Part 2

Part1 is Here

Mutuality

Mutuality consists in a consistent exchange of views on social norms and the creation of trust. If closeness and similarity are filters for potential friends, then mutuality is the mechanism by which friendship functions.

Any cycle of mutual actions can be represented in the form of a turn-based game with two participants. You can use the same model to discuss the cycles of mutuality in your game.

Player A goes first.

Player A commits an action against player B.
This action has a price: economic value in material resources, units of time, attention or status.
This action benefits Player B.
Player B sees the results of player A.
Player B "updates" its model player A. It includes a set of their past interactions - that is, relationships.
Player B evaluates the possible benefits of future interactions and decides what to do next.

Player B answers.

Player B commits an action against player A.
This action has a price.
It benefits player A.
Player A watches the results of Player B.
Player A updates the player's mental model B.
Player B decides what to do next.
The cycle begins anew.

So this is how one step looks like. The cycles of mutual action are usually repeated several times, and both sides receive economic and social benefits. Learn to discover these cycles. Step by step analyze them to understand which parts work and which parts do not.

Conception of mutuality

Exchange is essentially non-material

The language by which we describe the mutuality factor is borrowed from the economy. Therefore, it may appear that we are reducing friendship to the capitalist concept of the exchange of material goods. In fact, it's not like that at all.

A full cycle of mutual actions can include the exchange of anything from the list:

By recognition or attention: the caught eye already begins a cycle of mutual actions.
Overall experience: situations in which both participants react to the same events, and also see how the other reacts.
Conversation. Compensating roles: "tank" and "healer" in the MMO - economic specializations that do not cost the participants anything tangible.

Means of exchange

For mutuality to function at full capacity, there must be a means of exchange, creating a two-way channel between the participants. There are many opportunities here:

Chats: text, voice, video.
Movement in the visual space.
Trading systems.

Persecuted Benefits

Both sides should feel that the relationship is beneficial to them, if not right now, then at least in the long term.

Friendship collapses if the exchange is not mutual

Every time one of the participants in a relationship helps another and does not receive anything in return, the friendship between them becomes slightly weaker. This phenomenon can take many forms:

Player B ignores help. Communication between them is weak, so if player A does not pay too high a price for his actions, he may not try again.
Player B responds to player A's actions, but in an inappropriate manner. Gives too much or too little in return. Answer wrong. The exchange of norms turns out to be weak, and this can end the relationship.
Player B openly refuses help. The development of relations slows down, they can end.
Player B uses help to harm player A. After this relationship, whatever they are, will begin to disintegrate quickly.

In the development of non-both exchanges need to invest as much resources as in the creation of mutual

People believe that offering their services is risky, and rejection causes them to have negative emotions. We naturally seek to create friendship, but when they reject us, it causes deep spiritual wounds.

Therefore, creating an opportunity for failure, try to soften it. You can do this with the help of the following tools: polite language of text messages, failure reframing, statements that the source of the failure is not aware of the consequences, or an immediate transition to other opportunities for creating relationships.

Extinguished relations without negative exchange can be restored easier than creating new ones. Participants have already exchanged social norms - they have a basis of similarity that can be used to restart the cycle of mutual actions.

Judgments are full of prejudice

It is not easy to ask friends directly about the economic component of the relationship. Friends tend to downplay short-term or medium-term gains so as not to jeopardize long-term relationships. It is better to think about this phenomenon from the point of view of game theory. Use the following strategies:

Someone expresses short-term interest. If one participant demonstrates that he is interested in short-term gain, another can optimize his behavior in order to maximize the benefits until the relationship is over. The exchange of small cheap objects or services will be evaluated in terms of the expected outcome of the relationship. With such a strategy, friendship will quickly end.
Both sides express long-term interest. If both participants show that they are pursuing a long-term benefit, the exchange of small objects or services becomes valuable compared to the benefit in the future.
Someone shows a false long-term interest. If one person pursues a short-term benefit, and another - a long-term one, it is still worth noting that you are interested in long-term benefits. If you demonstrate an interest in short-term gain, the relationship will enter a losing cycle and collapse before the participants can extract some of their fruits.

