Critique my game design Zettel
I don't fully use all parts of a zettelkasten but I am trying to get better at making my notes atomic. This was one of the first notes I ever wrote but the more i learn about zettelkasten the more I think that this is more of a mini-essay. I think many of my notes are more of mini-essays rather than individual zettels. If so, how would I turn this into individual zettels? How do I know how far to break something down and when does it get too much? Sometimes I feel like every sentence could be turned into a zettel.
Side note: I use links instead of tags for categorization - not sure if I love this method but it's whats been working for a bit.
Edit: Game design is the tag - forgot to add the title!
Title: "Don't Tease Players With Breadcrumbs that Lead Nowhere"
"[[+ Game Design]]
Part of what is fun about adventure games is immersing yourself in the world of the game. Players want to explore every inch, unearth every mystery, and solve every problem. When they see a clue, aka. a game element that is [[The effects of foreshadowing in games|foreshadowing]] an upcoming interaction, they get excited. They are then disappointed if the clue leads nowhere.
This frequently happens in games when developers remove a quest without removing the clues leading up to it.
Let's say that you create a side-quest involving an exclusive party. You want to build up excitement so you add posters for it around town and make sure that plenty of NPCs are talking about it. Eventually the player gets introduced to the quest-line and is able to attend the party. This creates a feeling of satisfaction as it allows the player to feel like they are apart of a real world. They heard about the quest, got excited for it, then got to experience it- just like in the real world.
Now let's say that, for whatever reason, you've decided to axe this side-quest. You take out the quest, but forget to remove the posters and conversation topics. The player will see these clues and will be constantly be looking out for this quest. When the game ends without addressing it, they will feel disappointed and teased.
Why would you add this drawing on the map if I can't go there? Why do characters talk about a secret society if I can't ever meet them? Why is this kid complaining so much about his abusive father if I can't help him?
These are examples of thoughts I've personally had while playing games that teased me with interactions that didn't exist. If you highlight an element, you are giving the expectation that it will be important later on. This expectation not being met will end with the player feeling disappointment.
A good example of this is in the game, [[The Painscreek Killings]] (one of my favorite games). There is a poster of a missing boy hung up in town. Once I saw that poster, I was excited to find out what happened to the child. I remember expecting to find proof that the child had been kidnapped by one of the townspeople or had accidentally died. There ending up being no such plot line or quest eluding to the child which left me feeling disappointed- even though I loved this game. I would have much rather had no poster at all than that expectation that was never met.
This teasing can also happen unintentionally or even coincidentally. Avid adventure gamers are usually very good at detecting patterns even if they weren't planned. These patterns create expectations, whether the developer intends it or not. A single instance of this won't usually ruin their whole experience, but it will stay with them- especially if the game is otherwise flawless.
These missed opportunities are bound to happen since the developers can't possibly hit every chance for a quest or location. This is where [[The Role of the Game Developer in the Expectations of the Player|managing expectations]] can be extremely important.
When adventure players find crumbs, they want to be able to follow them. Don't tease players with breadcrumbs if they are not going to lead to anywhere. "
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Comments
This is for sure an essay.
For atomic notes, you'll want to hone in on keywords, key and decisive ideas and phenomena that become foundations to ground and link your future thinking.
In your essay, for example, I would focus on:
Once you identify these keywords and key ideas, you are putting these ideas on a pedestal and giving them the importance they deserve. The mere act of highlighting them will serve as anchors for you to think about those ideas and keywords in future contexts. Pick up a different video game and think about how it achieves "immersion as exploration". Pick up a third game and do that again, how is the third game using "immersion as exploration"; you will start to see patterns and nuances that you did not before.
@JasperMcFly thanks for the response - I like what you're saying but I feel like I don't really understand it as well. Can you elaborate a bit more on what you mean. I'm a bit new to these concepts. By keywords, are you referring to tags? Also the way you wrote the keywords with commas and even the way your worded them is a bit confusing to me.
Hi @sam453 . I mean just focus on one theme at a time, like: "immersion". What does it take to make a player feel immersed in a game?
Your essay is about several things: immersion, excitement, disappointment, foreshadowing. As you learn to write atomic notes (you will!) focus on one small theme at a time.
I don't see atomicity as an "hard requirement" for making a Zettelkasten.
I see Atomicity as a practice that if you use it brings your Zettelkasten to have some properties (desiderable properties in my case).
Atomicity itself is a rather subjective and need-to-be-contextualized concept.
