Time & Games

This month’s Round Table is on the subject of Age and Games, with the usual invitation to riff on this idea and push it as wide as possible. With that in mind, here are my thoughts on the tangential topic of Time and Games.

Time is the most important aspect of any game. No time, no game. Partly, this is a trivial consequence of the role of time in sentience (no time, no mind), but mostly this is simply the admission that it takes time to play a game. Is there more to time and games than casual philosophical truisms? Let us explore...

The role of time in gameplay is crucial. There are dozens of simple aspects to this claim – the distinction between real time and turn-based play, for instance, or the essentially logistical structure of computer role-playing games with their focus, not on role, but on accumulating a time-based resource (which Tea Leaves calls “R” but which there is a compelling argument for calling “t” – not coincidentally, the basis of experience in my latest cRPG project, Reluctant Hero).

We can look at time spent in play and derive discrete but abstracted values – durations – with consequences for how we think about the nature of game design and gameplay.

Let us call the time the player spends learning to play a game the tutorial duration (t_tutorial), the typical length of a single play session (the shortest comfortable duration of play – a level or other atomic chunk of play) the play session duration (t_play) and the total length of a game (how long it takes to complete) the total duration (t_total).What can we say about these values?

Firstly, we can say a lot about the play style of a particular player by examining the comparative values of these time values. (We're going to use inequalities here, so if your not familiar with these you might want to brush up; however, I will also put them into words for the mathematically impaired).

What is conventionally called a “casual player” requires:

t_tutorial <= t_play

That is to say, such a player must be able to learn to play the game in less than or the same amount of time as it takes to enjoy a typical play session. Indeed, the secret of most casual games is actually:

t_tutorial << t_play

Which is to say: you can pick it up in a fraction of the time it takes to complete a typical play session. Another aspect of Casual games with respect to time is that they are rarely built around a framing progress structure, or to put this in temporal terms:

t_total = ∞ (infinite)

We see this in studies of players who play few games, but play them with astonishing dedication. Some Tetris players have racked up literally hundreds, perhaps thousands of hours of play.

Compare, for instance, a strategy game – something requiring much greater game literacy, and having quite a different temporal identity. In the case of many strategy games we might observe:

t_tutorial  > t_play

t_total >> t_play

Many role-playing games have the same kind of relationship with time. Note the important distinction that it takes longer (in general) to learn to play these kinds of games than the length of a typical play session. In fact, tutorial content may be spread throughout the length of the game in order to apportion out the required learning.

In fact, it is possible that – in terms of the nature of games enjoyed – these temporal identities express the essential difference between casual games and “hardcore” (gamer hobbyist) games. We can express the inequalities informally as follows:

• Casual-style games can be learned rapidly, and played indefinitely. This indefinite length of play may be very short, very long or anywhere in between.
• Gamer hobbyist-style games take longer to learn than a typical play session of such a game, and can be played for a very long time (sufficient to justify the “expenditure” of time in learning the game).

Are these the only temporal identities? Certainly not. Many art-house games (such as Façade, for instance), have the following time relations:

t_total ≈ t_play

The interesting thing about this ‘shape’ of game is that (barring replay) the play session and the total play time are the same, and whilst it is possible to play Façade multiple times, this is not a game that most people come back to often or repeatedly. The experience of play has been delivered in an efficient manner – too efficient for commercial games, but ideal for a game with artistic goals. The nature of art house games may well be expressed by this idea:

•  Art house-style games can be learned very rapidly, but may only be as long as their typical play session.

Since constraining total game length in this way saves significantly on development costs, an argument can be construed that art house games effectively waste their development time by making themselves longer than an hour in length.

Now what of the games we have ignored in the middle ground – first person shooters, driving games and other such staples of the games industry. For these something interesting happens – by depending on conventions that occur across many games there is a sharp difference in the nature of the tutorial duration. Let us focus on the FPS (first person shooter) because of its ubiquity.

For game-literate players facing such a game:

t_tutorial  << t_play

t_total > t_play

(Or if network play is enjoyed:

t_total >> t_play

since playing with other players radically extends the duration of interest in the game).

But for players coming to this style of game for the first time, it is often the case that:

t_tutorial  > t_total > t_play

This is not at all like the other inequalities we have looked at!

Putting this informally:

• Game-literate players approaching an FPS learn to play quickly, but exhaust the main gameplay faster than with more complex games (extended play only happening as a result of multiplayer).
• Players coming to an FPS for the first time may not master all the nuances of the control skills before completing the game – the tutorial duration effectively exceeds the total game length.

In fact, some players coming to an FPS for the first time simply give up – they are not willing to make that sort of commitment to learning a game. Hence the sharp divide between quick and easy Casual games (with their trivial tutorial duration) and gamer hobbyist standard genres like FPS (with their implicitly long tutorial duration ameliorated by players learning to play over multiple different games in the same genre).