Symmetry and asymmetry

Describing their relationship, friends try to present them symmetrically. The advantage of one is always equal to the benefit of the other. Since such statements can not be believed, the stereotype that friendship should always be built on the balance of benefits is highly uncertain.

In addition, many social relations are in fact asymmetric, but they are still reciprocal (parent and child, teacher and student, and so on). Many friendly relations begin with the fact that people of low status deliberately get acquainted with high people.

With the deepening of friendship there is an escalation of the cost of actions

Friendly relations begin with very simple services, and then when the exchange becomes constant and mutual, the average cost increases.

From the investment point of view, this makes sense. At first a person does not know if a stranger will enter into a mutual exchange. Therefore, it is logical to invest in a large number of cheap exchanges in the hope that at least one of them will pay off. If the others turn out to be a failure, it's okay - the price was not high.

Then a story of mutual action appears between people. They can be relatively confident that the long-term relationship partner will predictably react even in the exchange of a higher cost.

Some friendly relations eventually weaken due to the fact that the cost becomes too great. But some continue to develop until too high a price no longer exists. This happens in marriages, families and some long-term friendships.

Define the development curve of friendship for your game.
Put less expensive interactions at the beginning of the game. Encourage players to develop their first skills in a safe environment. For example, the majority of players in the League of Legends first train in PvE-battles, and only then go to the competitive PvP-mode.
Moments for investing a large number of resources should arise later. So, often access to raids opens only after a person has already reached a certain level in the game.

Limited number of deep friendships

Because deep friendship implies expensive and long-term cycles of mutual action, most people can afford a small number of such friends. Dunbar suggests that the number of people with whom we can create relationships, including friends, is limited biologically.

Determine which groups will be in your game

500 people. These are people whose faces we learn, and relations with the lowest investments.
500 people. Acquaintances. People whose names we know.
150 people. Good friends. People with whom we sometimes spend time. The largest size of a typical group.
50 people. Friends. People that we could invite to dinner.
15 people. Close friends. People to whom we communicate the details of our personal lives.
5 people. Best friends. The fewest relationships with the highest investments.

Incentives of mutuality

Positioning in space

In a game where there is positioning of the player's avatar in space (Diablo or any FPS), even the simplest act of being next to another player already starts a cycle of mutual actions. It's kind of an invitation.

The other player reacts by moving in the same direction. Such actions are extremely cheap for players, so they do not risk anything. This is the basic form of cycles of reciprocal actions in games like Journey, where all strangers are friendly to the player.

In games with rotation, users can also be close to each other. This is a kind of social gesture, on the basis of which an early cycle of mutual actions can be formed.

Emotion icons or gestures

Often, players can express emotions through actions such as dance or a salute with a hand. One player can start with a gesture and the other either repeat it, or respond with some contextual variation. This can result in a synchronized dance or a special gesture-based language, formed for a variety of gaming sessions.

Chat

Chat is one of the richest methods of creating mutual interactions. Using the language, chat allows you to socialize, joke, share information, establish and protect social norms.

Trade (and exchange of gifts)

The ability to exchange virtual goods creates the conditions for the existence of a wide range of economic transactions. Players can become permanent suppliers or regular customers. In a capitalist culture, such relationships are familiar to many, and therefore players easily occupy the necessary roles.

Trade also opens up opportunities for the exchange of gifts and "winks" - these two practices imply that virtual goods are exchanged for status or better relations rather than currency.

Trade, largely based on negotiations, primarily concerns the creation of social relations, and only the second - economic procedures. It should be borne in mind that effective trading systems (such as auctions) that do not involve a large number of conversations can displace the cycles of mutual action from the game and negatively affect its social foundation.

