How to make life as fun as a game?
Today, let's solve a problem: How to make life as fun as a game?
This idea came from a Japanese book that I read, called “How to write video game script” (translated from Japanese).
Games and life seem irrelevant, in fact, they can bring people the same satisfaction mechanism. The game can be roughly divided into two categories: one with the plot, need to spend more time and energy to move to the next stage, allow the player to experience a complete emotional experience.
The other type is without plot, only provide immediate positive feedback, don’t need to put too much emotion, such as Tetris. And in life, read books, movies need to go through the whole emotional closed-loop, while sports and meals are like immediate feedback without burden.
Knowing this, we can design our own lives by designing the way we play the game.
Most of the game should be easy to get started, giving people a good first experience. For example, when starting the games, some games allow players to choose easy, normal and hard three types of difficulties, which design differently for different players skills.
At work, you can also optimize the experience by dividing different levels of tasks.
For example, when training new employees, according to the ability level, set up different levels of the task, if there is an outstanding staff ability, you can skip the current level, directly move to the next level to avoid burnout.
Game characters, able to make people easy to remember.
Game characters are not as colorful as real people, often the facial features are similar, so the game maker must create other "memory points" other than the facial features, such as bright hair color, unique clothes and so on.
If you want others to remember you, it's best to find your own "memory point," such as clothes, eloquence, and so on. When designing personal business cards, it is also necessary to make the information concise and convenient for people to identify.
The main characters of the game are normally ordinary people. When we watch a movie, the protagonist has quite a personality, even deviant. But the protagonist of the game should be more ordinary the better, so as to evoke resonance.
For example, the game Resident Evil 2 Remake, one of the protagonists, Leon, is just a new officer who was assigned to Raccoon City, which is almost in line with most people, and it is easy to be accepted by the players.
When you socialize with people, you also have to grasp the balance between "ordinary" and "personality".
Get closer to each other by talking to strangers, and get along with each other, and then slowly reveal your charisma, so that the other person can remember you better.
"From low to high", the game will slowly reveal the complex plot. A good game, will not reveal the plot of the core conflict and the ultimate quest at the beginning. It will use a small quest, gradually showing the characters, slowly show the whole game settings. But why would game developers do that?
First, is to reduce the psychological burden to the players, so that they don’t have to carry the "Save the World" burden in the beginning. The second reason is to allow players to constantly discover new plots, experience surprises.
When you want to give surprises to others, you don't have to show everything you have.
A better experience is to slowly reveal the full picture from a young age so that the freshness and surprises of the other side are more lasting.
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Create a sense of meaning that allows players to feel the fun. I’m sure you must have played games like the brick breaker, by controlling the ball and eliminate the bricks on top, the more you eliminate the higher the score. The game itself is just a repetitive mechanical movement, which can easily make people feel bored. But with a story, everything is different: “The sky is shrouded in dark matter, and in order to send the human ship safely out of the earth, the dark matter must be destroyed.” A simple move by the player has also been given a sense of meaning: “I'm not playing brick breaker, I'm saving the world.”, the players are more motivated to keep playing.
If you want to persuade others to do something difficult, don’t just persuade, it is better to give meaning to the matter. Steve Jobs, for example, had asked engineers to reduce the computer's boot time by 10 seconds, but engineers found it was difficult to do so, and Jobs said: "At least 5 million people are using our computers now, assuming 10 seconds per province, 300 million minutes a year, is equivalent to 10 people's lives." In order to save these 10 lives, please try your best.” As a result, the engineers were encouraged and the boot time was successfully reduced by a full 28 seconds.
Give a full range of positive feedback, so that players feel that they are valued. Games with plots will set up a lot of bit-part characters, such as street tramp, shop salesperson, security guards and so on.
You might think that these characters are just fixtures, and in fact, these characters also take on a feature, which is talking to players and making them feel like they're being watched all the time and getting more involved in the game.
In life, you can also start with the details, so that the other person feels that you attach great importance to him/her.
Many businesses do this: Ask customers for their names, say more words of thanks or blessings when providing goods and so on, so that customers feel that they are the center of the world.
Provide players with options to enhance their sense of participation. If you played a lot of games, you might notice that when reaching a critical moment, the players have to make their own choices to continue or even lead to different endings because of the player's choice. Why?
Because the player can think actively, put into emotion, enhance the sense of participation.
At work, don't forget the importance of providing options, such as when you come up with a perfect solution, you might want to come up with one or two more foil options for your colleagues to think about, so that they will decide the final option through their consideration.
Each completion of a quest will allow the player to enjoy a sense of accomplishment. This is a key factor motivating players to keep playing the game.
In addition to notifying the player of "achieving an achievement", after the completion of the quest, a good game will also design the achievement rankings of all players, motivating the player to play harder in order to achieve higher achievements.
In life, you can also use a sense of accomplishment to make things that are hard to stick to become interesting. Doing housework is a repetition task, the return is not high, many people don’t want to take the initiative to do.
A company has developed a small software, as long as you completed housework, the software will grow a virtual tree, the more you do, to a certain extent and become a forest, you can also redeem real saplings, and donate to the areas that needed.
Lastly, if you want to make your life as fun as a game, take the initiative to set goals and feedback, and continue to create a sense of meaning.
Posted from my blog with SteemPress : http://walkinharmony.vornix.blog/2019/02/21/how-to-make-life-as-fun-as-a-game%ef%bb%bf/