1st Draft

How halo reach is made to make the audience have fun. 

In this essay I will talk about How different theories suggest the game Halo Reach has been made to make the audience feel like they having fun.  

I think that the games uses different knowledge of the players and what they would want to make quests that would simulate fun for the people who are playing thease games and halo reach does this so well it still very popular after 10 years. To prove this theasis I will look at the different types of players by looking in to Ritchard Bartle’s theory then I will look at the different types of audiences and talk about the differences between passive and active audiences and how to spot them using the audience of halo to show examples. The next thing i will look at is the cultivation theory and how it effects players. After this I will talk about the desensitisation theory and how it has effected games and how it links to the different views and papers people have written about the links between violence and video games. Finally I will end this essay talking about marc leblanc and how he said games are made to make people feel like they are having fun.  

Bartles taxonomy  

  

This theory is about the different types of players and how to build character models in games. The theory says that there are different types of players and he made a graph to help to see and describe what sort of player someone is. this graph (illustration 1) on the x axis shows how much players want to interact with others or explore the world and the y axis shows interaction with people or more of a one sided action. A small time after this theory was made they made a quiz where it generates questions that when answered tells you a result of what sort of player are you. I think that this theory of taxonomy is really interesting and shows the different characteristics of players and will help my in my analyzation of the different types of players and why halo reach connects with its audience and who they are. 

To see how this links to halo reach I got a group of people to do bartle quiz then I compared the responses to those who play halo reach and who doesn’t to see what sort of players do play halo reach.  

Passive and active audiences 

Passive and active audiences are the different types of audiences for halo reach games. 

Passive audience- passive audiene is an adience that will watch and enjoy a product but will not get offected by it or make many opinions on it for example theres thousands of people who play halo but they won’t talk about it much or get too excited of a new game. 

Active audience- active audience is someone who is very interested and in the fandom of a product for example there are people who will make props for halo, dress up as the characters and cmap out for new games because they love halo and are very involved in the fandom. 

Cultivation theory 

Cultivation theory is mostly used in the context of televistion and how it effects audiences and their view on the world after awhile but there are some studies on how it relates to video games and people playing them. “The central hypothesis behind cultivation is that heavy television viewers’ conceptions of social reality are more  in line with what’s portrayed on television than is the case with  the reality conceptions of light television viewers. Applied to video  gaming, cultivation theory suggests that through continuous expo- sure to the video game world, players’ views of their real world will  become more akin to that of the game world.“(Gabriel Chong et al., 2012) I find this so interetsionmg that playing a game could alter a persons view on the world but this links to halo because ethere are times when people compare what is happening in the game’s very indeapth lore to real world events and it can change people views on things for example in halo’s lore the spartans were made to fight a terrorist group not unlike ISIS but they happened to be helpful and be revealed when there was an alian invation. Bu this has lead people to belive that some governemnts are doing experiments like this and forming super weapon people in secret to fight but this porbably isn’t happening and it has caused a lot of contiversy throught the games history. I think learning more about this theory that games and different media can influence anyone’s view on the world but games can alter a lot of peoples thoughts because they seem so real and people will project problems on a game in to real world because they get so invloed in the game and it’s universe that they don’t see the line between them.,  

Desensitisation 

 Watching lots of things and getting desensitised If you watch violent things enough then you’ll build up a tolerance and you won’t be so shocked and it loses its impact. E.g saw had to become more violent and gorey so it’d shock people 

