Here’s a trend I’ve noticed in the last few years… many games (especially mobile games) give the players busywork to do. Lots of it. These are actions which involve no decisions; the game could do them itself, but instead the player is required to do them to advance in the game.
I’m thinking in particular of the tap-to-collect mechanic that has become so common. Lots of development games (FarmVille-style games, tower games, etc.) have things that pop up, and you have to tap to collect them. Even Plants vs. Zombies — my favorite lane-defense game — has this; you have to tap sun when it appears to collect it, as well as coins (unless you add a special plant to collect them for you, which I always do).
In my day, game input was about making important decisions or controlling some onscreen avatar in real time. Anything that the game could do for you, it would do; there was none of this silly clicking or tapping around the screen just to collect things.
Even the venerable SimCity franchise is exploring this trend; the latest mobile version, SimCity Builder, uses this same mechanic. Buildings produces resources, which you have to tap to collect (and can then spend on more buildings).
So, enough preamble. My questions are:
WTF?
Under what conditions is this a good addition to a game? Does it depend on platform, for example? (I haven’t seen this nearly so much in desktop games; why do you think that is?)
Some classic simulation games suffered from not enough to do (SimEarth leaps to mind). Would the addition of busywork clicking have improved these games? Or would it be better to put more real decision points into the design?
Any thoughts very much appreciated. I’m making a simulation game now, and trying hard to make sure there is a steady stream of real, actual things to do, so I don’t need to keep the user busy with pointless clicking. But keeping the user engaged is always a challenge for any sim game. So, if you think busywork adds to the fun, please convince me!
Plants vs. Zombies is as much about manual dexterity as it is making strategic decisions quickly. In fact, manual dexterity is a factor in the strategy. If I’m building defenses at the front of the lane, I have to make a snap decision whether I’m fast enough to reach the sun before it disappears and without falling behind in building up front.
In a turn-based game, on the other hand, suns would just be annoying busywork.
My younger son Zach pointed out a case where tap-to-collect actually makes some strategic sense: in the latest Farmville on iPad, apparently, you can only hold so much stuff at once (which depends on the size of your barn). That limit is easily reached, so you actually do need to decide what to harvest and what to leave on the vine in order to achieve whatever goals you have in mind (selling them or crafting them into more valuable items).
However, in the PvZ case, and most other tap-to-collect developmental games, it really is busywork as far as I can tell. And while I find it annoying, I don’t want to assume that everyone does — I think it may feed into that feeling of “doing something productive” which is a driver for casual games in particular.
And there is that example of SimEarth which continually haunts me… I thought it was a good game, but it was a relative failure in the market, and I believe this is because when your game is going well, you literally have nothing to do but watch. SimLife had similar problems (and similar poor sales). I don’t want to believe that busywork clicking is the answer, but I don’t know… maybe.
And what about the apparent difference here between mobile and desktop games? Is it just that busywork suits casual games, and there are more casual games on mobile? Or is there something more fundamental about tapping with the finger vs. clicking with the mouse?
There’s something casually fun about frenetically tapping a screen. Heck, as a game jam-style exercise to get back into game development a few years ago, I made a little lane defense game myself (my sister-in-law did the art) that gets pretty frenetic. (It’s no gem of design or polish, but it was a quickie project.)
Maybe the problem with SimEarth is that there should never be a time when all’s well with the world. In tap-to-collect games, you’re bombarded nonstop with “to tap or not” decisions. Something’s always happening. I may be remembering the old game Balance of Power wrong, but it seemed like everything was always on the verge of falling apart – if it wasn’t Ukraine vs. Russia, it was unaccompanied minors at the border, or fighting in Syria, or ebola. So maybe the game design challenge is to find a way to replicate the constant demand of busywork with a continual barrage of meaningful decisions instead.
I have been thinking about these modern game design “advances” quite a bit lately too. I think the requirement for the player to do such mundane tasks is because (1) it makes it so a lot more people (casual gaming market) can accomplish these very no brainer tasks easily gaining instant feedback. They click hear a sound watch an animation and gain a sense of accomplishment. And (2) it creates an opportunity down the road to offer “Auto Harvester only 500 gems” for the people who have played so much they are burnt out on the clicking.
I can’t really say if it is good or bad design. I wouldn’t do it because I think the game should take care of that stuff automatically. But I am not interested in creating games for the casual gaming market to play. If I was I would need to approach it differently.
I can tell you that clicking or tapping frenetically isn’t fun for everyone. Some of, and probably a sizable number, have issues with repetitive motion.