Mutual support

If the players can help each other, often during this time a cycle of mutual actions will be tied between them. For example, one player covers the other when they run to capture the point. In response, the second can cure the person who helped him. This exchange occurs even when the players have the same abilities.

Specialization

As development of a theme of mutual support it is possible to create specializations for each player. Unique roles that are dependent on each other, and therefore create cycles of mutual action. Classes of MMO trinity (healer, tank, DPS) naturally supplement each other, increasing the overall effectiveness of the group.

Alliance System

Also you can create asymmetric hierarchies from interdependent elements. In Asheron's Call, a system was used in which new players declared their affiliation to a more experienced player in exchange for help.

So their gaming experience was enriched, and patrons received some of the experience of their vassals. The patrons in turn could be vassals of even more experienced patrons, and all the members of this chain had a reason to help the lower links.

In the Shadowrun version for Xbox, users could resurrect dead players and receive a portion of their collected kill points. However, if the "Savior" was dying, all the vassals resurrected along with him.

Face-to-face interaction

Many studies of situations from the real world show that simply being in one space is not enough. It is necessary to see the face of another person and be able to respond with his eyes or with the help of facial expressions. In games this side of communication is usually not affected, which can change with the spread of VR and face scanning technologies.

Disadvantages of reciprocity

Zero-sum interactions

When resources are limited, the player is forced to decide whether to keep them or spend money on improving relations. At an early stage, because of fear of losing resources, many players behave selfishly and do not initiate experiments. Instead, at the early stage of the relationship, it is recommended to use non-zero-sum interactions and cautiously introduce cheap zero-sum interactions at a stage where the connection between players becomes more solid.

Ideally, zero-sum interactions are used only as a tool for transferring relationships to a new level. For example, a player can pay a fee to strengthen the guild. The currency that will go to the deposit can be spent in other more selfish ways, so the player demonstrates selflessness and loyalty to the group.

Trading fraud

Creating systems that allow you to trade in material goods, consider that you thus create the opportunity for deception. Players with weak ties will regard the insecure transaction as an opportunity for fraud: they may simply not give up what they promised. So the general level of trust among players falls, and to form friendship becomes even more difficult.

The system with secure transactions works better, within the framework of which both parties to the transaction must confirm their reliability, and the exchange itself is automated. Ask yourself: Do the methods of interaction between users that you develop create confidence between them? Do they protect against evil intentions?

Insufficient predictability

In general, good social norms, that is, the basis of friendship, are based on predictability. We create in the mind a model of how the other person will act, and then base on her complex and costly plans, knowing that he will react in a certain way.

When players are stimulated for casual or unreliable behavior, it is much more difficult for them to form social norms. It turns out that by doing a favor to another person, you receive in return something random, not the expected payment.

For example, if your guild has just killed a boss, a social rule can be used, saying that all loot should be divided equally. However, the game system does not provide this, so one player picks up all the loot to himself and leaves. The fact that players have the freedom to commit such acts leads to very unpredictable results.

Some games do not interfere (for example, in EVE the community turns these scammers into outcasts both economically and socially). In most cases, these moments are regarded as random events, the regulation of which is not worth it. However, such "small" problems slowly reduce the general ability of community members to form long-term friendly relations.

Too much difference in strength

In many games with the possibility of development, new players are much weaker than the old ones. Because of this, in the community there is economic segregation - in the most egregious cases, a strong player from the weak does not need anything at all. Because of these principles, game design creates a powerful economic barrier between two people - completely artificial and unnecessary.

A good way to solve problems of this kind can be to create opportunities for economic and social dependence between players of any level of power. Create connections between players to make it profitable for them to become friends. Get rid of all systems that brand players as unnecessary.

Twins

A parasite is a player who benefits from being in the community, but does not invest in his material resources. American culture is especially characteristic of all forces to try to reduce the number of parasites, often to the detriment of the community. If you punish a narrow group of people, the community as a whole becomes more selfish, and friendly relations in it are formed with less probability.

