
Real Games Have Curves: Welcome to the Competence Zone - kilian
http://www.pixelpoppers.com/2010/06/real-games-have-curves-welcome-to.html
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chipsy
A problem with this theory: Flow isn't "I'm passing this level." If you
flailed through the whole thing, succeeding more on luck than skill, you
probably didn't achieve flow. Flow requires a combination of a tight feedback
loop and succeeding at getting positive output from it. So while
Bit.Trip.Runner _requires_ flow for any degree of success, lenient music games
like Guitar Hero let you use a resource-hoarding strategy(retaining star power
for hard parts) to pass songs at a pre-flow skill level, and then return to
them later for higher scores.

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hazzen
An addendum, and a game I think about quite frequently, is FlyWrench. It looks
like Bit.Trip Runner has taken some lessons from it. FlyWrench is also a
punishingly difficult game that appears to flow for an expert player, with
instant death on any mistake. What it nails is that the amount of work you
have to redo for a failure is tiny, and the restart is as close to
instantaneous as you would be comfortable with.

You enter a very flow-like state perfecting a 10-20 second stretch of inputs
because of this structure. The game _demands_ perfection as you enter the
later levels, but somehow you are comfortable with it because the penalty is
so small. I guess VVVVV is also in this school of game and has largely
succeeded.

I think, then, that Bit.Trip Runner may have failed somewhat if the restart
penalty is as large as the author makes it sound. You don't need to have a
large competence zone to create flow; you can alternatively have a low penalty
for failure with some tangible measure of progress and keep the player (or at
least this player) hooked.

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mbateman
This is just an aside in the article, but I had no idea that Rock Band 3 was
going to feature something much closer to the real instruments. I've been
wondering, ever since I played the first Guitar Hero, how long it would be
before it was possible to learn a real instrument in this manner. If it
actually works, this is awesome. You can transition smoothly from trying to
get high scores in a fun video game to playing the songs for real.

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te_platt
I wrote a prototype "Piano Hero" that used the midi out from my piano
keyboard. Instead of the notes coming down I had them come across the screen
laid out on a staff like standard sheet music. My kids use it for piano
practice and it seems to help develop real piano skills.

~~~
baddox
<http://www.synthesiagame.com/>

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kilian
It's interesting to contrast this with games such as WoW and Farmville, which
seem to reward endurance more than skill. Interestingly, Cory Doctorow's
latest book 'for the win' explores exactly this.

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diziet
It's no wonder that games such as World of Warcraft have a really low
competence zone and a really large amount of space left to provide rewards for
both time investment and player skill.

