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[webkilla]

Hey. I am doing an online survey for a university project on what makes games so good at making you play them so much. We all know that some games just glue you to the computer or console for hours... like WoW or DF - so I am collecting information to find out exactly what that is.

To you I ask:

What is it in the game that makes you keep playing it for hours on end?

It is the mix of challenge and feeling of reward? Is it that you feel part of the game, making a difference in it? Is it that it allows you to challenge yourself? Is it that it allows you to set your own goals and challenge yourself to achieve them? What is it?

Please also mention what game it is that has this effect on you - feel free to give examples from any number of games you play, not just DF.

EDIT: poll is closed. thank you all for your awesome flood of replies. 39 replies so quickly? i am quite impressed. Now... it'll take me hours to analyse all of them! argh!

also, addle your minds, i'll tell you how i am analysing your answers (the serious ones at least...)

I simply break down all replies into concepts and categories relating to three basic notions:

Presence:
Example: “I feel as if I am truly part of the game”
Clarification: high presence can come from a play feeling that the player him/herself truly is in the game, but does not relate to doing specific actions in the game.

Immersion:
Example: ”I feel as if I am really doing something in the game”
Clarification: high immersion can come from the notion that the player is actually doing something in the game world – shooting enemies, building cities. Basically that they imagine themselves actually performing real actions in the virtual game environment – this does not require presence, as they can still know they are in the real world, but still imagine they affect the virtual world.

Flow:
Example: “I like the challenge” or “I like the freedom to do anything”
Clarification: some people like challenges, and games that can create a good balance between challenge and effort required from the player can captivate players, making them play for ours. An example to this could be Tetris, or any other game where you just need “one more round” or “one more level” or “one more [game challenge or milestone]” Flow control, the freedom to do anything in a game, also factors in here, as the ability to set one’s own challenges in a game allows for the player to control the flow manually. This often coincides with non-linear gameplay.  One can choose to do something hard or something easy, as opposed to linear gameplay where the players options are limited.

from what i can see, most of you repeatedly fall under the categories of immersion and flow - which is understandable, since most gameplay falls into this. still, its kinda neat to see theory being applied to RL situations like this: that game theory can be simplified into just three words. go me

[Levi]

For me at least its two things.

1) Depth.  Dwarf fortress has more depth than any other game I've played.  The only other one I can think of that comes close is the game NetHack.  Both of these games can have unbelievable results happen from combination's of behavour.  My favorite example of depth is from Nethack.

One time I was down in the dungeon a ways and decided to take a sip from the well.  Unfortunately, the well turned out to be full of toxic waste, and I mutated into a female giant shark(that could somehow walk).  I wandered around a bit, and then decided to see if I had any special abilities as a giant shark.  I did, I could lay eggs!  So I laid eggs all over the place and eventually had a roaming army of giant shark babies following me around.  I thought I was invincible as monster after monster fell to my baby sharks.  Then the toxic waste induced mutation wore off and I turned back into a human, and was promptly eaten by my shark babies.

This was an extreme example of game depth, and dwarf fortress is full strange things like this.  (Reading the DF dev logs often make my jaw drop).

2) Building.
I love games where you can build things, and DF is fantastic at this.  I can make a perfect little society(until something FUN happens) that goes along and watch it run like a well ordered machine.  Its fun playing with new designs and ways to play.  I'm currently playing a game in a desert where my dwarves are all building on the surface to make a cool little desert trading town(and an eventual glass palace). 

These two things make DF such a fun game.  There definitely is the aspect of challenging yourself as well.  I almost always put some kind of restriction on myself when playing the game(like never go outside, or not building any walls/moats to protect from sieges, or building certain cool features). 

But reading the forums it always surprises me how many people play it completely differently than me.  From seeing some of the crazy mega structures to the functioning and accurate clocks to the people who purposely antagonize their own dwarves.  Its just awesome to see a game that can be played in so many different ways.

[Bloogonis]

i would have to second the Depth.

 Re-playability is simply being able to play the game again and get a different result. the more depth a game has the more re-playability it has. The more re-playability it has, the more you have to play in order to see it all. and ass shown by the fact that moss can grow on constructions that are many game years old is an example of the amazing deapth, and DF is still an alpha.

You still need that primary hook though.

 My second half of the response is, you need an intriguing story and a sense of purpose. In order to want to go deep into a game you need to want to. with DF you have your 7 little dwarves and they don't want to die, but the world around them seems hell bent on making it happen. You end up getting attached to the little guys and their personality traits and their romances and they successes and their failures.

[Noble Digger]

I would say that nothing makes me play games. I choose to play them because I enjoy them, the exploration, wrapping my consciousness around the details and modifying and uncovering things. That's part of the draw, anyway. The opportunity to create is another part, as well as the numerous different aesthetics and the "cool factor" of working with concepts and the like that are "cool". Combine that with the relative fuckery going on in the world today--I don't trust others too well--and you can probably see my reasons for choosing to stay at home and out of their way, enjoying games and spending time with a few close friends at things like DF, Starcraft, etc.

[Murphy]

It's all about creativity. Being able to see the subtle game mechanics and tinker with it. Participating in the creation of a good story. Designing a complex and functioning system. It's not so much a game as it is art.

Not that I mind some challenge too, but when I don't have time to play everything, I'll choose games with creative elements. Currently most of my game-related time boils down to playing DF, tampering with pictures in a paint program and building areas for my MUD.

I have to admit that years ago my attitude was different. I even beat Doom on nightmare back then.