In the context of a mindless mobile activity to clear ones head or pass a few minutes it makes sense. Those games focus so much on things like this so the player can accomplish something (no matter how trivial) in seconds. Contrast that to games for normal gamers where you may spend a few minutes just getting your head into the game maybe 5 to 10 minutes before feeling any sense of progress. I think the overall principle of providing great feedback and accelerating the rate at which players gain a sense of accomlishment and progress apply to all games. But overall scope and design goals must be kept in mind. I do think the interface makes a lot of difference too as someone previously stated. The mouse or other controllers as good as they are still provide an indirect interface to the game. A sort of abstraction layer. Whereas mobile is direct interaction with the screen. That almost certainly comes into play with making each click a better experience.
Is timing relevant? Imagine that in PvZ, the sun would pickup automatically, after 10 seconds. We would all agree that in 10 seconds, you could lose the game, and therefore, the timing and the pickup is a part of the game. PvZ would be less fun without it.
“Clear Goals” is the first requirement for Flow. Most actions in most games could be replaced by a computer - even many of the decision points. It doesn’t matter that bots can play games from Hearthstone to an MMO to Bejeweled. As long as your player is engaged and you aren’t attempting to control their behavior, then it hardly matters.
I was thinking about Christmas Crush while reading this thread. It’s nothing but tap-to-collect, and it’s fun, though in a very different way from, say, Civilization.
It won’t be big news, but I think that busy work’s role in games is situational. As @Gigiwoo says - there’s many casual games where the busy work isn’t just filler, it’s actually a key part of shaping the game experience. However, as @TonyLi hints - not all games are created equal, there are setups where busy work will actually impede the player.
There do seem to be too many times when these mechanics are really just being used to keep the players busy, more than likely so that players don’t think about how boring the game is. It’s a last ditch effort to prevent the player from twiddling their thumbs while they wait for something to do.
It can prevent periods of non-interactivity in a strategy-type game where you would otherwise just be waiting for something to do.
It makes it more obvious what resources you are collecting. Example: Imagine an RPG where your kills’ drops are automatically added to your inventory, vs having to go and loot the corpse. The latter example is basically tap-to-collect, but I think it’s much more satisfying and rewarding.
Well, that latter example doesn’t really count, because whether to loot the corpse is a significant decision in most RPGs, either because (A) you can only carry so much junk, or (B) there may be multiple people in the party, and you need to decide who gets what. So this is more like my son’s example of FarmVille on iOS, where you need to manage your inventory space by deciding what to collect and what to leave.
I certainly agree with point 1, but I also think this is kind of a cop-out for when the designers failed to provide enough real things to do (i.e., actual decision points) in the game design.
The latest (desktop) version of SimCity uses this mechanic just a little bit: abandoned buildings are not automatically razed and rebuilt as something else; instead they sit there, ugly and abandoned, until you manually bulldoze them. But this doesn’t happen all that often, and you certainly don’t have to click to collect taxes, trash, electricity, etc. So it doesn’t seem too onerous. I may (ahem) borrow this same mechanic in High Frontier, but if I do, I’ll try to be sure there is some good reason why, on occasion, you might want to actually leave an abandoned building rather than bulldoze it, so this is a real decision and not just busywork.
What’s wrong with busywork? You could argue that 90% of WoW is busywork. Until late game heroic dungeons, most of the game is extremely easy - it’s a matter of time invested. And, 10 million people LOVE IT! This holds true for clicker games, time-management games, and dozens of other genres.
I suppose, much of life works this way too. Habits, routines, and putting in the time - with a 1000 inconsequential, nearly-automatic, micro-decisions with the occasional HARD decision - “love her or leave her?!”
A game can continuously engage the player with important decisions instead of busywork – for example, micromanagement of resources and units in RTSes like StarCraft. Micromanagement is part of the challenge. The player that can out-micromanage his opponent while still maintaining a big picture strategy usually wins.
Most RPGs I played feel like mainly busy work to me. Talk to NPC. Get quest. Run here and there complete quest. Get another quest. Run here and there. On and on. I often have felt like I am just “spinning my wheels”. I find it boring after a bit so randomly head out to find battles. But since quests drive the games I need to return to them. Still it works overall. Keeps players busy although I find it monotonous as hell.
Quests are not just clicking buttons. Sorry, but the example given originally was not fun. Maybe it is really the only thing one can do in a mobile game. I don’t play many of those so don’t know.
Not clicking but the thread title says busy work. To me all of that running around talking to this person going there talking to that person, collecting 3 herbs here delivering them there… that feels like busy work to me. Like I am spending my time performing meaningless tasks.