In most communities, and in particular those based on non-zero-sum resources, there is striking stability in conditions of the average number of parasites. Players can complain about them because of their prejudices, but eventually it turns out a stable and happy society.

During the creation of the game, ask yourself: do parasites harm other players? If this is so, try to focus on the interactions of a non-zero amount. And if not, you can ignore the problem and do not spend on it the precious cycles of development.

High cost of interactions

If early interactions are too expensive, players will not begin a cycle of mutual action. One solution may be a system that compensates for early costs in order to reduce the entry threshold. For example, in some social games, users can give each other gifts that are worthless to the donor and are created from nothing.

Care must be taken, as people will start to think that their friendship is being bought. When you reduce the threshold of entry into the cycle of mutual actions, make the most initial steps cheap or free. Then gradually increase the price for the first interaction within the gaming system and watch how people's behavior changes.

Openness

The last factor in the formation of friendship. When relations between players deepen, the very essence of the cycles of mutual action changes from a simple repetition of each other's actions to a more risky construction of trusted relations between the participants. The key moment for the formation of deep friendship is the opportunity for friends to share with each other new or classified information.

Games in which there is no such opportunity, do not stimulate the emergence of deep friendship. They may not support the creation of even simple relations, as the players will understand that, as if they did not interact with long-term relationships they do not have.

However, the disclosure of important or personal information is a great risk, and often the developers try to deprive the players of this opportunity. After all, if the relationship is not strong enough, disclosing information can lead to their destruction and even the emergence of confrontation.

The concept of openness

Risk is mandatory

When a person discloses personal information to another, there is always the possibility that the relationship will collapse. Usually until this point, players exchange cheap actions of a non-zero amount, which are tightly regulated by gaming systems or social foundations.

Personal information brings to the relationship events from outside the game, values, gender issues, age, religion and race and other delicate factors, because of which mutuality can be violated, and one of the parties will exit the relationship.

If the refusal of reciprocity simply hurts feelings, the refusal of mutual disclosure of personal information is much more effective. For many, the description of their feelings is associated with sincere frankness and, accordingly, with a strong fear of rejection.

If the relationship in your game reaches this stage, you are not only engaged in simple entertainment of people. You create moments that please them or leave scars for life.

What is considered to be the disclosure of personal information depends on a particular person or relationship.

The very meaning of the phrase "disclosure of personal information" depends on what can endanger specific relationships at a particular time and with specific participants. In short, this is a situational concept. However, in the minds of the participants in the relationship, the concept is fully formed, so that they themselves decide what to disclose and when.

Incentives of openness

Rich communication tools

Concepts related to the disclosure of important information cover a significant part of human experience. Emotion is not enough. In order for the relationship to deepen and become more trustful, it is necessary to give players communication channels with many opportunities.

Many game designers are now arguing about whether to include chat in the games. Problems associated with the chat, highlight easily. If the interaction through him occurs at an extremely early stage of the relationship, this can lead to the premature disclosure and abuse of personal information. You can spam through the chat. Pedophiles can be contacted with children through the chat.

There are many legal and moral subtleties here. Developers have to resort to the services of moderators or create filters to solve these problems, and this is not cheap. Many modern development teams decide not to add chat to their games.

However, if you remove the chat from the game, the community will be bled. Players will remain strangers to each other and will never form a long-term relationship. All relationships at best will be like in Journey, where the anonyms accidentally collide with each other, which never leads to the formation of friendship. Clean the chat, and along with it, 95% of positive social interactions will disappear.

When we create game systems for people, we need to understand that some manifestations of the human nature will have to be filtered out.

Fortunately, there are ways and wolves to feed, and keep the sheep.