[Retro]

I've never played a game as intellectually stimulating as this, period. Fun, rewards creativity, open-ended. The few things I could ever want from this game that it can't give me are all set to be included in the future, anyhow.

[Kilo24]

For DF, I'll have to second depth.  When a wide variety of situations can arise from just one seemingly simple base situation, that makes the game interesting.

There's also another factor of improving a persistent fortress.  When you solve a problem in a fortress, it's usually permanently solved in a way that makes the fortress better.  That constant working towards a goal offers a good feeling.

WoW and other MMOs have a variant of the latter method.  When you kill something, you permanently improve your character by getting experience, and get loot to get more money, and maybe upgrade some skills.  MMOs are entirely about stretching out that sense of accomplishment in a multitude of ways to ludicrous extremes, usually in ways that are obscenely repetitive (because they're a lot easier to design.) 

The primary difference between Dwarf Fortress and MMOs is that the problems that Dwarf Fortress offers are much more varied, and that they are usually non-trivial problems.  MMOs generally reward you on time spent in a game, not on overcoming challenges with a chance of failure; Dwarf Fortress rewards creative problem solving more than most other games because most other games don't have the necessary depth.

[Tokkius]

Freedom.

[valcon]

It's tough to play different games after DF.  Once you've immersed yourself into a fort and touched the depth of possibilities and freedom, you feel like all the other games are just sort of ripping you off. 

Particularly considering that one guy can make a game this good you have to wonder: why does it take millions of dollars and tons of people to make a game like Halo, which is about as deep as a pitri dish, compared to the ocean that is DF?  Well, okay, they have an art department, but still, I think the point is valid.  No offense to Halo-ites either, there are tons of other games I could've used as an example, that one is just sort of a universal standard.

[Orkel]

Incredible depth and detail (especially in the next version) and the pure sandboxness it gives you.

[slink]

I love builder games, and games where the player can change parameters that affect the physical properties of the generated world. 

In DF, trees grow, crops produce seeds, and thus the renewable resources renew themselves.  This is important to me.  I dislike games that run out of resources when they think the game should be over for the player.

DF, at least in this version, has no Game Over condition.  I can play as long as I want to play.  I am done when I decide that I am done.

I got hooked on DF the first time because it simulates engineering in ways I had never seen in a game before.  For instance, there is no other builder game, that I know of, that allows me to pump fluids where I will.

A year later, after having spent part of a year playing a multi-player wargame online with my husband, I got hooked on DF a second time because it generates a detailed history behind every world.  I love reading legends generated without pruning the ancestry tree.

To all of this, add the ability to mod the game raws and DF is a winner for me.  Tarn Adams is working to improve all of these features, so unless he makes a really bad error from my point of view, I am here to stay as a fan of DF.

Other builder games which have stood the test of time with me, but fail in one way or another as compared to DF are:

Caeser 3 (C4 is prettier but less adaptable to sandbox play)
Pharaoh (suffers from "ghost" population which eventually causes the city to fail)
Children of the Nile (this one is probably my favorite on this list but the constant requirement to keep "prestige" from falling limits play time)
Civ 4 (and earlier versions)
Alpha Centauri

All of the games on the list are prettier than DF, but none offer much opportunity to modify the game other than drawing custom maps or, in the case of Alpha Centauri, making custom races. 

MOO2 was also a favorite of mine but I have not played it in years.  Startopia may make it back onto my hard drive this year.

Neverwinter Nights offers great modability both in graphics and in scripting, and I have built entire worlds with that game, but of course it is an RPG and not at all in the same category.

[Roxorius]

I don't play DF at all. Anyone else?

It's been at least 6 months since I made a game, and 12 months since I made a serious game. I just keep in touch with the development because it's hella ambitious and fun to read. I'll probably play the next iteration for a few months and go back to watching. Although, the arena mode might be fun to play with sporadically every few weeks.

[smokingwreckage]

It's an ambitious project by one guy, so that is interesting. It's a builder/sandbox with no victory condition. It has optional depth- you can refine it down to custom furniture and pets in every bedroom, or bed everyone down in the barracks. It has compelling fantasy/story elements (artifacts, theft, CHILD SNATCHERS!! and seiges). It has a trading game built-in, which I love.

[The Eviscerator of Gods]

Because it's so goddamned weird.

[Duelmaster409]

I honestly don't play Dwarf Fortress an insane amount of time. I usually make a fortress last, I play for a dwarven season before I go do something else. But the reason why I play such a game that lacks graphics at all even when my friends say it's a piece of crap, is mostly because I know this game has had MUCH thought put into it. I love the default ASCII graphics, because it stimulates my imagination when I try to picture an epic battle scene or what my fortress would like to invading forces or caravans.

I love how the geographical world is pretty accurately simulated. You won't find a game besides Dwarf Fortress that's flexible enough to generate an enormous world, each world being unique every time you make another. Dwarf Fortress balances fun with realistic physics, which is the most precious gem of the bundle.

Dwarf Fortress, Toady, and TheeToe deserve more recognition than they already have. I'm very certain that if the game had modern-day graphics, it would be a hell of a lot more popular. However, I don't think the technology is available to civilians to actually run Dwarf Fortress AND the Modern-day graphics at the same time. It's far too much to handle, even if multi-threading was supported. Plus, there's just too much stuff to process to accurately visualize it in realtime under a neat-looking 3D environment. I think it's safe to say, however, the game's a gem all by itself.