Esoterics IV:The Yoga of Player Rhythm (Part 1)

It's not hard to see basic rhythms in game. Mechanically they could be considered machines and one could assume as long as a machine is functioning correctly it will have perfect rhythm. Add a human variable to this and the rhythm has a tendancy to change.

It's very important to understand rhythm when plotting any kind of pacing. Infact one would be more inclinded to say it is very important to understand polyrhythms. For the uninitated a polyrhythm is the simultaneous sounding of two or more independent rhythms.

The rhythm of a game is fractal in nature, it exists from the length of the game through to the level, story and area progression to button presses and neurotransmitter manipulation. And the only thing they have in common is the player.

Games don't exist without players. They are the necessary input to the interface to manipulate an outcome to continue the feedback loop. And here is your first rhythm. This rhythm starts with with a player. Players naturally have particular rhythms. You can associate this with various chakras and other Yoga sentric things. But for now we'll call it their heart rate. How energised they are will result in how they start the game.

It's important to recognise that all players will have a different rhythm. Even a player playing the game twice on separate occations will have a different rhythm each time. Because their circumstances and body will have naturally had some change. It's important for the player to be able to get in rhythm with your game, or visa versa.

The rate of button presses (or motion equivilant) are their own rhythm. One should be able to read how people are playing the game. Whether this is done during focus / useability testing or to have an input buffer of which useful data can be extracted from. This would be done in order to provide some kind of syncing of rhythms. The whole idea is to draw the player into the natural rhythm of the game, organically and ergonomically.

Let's look at Dance Dance Revolution as our "super liminal" rhythm game. It's pretty obvious the player has to keep in rhythm with the game or they will fail the song / dance routine or not score as high as their friend who can dance much better. But this kind of rhythm is prevalent in all games. This rhythm exists in Super Mario Bros. and Crash Bandicoot. If you take the simple idea of a beat structure and apply it to the level flow, you can easily work out the rhythm.

The rhythm is co-dependant on the player. If they fall out of sync with the rhythm the interface allows and the output delivers, the experience is suddenly less enjoyable as failure is common.

This is where we can touch on the subject of neurotransmitters and the basis of play, which is learning. What we essentially want to create is a steady release of adrenaline, dopamine, endorphin and serrotonin. This has to be in in the polyrhythm as well. As if it isn't, the player isn't learning and isn't feeling very good about it. And they will quickly grow bored and fall out of rhythm.

That's it for now. Part two will go into a more practical side.