Make it so that the tools for disclosing personal information can only be used with the consent of both parties. For example, a chat can be unlocked for two players after they both agree to go to this stage of the relationship.
Let's have a lot of opportunities for selecting players: let them have convenient tools for filtering and blocking other players using the chat in a negative way.

Conditions for quiet conversations

Places and situations in which players relax their business, naturally lead to the fact that they begin conversations. In action games, players are usually too involved in the gameplay, so they do not have the ability to transcribe in the chat. Therefore, you as a designer should deliberately slow down the game at certain points.

Common examples:

Time of treatment in MMO.
Lobby in the FPS.
Chat after the match.
Private chat channels.
Chat channels of guilds.

Mechanics that encourage disclosure of information

Simple interactions, borrowed from games for parties, can give people information about the player's sense of humor, his status, abilities, past, and so on. In the end, these mechanics should encourage people to divulge information.

Openness or punishment. Typical mechanics in the spirit of the game "truth or action." It is worth noting that, although it encourages people to provide information about themselves, it is not necessary - any participant in the exchange of information can leave it.
Secure spaces. Create places where everything can be said, anything. However, to act elsewhere, based on the knowledge gained in these places, should not be correct. According to this principle, confessions and receptions are practiced by a psychiatrist. For example, in Japan people are motivated to go to the bar with colleagues. If a person is drunk, you can not take what he says to his heart - this is the social norm. So people can give each other feedback without fear of complications.
Open cycles of mutual action. If you give something to a person, and then ask him to tell you something about himself, he will most likely agree.

Liberation Mechanics

In games, they are infrequent, but in real life there are many examples.

Funny costumes. All that draws the player beyond his current social context and identity, allows him to experiment with new roles.
Alcohol. After its use, people loose their tongues. Remember that this can lead to too early disclosure of information.
Physical interactions. Many games designed to "melt the ice," deliberately force participants to violate each other's personal space. So quickly creates a sense of closeness, which in other conditions would not have arisen.
Actions that imply a great contribution. Let the player do something that is either very difficult or expensive. Then if he refuses to disclose information about himself, it turns out that this contribution will be made in vain.
Encouraging groups. If you simultaneously disclose information about yourself will be several people, each of them will feel more comfortable.

Disincentives of openness

Too early disclosure of information

Often, game mechanics disclose information about the player even before he is ready. Game designers think they are helping him, but in fact they force the cycle of mutual actions to move to a more advanced stage, although the trust between its participants has not yet strengthened. The result is usually extremely negative interactions between strangers.

If the player does not trust the other, they will use the smallest details in the appearance and behavior of each other to activate the stereotypes. By themselves, stereotypes are not bad, it is only a pre-created replacement of real experience, through which you can quickly decide on what to do next. However, due to negative stereotypes, the opportunities for creating relationships will be destroyed.

Examples:

Demonstration of real name. The real name of the player contains a variety of personal information about his country, field and race. Give players the opportunity to choose their own names or automatically generate them.
By default, the included voice chat. By voice, you can understand the age, sex and the player's native language. Let the voice chat by default be turned off.
Demonstration of location. The place where the person came into play shows his belonging to the country. It should not be shown.
Purchased items (free to play). Demonstration that the player bought an expensive item. Or that he has only cheap ones. Do so that items from shops can be obtained not only through purchase.

Focussing on differences between players

When a player disclose information about himself, or when it is done for him, as a result, he can demonstrate the differences between him and his friends. Because of this, friends can rethink the relationship with him.

The introduction of non-player similarities between players

It is not necessary to disclose non-player similarities between players and to hope that they will prove to be just as powerful as the game ones.

Metrics

We have analyzed a weighty theoretical block about how friendship works, and how to stimulate players. However, for modern development of theories is not enough. We need to somehow measure whether we have achieved the goals. And if not, how to use the tools mentioned above to make the game more favorable for the formation of friendship in it.

The question arises: what metrics of friendship can we use?

