Making gaming fun

Execution, on the other hand, is doing what you planned, or what you didn't plan. If there is an enemy fortress, an execution heavy game would basically give you a single gun, and have you charge up killing everything that popped into view.

Most games have a mix of both, but many skew things to one side or the other. Games like Thief are composition heavy, Wolfenstein 3D is execution heavy. The more execution heavy things are, the more they seem to be on rails, not necessarily a bad thing, but some find it tedious.

Games that let you plan, then do, are fine, but if you fail, many games have you die and restart. You could call this being taken out of execution and back to composition. If it is not handled gracefully, it can kill a game. Nothing is worse than having to redo 15 minutes of a level because you pressed the wrong button by accident.

A fault-tolerant game will take you out gracefully and let you retry without a crushing failure. This in and out makes a game good. Instead of dying and reloading, then trudging across the map for several minutes, you get shot and a medic pulls you away from the fight. Back at base, you get reloaded, healed and try again without much of a break.

Far Cry 2 did just that, if you got shot up too badly, your buddy grabs you and patches you back up. Into the breach once more my, blam, ow, thud. Thanks again bud, time to go back and.... rinse and repeat.

One more definition that was thrown in was initiative. In the framework of the talk, it is defined as kicking the player out of execution into composition in a way that makes them want to get back in. This entails little repetition, and makes a customer happy. Happy customers are repeat customers, and games that balance things right rarely become coasters.

In the end, the concepts in the talk are simple. Let players make their own path, and they will do things they like while having fun. Too much rope lets them hang themselves, and leads to something that is a sandbox, not really a game.

You need to plan things out for them to a limited extent, and give players the tools they need. If you do this, and allow them to use those tools gracefully, players will like your game. Balance things wrong, and a new career in something other than game design awaits. Balance carefully, grasshopper.