Top Chef Ingredients for Magical Video Games
Chef: Seymour Papert. Ingredients: Four Ps
Fellow designers, you may be thinking, “What makes a great video game?”
What sort of “ingredients” make an interactive media experience magic and live on for generations — such as Super Mario Bros? Different theorists, or “chefs” as we’ll call them, had some of these ideas in mind when developing their theories. The only difference was that their theories were designed for understanding learning environments.
However, learning environments aren’t all that different from video games. People learn from video games all the time and some games are specifically designed to teach certain subjects.
From Top Chef to Home Cook, Seymour Papert and Mitch Resnick have constructed some ingredients for our interactive media cookbook that can lead everyday designers like you and me towards the creation of a more intuitive and magical video game experience.
Constructionism
When you hear the term “constructionism,” one name typically comes to mind; Seymour Papert.
Inspired by his mentor, Jean Piaget, Papert turned constructivist learning theories into constructionism.
According to Piaget, Papert understood him well enough for him to say, “No one understands my ideas as well as Papert.” What exactly is this idea of constructionism? Experimentation and application. In other words, a child needs to use a tool or do a task in order to fully understand it.
This allows children of all ages the ability to be creative through technology and use a “trial and error” approach to solve problems. This line of thinking formed the foundation for Logo, a programming language meant to help children with problem-solving and critical thinking.
However, Papert has also acknowledged that older children and adults can reap benefits from Logo as well. With this programming language, Papert teamed up with LEGO to create the LEGO Mindstorms Robotics Kit.
Later, Mitchel Resnick — also at MIT — was able to utilize Papert’s ideas to lead a team to create Scratch.
Scratch
Scratch is a browser-based coding language with a visual drag and drop interface. Resnick lists for ingredients for Scratch: projects, passion, peers, and play, otherwise known as the four Ps.
Scratch is a place where young programmers are allowed to be fully expressive with no restrictions and can share these experiences with peers creates an ideal learning environment.
Resnick’s book — “Lifelong Kindergarten: Cultivating Creativity Through Projects, Passion, Peers, and Play” describes how these elements work.
Based on our top chef (Papert) and home cook’s (Resnick) goals and ideals, what ingredients have they provided us to make a delicious interactive experience?
A scrumptious and nutritious video game can use the four P’s.
Projects can come in many forms. They allow kids to problem solve and allows them to use ideas as well as understand them. Passion refers to falling in love with ideas and an overall fascination with what they are learning. Peers allow people from all over the world of different age ranges and experience levels to give feedback on each other’s ideas and creations. Play differs from typical fun and laughter and instead focuses on experimenting, taking risks, and adapting when things go wrong. When video games bake these ideas into their DNA, players across all different backgrounds can benefit from this team-building experience.
But this idea of the Four P’s did not occur by chance. Seymour Papert’s theory on constructionism led Mitch Resnick to make these four essential ingredients to our cookbook.
As stated earlier, constructionism is based around experimentation and application. By allowing children to play and experiment with different solutions, they can learn so much more than having clear-cut directions and rules on how to complete a task. This is especially true with video games. Everyone knows all too well that some video games need to know when to stop talking. In their attempt to help guide the player to the “right” path, these games come across as condescending and don’t allow for player improvement. However, with the bad also comes the good. I have found several magical examples in video games that implement some of Papert’s and Resnick’s ingredients. It is because of these ingredients that they are widely accepted as great video games.
Examples
When I was looking for examples of these ingredients, I thought to myself, “What video games do I know that allow the player to create, experiment, and share with friends?” An automatic first response was a popular video game as of now called Fortnite. Most people play the Battle Royale mode where they drop into an area with 99 other players. The last player standing wins, which is pretty similar to how The Smash Bro. Series works. However, the major difference is that the players can actually build in this game, which is hinted in its title. Whether it’s to hide from enemies, block current attacks, or to show off someone’s building skills to their friends, players can utilize this game mechanic in various ways. Does this game represent the 4 P’s and constructionism? The building mechanic allows players to do the following:
· Experiment with different tools to see which are the most effective (metal being more effective than wood)
· Think quickly to evade other players and attacks (player hears gun shots à begins to build immediately)
· Play with friends and use teamwork to defeat other players (Duos and Squads allow players to make teams)
· Build upon skill by trying different methods of survival (Building fast and efficiently to survive).
With these different elements in the game, I would say that Fortnite does implement the Four P’s based on its ability in letting the player experiment and try new things to become a better player.
