Two months later and one speech at Business of Software 2009 still sticks in my mind (actually, several do, but I’m only focusing on one today). Kathy Sierra asked us whether we’d rather people say we have a good A) product, B) service or C) company. Don’t cheat – have a think about this for a second…
Being a ‘product’ person, I decided on A, but it turned out to be a trick question. Kathy’s answer was D – themselves! You want people to say that they are good. Now this might seem a little bit strange, to focus on making your user / customer / player feel like a superstar. But it’s a subtly different way of thinking that has an unsubtly large impact.
As you might guess, this is all too obvious in games. If a game is too easy, you’ll feel like you didn’t achieve much and you won’t get any satisfaction. If a game is too hard, well, you feel pretty rubbish and if you’re me, abandon it. But with just the right amount of difficulty, you’ll feel like you’re improving, think you’re awesome and love the game.
One of the uses for our 5 computers is games and I like to try (at least once) the games my partner plays. The two that he spent the most time on over the last few years were World of Warcraft and Heroes of Newerth – and they were vastly different experiences for me. With WoW, it takes you by the hand and gently leads you from one level to the next. Before you know it you’re at Level 5 and wanting to do just one more quest. On the other hand, with Heroes, the best advice I got was to attack, but if you get hurt, run away as fast as possible (hardly heroic!). But running wasn’t quite my forte and I spent most of my time waiting for my hero to come back to life in the pool. To put it simply, WoW made me feel like I was good at games and Heroes made me feel like I sucked. Easy to guess which one I played longer…
With game and software design, it’s not only important to get the level of difficulty right, but also to help people improve. This could be through tips, by highlighting improving stats, or even by just giving them something achievable to aim for and celebrating when they do. But don’t underestimate the power of making people feel good.
Tags: game design