Desentisation as a world means to make someone less reponsive or non reposnsive to a stimuli. For this I am going to be talking about the desensitiation theory and how it relates to games. Video games are getting more graphic and detailed as the years go on but most audiences are exceited for this not scared like they wouldhave been years ago this is because people are getting more and more used to this level of gore through years of exposure. Orginal old games had maybe a blood splat or something simmlar but now you can see what happen if you shoot off sections of bodies and more this is quite a dramtic difference but it’s because4 of the slow change up to this level that most people are not really bothered by this but more excited for more of a realistic game. Examples of this are the old graphics from halo combat evolved where you can see (illistation) purple coming out of an elite when you shoot it untill it just falls over or with a person or spartan a red comes out but with mortal comat 11 that came out recently theres clips of being being torn apart (illistation) or brains being stabbed out and people think this is just fun now as they have become so desnsitised from it. I think desensitiastion is linked with empathy when related to things like this as people with more empathy will think of themselves in the place of the person being killed and feel something about it where as over time people have become less empathetic in games so they will just laugh or be entertained in this situation. “Desensitization might 

reduce sympathy for the victim, increase beliefs that 

violence is normative, and decrease negative attitudes 

towards violence” (Carnagey, Anderson and Bushman, 2007)  

  

Violence theory 

There are many theories and papers written about the link to aggression and violent video games. This study i found i think shows all evidence from the last 20 years and compares it really well to show the positive and negative effects of violent video games. 

Leblanc taxonomy 

 Marc LeBlanc had a talk about how to make a game where the players have fun, since this talk he has realised the powerpoint from the talk and together ith two other people written a paper about this. I have read both things and although it was hard to understand soe of theings being said in the powerpoint without the context I learnt a lot and I find it really insteresting on how fun is made through games and how well the gamer makers plan out everything response a player would have.  

LeBlancs theory is about MDA (mechanics, dynamics and aesthetic). This is three parts of game making that split up to form the different things every player sees and does in a game and how it makes them have fun. Mechanics describes the particular components of the game, at the level of data representation and algorithms. Dynamics describes the run-time behavior of the mechanics acting on player inputs and each othersí outputs over time. Aesthetics describes the desirable emotional responses evoked in the player when she interacts with the game system.  

Making games is really interesting and its so fascianting to me to see how much I react to the different things and how much of that reaction was made by the coding and the game makers. How the MDA system works is the machanics are the first thing that a maker will focus on, making sure it all works and will react to the player well for example if a player is walking down a steet in skyrim the npc’s will walk around them and look natural or an example from halo when the player goes in a distance of an enamy the enamy will notice and react. Next they will work on the dynamics, the little things that make the player happy, the foxes that run around in skyrim or the way grunts will run away from you when they are scared in halo. The last thing they look at is the look of the system, the aestetics, they will try to make the universe so it connects to the audience and causes them to make an emotional connection to their surroundngs and everything in this games universe. An example of this is in Skyrim they made everything be at such an extreme level that everything looks beautiful and makes you feel happy, for example the mountins are not small their either non exsitsant or massive. Another example of this is how they show the details in space and the planets and trees, it makes it seem very real and it makes you feel like you are more there alaso causing an emotional and happy response.  

LeBlanc had said that the way to make the whole experience of the game fun he makes the player have ‘requirements’ by this I think it means that he makes the games so the player will have goals to accomplish and this will make them feel happy and like they have achieved things but leblanc has said that there are 8 kinds of fun the different ‘requrements’ will achive.  

“8 kinds of fun  

1.Sensation 

Game as sense-pleasure 

2. Fantasy 

Game as make-believe 

3. Narrative 

Game as drama 

4. Challenge 

  Game as obstacle course 

5. Fellowship 

Game as social framework 

6. Discovery 

Game as uncharted territory 

7. Expression 

Game as self-discovery 

8. Submission 

 Game as pastime” 

- (Hunicke, LeBlanc and Zubek, 2004) 

Thease are all really interesting as there are so many different types of fun and game makers use this to find out what they target audience would like and aim it to them. I think 4 of these would relate to halo reach as a game, Fantasy as it is in a fantasy world and timeline, Narrative as there is a sad and dramtic storyline that players can play, Challenge as halo is quite a hard game and you really have to work totget through the missions and discovery as you discover new areas and worlds as the game goes through either in the storyline or online.