Gameplay

Gameplay is what distinguishes a game from a non-interactive medium (book, movie) through the player interaction. Many guidelines were developed:

Goal and ways to achieve it

• Provide clear goals. Present overriding goal early, as well as short-term goals throughout the play (Clanton 1998, Malone 1982, Desurvire 2004)
• Design for multiple paths through the game (Federoff 2002)
• Game play should be balanced so that there is no definite way to win (Crawford, 1982; Malone, 1982)
• There must not be any single optimal winning strategy (Shelley 2001, Desurvire 2004)
• The game must maintain an illusion of winnability (Crawford, 1982)
• The game should have an unexpected outcome (Malone, 1982)

Learning and mastering

• There should be variable difficulty levels (Malone 1980, Norman 1990, Shneiderman 1997)
• “A good game should be easy to learn and hard to master” (Nolan Bushnell)
  
• The game should give hints, but not too many (Clanton, 1998)
• Teach skills early that you expect the players to use later, or right before the new skill is needed (Desurvire 2004)
• Pace the game to apply pressure to, but not frustrate the player (Clanton 1998, Shelley 2001)
• Vary the difficulty level so that players become more challenged as they develop mastery (Desurvire 2004)
• Challenges are positive rather than negative game experiences, resulting in players wanting to play more rather than quitting (Desurvire 2004)
• The game should use orthogonal unit differentiation, i.e., use objects with different strengths and weaknesses (Laitinen 2008).
  

Arouse and maintain interest

• Create an interesting and absorbing tutorial that mimics game play (Desurvire 2004)
• Get the player involved quickly and easily (Bickford, 1997)
• The game is fun for the player first, the designer second and the computer third. That is, if the non-expert player’s experience isn’t put first, excellent game mechanics and graphics programming triumphs are meaningless (Desurvire 2004)
• Games should use visual and audio effects to arouse interest (Bickford 1997, Malone 1982, Shelley 2001)
• The game transports the player into a level of personal involvement emotionally (e.g., scare, threat, thrill, reward, punishment) and viscerally (e.g., sounds of environment) (Desurvire 2004)
  
•  Player’s fatigue is minimized by varying activities and pacing during game play (Desurvire 2004). Use about 5-minute intervals (Schaffer 2008).
  
• Allow users to skip non-playable and frequently repeated content.
• Include a lot of interactive props for the player to interact with (Desurvire 2004)
• Play should be fair (Clanton, 1998)
• Player should not be penalized repetitively for the same failure (Desurvire 2004)
• The game is enjoyable to replay (Shelley 2001, Desurvire 2004)

Rewards

• The game should give rewards that immerse the player more deeply in the game by increasing their capabilities (Desurvire 2004), and expanding their ability to customize (Bickford 1997, Clanton 1998, Shelley 2001, Shneiderman 1992, Desurvier 2004)
• The first player action [...] should result in immediate positive feedback (Desurvier 2004)
• Focus on rewarding players for success (within reason), and less on punishing them for failure (Fortugno 2008)
• One reward of playing should be the acquisition of skill (Federoff 2002)

Control and impact

• Player’s should perceive a sense of control and impact onto the game world. The game world reacts to the player, and changes the player makes are persistent and noticeable if they back-track to where they’ve been before (Desurvier 2004)
• Allow players to build content (Shelley, 2001)
• The player has a sense of control over their character and is able to use tactics and strategies (Desurvier 2004)
  
• The player feels as though the world is going on whether their character is there or not (Desurvier 2004)
• Artificial intelligence actors should be unpredictable, yet consistent with the player’s reasonable expectations of AI actors (Bickford 1997, Crawford 1982, Desurvire 2004).