There's a lot of objects in games.
Bricks, robot fists, books, planets, magic hats.
And there are a lot of ways to represent these objects.
What we should keep in mind is that the way we represent the objects
in our game has a big effect on how our audience will interact with them.
Just as in our earlier example, it really changes the interaction if we have
a power-up that looks like a generic pellet or a kitten or a sandwich.
The audience has a different reaction to all three.
Using specific imagery has some big advantages.
It can give your world a rich and detailed look.
It can also help communicate to your player,
telling them how to interact with these objects.
A player has probably seen kittens and
sandwiches before and probably has some ideas for how to interact with them.
So why isn't all imagery specific?
Why do we still see generic-looking pellets and
boring-looking objects in video games?
Well, sometimes the designer doesn't have time to add detail to everything.
They might choose to only give details to the most important pieces of their game.
Because their game has too many objects to give each one a unique and
interesting design.
Another reason could be that the design of a game could become cluttered if
every single object had a detailed and unique design.
The world can't be made of fancy sandwiches and kittens.
Some objects need to be simple in order to push the player's attention
towards more important things.
Balancing simple and complicated things is an important part of game design and
the use of contrast is one of the most powerful tools you have to work with.
A third powerful reason that you may want to keep a design simple is that you
are using more than just imagery when you're describing your world
to the player.
Let's take our generic power pellet as an example.
What if your player finds themselves at a seedy underworld hangout,
meeting an undercover informant?
Just as a player is about to hear all the secrets from the informant,
thugs show up and drag the informant out of the building.
After the scene calms down and
everyone's gone, the player finds the informant's bag in a pile of wreckage.
And inside they find a mysterious pellet.
What could it be?
The story can tell the audience how to interact with the object.
And this is a melodramatic example.
What if the object is just singing a little song when the player approaches?
What if the object moves in an interesting and
unique way, hopping around like a rabbit?
What if the player can fly whenever they hold the object?
We have a lot of ways to communicate to our audience.
And it's important that we are aware of all the tools we have
when we're describing our world and telling our stories.
When a player encounters an object, we can tell them about it through imagery,
like showing it as a pellet, a kitten, a sandwich, or literally anything else.
We can use story, like finding an object in that informant's bag.
We can use sound, it can play a little song.
We can use behavior, it can be moving a certain way.
And we can use interaction, the object might have an effect on the player and
the other objects that are in the world.
Now that's a lot of decision making and you probably won't be
going through that process for every single object in your game.
But it's something that you probably want to keep in mind for
the more important objects and environments.
The objects in your world help to tell a story to your players.
Each decision you make can have a big effect on how your
player interacts with the game.
So ask yourself, how do I want my player to feel?
And then try to find the method that helps to find those feelings inside
your audience.
Fran KrauseFaculty, Character Animation
