I am working on doing some research into the more psychological aspects of gaming. Why do we game? What aspects of one game make it better than another game? Are social and online games truly manipulative? Can we objectively rate games? Are game companies truly creating efficient experiences that maximizes their resources without waste?

I have created a short survey. It is for the most part basic questions but it is the stepping stone for my larger project.

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/WY7PMLF

Also I have been working on organizing a set of experiments. If anyone is any good at programming and wants to help, send me a PM.

The last question is no. Most of a game's budget is "lost time" waiting for different assets to finish so another team and continue with their work. So things can definitely be streamlined in the development process of bigger games. I think for the game that was mentioned over 1000 hours of lost time was recorded.

There does seem to be a lot of feelings among gamers that companies don't use their money wisely. So I want to find out how can companies use their money more wisely. What aspects should they focus, what aspects should they lessen. I just find that a lot of time how they make games is either guesswork or artistic desires.

Why do we game?
Relaxation, escapism and addiction.

What aspects of one game make it better than another game?
Unfortunately hype plays a big role but in general "Easy to pick up, hard to master" is a good formula to adhere to. Most important of all get the controls right.

Are social and online games truly manipulative?
What do you mean by that? Most games manipulate the player by stimulating our need to feel rewarded and to accomplish something.

Can we objectively rate games?
No. Well we can give them an objective score based on controller latency, frame rate, percent screen tearing, lalala, but that's only a small part.

Are game companies truly creating efficient experiences that maximizes their resources without waste?
No large company manages that, game companies are no exception. In my experience 4 to 6 people are the most that can work together efficiently.

In a course I took in collage we covered the psycological hooks of games I believe there were 7 in total games apeel to different people in different ways, so it is hard to have a Univerally loved game, because you would have to cover all the hooks well.

I actually found the book, the topic started in chapter 2. The book title is Game Development Essentials written by Jeannie Novak. (On a side note I found two silver certificates I hid the book. ;p )

Paging through it I had to laugh it had the Phantom reciever as a "new way to play" section. Caused me to snort.

Here the link to the amazon listing of the newest edition of the book.

http://www.amazon.com/Game-Development-Essentials-An-Introduction/dp/1111307652/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1345250887&sr=8-1&keywords=game+development+essentials

7 hooks of gaming that would be interesting to read about.

I heard that the reason social gaming is so manipulative is because it uses mundane and completely optional task to create habits. It also uses friends as objects to advance your experience. I have also noticed that a lot of facebook games employ a timer I am sure that helps to keep you as a repeat player.

are you doing this just for fun or are you a professional ? also this might help you

http://www.ted.com/talks/jane_mcgonigal_gaming_can_make_a_better_world.html

I'm in the process of getting sources together, to make a book to help people get into developing games as cheep as possible. After what I went through and realizing that I could of done it a lot cheaper and not be in school loan debt hell, I kicked my self.

This is for personal research. If this was a job of mine I can guarantee you that survey would look a whole lot better. I use to do surveys for different organizations, it is certainly not as easy as you think. You have to balance all of the different questions people want to ask, take away their slant and bias, remove questions that don't provide valuable information, explain why you removed someone's question.

Like I said in the opening post the survey is a kind of stepping stone for actual experiments. I may do a follow up survey or so but I would really like to get going on a set of experiments where we isolate individual game mechanics and test their worth and effect on the players experience. So if anyone is good at game and computer programming or knows someone who is and is also intresteded in the project let me know.


@bananaking21-Thanks for the link I will look into that.

@BlkPaladin-That is pretty cool, let me know how it goes.