
Loops and Arcs - dwynings
http://www.lostgarden.com/2012/04/loops-and-arcs.html
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teamonkey
There are some very strong reasons why arcs dominate and they're not all
financial.

1) People get bored and need change. This can be partly satisfied by a larger
loop that varies the gameplay mechanics, one method being "exotic gameplay"
(such as bonus levels).

2) People need closure and the feeling that they've finished a task. A visibly
endless task with no goal is a thankless task.

3) People get satisfaction in closed cause-and-effect chains (and have limited
working memory space to process them), by which I mean converting a short
string of events into a story.

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chii
"2) People need closure and the feeling that they've finished a task. A
visibly endless task with no goal is a thankless task."

This is not necessarily true. Its only true if the game frames itself to be a
task to be completed (for fun).

There are (very few) games that are called "sandbox" games, where there are no
ending. The player decides what their goal (if any) is. An example of such a
game is Eve online, the sims, and simcity.

~~~
teamonkey
Flow theory[1] dictates that there has to be clear goals set in place, whether
they are set by the game or player. More than this, these goals need to
challenge the player while still being achievable.

The problem is that when playing a game not everyone can (or wants to) set
their own goals in this way. It takes a small amount of persistence and
discipline, which might not be appropriate for a game that is supposed to be
played as a leisure activity.

[1]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flow_%28psychology%29#Condition...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flow_%28psychology%29#Conditions_for_flow)

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jacobolus
I really like this metaphor. I think one of the biggest problems with the way
we spend our modern lives is that we’ve made the payoffs at the ends of “arcy”
activities (media “consumption”, tweeting and snapshotting our daily lives,
buying food from restaurants instead of hunting or even cooking, buying
clothes instead of making them, buying houses instead of building them, hiring
mechanics and plumbers instead of fixing our own things, hiring landscapers
instead of growing our own gardens) so incredibly stimulating that we lose
patience for “loopy” activities. Up to a certain point, we get more “pleasure”
out of just enjoying the fruits of mass production and other people’s labor.
But we run a real danger of forcing the loopy parts out of our lives too much;
the loopy parts are where Cziksentmihalyi’s “flow”, creativity, mastery, and
the most fulfilling kind of happiness lie. At the extreme, people organize
their whole lives around “bucket lists” of arcy items that can be checked off,
each with a discrete endpoint.

And we don’t properly recognize that the room for learning is much greater
when we’re in loops; schools, instead of teaching us to put connections
together and ruminate, encourage us to memorize and regurgitate. Very arcy, “a
singular path through a system that someone else previously explored.”

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davidtyleryork
Another great post by you guys. Love the distinction between Loops and Arcs,
though I'd love a specific example of Arc -> Loop -> Arc as a primary game
flow. Most RPG games (like Mass Effect) go Arc -> Arc -> Arc, with Loops
typically being regulated to side quests or objectives (like resource
harvesting). In RTS games, the entire game is Loop -> Loop -> Loop as far as
gameplay is concerned, and then the story itself is an Arc.

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mbel
Well, he gave quite specific example of `sandwich design': "This is your
typical cutscene-gameplay-cutescene sandwich." Where cutscenes are arcs as
player is to watch them once and actual gameplay is build by looped actions. I
haven't played Mass Effect, but I guess this is an example of such design; in
all cRPG games gameplay is kind of loop build of schemes like talking
to/fighting with NPC, walking around and collecting items.

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jpitz
Loops immediately brought to mind <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OODA_loop>

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gbog
Can we please stop using these JavaScripts slide page tricks, it is completely
broken, I can't even read the page on my phone.

