Game decisions

The articles I read this week focused on influencing players to make decisions while playing your game and how gaming effects the player. Many games use subtle techniques to influence you to go a certain direction or carry out a specific task. A great example of a game that does this is The Legend of Zelda: Breath of The Wild, although the game is open ended and allows for and encourages the player to make their own choices while playing there is one section of the game where you are ' forced ' into carrying out a very specific set of tasks. The opening section of the game takes place in the great plateau, a section of land raised above the rest of Hyrule. In this section you are challenged with completing three shrines and collect three upgrades for your Shieka slate before you can continue. This is a positive example of a game controlling your choices, you are still free to approach the challenge ahead of you in any way but you must complete the task ahead of you before you are allowed to continue on exploring the rest of Hyrule. 

A section of the first article I read also covered learning curves in games. A learning curve is necessary to keep the game feeling difficult but also fair. An amazing example of a game with a high but fair learning curve would be the The souls series, a series of games by Japanese development studio From Software. These games are known for being incredibly difficult but as a longtime fan of the series I would argue that although they are indeed difficult games, they are also fair games. Take my favourite game Bloodborne for example, unlike the Demon Souls and Dark Souls before it Bloodborne focuses on quick paced combat. The game subtly pushes you towards this way of playing by using one specific mechanic. This mechanic is known as ' rally ' how this mechanic works is when you take damage from an enemy you have a short time frame to damage the enemy back to receive the health that you lost back. This mechanic slowly encourages the player to play in a more aggressive way. Ultimately this mechanic will lead to you slowing improving as a player because you are more likely to focus on dodging which will lead to you dying less. This one subtle mechanic helps you move up in the learning curve which will ultimately lead to you becoming better at the game

What the learning curve looks like