If I compare some of my notes with notes taken by other users of this forum, my notes are not atomic but stuff that belongs to quantum mechanics
And I have, in my system that I still consider a Zettelkasten, a spectrum of notes starting from the one made with only the title, to the note that seems like a wikipedia page if I see its size.
After writing that, I'll study your note
The first thing I noticed, there isn't a clear enough title that explains why I should read this note.
Is "Game Design" the note title? For me is too broad, generic and vague for the content I see, it might be a good title for a note that collects links to all game design ideas you have (an index or structure note or map of content, as you prefer to call it).
If game design is not the title, the title is missing. The title is the most important thing of the note, for me
Reading the first lines, I already see a concept that forms a note on its own.
In my system I surely have the "Adventure games are fun because they are immersive" note.
It is a strong claim and I feel it has its own relevance (in my mind).
This concept is a feature of adventure games, rather than a game design concept.
In that note I can write the reasons of that. So, into the note, I write "players want to explore...." and so on.
Reasoning about this brings me to consider what does "immersive" mean. So, I surely develop a note about this concept.
Why I make many notes in this "complex" way. Isn't a single note enough?
There may be other kind of games that are "immersive". for example, arcade games. So, I could write, in the future, the note "Arcade games are fun because they are immersive". And writing in that note the reasons that make these games immersive.
Adventure games, besides, are not only immersive, so in the future I surely write other things that make them fun.
I'm not sure what do you mean with the term immersive, translated in italian I see that means engaging too, probably you intend immersive like virtual reality is, more specific. If so, immersive is a specific case of engaging. Engaging is another concept that will make me think in the future...
This is how I intend the "atomicity" of the concepts you have taken in your note. What you have written in a plain text, I imagine in a network of more elementar things.
I don't worry if many of my notes become very short. They will grow in the future. For example, in one of this note I can cite the case of the painscreek killings game.
These are thoughts about only the first two lines of your note
Reading very fast some sentences of the remaining text.
I often feel that "do" and "don't" sentences are strong enough to represent concepts that can live in their own note.
"Don't remove a quest without removing the clue in adventure games" is a title for a potential note, that explains a bad idea.
Another title for the same note could be "Removing quest without removing the clue causes loss of immersivity". Maybe a little better, but it's a matter of taste.
Somewhere I'll collect bad ideas about adventure games design. And maybe good ideas about adventure game design. I surely will have many of them.
Reasoning about a single bad idea on it own allows me to:
The power of the network is that it opens you a big number of directions to follow for your thoughts.
If I have in front of my eyes a big block of text, instead, it is much less effective on suggesting me these directions.
When you write so many notes in this way, of course, you need to distribute and maybe rewrite a little the text you have already written in separate notes.
Two important things to consider:
1) this is how it works well for me. It's not the right how-to for everyone. It's a very personal thing. It's my strategy, it may not be yours.
2) It's not required to start writing immediately in this way. If it is natural starting in this way, you can start so. But it's often much more easier writing our ideas as a flow, as they come in our mind, in single page, and only in a second moment try to refine the text first, then figuring how to split in separate notes. The splitting can happen even days or weeks after you have written the first take of the content.
You can start dividing a long text in paragraphs, then try to write a title for every paragraph. When you easily find a catchy title for a paragraph, this is a potential opportunity to detach a separate note.
A powerful method that helps me to have content easily separarabile in notes is writing using bullet lists (outlining).
Don't worry if what I've written seems hard.
When I started with zettelkasten, I didn't write like i've explained, and maybe I wouldn't have been able either to understand what I've just written.
I rewrote some notes, during these two years, even half dozen times. Don't fear to try, don't consider your writing notes as stones.
Agree @andang76, atomicity is not absolutely required. Your ZK notes can be as short or as long as you want them to be.
Atomicity is a proxy for so many other helpful attributes of a note- the more you achieve in a particular note the better - concise, understandable, one (usually) key idea or concept, connectable, useful, etc, etc. These other attributes can be attained in non-atomic notes as well, so agree.
It can be helpful to focus your thinking lens on one concept or concept-property at a time; i.e. just think about game immersion, or just think about the act of exploration as it contributes to immersion.
I would rename this as "Unresolved Chekhov's Gun Ruins Immersion in Adventure Games" and call it a day, personally.
@jiwonac said:
Like @jiwonac suggested, my own note titles tend to be propositions (such as "Unresolved Chekhov's gun ruins immersion in adventure games") or questions, not concepts or topics ("Game design" – "Immersion" – "Unresolved Chekhov's gun") as @JasperMcFly recommended. All of these—propositions or claims, questions, concepts, topics—can be distinct note types. Concepts and topics have a role in a note system, but for me they are not the most common type of note.
