Welcome to Friday Fun, the blog where I poke my head up from underground, let you all know I’m still alive, and hopefully entertain you with some bits about my project progress and game development experience.
Fun and Learning New Things
As I mentioned back in FF#7, Recently I had the pleasure of reading Theory of Fun for Game Design by Raph Koster. It really struck a chord with me, and I think that Raph is on to something. In the book, he postulates that games evolved as a safe space in which to learn essential life skills, and that once we have learned the lessons that a game has to teach us, the game loses much of its fun. He points out that we have LOTS of games that teach us things like aiming, melee combat, resource allocation, force projection, and territory control, but that we need more games that teach us other skills that are coming to the fore.
This is one of the areas in which I think Dehoarder 2 can really shine and stand out. As the game already revolves around trying to run a household, It is perfectly positioned to gently teach in a fun and humorous way about many things in modern life. Somehow I already knew this and was working toward it, but reading Theory of Fun really crystallized it for me.
Food For Thought
One subject in which MY life training was sorely lacking was in the area of nutrition. In school, we were taught about the “four food groups” and later the “food pyramid”, both of which are sorely lacking models for nutritional guidance. Beyond that, any other information I’ve received on the subject has come from a barrage of conflicting studies, schools of thought, and sometimes outright conspiracy theory. Over my entire adult life, I’ve had to sort and wade through and experiment with this information myself, until finally figuring out what actually works for me. It’s actually an ongoing process, and I continue to learn new things every day. (By investing effort in this, I have lost 130 pounds over the last 4 years, gained tons of energy, and generally have reversed most of what used to ail me.)
Many, many games contain food and allow characters to consume food. Very few distinguish different qualities of food; in many games, a salad and a candy bar are nutritionally equivalent. What if games had a system where a pattern of wise nutritional choices resulted in buffs, but questionable nutritional choices resulted in performance penalties or even character death? We’d learn pretty quick which foods to have our characters eat and which to reserve as rarer enjoyings. Plus, since it’s part of a game, it is a safe environment in which to prompt thinking about this critical life skill.
This is the inspiration behind the nutrition system in Dehoarder 2 that I started to implement this week. At the beginning of the game Harry’s nutritional profile is atrocious, much like mine was through my early adult life. Harry will receive information regarding what nutritional choices might be beneficial, and it will be up to him to follow or disregard that information.
This starts at the very first meal in the game, where Harry is offered one of four meals that have wide range of nutritional profiles, from the very obviously dessert-as-a-meal choice of chocolate ice cream, all the way to chicken and broccoli stir fry.
The idea is not to penalize the occasional choice that is sub-optimal nutritionally, or to encourage min-maxxing on the healthiest choice to maintain the highest possible level of buff, but to reward or penalize an overall pattern of choices, and most importantly, to add fun in learning to the game! Indeed, there may be reasons to choose the ice cream now and then, as it will improve mood in the short term.
This is a large part of how choices will matter in Dehoarder 2, both here in the nutrition system and in other areas of the game. In many cases, it will be a pattern of choices that dictates the outcome, though there will still be a number of points in the story where a single decision has a large impact. This closely simulates my observation of how life works – both our patterns of lesser choices and our key critical choices matter.
Appearance on Volpe Creates
I will be making an appearance as a guest on VolpeCreates channel this afternoon (October 7) at 1pm US Eastern time. Chris and I go back quite a long ways via GDEX and COGG and we have both been working for ten or more years to grow the game development industry in Central Ohio. Should be a very interesting talk!
Conclusion
Well I’ve probably rambled on about good nutrition and such long enough for one week. Until next time, have fun and be good to each other.