{"id":97,"date":"2008-09-10T18:22:31","date_gmt":"2008-09-10T18:22:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/positech.co.uk\/cliffsblog\/?p=97"},"modified":"2008-09-10T18:22:31","modified_gmt":"2008-09-10T18:22:31","slug":"fiddling-with-variables","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.positech.co.uk\/cliffsblog\/2008\/09\/10\/fiddling-with-variables\/","title":{"rendered":"Fiddling with variables"},"content":{"rendered":"

A lot of the vital design stuff on my games is coming ton conclusions about cause and effect that are simple enough to work inside the context of a PC game.<\/p>\n

Take alcohol. What are the effects of alcohol? Well they are many and varied, according to scientists and doctors, low levels of some alcohol can actually be beneficial as a prevention against heart attacks. High levels will ruin your health, and we probably agree that alcohol will give you a higher level of confidence, and relax you.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

But… does it make you happy? This is a complex question. In my experience, alcohol exaggerates moods, so miserable people become more miserable, and happier people get more happy. The problem is, this is a bit of a personal opinion, and not easily explained in game terms. In the simplistic fashion of a sim game, alcohol makes you happy, albeit at the cost of reducing your concentration, and having potential health effects.<\/p>\n

So I find myself wrestling with how to set the numbers in Kudos 2. Right now, you get a confidence and relaxation boost automatically from all alcohol, but only deliberately chosen alcohol in restaurants directly makes you happy. The happiness associated with alcohol from a bar or a wine and cheese evening is factored in with the other effects. If this seems slightly woolly, and not 100% accurate, it isn’t, but that’s game design. The problem is, you could add more and mroe complexity until the game took 20 years to make and a manual like a phone directory to play it. The trick is making the effects in the game seem just real enough to suspend disbelief, whilst still keeping it as just a game, and not an exercise in statistics.<\/p>\n

Tis a fine balance…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A lot of the vital design stuff on my games is coming ton conclusions about cause and effect that are simple enough to work inside the context of a PC game. Take alcohol. What are the effects of alcohol? Well they are many and varied, according to scientists and doctors, low levels of some alcohol<\/p>\n

Continue Reading… Fiddling with variables<\/span>Continue Reading…<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,5],"tags":[72],"class_list":["post-97","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-game-design","category-kudos","tag-alcohol"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.positech.co.uk\/cliffsblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.positech.co.uk\/cliffsblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.positech.co.uk\/cliffsblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.positech.co.uk\/cliffsblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.positech.co.uk\/cliffsblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=97"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.positech.co.uk\/cliffsblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.positech.co.uk\/cliffsblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=97"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.positech.co.uk\/cliffsblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=97"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.positech.co.uk\/cliffsblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=97"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}