So, just by the simple act of poking their eyes out of the water, our ancestors went from the mala vista of a fog to a buena vista of a clear day, where they could survey things out for quite a considerable distance. You can see things, roughly speaking, 10,000 times better. From a perceptual point of view, it was a whole new world. "But then, about 350 million years ago in the Devonian Period, animals like Tiktaalik started making their first tentative forays onto land. Malcolm MacIver, who as far as I can tell originated this theory, writes about it like this: In fact, so important was this shift that it is probably a big factor in how consciousness evolved. Previously, smart brains had been a waste of energy, but now it was a great asset. Suddenly it was possible to plan ahead and to properly think about your environment. In order to understand why planning has such a prominent role in games, we need to look into the evolution of our species and answer this question: why are fish so stupid? The more a player can plan ahead in a game, the more engaging that game will feel to play.īefore I cover some evidence of why this is most likely true, I will need to get into some background information.
What is it that causes this? My hypothesis: the ability to plan. Just compare playing Super Mario to something like Dear Esther, and I think it's clear that the former feels like it has more gameplay than the latter. There are just certain games that feel "gamier" than others.
I think we can all agree that there is a difference in how certain games feel to play. This post will go over the reasons behind this, and explains why planning is so important for narrative games. Planning affects many aspects of what is so special about games and why we enjoy playing them. In this post I dig into planning, and how it is a fundamental part of what makes a game engaging.
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