After Analyzing Games for 10,000 Hours, We Finally Found the Formula for Fun

Comments · 181

• PA

  @patrick_rose · 4 weeks ago (edited) · pinned

  What are some game mechanics you could apply the ARC framework to and how?

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• SE

  @sethryan3531 · 1 month ago

  wonderful video!!! thank you both so, so much!

• SH

  @shades1756 · 3 weeks ago

  Very cool distillation. I&apos;ll be working ARC into my brainstorming and analyses. Who knows? It might actually nudge me into a zone where I feel like one of my games is finally &apos;publishable&apos; rather than merely being &apos;finished&apos;. <br><br>Since you asked for ideas (and I may as well test out this ARC theory on something)...<br><br>I&apos;ll envision a game where the player character is the only/last person in the world. Exploration might be the primary mechanism, with survival and/or puzzle solving elements being secondary to it. As the player gets deeper into the game, they begin encountering &apos;ghosts&apos; - maybe alternate selves or personalities. <br><br>The autonomy aspect is fairly straightforward. The player decides where to explore next and how to survive/traverse the world. <br><br>Competence will be a function of how the autonomy is offered. Different obstacles require different solutions. The player has to learn the game loop, then the mechanisms for traversal and maybe combat. Possibly even provide different paths for different playstyles (direct approach/murder everything, stealth/avoid detection, magic/maybe swap between dimensions and change the nature of traversal completely.<br><br>Relatedness: That&apos;s where the ghosts/imaginary friends come into play. Depending on which personality is present/active at the time you might get snarky commentary about your choices (like the narrator in the Bard&apos;s Tale remake) or hints about an obstacle or straight up help from them. There could even be relationship alignment based on how you react/interact with them. <br><br>If I understand the concept correctly, we could get additional relatedness from the world design/presentation (suitably atmospheric for whatever theme we chose) and adding some background lore hints/snippets to be found as the map is filled out.

• PI

  @pineappleparty1624 · 1 month ago

  After seeing Minecraft in here, it made me wonder what aspects of single player survivals fall under relatedness. Perhaps this is why so many of them have you find food, water, and heals to look after your player? Often times even cooking better more tasty looking foods, or getting excited to find a nice fresh burger to feed your starving survivor, in a zombie game? <br>These games often also have customization for what the character will wear to keep them comfortable in the elements. Maybe this is all to force the player to care about their character?

• LA

  @latte4159 · 2 weeks ago

  Baba is You &amp; Portal are both great games, but something I&apos;ve noticed after watching a lot of people play both games is that Baba is You often makes people FEEL &quot;stupid&quot; after spending a long time solving a puzzle. There&apos;s clearly something about the game that &nbsp;has a negative effect on a player&apos;s sense of **competence**.<br><br>Situations like that rarely happen while watching Portal gameplay. I guess it mostly boils down to one game being easier than the other, huh?

• IM

  @Impos__Sound · 1 month ago

  Ok so the three main points are competence, autonomy and relatedness. If I apply that to my cozy simulation game it‘ll look like that: <br>Pitch: You’re vinyls and tapes got knocked out of the shelf’s, organize them. (Compare to librarian: tidy up the arcane library)<br>Autonomy: the player can decide how they wanna tackle the sort<br>Relatedness: the tapes and vinyl are real recordings showing the thoughts and personality of the collector and recorder<br>Competence: figuring out the fastes way to sort the collection.<br>Do I apply the concept correctly?

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• BR

  @brycejohansen7114 · 1 month ago

  How does relatedness work with &apos;Tetris&apos; or more abstract games that don&apos;t really have characters or interactions with other players?

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• DA

  @davidj3048 · 1 month ago

  I like to concept but it misses what L4D did with it&apos;s Game Pacing.

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• ID

  @idle.observer · 1 month ago

  So, I&apos;m making an incremental game, where we kill humans to gain their blood and spend the blood on the skill tree to get stronger. But I&apos;m seriously struggling to make it more fun. I watched the whole video but it still didn&apos;t click. Can you give some tips, maybe some hints at leasts? The project&apos;s progress is literally stopped right now.

• BO

  @bonecircuit · 1 month ago

  Have you read the octalysis framework?

• JB

  @JBeestonian · 1 month ago

  Former game dev now in learning design. You wouldn&apos;t believe how much gamification is misrepresented in education.

• RE

  @Reality-On-Duty · 1 month ago

  Let me bring up another topic here. First of all: what an excellent video! Secondly, I’m very interested in game design, but not for the most obvious reason. I’m a tabletop RPG Game Master and have been running games for my group for about 10 years. I know creating a video game is very different from planning a D&amp;D session, but how would you apply this &quot;arc&quot; concept to a tabletop RPG scenario?