What is playability?

What is playability?

When a gamer first takes to the controllers or keyboard to interface themselves with the game, they are creating a seamless connection with themselves and the game.  This interface should be fluid and easy to learn, the same way a person has a intimate connection when sitting in the driver seat of the car.  The player shouldn't have to look down to look for buttons, and there should be no distractions, from the game or elsewhere.

When a seamless interface is created, it is said that immersion has occurred.  At this point, the player is in the game and does not realize that they are connected via a controller.  This creates an optimal play experience and it is expected of any gaming experience.  Hence, the act of getting into this "magic circle" called immersion is what playability is all about.

There are a number of things that can distract.  Some are external and the game developer would have no natural control over there.  This could include the door bell ringing, a dog barking, or something as simple as an alarm going off indicating its time to quit playing.

External Distractions

•  Unintentional
• Door bell ringing, dog barking, health reasons, etc.
•  Intentional
• Scheduled alarms, conscious thoughts, etc.

On the other hand, there are internal sources of distraction that should and must be minimized by the game developer.  These include glitches in the game, discontinuities in stories, poor system performance, or poor network lag (which could be both a problem at the network side or with the poor usage of data streams being sent across the network which could've been made more efficient.)

Internal Distractions

• Performance
• Network Latency
• Inefficient operations, menu takes too long to load, etc
• Discontinuities
• Gaps in story, missing but expected considerations or implementations, etc.
• Defects
• Glitches that make you go "what the... "
• Designs that are disconcerting, tutorials that take too long/too obvious, slow load times that aren't due to inefficiencies, etc

Software Performance Engineering

https://www.slideshare.net/TanzaIratier/joe-krall-presentation

Study on latency in games leads to lower overall enjoyability index (http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=566500.566511&preflayout=tabs)

https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007/978-3-540-74873-1_53.pdf

The gameplay lifecycle

All games go through this gameplay lifecycle.  Consider the perspective of the gamer.  As an individual, their attention and interest must first be obtained and piqued.  Then, with enough interest and motivation, they will buy the game and begin playing it.  The first play is critical, because it will define how long they play it thereafter.  Eventually after completing or beating the game, they'll put it down, and perhaps do one of two things: either sell it, or keep it for later.  In the case of the latter, they'll wait until the game becomes interesting enough to once again replay it.

Once a game product is finished, and even before, it begins in the Advertising & Marketing stage, where players are given First Glance opportunities.  These could actually come from trailers and other pre-marketing strategies, such as demos or screenshots.  During this time, a player is contemplating whether he or she wants to buy the game when it is available.  The player also develops expectation levels about how good they think the game will be.  If the expectation is more than what is essentially their threshold for buying the game, then they will do so.

At that point, the game is bought, and the player enters the First Play stage.  This represents the game's Playability phase.  At this point, all expectation is either brought to realization or it isn't.  If it is, and the game successfully minimizes distraction from immersion, then the player will keep playing it, absorbing the content and entering the "Game Replay" stage.

At the point of Game Replay, the player has made the conscious choice to play the game for various reason encompassing the aspects of replayability.  All the while, playability considerations remain important, because unplayable content will add to the player's growing list of reasons to quit the game.  If that list of reasons becomes too heavy, the player will quit, which is the final stage of gameplay lifecycles.

Quitting a game isn't so bad as it sounds, as long as its for the right reasons.  The wrong reasons mean that the game didn't provide enough reasons to keep playing, i.e. the aspects of replayability.  Other wrong reasons could mean the game didn't minimize distractions from immersion.  Sometimes such distractions are impossible to avoid -- the player could simply be too busy for good life reasons.  Other distractions should and must be avoided, such as game lag (network or system), discontinuities in the story, bugs and defects, unfair content (i.e. challenge flow zone not correct), and more.

In any case, the player must quit at some point.  This is inevitable.  When that does happen, the player can resume game play at any time at a later date.  If they sell the game, they may be reconvinced through First Glance to buy it again.  If they keep the game, they may decide to simply play it later, with different experiences (playing for impact) or for other reasons.  And lastly, the most common, they quit because they're simply done (or ran out of time) for the day.  Their gameplay session done, they'll go to sleep, wake up the next morning, go to work, come home and have another gameplay session in the Game Replay stage, and so on.

Understanding the gameplay lifecycle is important because, it can help game developers understand how their end-users are behaving.  It is likely something they already know, deep-down inside, but to put it to voice and reason and on paper can be very helpful.  First and foremost, developers should know that every product they make has the destiny of being quit by their end-users.  But that isn't a bad thing as long as its for the right reasons.  Understanding the branch points when players make their decisions can help identify what the reasons might be.  For example, if players aren't committing to purchasing the game, then its because of poor First Glances, which could be due to bad advertising & marketing.  With this kind of information, the developers can then address those concerns, and make their game (or the next one) a little better.

Advertising and Marketing in the Game Industry

Advertising and marketing are some lesser talked about topics in game design, but I find them important.  They may fall outside the domain of software developers and game designers, but at least a solid theory of what they are and why they're important should be a requisite for any successful game developer.  These topics not only encompass game development, but also other forms of entertainment, such as movie production and book authoring.

Advertising

Advertising is necessary because it lets people know about your game.  It is a complement to virality, and you need both.  With virality, all the advertising in the world will do little good, as virality can work both ways - it can advocate your game or it can alienate your game.  Players who love the game will tell their friends.  Players who don't will also tell their friends that they don't, which will discourage others from buying it, despite seeing it being advertised.

With a high virality, meaning players greatly advocate to their friends that they enjoy the game and that it's worth their time and cost to buy, the game advertises itself locally as popularity spreads.  Without advertisement, that virality will remain localized and will not spread as much globally.  With advertisement in addition to great virality, many "initial contact points" occur, and from within each, the game is spread virally.  This is optimal.

Marketing

Marketing is also just as important.  If you have both advertisement and virality, the popularity does little good if buyers can't find a location to purchase the game.  The internet today is an excellent resource for marketing today, and there are still in-person options available for shops like Gamestop, Walmart, Best Buy and others.  With in-person shops, research must be done to determine how many copies should be provided to the shop, and the rate of purchase for restock.  An audience must also be researched.  The game may sell better in Pennsylvania than it does in Nevada, for example.  If that were the case, Gamestops in Pennsylvania should get more copies of the game to sell.

Marketing via the internet is another topic.  Online retailers like Amazon are already quite popular.  Other retailers need to be advertised so that potential buyers are aware of where to go.  And hence, to market properly sometimes you need to advertise your marketing strategy.

Summary

Both advertisement and marketing is necessary for successful game development.  This also includes virality of the game product, which arises as a result of good game design.  Advertising lets players know about your game, and marketing lets players know how to find it.  Successful marketing thereby also needs to be advertised along with your game.