5 Attributes Every Successful Game Should Have

What makes some games so addictive while others just fizzle out of public memory? Why do simple games like Pacman and Tetris achieve so much popularity, while games with far more superior graphics and strategy like Charlie’s Angels and Tron 2.0 hardly manage to find a player? Designer R J Mical discussed just that in his speech, titled “Designing the Five-Second Game”, at the recent Game Developer Conference.

Mical, in his research on the ideal video game, has studied the most popular games of the past and the present to find out what they have in common. He lists out the following five characteristics a video game must have, to become popular and addictive, and says that games that ignore or overlook these criteria risk passing into oblivion. So what exactly makes a game work?

Simple Interface

The game’s interface must not be so complex as to distract the player from the challenges of the game itself. It’s a temptation to make your game’s interface as sophisticated as you can, but remember, gamers don’t want to see your talent as a designer, they want to play a game. In Angry Birds, players just have to shoot birds into green pigs, they don’t have to figure out what each icon on the screen does.

Simple Strategy

The basic strategy of the game should be so simple that a user could grasp it in five minutes. Players don’t like being stumped about rules in the middle of a game, nor do they want to sit through long and boring demos. In Pacman, all a player needs to do is eat dots and flee from ghosts. It’s that simple, and a new player will know what to do five seconds into the game.

Short Levels

Even the most serious and addicted gamer knows that the game is only transitory. Don’t force players to sit through hours of gaming before they can end a level and save, it’s inconvenient and ultimately annoying. Also, gamers playing a game with very long winded levels experience a higher rate of frustration, as they lose any sense of progress. In a game like Plants Vs. Zombies, levels are short enough to remain interesting and keep the game quick paced.

Emulation of the Physical World 

The most popular games are those that emulate the physical world to some degree, but not entirely. Games like Tetris and Angry Birds follow the rules of physics, games like the Sims have players playing in a created universe that’s a copy of our own. However, make sure the graphics and strategy are not so realistic as to actually seem real. Video games are a sort of fantasy escape for players, so if they wanted a lifelike experience, they wouldn’t be gaming.

Great Sound Effects

It is easy to overlook the importance of sounds in a video game, because who on earth listens to that music while playing, right? Wrong! If you heard a snatch of the Mario music from your kiddiehood, you would probably instantly recognize it. Game sounds enter our psychology and become associated with the particular gaming experience, so crappy music will repel players even without them realizing why. Some simple yet catchy tune that doesn’t distract is the ideal music for games.