Postmortem – Gloating

For Week 2 we chose to work on making the player feel like gloating and find mechanics that enables players to gloat during gameplay. The official definition for the verb gloat states that to gloat is “to contemplate or dwell on one’s own success or anther’s misfortune with smugness or malignant pleasure”.

To extract the emotion from the verb we first needed to break the emotion of gloating down to its basic elements. What we found was that the moment of gloating is emphasized when there is a shift in power, a reversal in status or a moment of realization when the odds are in the players favor. After the breakdown we each concentrated on various mechanics that will provide these pivotal moments of realization.

The 1st Prototype “Human lab” focused on an achievement system which prompted players to use creativity and experimentation to get achievements which puts players in a position of power. Players start experimenting and gain achievements without too many consequences for doing things wrong. The hypothesis in behind this game is to create gloating situations by amuse players when they do crucial behaviors. Specifically, the crucial things are experimenting on human bodies and amusing parts are unlocking achievements.

The 2nd Prototype “Run Egg Run” focuses on competition versus AI where the AI trash talks to the player goading the player to move forward and win the race. The hypothesis behind this game is to let player and AI taunting each other, but all the leaders will be screwed during the match except for the last one survived. The moment of seeing the original leader (who will always taunt others while leading during the match) killed itself because of either accident or carelessness is the target moments this game aim to evoke gloating from player.

The 3rd prototype “Type Duet” deals in inducing the moment of reversal by giving one player easy words to type and the competing player extremely hard words to type. To goad the competing player the player completing the easy words gets the option to press shift after completing a certain number of easy words which brings up a Taunt that the competing player must type. Eventually the system reverses the role of both players thereby inducing the moment of gloating for the competitor. The hypothesis of this game is that the winner will experience gloating having been taunted so many times in the first part of the game.

The 4th prototype CNFT was similar to the third with a twist using platformer mechanics and giving the player less and less hope of defeating the competitor until they are almost ready to admit defeat,at which point the reversal kicks in giving the player with lower score a moment to gloat on the competitor.

After extensive playtesting with various players we collated our findings and came across the following observations and results.

1.Starting with hopelessness enhances the moment of reversal

When aiming for players to gloat, the game must create situations in which players need to feel hopeless. We should note that hopelessness must be understood as a logical conclusion to events which must never cross the point to where the player feels frustrated. This can be illustrated through the 4th prototype “CNFT”.

In that game the winning cube size is increased as they play to the point where the person lagging behind  cannot compete with the winner as it is far easier for the winning cube to get the burgers even if they do not jump. This situation will cause the losing player to feel a sense of hopelessness. But this situation if dragged on too long will cause sheer frustration to the losing player that they might actually stop playing. Additionally,The advantage of the “winning” player whether it is an AI or human must be conveyed fully either through UI,Dialogue or action sequences which can be enhanced by Taunting.

2.Human Opponents over Artificial Intelligence

Throughout playtest we noticed the feeling of gloating is enhanced when players are facing an opponent that is human and not AI. This leads to instances of taunting in the real world which further enhances the feeling of gloating when the reversal in power occurs.

An example of this can be seen in the game Run Egg Run. The game revolves around a race where the AI is competing against the player. To goad the player the AI can trash talk in various time intervals. Through playtests we found that this had little to no effect on making the player feel a sense of gloating even when the opponent AI eggs crashed on the rocks. This indicates that since the player considers them as “part of the game”  it was hard for them to feel any intimidation from them.

3.Creativity and Achievements enhances the feeling of superiority

Creative problem solving such as difficult puzzles work well in inducing the feeling of gloating in single player scenarios.This feeling of satisfaction ,which comes from rewarding creativity compliments and enhances the feeling of gloating by making players feel that they have a sense of control and power over their creations.

An example of this can be seen in the “Human Lab” game.the player has options to mix and match the different limbs of the humans on the operating table. They can also see the results of their experiments via the animations that play when the humans are put back into the environment. The feeling of power over seeing the results of their creativity could be seen when the players laughed and immediately went on to taking two more humans. They would generally try to pick the ones which had not been experimented on previously.

4.Delivering a feeling of power should be overwhelming

The feeling of power is central for players to feel superior and enhance their feeling of security and confidence. Delivering that feeling of power however must be very clear through the gameplay mechanic itself. This should be done such that it will give the player a feeling that they are skilled and that the game is “too easy” for them at that particular moment. The pivotal difference between making the player feel like gloating over making them feel powerful is that they must see their opponents struggle with the mechanic which up until that point had seemed balanced and fair. An example of this can be seen in the “Press Shift To Taunt” game.

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In the above example the player on the left had been winning up until that point and had been given easier words to type. In the moment of reversal the balance in the game shifts to favor the player on the right. The same mechanic of typing words has been made significantly harder for the player on the left making the player on the right feel a sense of reprieve and after a few successive correctly typed words leads to gloating. The engineered imbalance in the game manages to clearly convey the reversal discussed in Lesson 1.

Final Thoughts

Through our playtest data we came across the following interesting observations:

1. the shift in power or “reversal” is pivotal in multiplayer games for making players gloat over their opponents.
2. Having human opponents generally makes the situation easier.
3. In cases of single player experiences its is possible to make the players gloat by appealing to the sense of satisfaction and power they gain by fueling their curiosity and creativity.