The Magic of Wait
From Civilization to Overwatch
On every stage, the action of wait is magical. It creates suspense; it slows the pace down, it cultivates expectations. If often seen acts with excellent pauses, where all audience hold their breaths, waiting for the next big thing to happen on stage. All attention is on the stage, on the very actor who made us wait.
Audiences like to wait, but game players generally hate to wait. Long loading time frustrates the player. In multiple players online game, delay is undesired. No Overwatch player would love to see a delay in their power attack. The bullet should reach its target in less than a second. Delay is terrible.
However, some games are made addictive because of the delay. I am talking about turn-based games like Civilization. When I play the game, I always want to play one more turn. In fact that there are not many things that I can do in one turn, but I still want to keep going. There are several reasons why I always want to continue. The most obvious answer is that it does not take much effort to play one more turn. Each turn only cost less than a minute sometimes. Sleeping at 3:59 or sleeping at 4:00, doesn’t matter.
However, I would like to highlight the other aspect that made Civilization so addictive. It is a game that masters the art of delay. Besides Military attacks and Patronage Effects, most of the actions in Civilizations does not come with immediate effect. It takes the time to build wonders, research technologies, and maneuver units. There is nothing much you can do in one turn, but in several turns’ time, exciting stuff is going to happen. Player has to wait for several rounds to see the effect of their decision. It sounds bad but what made the wait reasonable is that the player can do something else while waiting, and that “something else” also takes turns to show effect. It turns out to be a pipeline which things are happening at every turn so that the player does not feel like they are waiting but in fact, he/she is always looking forward to the future turns.
Create a pipeline of expectation is magical. It is like a black hole that sucks all your time inside. You are controlled by your expectations and desire, keep moving forward, just one more turn.
Is the magic of wait only effective to turn-based games? Not really. Even in real-time games like Overwatch, designers love to make their players wait. Before each game, there is a PREPARE TO ATTACK time. In that given minute, both teams are forced to stay in their base, usually blocked by a gate. Most of the time, the player can have a sneak peak of the battlefield behind the gate through holes or windows on the gate. After one minute countdown, the gate opens, and the game is on. The fact that the player has to take one minute to prepare for the game forces the player to wait for the game to start and hence creates suspense and builds the tension between two teams. It also provides a break time between turns.
There are many other examples of enhancing gaming experience through effective use of wait. Waiting is a double blade sword, it could cause frustration, it could also be very magical.
