The art of game development (The engagement wave)

Let me explain:

The wave of engagement I will be talking about is like a plot line in a book or in a movie. There is rising action, falling action, and in the middle is the climax. The difference in a game is that id inst just one curve. In a play session, it happens over and over again in all aspects of the game. Of course, if the game is story based it will have a typical plotline but what I will be talking about is the small shorter waves that are a constant up and down through the game.

Some examples

Let's look at something simple like a gunshot and recompile it. We have the pull of the trigger, the shot, and then the sound/smoke after. This is a perfect example of one of the smallest action curves. The pulling of the trigger would be the rising action building the tension. Think of satisfying guns in any games you play the most satisfying ones will all have some sort of build up this could be as obvious as drawing back your bow in Minecraft or as subtle as something like the slight audio change in tracers gun from Overwatch. The peak is pretty apparent in this situation; it is merely whatever draws the most attention, the flash of light or bang sound. But probably the most used in this scenario is the falling action. It could be a sound or a particle effect and almost always includes an animation. This gives the player a quick rest before engaging them again.

In larger scale 

Now that you understand the engagement curve and I have shown you how it works in some smaller examples lets talk about how it is useful throughout games. 

https://www.semanticscholar.org/

Above is an example of how difficult it can be used to cause one of these engagement curves. Obviously, the difficulty will incise as the player gets better, but if it were a flat curve, it would be no fun for the player that's why it's crucial to have falling action throughout the game. No matter how engaging a game is, players will lose interest without falling action. This can mean having waves of enemies with relaxed waves staggered throughout. Or it could be something more organic like PUBG gameplay the shrinking zone makes it inevitable that you will run into more and more players, but the maps are so large that there is always falling action throughout a game. But relying on more organic occurrences like this can be tricky to rely on so be careful if you are making a game around something less reliable, you could leave your players in a lull of no engagement or overstrain them.

Conclusion

Next time you are playing a game pay attention to your engagement. Any you may be surprised how often it fluctuates or what small things can change it. And when you get developing another game, remember that it can be easy to lose or gain a players attention, but the important part is how you balance your player's attention to keep them on their toes.