that every player has a different tolerance to it.

Mechanics

Each player is allowed 3 heroes.

Gold is gained through income.

Income is controlled by the formula 50 + # of farms * 50

Farms are limited to 5 times the current town hall tier

Buildings follow a techtree, and sell different items for heroes.

In my opinion, there are three why games are fun:

• Learning
• Fake Accomplishment
• Real Accomplishment

Learning

The first reason why games are fun is that they teach us things. From an evolutionary standpoint, those that know things will do better than those that don't.  Your brain rewards you when you learn what a new enemy does, or how to beat that level you spent 3 hours on.

Now though we have a problem. If games are fun because of learning, why is school, where everyone is learning, so boring? The answer lies in how you are learning. In a game you learn by achievement. You figure something out and use it to achieve a goal, and your brain rewards you for learning something. In school though, you are learning through many different levels. Your brain doesn't actually know if something is useful, or even true in some cases. You trust that your teacher is teaching you something useful and true, but the lower levels of your brain don't know that, as all they see is a teacher talking. Therefore you don't get rewarded.

Fake Accomplishment

If learning was the only thing that mattered in games, what makes us keep playing after we have figured everything out? Fake accomplishment helps to add some more fun contrary to learning.

The best example I have seen of this is Guitar Hero. Guitar Hero/Rock Band is a relatively simple game. The main fun lies in pretending to be a rock star. If you had a goal to be a rock star, the game tricks your brain into thinking you have accomplished your goal, and your brain rewards you. This effect is usually coupled with others, as it varies from player to player how effective it will be. The spell can also be easily broken. Stories can also provide this effect, and players that are easily immersed will actually believe they are saving the world, and have a lot of fun.

Real Accomplishment

Real accomplishment is by far the most effective way of getting a player hooked on a game. If they achieve, or atleast think they have the chance to achieve, real world goals from playing the game, they will keep coming back. Examples of this would be high scores. If a game has an achievable high score, players will try to beat it in order to express their real world skill in playing video games, and differentiate themselves from their peers.

Sports also uses this, and as the thrill of victory outweighs the pain of defeat, people keep playing. Other examples would be pretty much any multiplayer game, and eSports.

There is actually a fourth reason as to why people play games, and it is fear of loss. If a player stands to lose something by quitting the game, they will keep playing in order to sustain their earlier accomplishments. Examples of this would be virtual pets that die if not played with, or MMORPGs that delete your account if you stop paying them/playing. Using this in your games is ethically questionable, as people aren't actually having fun when they are playing your game.

Next post will be about what tools you can use in your game to make them more fun.

History

The game first started after some of my friends convinced me to play Maple Story. Maple story is an mmorpg where you run around killing various monsters and doing quests. I was sick and out from school for one day, and decided to give the game a try. I played for roughly three hours. I wasn't having much fun, but was assured when you reached level 10 that you got to pick a class and the game became much better. So I grinded my way through the game, killing monsters in 3 -4 hits and slowly leveling up. There were other people in the game, but they were all pretty much doing the same mindless tasks. Eventually I got to level 10, and picked a class. I thought the game was about to get better. Here is what actually happened:

• I started fighting a new monseter, which was a purple version of the one I was fighting before
• My damage was upgraded from 30 per attack to 60 per attack
• The monsters HP was upgraded from 100 to 80

I am not so sure about those numbers, as it was awhile ago, but they seem right and I remember that they were something of that nature. Nothing actually changed, and the gameplay still sucked, and I was still not having fun. I turned off the game and thought for a minute. How could a game that pretty much completely defied the game design aspects that made games fun be so immensely popular. It rarely ever rewarded the player, did not keep player focus, and was almost 100% work. And then I realized what it was. It was online. The social aspect was the only thing carrying the game. The MMORPG industry had taken a crappy game and made it online, and sucked millions of players in. What if the base game was actually fun?

Attempt 1

The first attempt at making this fun online game was with gamemaker. I simply took Maple Story and tried to make it fun. I made a platform game and made it online. I added PVP and made the battle system work by players shooting dodgable fireballs. For those that remember, this game was IMMENSELY fun. 5 hour duels were not uncommon. But it had some equally immense flaws. I was a noob at networking at the time, and Firecaster was my first real online game. I put everything clientside, and so the game was completely hackable. If you were lagging, you were unkillable. I later tried to move things serverside, but delay made it unplayable.

Attempt 2: Rising Flames

A friend and I wanted to make an mmorpg in VB6 using Mirage Source. Because of my adversity to generic mmorpgs, I decided to add a simple  firecaster-esc fireball system to the game. Even though the movement was tile based and top-down, the game was still fun. Unfortunatly the game was never released due to loss of interest after having to completely redo the graphics system (it was running DX7!).

