Evaluative Meaningful Play

Meaningful play occurs when the relationships between actions and outcomes in a game are both discernable and integrated into the larger context of the game. Creating meaningful play is the goal of successful game design.

This definition of play allows us to externally view the games we are working on, and helps us to determine if what we are making is in fact meaningful. It also gives us a metric as to whether or not our designs are successful. We can use it to evaluate our systems.

In this definition “meaningful” is less about the construction of meaning and more about embodying a system. We must understand discernable and integrated in order to fully process these ideas.

Discernable

This simply means that the results of game actions are communicated properly to players in a perceivable way.

Readability of Critical Information

This should be both in cases of current information and results of actions. In an RTS is a player’s units are being attacked off screen and the game does not notify the player that this is happening, they will get angry. If an RPG requires the player to feed their party members regularly but does not give an indication to this, and suddenly one of the characters keels over and dies from starvation, then the player will be angry. And rightly so! How are you supposed to know something if the game doesn’t tell you? Why should the player have to guess critical information?

Feedback

If you are shooting an asteroid in a video game and the asteroid does not change in any way, then you are not going to know if you are actually hitting it not. Even if you can break it then you will have no way of understanding that you can. If the asteroid begins to shatter, shutters, or an explosion occurs, then you will receive live feedback about your decision to shoot the asteroid, and the outcomes of that decision.

Understanding

If you are playing a board game and move a piece with absolutely no idea whether or not the move was good or bad, or if it brought you closer to winning, then this action is not discernable. If players do not have enough information on the board to create an understanding of how to play, then it is not discernable enough.

Discernibility tells us what happens.

Discernibility tells players what happens when they take an action. Without discernibility players may as well be randomly pressing buttons and throwing cards. With discernibility a game has the basic building blocks of meaningful play.

Integrated

Discernibility tells players what happened, and integration tells players how it will affect the rest of the game. Each opening move in chess has cascading effects on the rest of the game. Think about how a Decathlon works. If the foot race at the start did not contribute points to the rest of the game, then no on would race because it does not hold meaning to the larger structure of the game. Every action the player takes must be woven into the larger fabric of the overall game. This is how the play of a game becomes truly meaningful.