We need to measure behavior patterns that serve as indicators of the fact that there are "friendly" relationships between players in the multiplayer project. Since these metrics should be suitable for most games, we will avoid in-game measurements, because they are adjusted to a specific project .

Key concepts of measuring friendship

Joint game experience

As the name implies, this is when people play together.

Joint game: two people together pass a dungeon in World of Warcraft.
Separate game: two people communicate through chat, being in different areas of World of Warcraft.

Repeated shared gaming experience

People play together several gaming sessions. The first joint game session will be session 1, the next session 2 and so on.

A recurring joint gaming experience: Two players undergo a dungeon in World of Warcraft after they completed the quest the day before.
Not a recurring joint gaming experience: Two players pass the dungeon in World of Warcraft immediately after completing the quest. That is, between the two sessions there is no clear break.

"Friendly" behavior

Models of behavior that involve trying to start or extend a shared gaming experience or can lead to a shared gaming experience in the future.

Friendly behavior: invite to the group or stay in the group to continue the joint game.
Unfriendly behavior: attack of the enemy, treatment of a member of the team.

The problem of strangers

In most commercial games, marketing campaigns usually lead to people who are unfamiliar with each other. There are methods for importing friends into the game, but often the list of friends in the social network like Facebook is very weakly correlated with the list of active users of the game, especially the new one.

Problem of the joint gaming session 2

After considering a lot of games (and also referring to decades of experience in game design with the authors of this work), we identified the key problem: how to transfer players from session 1 to session 2. Matchmaking creates session 1 well with strangers, but to make people who Played with each other, did it again - it's difficult.

Existing design solutions do not cope with this problem, and development teams often do not pay attention to this important factor at all.

Friendship metrics

This is a common metric of how many repeated joint sessions happen in the game. It is better suited to games that consist of specific sessions (matches in Call of Duty) than to voluminous games in which people can be present but do not act together (people on different World of Warcraft servers, people on one World of Warcraft server, But in different zones). Here's how it can be calculated:

The percentage of people in the game session that the user has already played. That is an indicator of how many "familiar faces" in the match. If the player has never met other players in the match, the percentage will be zero, and if faced with all, then 100%. Notes: a lot of consecutive matches with the same stranger are not considered to be a joint game with a friend. Between sessions there should be a break, so it was clear that users intentionally decided to play together. This indicator is unique for each player.
Average percentage of friends in all matches. How "filled with friends" the gaming experience of a person. It can help identify those who are many and deliberately playing along with others (playing with "friends" against an occasional joint game with an ever-changing set of strangers). Sharp falls of this metric can talk about the risk of rejection: the player has lost a partner.
Global statistics for all player matches. The indicator of what a typical human gaming experience looks like during recurring joint sessions. Perhaps it is useful to distinguish the percentage of players who are at different stages of "filling friends" with their gameplay.

These metrics imply that users intentionally play with each other several times. They decide on this, not the gaming system.

Measurements of the reasons for "intentional joint gaming experience"

In addition to the binary metric described above (a deliberate shared gaming experience: was or was not), there are other useful measures to calculate the probability of a repetition of a deliberate shared gaming experience in the future:

Location in the list. List of friends, subscribers or members of the guild. They all make it easier to move on to behaviors that lead to a shared gaming experience. However, a long list of friends does not necessarily lead to more joint game sessions.
Invitations. The number of invitations to joint game sessions is obviously an excellent metric. Here are some additional indicators to measure: a) the number of accepted invitations; B) the number of accepted invitations, after which the joint gaming experience immediately began.
Attempts to contact another player. Sending messages, talking and so on can increase the likelihood of a joint game in the future. However, some types of communication to the joint game do not lead (empty conversations in the chat), and sometimes even completely can reduce the probability of its occurrence (rudeness and aggression). 1. Reaction from others. Attempts to communicate that trigger a response are more likely to lead to a shared gaming experience (but not always). 2. Analysis of the tone of statements (the algorithm that determines the positivity or negativity of the text) becomes more accurate and faster, which facilitates the measurement of the reasons described.