Another proposition in the original post, for example, is "Unresolved Chekhov's gun frequently happens in games when developers remove a quest without removing the clues leading up to it." (I have many note titles with that much information, or even more, in them.) Whether you would refactor that proposition (for example) into a separate note depends on how important it is to the structure of your note system and whether you want that proposition to be easily addressable (linkable) from other notes.
An implied question in the original post is "How to avoid unresolved Chekhov's gun in adventure games?" One answer is "Don't tease players with breadcrumbs if they are not going to lead to anywhere", and there may be other answers related to "managing player expectations" as was mentioned in a link.
Nice thread everyone. Thanks all for the discussion.
I do think this is more interesting- to think about the general "content types" for a note whether they be concepts, questions, propositions, objects of attention, or mini-essays like the OP - than to debate about whether notes should be atomic or evergreen, etc. I am still interested in those characteristics too, but it's just more fun to see either examples or explanations of content types going into others' slip boxes.
I realized that I forgot to paste the title of the note! My bad - I've edited to include it now. "Don't tease players with breadcrumbs that lead nowhere" is the title and "+ Game Design" is a category page I use.
Very interesting to read all your replies - good discussion! Especially interesting to read a bit about your process @andang76. I must admit I didn't fully follow along but I'll definitely have to come back to this as I progress in my notes! It was very cool to read.
I'm certainly used to writing more mini-essay style so I'm trying to learn the power of breaking down notes to be able to explore mixing concepts more. I've thought a lot about note types as I notice my brain always grasping for more definitive rules. Like if you are writing "x" note type, it should have an "x" title- or specific guidance of when to break down a note.
I feel like if I do write a mini-essay like above, I should then break down concepts inside that essay. - I like what @andang76 said about "do" and "don't" sentences being strong enough to represent concepts that can live in their own note. - I'll have to review that in my notes and see how it comes out.
Try to draw a concept map for this content, so you might see clusters.
I am a Zettler
This is an essay indeed, but I would cut it to make shorter notes.
As you work around many different ideas, they kind of mixing with each others. The "how breadcrumbs" are mixed with "why breadcrumbs", with "consequence of misleadings breadcrumbs".
Contexte : I am a writer and artist working on video game. I'll try to point you some points here to give you concret element to work with.
Yeah that what we call "the open doors". While writing a story, whatever your medium is, you'll have to close every door you open through the story.
While reading I think that your main subject is "what are the consequences of misleading players with breadcrumbs that lead nowhere in adventure games ?". Is it always disappointement? It breaks immersion too, because it gives a "non-finished" touch, disbeliefed feeling, or "they did'nt give a fock about me, they don't take it seriously this is insulting".
Part only, indeed, or only at some moments.
Some people likes to solve puzzles, some others ones like to crush their friend into a RTS game. Immersion is really important, but... Not every games are narrative like the Witcher, Baldurs Gates or Undertales. It is specific so you should add it into your title.
Not every players. Some really like to complet every tiny bit of the games, others don't like to. I know guys who loves to "role play" into Helldivers without wanting to find every clue of lore that the dev hide on the worlds they visit. As myself, I just want to see the whole story before beginning side quest (so I am quite annoyed when I have to switch my focus to accomplish some side quests and exploration). It breaks immersion too.
So, I think that the mention of players are too much, or too little. So many profiles, with so many different types of reactions.
This is the heart of the reflexion here. Foreshadowing is not the only narrative tool we can use in a game, but yes, wrong forshadows are a source of misleads. You could add wrong dialogs lines (we can find it in some even in good RPGs), useless objects (I can't remember the game but I once found an arm for a non existent character) or other things.
This is one the reason we can find some misleads in the game. Maybe you could make an totaly differents notes and analyse this cause with others ones. It is really interesting.
For example, some games take some late from the initial releasing date, so the editor pressed the team. Excellent ideas are forgiven in the side road, but some leads stays here. Some bugs were never be corrected as well.
After that, you take your own experience through a game. You'll can add other examples of game where developement was so... so desolating.
This a specific profile of gamer and this is one of the consequences of misleads breadcrumbs. There are other profiles of gamers to explore maybe (personas, which are rough archetypes).
To sum up : What I want to emphasise is that the note talk about your experience on a specific game and the fact that the "how" "why" "what" are mixed inside your argumentation. If you really into game design to study it and to use it professionnaly, you should go deeper. If you wanted to express your disapointement about a specific game, just re-order things would do the work.