Final draft
How Halo Reach is made to make the audience have fun.
This essay will talk about How different theories suggest the game Halo Reach has been made to make the audience feel like they are having fun. This game uses different knowledge of the players and what they would want to make quests that would simulate fun for the people who are playing these games. Halo Reach does this so well that it still very popular after 10 years this is evident by the “more than 90,000 active players” (Worrall, 2019). To prove this thesis, this essay will look at the different types of players by looking in to Ritchard Bartle’s theory then 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 it will look at is the cultivation theory and how it effects players. After this the desensitization theory and how it has affected games and how it links to the different views and papers people have written about the links between violence and video games. Finally, it will end this essay talking about Marc LeBlanc and how he said games are made to make people feel like they are having fun.
Halo Reach is a game realized 10 years ago on the Xbox 360. It is classed as a first-person shooter (hiddenXperia 2019) it is set before the other Halo games and the last Halo game Bungie made. The audience has said that storyline is amazing and well thought through (The Return of Reach - Why Halo Reach was the most loved AND hated Halo game, 2019). You play as a new member of the top group of assassins from the planet and you are sent to do the most important missions in the game although it all fails.
Bartles taxonomy 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 (figure 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. This theory of taxonomy is interesting and shows the different characteristics of players and will help me 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 a group of people did Bartle quiz then the results were compared the responses to those who play Halo Reach and who doesn’t to see what sort of players do play Halo Reach.
(figure 2-7) These answers to the Bartle quiz are all mostly quite similar but some are different, figure 5, 6 and 7 are the results of people who do play Halo, you can see a link in their results as they are both mostly in the ‘killer’ aspect whereas most others are explorers, in Halo there is some exploring but most routes although you can't tell unless you really focus on it are a linier path so the players can just focus on the killing of aliens and the storyline. The makers of Halo have realized that their players would prefer to focus on killing and what's happening that trying to find their way around or exploring so they make the game so players don’t have to focus on how to get around or anything they don’t want to, the makers have found out exactly what their players want and they give it to them.
Passive and active audiences are the different types of audiences for Halo Reach games they are very different but both are big parts of the target audience of the game. Passive audience is an audience that will watch and enjoy a product but will not get affected by it or make many opinions on it for example there's thousands of people who play Halo but they won’t talk about it much or get too excited of a new game. 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 camp out for new games because they love Halo and are very involved in the fandom. Figure 10 and 11 show what active fan members will do, one figure shows someone who makes the guns from Halo and sells them and another is two fans that got Halo masks made and took photos with them on their wedding because they like the game so much.
Cultivation theory is mostly used in the context of television and how it effects audiences and their view on the world after a while but there are some studies on how it relates to video games and people playing them. The idea of Cultivation theory is that the people who watch the television more see the world more how the media has portrayed it than how it is, linking this to video games the theory suggests that through continuous exposure to the video game world, players’ views of their real world will become distorted and they will view the real world as they do the video games (Gabriel Chong et al., 2012) this so interesting that playing a game could alter a person's view on the world but this links to Halo because there are times when people compare what is happening in the game’s very in depth 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 alien invasion (Halofollower 2014). But this has led people to believe that some governments are doing experiments like this and forming super weapon people in secret to fight but this probably isn’t happening, and it has caused a lot of controversy throughout the game's history. 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 involved in the game and it’s universe that they don’t see the line between them.
Desensitization as a world means to make someone less responsive or non-responsive to a stimulus. For this is going to be talking about the desensitization theory and how it relates to games. Video games are getting more graphic and detailed as the years go on but most audiences are excited for this not scared like they would have been years ago this is because people are getting more and more used to this level of gore through years of exposure. Original old games had maybe a blood splat or something similar but now you can see what happen if you shoot off sections of bodies and more this is quite a dramatic difference but it’s because 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 (Figure 8) purple coming out of an elite when you shoot it until it just falls over or with a person or spartan a red comes out but with mortal Kombat 11 that came out recently there's clips of being torn apart (Figure 9) or brains being stabbed out and people think this is just fun now as they have become so desensitized from it. Desensitization 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 whereas over time people have become less empathetic in games so they will just laugh or be entertained in this situation. There have been people that have made this link and one says “Desensitization might reduce sympathy for the victim, increase beliefs that violence is normative, and decrease negative attitudes towards violence” (Carnagey, Anderson and Bushman, 2007) this is scary to think about as more people every day especially young children are becoming more desensitized to blood and violence daily so reducing sympathy and empathy in young people's minds can affect the future a lot.