Attempt 3

The third attempt to make Firecaster was again in gamemaker. The problem of lagless but fun mmorpg play was showing itself to be harder than previous thought. This version was top down, and featured a system of movement similar to that of an RTS, where you click where you want to go and then you move there. This system is extremely low bandwidth, as very little has to be communicated to the server for a lot to get done. Unfortunatly other players had trouble moving thier mouse from where they were shooting to where they wanted to move. The system was changed to a tile-based one as seen in Rising Flames. Actually the system was better, as it featured diagonal movement that removed some of the feeling of locked in place like in a normal tile based system. But I soon realized that Gamemaker was a bad match for the game I wanted to make. Things started to lag, and I didn't want to have to optimize every line of code to make the game runnable on everyday computers.

Current

The current version of firecaster, written in java, came rather fluidly out of the gamemaker version. I  kept the tile-based movement, which was proven to work and be fun, and the Java Client/Server has really fixed the lag problem. More about what is in the current version of firecaster can be seen in the about section.

About

The current model for Firecaster is very different from other mmorpgs. The first difference would be the spells. Firecaster allows you to have 3 spells, though over 20 are planned to be put in the final game. Spells are the only method of doing damage to an enemy, as there is no "normal" attack. All spells are created under the guidelines that they should be equal but different to all other spells. They should also take some sort of skill or strategic planning to use. The spell system doesn't use mana either, but to prevent burnout during fights instead uses a cooldown method. After every spell cast, a cooldown is placed on you and you cannot cast ANY spell until it finishes. Here are some examples of spells in the game/planned to be in the game.

• Fireball: This spells shoots a fireball wherever you aim it. Other players can dodge it, and is the primary mean of doing damage.
• Tri-Fireball: This spell shoots a fireball wherever you aim it, but also in 2 other directions offset about 30 degrees from the first one. Has a longer cooldown than Fireball
• Frost: This shoots a fireball that, while not doing any damage, stuns any player that it hits. Has a high cooldown.
• Lightning: This marks a spot for a lightning bolt. After a second or so, a lightning bolt will hit that spot and that spot only, though it will do enormous amounts of damage. Has a high cooldown.
• Heal: Heals you a few hitpoints. This has a very high cooldown, so it is not suggested to be used in a battle.
• Shield: Sets up a shield around you that blocks any spells. Shield will wear off before cooldown though.
• Shieldball: Sends a large, fast moving fireball out that destroys any enemy spells it hits.
• Darkball: Sends a very slowmoving fireball out that does an immense amount of damage.

So you may ask why I limit each player to only 3 spells. That is because of the next system in Firecaster, the team system. Each player can team up with up to two other players. Teams share experiance, and allow for variety in players. In a solo game, eventually a few builds would become best and the game would become fairly boring. But teams allow  for  much more complex strategies, and a more interesting atmosphere overall. Because of the cooldown system, combination of spells can only be preformed via a team. This alone creates variety among players. For example, you get the Frost spell, and your teammate gets the Lightning spell. Alone each spell is pretty useless, but if used together they can be deadly. Your opponent freezes the enemy, and you step up and cast a lighting bolt on them while they sit there helpless.

The next most different thing you will probably notice in Firecaster to that of other MMORPGS is the levels. One of the things I really dislike about MMORPGS is that they reward time, not skill (I'm talking to you, World of Warcraft!"). Firecaster follows this philosophy: A skilled level 1 can beat an unskilled level 100. Levels really play no role in the gameplay of firecaster, but instead serve as sort of a ranking system. You lose experience for every death on your team, and gain experience for every kill your team gets.

Because of the lack of traditional leveling, Firecaster will not have random mobs of monsters running around, as there would be no incentive to kill them. Instead monsters in Firecaster function as boss fights. Bosses will work like Legend of Zelda bosses, with unique abilities and weaknesses. There may/may not be dungeons leading up to bosses, as I am still pondering this. Eitherway, killing a boss will unlock for you a new spell. While you only can equip 3 spells at a time, you will be able to switch out those three from any you have unlocked at a "switching station", which will most likely be located in towns.

Items are the last thing I haven't mentioned. Items will behave like spells, but wont be usable. They will provide passive bonuses, like +10 hit points, or increased speed. They will also take up spell slots. There will be no gold.

I am continuing to work on Firecaster, and should have an update shortly. Also expect a new post on general game design up later.

In other news, Firecaster server is back online. It may be a bit buggy, as I haven't looked over the current version that is on the site. I have a version that I was working on awhile back and will try to get that up with all the bugs fixed later. I am also going to be making another post about what Firecaster actually is later.

I have also decided to be much more open with my projects. Currently things that I am working on:

Firecaster (there will be an update soon, don't worry)

Story Spheres (mostly just maintance)

Learning AI (Will make a new post on this later)

Things on hold:

MND Online (for iPhone): Looking for a graphic artist, contact me if you are one!

Directx Headtracking (hack for directx to implement 3d headtracking into games. For more info click.