[...] http://www.raphkoster.com/2007/07/23/cooking-up-chemistry/ [...]

A directed graph ends up being a bit more flexible when a single atom feeds into multiple other higher level atoms. For example, jump might be used in both “crossing the canyon” and in “climbing the cloud tower” This seems to be a rather common structure.

Strict nesting where a higher level atom contains all its component skills can get quite messy with many duplicated atoms if you show the contents all the time. The opposite problem is that if you don’t show the contents, it becomes harder to visualize the relationships and the ‘flow’ of mastery along the entire chain.

So much of this is ‘just’ visual information design. The bigger question ends up being “What is it important to show explicitly?”

take care
Danc.

[...] Raph’s Website » Cooking up Chemistry Commentary on Dan Cook’s “Chemistry of Game Design” article. The way Raph sees it, atoms aren’t necessarily linear chains, but nested “pretty much indefinitely and arbitrarily.” Also see work by Andrew McLennan and Ben Cousins. (tags: games design language commentary systems) [...]

[...] Raph’s Website » Cooking up Chemistry Commentary on Dan Cook’s “Chemistry of Game Design” article. The way Raph sees it, atoms aren’t necessarily linear chains, but nested “pretty much indefinitely and arbitrarily.” Also see work by Andrew McLennan and Ben Cousins. (tags: games design language commentary systems) [...]

Each of these differing levels actually has exactly the same components and characteristics as your skill atoms. And in the way I see it, a skill atom decomposes into elements that are also skill atoms — just that the lowest level ones are interface actions like pressing a button.

I always wondered why games don’t give players more game play through jumping, climbing, and other basic activities that players seem to really enjoy. These things are just plain fun. In WoW, you can jump. But the application falls short of where it could be. The chain is broken. It stops at jumping over objects and up cliff sides. Where are the tests of skill?

It seems like every time a game has these platforming elements, regardless of genre, many people find it to be extremely frustrating. It may be partly due to the manner in which the jumping puzzles are implemented that makes them to harsh, but I think a lot of times our control possibilities are just not good enough.

That said, many MMOs have “emergent” jumping gameplay, but it’s really up to the player to find it. Jumping up a mountain one vertex at a time to find a way underneath Stormwind is quite challenging, but it largely won’t gain you any advantages in game. Likewise for using whatever jumping/hovering options are available to get on top of buildings. In fact, if you actually tried to gain some gameplay advantage from it, you’d probably be labeled a cheater.

As David mentioned, jumping puzzles require physical/twitch skills and do not fit in with the (MMO)RPG skillset, which is focused on character-management skills. If you further add gameplay incentives to those jumping puzzles, it basically becomes a requirement, and many people who lack the skills (or are simply uninterested), will be annoyed that they have to do this to advance, or to reach parity with the best of their peers. Probably the best solution would be to have these puzzles in there with no gameplay incentive (other than bragging rights), and let interested players go through them. The number of people who would experience this gameplay vs. the time it would require to design and test the puzzles is probably not high enough, though.

A -> B -> C is the equivalent of A -> D where D = (B -> C).

“Chains” as directed graphs are important because the structure captures the concept that players must learn basic skills before they learn complex skills. You don’t immediately master a combo kill in Mortal combat. First you need to learn how to press the buttons. This dependency has an important effect on burnout.

It is fascinating to see these similar concepts bubbling up to the surface from multiple perspectives. Though my crystal ball is still fuzzy, work of this nature is going to a major impact on how game design is done in the future.

take care
Danc.

It’d be very nice to have a set of links.