There are few things as immersive for gamers as playing an RPG-style game, and for good reason. Game worlds are full of points of intrigue that one can only learn by exploring the environment and talking to NPCs. Though most people play single-player games, socializing is still required in the forms of NPC interaction and guild chat. Knowing your environment and the people who live in it can make or break a character in an RPG.
Working multiplayer game worlds like World of Warcraft often have hundreds of thousands or even millions of players interacting with one another through various means. This presents unique challenges for game designers to create a convincing world that can be experienced by such a large number of users. Though there are many difficulties associated with creating such a world, there are also many elements that can make it believable to the players. What follows is a list of ways that game worlds can be made more believable for their users.
However, in many cases, it is actually the way that games are made and not the content of the game that is key to making a believable game world. For example, when players become familiar with a game world like World of Warcraft, they will often criticize its lack of realism. However, World of Warcraft doesn’t have to be real to be accepted. Interest in experiential realism resonates within many MMOs because other players can provide real-world perspectives on events and make direct comparisons to their own views of real-world events. In this way, playing a role-playing MMO does resemble how people actually access social information from other people and moderate what they see in their own worlds.
Another factor that makes a game world believable is its ability to be experienced as real. Though power levels and character development are often criticized for being unrealistic in MMOs, it is just as important that a game world seem realistic to users. If the game world is not believable, then many players will not be able to completely immerse themselves in the game, and this will affect their ability to have fun. This means that it is always best to provide suggestions for enhancing believability when designing a game through planning and design rather than leaving those decisions up to the content developers.
Physics can be used to improve believability as well. Most games rely on physics to create realistic environments, and this is one area where MMOs can often apply them. Though the quality of this physics often depends on game engine developers, it is still a good idea for many games to take advantage of physics engines to give their worlds more of an immediate realistic feeling.
Designing believable game worlds does not always require implementing detailed models and intricate environments, since they can be achieved through many different design techniques. A variety of design elements can be employed in order to make a world feel more or less believable.
Lighting is often one of the most important aspects of believable environments. If a game world has light sources that are too powerful and unrealistic, players may be able to see through walls and find ways to explore areas that the designers did not intend on them being able to. If light sources are too dim, it can make it difficult for characters to see in nighttime environments, which will make socializing with other characters more difficult. Designers should provide as much lighting detail as is realistically possible, but they should also be careful not to overwhelm players with too many lights or lack the necessary ambient lighting in some areas.
Environments can also be made believable by having a good color palette in which colors are used intelligently. Think of using black in a game world as you would in the real world. Black is used to show where light sources are, and it creates shadows. In video games, however, it can be used in places where designers don’t want the player to see something. Color palettes can also be used in order to help make environments feel like they have more depth. Though this is most often overused for some reason, it is actually one of the least expensive ways that a game designer can make his or her environment seem more realistic.
Free slots games use shadows, sound schemes and animations to enhance their environments. These are also some of the more subtle ways that environment designers can make their game worlds feel more real. Though many video games do not use these techniques, it is still worthwhile to consider how they can be used to make a game world feel more believable to the player.
In order for a game world to be believable, there must be people living in it. This means that the designers must provide enough people and role-playing opportunities in order to have enough interesting personalities and NPCs for players to interact with. This is why MMOs encourage player interactions by providing dynamic social structures, guilds and other services designed to help players form attachments with one another while playing their characters at the same time.
Graphics aside, the game should be set in a world that the players can understand. The game world should be designed so that the players can best define what it is like and interact with it based on their perception of what is relevant. Dynamic environments that change constantly are not necessarily the best way to make a believable game world, since they do not allow players to form attachments or remember things easily.
Designers often attempt to create believable environments by giving them large amounts of detail. This approach is normally used because designers want their environments to look realistic, but reality does not require this kind of depth or detail. In fact, real-world nature often appears quite flat and shallow due to a lack of detailed lighting, height, depth and other optical illusions created naturally by our eyes. Realism in game worlds means that designers should have depth and detail but only in places where they make sense, such as the areas close to windows or focused around the players’ characters.
Game spaces can be designed with their own unique rules. Sometimes, this means that designers will need to create more restrictions and limitations in order for their games to become more believable. In the real world, there are many types of barriers that keep people from doing things. There are mountains that keep them from traveling all over the world, oceans that limit knowledge of foreign cultures and languages, language barriers and even social class differences.