Examples of metrics of "friendly" behavior

Because in-game "friendly" behavior is specific to a particular game, it is impossible to create a whole valuation system. Here is a list of metrics that serve as examples, but not examples of how it can be implemented:

Gifts. In games where you can give gifts, they can be considered an excuse for sharing gaming experience and even the joint gaming experience.
Help in the murders. In games where there is statistics of assistance in the murders, it is possible to consider which of the players helped the other members of their team more.
Created voting for the exception from the match. In games where people can kick out other users from the team, the number of votes created for an exception is a good indicator of the behavior that prevents the formation of relations.

Nuances

Friendship formation systems deal with a potentially emotionally complex issue. With the concepts that are discussed in this work, it is worth working very carefully, because they relate to real people and their feelings.

Most people who become friends in the game will be only acquaintances

We use the word "friend", but in fact the chances of really making friends with someone in the game are extremely small. People simply can not have so many close friends. Therefore, our games are more likely to create systems from friendly friends. However, the game should be thought of as a tunnel of friendship: there is nothing wrong with the fact that only a few reach its depths, if only someone reaches them.

Players can realize that they are manipulated

People do not like it when they are instructed, with whom to be friends. Programs can inform people about information about them that they would prefer not to know. For example, you do not need to create a system of in-game marriages, which simply tells two players that they should get married.

Instead, create systems that, by mutual consent, motivate people to act comradely. And then they can have tools for creating ceremonies or the possibility of a mutual consent to wear a sign telling others that they are "married".

Asheron's Call very aggressively encouraged users to invite new people into the game. It was risky, because the newcomer sooner or later figured out why he was actually invited - began to raise questions in the spirit of "I was necessary to you only because I'm rich?", Because of what the players doubted the already established relationship. People feel when they are manipulated. Create logical reasons for the formation of friendship in addition to economic benefits.

The relationship between behavior and impact

If you have two players who are constantly communicating, this is not necessarily a good sign - they can also swear. Be wary of rising rates if you do not track the reasons for their growth. A classic example is the collapse of the games of the publishing house Zynga - the players left them, despite the fact that key indicators were growing.

Test your systems for sabotage

Systems that help people form friendships are easy to use for evil. In particular, it is especially problematic to disclose information about yourself, but, one way or another, most of the above disincentives have negative elements.

Assume that the players will try to act negatively, and plan what you will do in that case. If your systems mean that all people are angels, it will awaken demons in them.

Conclusion

Arguing about friendship, we are convinced of the following:

Creating deep relationships between people is a worthy goal for game design.
Games are uniquely suited for creating relationships.
To make friends, you need a few people, the reason for them to come together, and some kind of mutually beneficial interaction. In multiplayer games, all this is there.

Each element of the game can create connections between players and remove barriers between them. Such an opportunity to miss a sin.

We can make systems of matchmaking and logistics that stimulate people to be close.
We can create social signals, characters and game groups so that people find players similar to them.
We can manage the economy of the cycles of mutual action at all stages of the formation of friendship.
We can gradually stimulate people to disclose information about themselves during the formation of friendship.
Often, computer games seem to us predominantly a single-user kind of media, created for storytelling or another form of sensory experience. We put games in one category with books, movies, comics and so on.

However, games can also be treated as processes of deliberate interaction of people. Games - this is based on certain laws of the mechanisms, consisting of living people, the number of which is growing. Games run on the same scale as sports, religion or government. They can help players to have a good time in specially created virtual spaces, and, in the end, in real life.

This is GameDesigners strength and responsibility - one of the greatest. We create these mechanisms. We are responsible for the prosperity of the players making up the mechanisms, and the communities that they form. The truly human process of forming friendship is an important game design tool.

Game Design: How to create relations between players. Ultra long-read. Part 2