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I’ve nothing against Sydney or New South Wales. It’s just that I’m so used to the word NSFW (Not Safe For Work) that I’ve written (and thrown away) at least 5 envelopes that’s addressed to NSFW 12xx, Australia. Argh. Habit. Also, the countless times that I’ve typed NSFW instead of NSW when needed. In other news, Fark.com (I . . . → Read More: The Problem With NSW These few days, I feel I’ve got excessive creative energy. And so, I wrote a script. Based on a true story. What really happened: I take a bus to the shopping mall (that’s sad, considering back home, the nearest shopping mall was a walking distance from my house). On the bus today, there was nobody, save me and the driver. The driver was a friendly chap, and we soon chatted a storm up. Usually I don’t like to talk to strangers, but this guy infused me with his enthusiasm. He was a part time driver, and was a fire-marshall on race courses. He was really animated, even down to the extent of mimicking walkie-talkie sounds and codes (like: 401 fire in progress chhhhrrrrr.. blabla). That guy really loved his motorsport, to actually want a piece of action in the racing field. He told me a lot of interesting things, like how, over the course of 15 years being the fire marshall at places like Bathurst 1000 and the V8 Super Cars, he had encountered 4 deaths (i.e. people he failed to rescue), and all the amazing miracle stories. Then he started bragging about his power tools (what is it with Aussies and their power tools??). Fun guy, that man. Then I went shopping. This is Part II of the Good Game series. It is actually a direct continuation of part I. If you haven’t read it, please do. Game design is a complex topic, and one can buy shelves of books on game design theories (I personally own serveral books on game design theory). The thing is, there are many approaches to game design, some good, some bad. But ultimately, the game design has to center around the player, not the game. This is the Commandment for all game designers to follow. Yesterday I confirmed my hunches empirically: Valve makes good games. What I did rather extreme: I got a few totally n00b friends to test Portal. And then I got them to test Crysis and Half-Life 2. Out of the 5 test subjects, 4 of them never touched a single computer game in their life (Minesweeper and Solitaire asides). One of them had some experience in computer games, but not in FPSes (I lured him into saying it’s one of my alcohol reflex tests as a control group). I know, I know, don’t harp on me using a small population sample. I didn’t have many friends who never played computer games. It also means CLT cannot be used (though technically the average approaches normal after n>4). Also, another assumption made is that the gameplay skills of the test subjects are identically and randomly distributed (they are obviously independent of one another, since neither knows each other). All my test participants were a mix of males and females (3 males, 2 females), aged 23-25, and an IQ range of 130-150. This experiment negates the difference between sex and age related reaction times, simply because I realized, after a series of multivariate play testing, it wasn’t important (or in other words, I suck at even simple multivariate regression testing, something I better buck up before next semester starts). In simple terms, I measured empirically, the frustration times of the players – i.e. how long does a totally new player gets frustrated with the game and gives it up. Because they all had no prior experience in first person shooters, I let them play the most ‘guiding’ game – Portal. Having had some experience in first person shooters, I let them play both Half-Life 2 and Crysis. Not at the same time, of course. I let them choose which game to play. Most chose HL2, while 1 chose Crysis first. If I had a larger sample size, I’d make a correlation between choosing either game first, but oh well… So, anyways, here’s a brief overview of the results: You know, I have so many Miscelleny posts that I have given it its own category. From now on, posts like Varied Thoughts go into the Miscelleny category. Anyways, these few days I have been having really strange conversations with people. Here are some:
Of all things I talk, I talk Tim Tams with Syeon. WTF? I must have really run out of small chat topics. And Elanor is of course, my used-to-be wife-to-be Elanor Tan. She was so tired. The poor girl seemed so stressed out. Sigh. What?! After all the effort and waiting you guys have been putting up with and here I come, announcing that there is no vodcast? Is something up? Yep you bet. Watch this week’s video to find out why. |
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