Worlds Apart Development Diary (part 2)

At the start of any project, I always try to figure out as much as I can about the motivations behind it. It's my strong belief that understanding the "why" of a project is crucial to designing the "how". So with that in mind, I ask myself "Why a browser game?". I answer that question in the following article, and examine the place of interface design in games.

It's fairly common these days to see people using computers as sources of entertainment. Computer games, the BBC website, Youtube, Wikipedia... We don't have a TV in our house - I'm told that a fair number of urbanite households are the same these days - having replaced it with a combination of Lord of the Rings Online, Facebook, and drifting through the blogosphere.

The stereotypical bespectacled, overweight, nerdy, teenage computer addict living with their mother seems quite out of place in this new world of interactive entertainment. My dad trawls ebay for laughs, and even my otherwise computer-illiterate mother has clocked enough hours on windows solitaire to rival your average World of Warcraft player. Even (especially?) people like me who work with computers for a living often prefer them to other forms of entertainment.

At this point I might be expected to go on about how society is breaking down because everyone's glued to their monitors, or alternately about how playing Guild Wars is much better than watching TV because it's more like being social, but I'll spare you that because it doesn't bother me either way.

What fascinates me is the way that computers are making the transition from "that blasted machine" to "favourite pastime". The mainstream are becoming more and more aware of the ways to use a computer to have fun.

Browser games sit on a very delicate precipice. They don't have the flashy 3d graphics of traditional PC games or console games (or even flash games). They don't have the informative value of a web publication. They don't have the tangible real-world rewards that an e-store has. So, why do people spend their time playing them?

"Because they're fun" obviously, and while I'm not going to waste time trying to define fun I will say that good browser games are a spartan combination of solid mechanics, inter-player interaction, and excellent interface design.

It's that last one that I'm most interested in here. We spend a lot of time in application development trying to ensure that our interfaces meet certain metrics - Is it easy to learn? Does it save time? Does it help ensure the user makes fewer mistakes? - but there's a crucial question that often gets left out: Is it fun?

It's odd considering that a user interface can be "fun", but I'm not sure how else to describe it. At a very low level, you press buttons in a particular order perhaps with a particular timing and you are rewarded for it - perhaps by progress to the next "level", or by some in-game cinematic, cosmetic, or mechanical reward, or in some cases a real-life reward. This tight cycle of action/reward (called the "compulsion cycle" in some circles) is what drives people to play (and to return in the future), and the user interface has a huge part to play in the satisfaction you get from that.

That's why I'm excited to take on a project where the simple pleasure of interacting with the UI is one of the major draws of the product. Not only am I looking forward to honing my skills in an environment where they really matter, but I'm also looking forward to taking those lessons and applying them in my everyday work - hopefully infusing my clients' applications with a little bit of fun!

See you next time!

Work done this week:

• Did some more work on the data model. Will need to start coming up with ideas for the entities in the world soon
• Finished the closed beta feature list, started implementing
• Did some investigation into dynamic update of the back-end database
• Learned some ASP.NET AJAX to start creating UI elements - considering ditching it for Scriptaculous or JQuery