one of the most powerful things games
can do is convince us to live fictional
moments as if they were real think back
to the last time your heart beat faster
while playing a video game think about
that moment when your eyes went wide as
a character started to speak when you
exhaled when a boss missed you by just
an inch or sat transfixed by the broad
horizon ahead of you more than just
being transported to another world you
were thinking and behaving as if you
were there this feeling of living a
moment in a game is called a vie carroty
and creating it is one of the central
goals of game design real quick up top
to help us tackle today's topic please
give a warm CC welcome to Naughty Dog
game / level designer and friend of the
show Evan Hill whose guest writing this
episode thanks Evan creating vie carroty
might seem daunting but we've all played
games where we've had that moment where
the real world fades away and we treat
the moment in a game as if it were real
so we know that it's possible which
means what causes these moments can be
broken down and explained in terms of a
few core ideas three to be exact
immersion once and expectation gaps
these three ideas act as the levers that
create this sense of AI carroty let's
start with what may be the most familiar
idea immersion immersion is that feeling
of connection or presence in a game it
happens when every part of the
experience feels unified where the
player isn't jarred out of the world by
things that don't seem part of the
experience they've come to trust it's a
loop of guesses the player
subconsciously makes about how the world
will act combined with the game agreeing
with those guesses for example a game
tells you to open a pixelated chest in a
pixelated room and inside there's going
to be a teapot subconsciously your brain
is already making assumptions about what
this teapot will look like not the
specifics like the shape but the fact
that it too will also be pixelated when
a game is working to immerse you the
assumption it sets you up with should be
matched by the world the game delivers
and this isn't only about visuals if the
game then told you to make tea with your
newly found pixelated teapot your brain
will have expectations as to what that
experience will be like and because we
got this pixel teapot out of a dungeon
we might expect to just combine some tea
leaves with the pot in our inventory and
then voila
tea in this specific case however if you
had to take the pot to a stove fill the
pot with water wait for it to boil pick
what tea to steep then wait in real-time
for said steeping this fidelity to
reality might actually break your
immersion because immersion is all about
your subconscious expectations immersion
is put at risk any time the game stops
lining up with our loop of guesses this
is also why running into an invisible
wall at the end of a level is so jarring
before you hit it you probably assumed
you knew what is solid and what was it
and if the game continues to feel
inconsistent like this your immersion
might break entirely leaving you feeling
disconnected from the games world but if
the mechanics and visuals sync up and
are accompanied with the right sounds to
fit those expectations as well then
we're starting to get an experience you
can get immersed in you begin to feel
that the world in the game makes sense
that like our own reality it's coherent
in a way that you can predict even if it
happens the look or act differently it
can feel real next let's talk about
getting the player to walk things and
that might seem simple on the surface
you want things I want things everybody
wants things all of the time but beyond
the want for survival and material
things we desire things like connection
acceptance control and mastery games
give us a framework to channel these
desires we go to rock band because we
want to feel the mastery of being a rock
god we go to Gears of War because we
want to feel powerful we play life is
strange because we want to experience
the catharsis of human drama whatever it
is we play games to fulfill the desires
we consciously or subconsciously bring
to them the better the game matches and
can deliver on those desires the closer
we get to being able to treat it as real
and achieving vai carroty but there is a
problem if you just keep guessing and
being right again and again and again
our brain will do the same thing it does
in real life you guessed it hmm
lazy you'll start to feel bored or
disengaged you'll still be immersed and
acting on your desires but play will
feel less and less vivid because the
game will feel more and more routine we
need moments that surprised us now since
we already said that part of achieving
by carroty is having a space that meets
our expectations how do we work
surprises into that well we use
something we call expectation gaps and
they are just that gaps that break the
players expectations this can be a plot
twist a super-rare drop an unforeseen
obstacle or anything else that disrupts
the players automatic assumption and
makes them reconsider their model for
the world like a boat at sea if these
disruptions become too intense or the
gaps too plentiful the players immersion
will sink or be toppled completely so to
maintain immersion these gaps eventually
need to be filled effective expectation
gaps have two parts the break and the
fill like the setup and the punchline of
a joke these two actions work to disrupt
and correct the players immersion let's
look at another example a player has
just started minecraft they recently
learned that stone blocks will stay put
however a break from that assumption
comes when they discover gravel and are
promptly killed as it falls on top of
them the player is confused surprised
and already thinking about how to close
this new gap in their knowledge the fill
comes as the player figures out that the
gravel behaves differently from stone
and that they should always be cautious
of these types of cave-ins so now they
reconcile that new knowledge with their
expectations of the world a good gap
shouldn't break the players immersion
but instead expand their expectation
space to include something that they
wouldn't have naturally included which
their brain works out through the fill
some other examples of gaps would be an
opponent countering you in a fight
the moment where an ally betrays you in
an RPG or Mario Odyssey giving you a
moon for just poking a miss colored rock
seriously some of those were insanely
simple I did not see them coming and
other examples of fills would be coming
to understand that pokémon evolve
realizing you can go against the
narrator in Stanley parable or figuring
out to shoot the moon at the end of
portal 2 without fills though gaps where
on immersion this is why overloading the
player with surprise after surprise
after surprise after surprise after
surprise after surprise after surprise
after surprise after surprise after
surprise after surprise can be just as
bad as boring them with nothing if we
can create meaningful expectation gaps
and interesting ways for players to fill
them then along with immersion and once
we have all the tools we need as
designers to deliver on the powerful
state of AI carroty so--even since I
have you here I just gotta ask is Nathan
Drake gonna be playable in jak for when
when is that gonna be coming out by the
way Evan are we talking like q3 2019 or
or what man
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