There are many theories and papers written about the link to aggression and violent video games. This study shows all evidence from the last 20 years and compares it well to show the positive and negative effects of violent video games. It is really interesting the link between violence and video games because people think it either helps with violence or makes it worse. Some would say that desensitization has made people think violence is more acceptable but playing video games will make someone more violent. there has done an interview with someone who used to be involved in violent activities as a child but stopped when they started playing games. From this interview she said that playing games like Halo and Gear of War really helped her, she said that “i used to be always out with my friends causing trouble in town but I started to play games and I was having fun playing them it would distract me from going out and I would use my energy to help save the planet Reach instead of loitering around town and being a nuisance” this shows that young people now that are encouraged to “go out” and spend time with their friends in town would be better playing games. There is evidence that if teens are going out around town with their friends people would just walk from one field to another and this would cause people to start being violent and littering or throwing eggs in to peoples letter boxes but these people are saying now that they stopped what would lead to drugs and stealing to play games and get jobs to buy them. “two models imply the same idea that aggression cannot be separated from internal and external factors.” (shao, 2020) this quote proves that everything in this paragraph has evidence to support it although there may be a correlation between young people being violent and playing video games you cannot prove that this violence comes from playing the game or outside influences.
Marc LeBlanc had a talk about how to make a game where the players have fun, since this talk, he has realized the PowerPoint from the talk and together with two other people written a paper about this. It was hard to understand some of things being said in the PowerPoint without the context although it still makes good points and there is evidence behind this in his journal. It is really interesting on how fun is made through games and how well the gamer makers plan out everything response a player would have.
LeBlanc's 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 other 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 it's so fascinating to see how much players 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 mechanics 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 street 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 enemy the enemy 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 aesthetics, they will try to make the universe so it connects to the audience and causes them to make an emotional connection to their surroundings 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 mountains are not small their either non existent 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 also 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 he 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 ‘requirements’ will achieve.
“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)
These 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. Four 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 dramatic storyline that players can play, Challenge as Halo is quite a hard game and you really have to work to get through the missions and discovery as you discover new areas and worlds as the game goes through either in the storyline or online.
The information that has been looked in to in this essay supports the thesis that game makers like LeBlanc use requirements and aesthetics to make the audience feel fun but they have to use different theirs to find out their perfect target audience and what aesthetics and requirements their target audience would most enjoy and feel fun from. Halo Reach specifically uses these theories to find their target audience and find what they would like, they have done this to find that the audience would like requirements like “clear the area”(Halo Reach 2010) or “Investigate The Beacon”(Halo Reach 2010) as this is the sort of fun the audience will enjoy and want to play again and again. These are good objectives as they can be re played again and again and they are vague so there are many ways to do it and this is another thing the game makers found out. Overall, this essay agrees with the thesis made.
Figures
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BLOGGER WONT LET ME UPLOAD MY OTHER PICTURES I HAVE SHARED MY DOCUMENT WITH EVERYONE ON WORD ONLINE .
Bibliography
Carnagey, N., Anderson, C. and Bushman, B. (2007). The effect of video game violence on physiological desensitization to real-life violence. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 43(3), pp.489-496.
Gabriel Chong, Y., Scott Teng, K., Amy Siew, S. and Skoric, M. (2012). Cultivation Effects of Video Games: A Longer-Term Experimental Test of First- and Second-Order Effects. Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology, 31(9), pp.952-971.
Halo Lore - Origin of Humanity in Halo. 2014. [video] Directed by H. Follower. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m_ZyivD7BXQ&list=PLnlUtt1crLoAKvYN_JhyNCW0VjMS6AAPC&index=13&t=0s.
Halo Lore - Noble Six. 2016. [video] Directed by H. Follower. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WG6G_wUw_MQ&list=PLnlUtt1crLoAKvYN_JhyNCW0VjMS6AAPC&index=7.
shao, r. (2020). The Relation of Violent Video Games to Adolescent Aggression: An Examination of Moderated Mediation Effect. [online] Available at: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2019.00384/full [Accessed 28 Feb. 2020]
The Return of Reach - Why Halo Reach was the most loved AND hated Halo game. 2019. [video] Directed by h. Xperia. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dFuOADgn_Co&list=PLMFta-CCYzCfMLnAK-AECwR_86uJQh6Ht&index=9.
Worrall, W., 2019. Halo Reach's Enormous Player Plunge Reveals An Unsettling Fact. [online] CCN.com. Available at: <https://www.ccn.com/halo-reachs-enormous-player-plunge-reveals-an-unsettling-fact/> [Accessed 13 March 2020].
Communication Theory. 2020. Cultivation Theory. [online] Available at: <https://www.communicationtheory.org/cultivation-theory/> [Accessed 3 April 2020].
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