Here are two tools I've been using lately to better understand the functionality of my game designs. The first is the loop, a structure that should be very familiar to those who have looked into skill atoms. The second is the arc.
Loops
The 'game' aspect of this beast we call a computer game always involves 'loops'.
- The player starts with a mental model that prompts them to...
- Apply an action to...
- The game system and in return...
- Receives feedback that...
- Updates their mental model and starts the loop all over again. Or kicks off a new loop.
These loops are fractal and occur at multiple levels and frequencies throughout a game. They are almost always exercised multiple times, either within a game or by playing the game multiple times.
Nested, dependent loops yields complex feedback loops and unexpected dynamics. Loops tend to deliver value through the act of being exercised. Thus they are well suited for mastery tasks that involve trial and error or repeated exposure. The goal of both loops and arcs is to update the player's mental model, however loops tend to rely on a balance of the following:
- Interrelated actions that trigger multiple loops in order to bring about specific system dynamics.
- Systems of crisply defined cause and effect that yield self contained systems of meaning.
- Functional feedback that helps players understand causation.
Loops are very good at building 'wisdom', a holistic understanding of a complex system. The player ends up with a mental model that contains a thousand branches, successes, failures and nuances that lets them approach new situations with confidence.
Arcs
'Arcs' have similar elements to a loop, but are not built for repeated usage. The player still starts with a mental model, they apply an action to a system and receive feedback. This arc of interaction could be reading a book or watching a movie. However, the mental model that is updated rarely results in the player returning to the same interaction. The movie is watched. The book consumed. An arc is a broken loop you exit immediately.
Arcs are well suited for delivering a payload of pre-processed information. You'll typically find many arcs have the following footprint:
- Simple independent actions such as turning a page or watching a movie
- Simple systems that rely heavily on complex mental models to have meaning. Text on a page is a good example.
- Complex evocative feedback that links together existing mental models in some unique, interesting or useful manner. For arcs, the feedback is 99% of the payload and the actions and systems are simply a means to an end. Once this payload is fully delivered, the value of repeated exposure to the arc drops substantially.
Arcs are highly efficient at communicating 'success stories', a singular path through a system that someone else previously explored. The best teach a lesson, either informative, positive or negative. This is a brilliant learning shortcut but the acquired knowledge is often quite different and less robust in the face of change than 'wisdom'. With a slight shift in context, the learning becomes no longer directly applicable. It is not an accident that we make the distinction between 'book learning' and 'life experience'.
One of the common issues with arcs is that people burn out on them rapidly, rarely desiring to experience them more than once. It is possible to give arcs a bit more staying power by stringing them together serially in a sequence of arcs. This is a pretty proven technique and is at the base of the majority of commercial attempts to give content arcs longer retention. Businesses that rely on a constant sequence of arcs to bring in ongoing revenue often find themselves running along the content treadmill. If you stop producing content, the business fails.
Any loop can be superficially described as a series of arcs with one arc for each pass you make through the loop. This is an expanded loop. This is useful for recording a particular play-through, however it tells you little about the possibility space described by the loops. Where loops often describe a statistical spectrum of outcomes, the arc notation describes only a single sample.
Mixing Loops and Arcs
Since both loops and arcs can be easily nested and connected to one another, in practice you end up with chemistry-like mixtures of the two that can get a bit messy to tease apart. The simplest method of analysis is to ask "What repeats and what does not?"
Narrative games are the most common example of mixing loops and arcs. A simple combination might involve layering a segment where the player is engaged with loops with a segments of arcs. This is your typical cutscene-gameplay-cutescene sandwich.
However, the analysis can get far more detailed. For example:
- Parallel Arcs: You can treat the emotional payload of song as an arc that plays in parallel to the looping gameplay.
- Levels: The spatial arc of navigating a level provides context for exploring variations on a central gameplay loop. The 'Golden Path' in a single player level is really just another name for an arc.
- Micro Parallel Arcs: A game like Half Life combines both levels and parallel arcs to deliver snippets of evocative stimuli as you progress through the level.
These structures also exist in traditional media. For example, if you look at a traditionally arc-based form such as a book, you find an odd outlier in the form of the Bible. At one level of analysis it can be seen as a story arc that you read through and finish. However, it is embedded in a much larger set of loops we casually refer to as a religion. The game-like loops include everything from worship rituals to the mining of the Bible in order to synthesize weekly sermons. The arc is a central rule book for a larger game consisting primarily of loops.
;)
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