Speaking of building, wouldn’t you love to design your dream home and life in the matter of minutes or hours? The Sims franchise lets player do exactly that. Take everything from the building aspect from Fortnite and you pretty much have the essential parts to a Sims game. Not only that, but the Create a Sim function was easily one of the most enjoyable parts of the game. From when I was a kid to this very day, I can spend hours perfecting every aspect of my Sim and the house they are going to live in. What was so special about this? What is it about building a house and creating a person in a fictional world that makes this experience so fun? It is because the player can choose almost every aspect in the game that they want. In Create a Sim, they can choose their Sim’s hairstyle, their clothes, and even how far apart their eyes are. It is fully the player’s choice and that is what makes it so appealing. There is also a little bit of unintentional learning that the user experiences in the Build Mode of the game.
Let’s say you are building a house in the game and you want a staircase to make a second floor. The game will physically not allow you to build the staircase unless you have enough of floor space to allow for this item. It realistically scales the items to a grid where the player must strategically place the furniture and other miscellaneous items without causing errors that might happen in real life. For example, you can’t put a bookshelf in front of a doorway since it would cause more problems in the long run. You would have to constantly move the bookshelf out of the way every time you wanted to leave that room. The Sims takes this into account and does not allow items to be placed if they would not make practical sense in real life.
Not only does The Sims allow the player to be experimental in their home/character design and life choices, but it also incorporates the peer’s aspect of the Four P’s as well. In the Sims 3, you can share events that happen in your game with other users across the globe. Incidentally, there is also a huge community of The Sims users where they share silly game glitches, interesting challenges, and entertaining experiments.
It is evidently clear how much of a success the Sims games have been over the past several years. Not only has Maxis had multiple sequels of the game, from The Sims to The Sims 4, but there have also been mobile installments of the gameplay and various console variations. How do we know when a video game isn’t magical and turns to dust in our eyes? We look back to our ingredients that make a magical interactive experience and compare those to the elements in a game. For example, when a game tells the player that the choice is all theirs and can affect the ending of a game but doesn’t live up to that potential sets users up for false hope in experimenting and designing. One ad I kept getting on certain apps was for a game called Party in my Dorm, where on the PlayStore it states, “You can be whoever you want as long as you like to have fun.” After playing around in this game for a bit, I discovered that it is essentially just a chat room with added role-play features. This can trick the player into believing that they decide what happens in the game, when it really doesn’t matter what you say or do in the game.
The player doesn’t decide on much, aside from joining a club and sending friend requests.
But aside from it all, the chats were spammed to an unhealthy degree of inappropriate comments when the chat function clearly says to help keep it “clean.”
Notifications pop up way too much for a game like this to the point where I was getting five notifications at a time from this app. To me, this game is a clear example of dust and doesn’t implement any form of experimentation or a safe friends function. My advice: if you want to join a role-playing chat room, you can probably find one online somewhere and not in a mobile app that wants you to make in app purchases.
Even if games don’t coerce the player into spending money, they can still crumble and make the player want to quit. I noticed this same frustration with an old game called Rollercoaster Creator. The basis of the game is that the player draws lines and uses tools to make a rollercoaster that will run from the left to the right side of the screen without crashing. It seems like a fun enough idea, who wouldn’t love building their own rollercoaster? However, there isn’t much room for experimentation and play even though the player chooses the lines where the coaster will go. Unfortunately, the game is not consistent in its physics. If you physically draw a line as a hill, the coaster will not stay on the tracks and crash. However, there is a tool that makes a steep incline and decline, which does not send the coaster flying. By the original logic in the drawing tool, the coaster should go flying after it makes that steep incline or crash from the steep decline. This inconsistency can get frustrating and the player needs to be exceedingly careful in drawing lines. Not to mention, the tools available to the player varies with each level and are limited. While this does create a challenge to the game, it does not allow the player to experiment with different rollercoaster designs.
Instead I would recommend playing RollerCoaster Tycoon, where the player not only designs a rollercoaster, but an entire amusement park. Not only this, it also encourages play and experimentation with rollercoaster and amusement park design.
Conclusion
While I have only named a few examples of magic and dust in video games, there are thousands more that are just as magical and dusty as the ones mentioned. When designing a new game, keep the Four P’s in mind, just as a real pastry chef understands and uses salt, butter, flour and yeast.
There are also dozens of other theories that can be applied to video games that creators can use, but many of them overlap and coincide with one another. As long as creators incorporate the ingredients that have been proven to work, they can create a truly interactive experience that the audience will find magical.
