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What makes a game great?

A good, great, and glorious game share the same qualities: uniqueness, beauty, and elegance. The big difference is how well they are executed.

Make intense emotions our goals

It is easier for people to think of emotional events: boss fights, betrayal scenes, permanent deaths, and new items. Make them our goal, then begin figuring out ways to transition between goals. I like to think of these goals as mini-climaxes.

The most viewed videos of a Let's Play are the beginning and ending. Make sure to have the best moments in the beginning, climax, and ending. Viewers watch the beginning to get the content creator's initial impression of the game, and the ending to get the content creator's final thoughts.

Intense emotions per minute

For Null Recall, I tried to have 2 big reveals every episode. An episode is 20 to 30 minutes. An action game might have 1 mini-boss every 30 minutes, and 1 boss every 1 hour.

Greedy Transitions

To achieve a strong emotion, we try to jump from opposite emotions as quick as possible. If happiness ranges from 0 to 100, and sadness ranges from -100 to 0, then going from happy to sad is 200 points. Many times, going from -100 to 100 in a few minutes will feel distasteful to the audience. Good execution requires us to know when to move slowly, and when to move quickly.

Constant: no growth

If every object in our room started moving, we'd get confused. Is the book possessed? Does it have good, or bad intentions? How does its behaviour vary from moment to moment? Multiply this by 10 objects, and we get information overload.

No growth, or slow motion can also make emotions linger. John feels anxiety when he confesses his love to Jane. If Jane pauses for 30 seconds to think, the feeling of anxiety is extended.

Slow: linear growth

Big structures can be broken into smaller ones. Many learning resources have an easy, medium, and hard difficulty level. A book can be broken into chapters, which can be broken into paragraphs, etc. If we are introducing an uncommon idea, reveal it in small steps.

To build to an amazing scene where every object in the room moves, we might introduce 1 object first, then 2 more, then 4 more.

Slow growth, or small changes can be used to indicate similarity. Red, orange, and yellow are distinct, but seem closely related to fire and energy. If we have 5 identical, red monsters, then we can imply one of the 5 is the leader by coloring it yellow, or orange.

Quick: logarithmic growth

People love being showered with positivity. A logarithmic curve grows quickly at the start, but slowly in the end. Use log growth for positive emotions. Many RPG's have logarithmic level up curves. Players grow quickly to get them hooked, but grow slower near the end to stop snowballing.

Summaries use log growth, because they try to use common knowledge to explain new ideas. In a tutorial section, we might put in a ball to explain a bounce mechanic. We know how balls bounce in real life.

Quick: exponential growth

People dislike abrupt and negative emotions. An exponential curve grows slowly at the start, but quickly at the end. Use them for negative emotions. Having a new character open with a rape joke would make people hate them. Tell a few clean jokes, then a few dirty ones, then imply it in a few jokes, before bring out the rape joke.

When introducing anything: character, location, idea. We try to use a log growth to explain the easy parts quickly. After that, only complex information remains. This makes us use linear growth. Finally, we can end in exponential growth to create an ah-ha moment.

Repetition: wavy growth

Repetition is used to reinforce an idea like a theme or motif. We do this by copying and pasting what we've already built, and adding add 20% to 40% variation.

Music uses a lot of repetitions. Musical sentences are 3 to 8 notes. Once we figure out those 3 to 8 notes, we can repeat them in the track, but change 1 or 2 notes each time we repeat it. Most components of music are repeated: chorus, ostinatos, riffs, bass, drum beats, chords, etc. Each component will usually repeat different musical sentences.

Explosions

Greedy Transitions covers how we build up sections. What happens when two massive sections collide? Having a first draft makes testing these collisions easy, because we have a lot of big sections to smash together.

Bouncing Arcs

John wins the first fight against Bill. Bill wins the second one. John the third one, and Bill the forth one. They take turns winning. Every match is exciting, because we have an immovable object vs an unstoppable force.

Try to move sections around to cause this bouncing effect on the story, or game system. If a move creates an awkward transition, try adding a new section between to smoothen it out.

Merging Arcs

Weak sections might have standout moments among lackluster ones. We can merge the standout moments from 2 or more weak section. The merged section may increase the quality bar too much, so we might have to revise the other sections to match.

Team Arcs

A team arcs occur when our favorite celebrities, superheroes, or anything else work together. Established artists usually collaborate to mix, or combine their audiences.

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