This, in many respects, is the hole that the games industry dug for itself by making more and more of the games it likes – those who are part of the gaming culture carry their tacit knowledge (their game literacy) from game to game, allowing easy access to more games made in a similar style. But when a new player without that game-literacy tries to play, they frequently struggle. The complexity of the standard controller design hasn’t helped this matter at all.

Nor is the Wii miraculously immune from such problems: the Wii remote may have the potential to be simple and intuitive, but specific games can ask the player to conduct actions with the remote which they perhaps never truly master. Simply having the Wii remote as an input device isn’t enough to guarantee accessibility to the non-game literate: some care must be taken in ensuring that the tutorial duration is not effectively longer than the length of the game, just as with new players coming to the FPS genre.

Looking at the relationship between time and play is a different perspective on games, one that can reveal much about the diversity of players and their different approaches to play. Why not use it to look at your own play? How long a tutorial duration will you tolerate? Do you bore of a game with indefinite total play (like Tetris) because it has no structured goals? Or do you bore of a game with fixed total play (like most FPS games) because your interest in them becomes exhausted?

In short: what is the relationship between time and your play?

Comments

[Patrick]

I bet you could specifically measure these things over mean, median ect. and then actually have very specific ratios to analyze.

[zenBen]

"I bet you could specifically measure these things over mean, median ect. and then actually have very specific ratios to analyze."

Was just about to say that :D
Ben Cousins has done something like this, in a small way. And (if you lend the implication credence) it bears out the idea that good game design works within certain parameters that are independent of platform and other strictly 'designed' elements - i.e. they are constraints in some way inherent to the players!
Of course, there are classes of players (variations of experience?), and types of players (variations of play preference?), and that really confuses any search for inherent qualities of players.

[Peter Crowther]

As a meta-comment on recent posts and comments (sorry Chris)...

Treating Only a Game as a game, it is interesting to note that the game's author likes to play language games, for example stating that:

It actually doesn't greatly matter whether we designate various fields as science o[r] philosophy in my opinion - the fields do what they do whatever they are called.

These language games raise the barriers to casual gamers, as t(tutorial) >> t(play) and possibly even t(total), making at least the philosophy topics of Only a Game more appropriate for hardcore than casual gamers.

Squirrels, however, are far more a topic for the casual gamer :-).

[zenBen]

"As a meta-comment on recent posts and comments..."

Indeed, given the diversity and profundity on which the variety of topics draw for source and inspiration, one could say only the game master can claim that for him
t(tutorial) < t(play)
or even
t(tutorial) < t(total)

Of course, perhaps this is as it should be :D

[Chico]

Enlightening post, actually. I've always tried to make tutorials as short as possible. However, I think I never really cared about making play sessions much longer than tutorials. I used to feel that I should have, and now I understand better why.

I should join Patrick and ZenBen (and Cousins) in the search for the golden ratio of game progression...

[Chris]

Patrick, zenBen et al: "I bet you could specifically measure these things..."

The thought, of course, had crossed my mind. :) However, as a game designer dabbling in research, I really don't have the resources. Besides, the inequalities are good enough for now. I would love to see some more detailed work on this, though.

Chico: keeping a play session short is invaluable in the casual space, or course. Is there a benefit from keeping the play session length longer than the tutorial, or just ensuring the tutorial is shorter than the play session length...? Because if the former, games with long tutorials should compensate by having longer play sessions - and I'm not sure that's the conclusion to be drawn. :) Best wishes!

Peter, zenBen et al: So Only a Game is a hardcore philosophy game and a casual squirrel game? ;)

Regarding:

"It actually doesn't greatly matter whether we designate various fields as science o[r] philosophy in my opinion - the fields do what they do whatever they are called."

I know, I know, I trip people up by playing a language game one way and then turning around and denying the basis for the game. :) Still, it's all part of the crazy philosophical fun - I hope!

And if t(tutorial) >> t(play) for the players of this blog-playing game, it surely is for its Games Master as well! How could I possibly learn everything there is to learn about the players, let alone the content! :)

Best wishes!

[James Lillis]

Do you bore of a game with indefinite total play (like Tetris) because it has no structured goals?

What do you mean by this? Wouldn't the phrase 'no structured goals' assume a paidia-type game, i.e. formless play?

I would say that Tetris has very strongly structured goals... wouldn't you agree?

[Neil]

Not unless it has a "mode" which is like, Get 100 lines; or like the N64 Tetris which slowly built structures with the bricks you used during a game...

This sort of thing is (are) structured goals. A definite challenge laid down for you to complete.

Without it, for many, Tetris (in this example) can only be played a few times before it is boring/uninspiring etc.

[Chris]

James: Neil covered this one nicely. It's not that Tetris doesn't have goals, per se, but it does not have a framing goal structure, like a cRPG or a strategy game.

So perhaps instead of saying "no structured goals" I should have said "no framing goal structure" - since as you observe, Tetris does have goals but they are implicit in the play mechanics rather than framing goals.

Best wishes!