Difference between revisions of "Encouraged Return Visits"

Revision as of 20:38, 2 February 2011

Game structures making players wanting to return to certain places or activities in the game.

This pattern is a still a stub.

Examples

When players of FarmVille place crops or animals in their farm they are also committing themselves to returning to the game after a certain time since each such placed object only can be activated after a certain waiting period. To further encourage players to return often, there is only a certain harvest window before crops wither and not many crops or animal have the same waiting periods.

Using the pattern

Encouraged Return Visits assumed that there is a game to return to and that it is possible to join and leave it often, so a requirement for this design choice is that the game in consideration already supports Drop-In/Drop-Out gameplay, and typically this is done through a Persistent Game World.

Players are encouraged to return frequently to a certain part of the game space (Based upon observations in Brathwaite, 2007);

There are several different ways of encouraging players to return to games. Delayed Effects

Extended Actions

Interruptible Actions

Risk/Reward component

Ephemeral Events

Continuous Goals

Grinding Spawn Points

Investments

Resource Generators

Persistent Game Worlds add another option: if they have Evolving Rule Sets due to designers often adding or modifying parts of the game, players will need to return regularly to keep up with the changes in the game or be disadvantaged.

Diegetic Aspects

Interface Aspects

Narrative Aspects

Consequences

Relations

Can Instantiate

with Interruptible Actions

Risk/Reward

Can Modulate

Drop-In/Drop-Out, Persistent Game Worlds

Can Be Instantiated By

Evolving Rule Sets together with Persistent Game Worlds

Can Be Modulated By

Interruptible Actions

Possible Closure Effects

Potentially Conflicting With

History

New pattern created in this wiki.

References

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Acknowledgements

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