Our brain is ready to perceive reality and organize it in patterns. A pattern is a structure that defines a group of elements or stimulus and is learned by repetition. Every time repeated structures are detected and perceived the cognitive work is optimized and reduced, making the reality perception become faster and more efficient. In example, the task of driving a vehicle can be very complex when you are learning to drive, as it is necessary being aware of many aspects and information. The seat's position, the mirrors' position, the current gear, the pedals combination, etc. Managing so much information in that moment can stress and saturate. This is because to our brain the situation is totally new, and it can't optimize these calculus. However, once we learn after many repetitions, our brain optimizes these calculus and allows us to avoid this cognitive saturation. In the end, all the subtasks that form the driving task end up being automatic in a simple pattern, which can be done without even thinking about it. Video games act similarly, showing successive patterns that the player has to detect, learn and manipulate. So, video games are learning tools. This learning will be necessary to achieve the objectives and pass the challenges the game sets out. Here we can see two examples. The first one is a whole of structures that delimit patterns, under criteria such as connection, closeness or similitude, we create patterns in our perception of the reality. On the right figure we see an image of the video game R-Type, in its Android version. It is a classic 2D shoot'em up. In this kind of games we can clearly see patterns, especially in enemies. They usually attack in formations of a certain number of members delimited by the space between themselves, and move together at the same speed. Also, these enemies attack in waves, which also repeat cyclically. This way the player can, through repetition, detect a pattern and progressively improve his performance to avoid dying. The projectiles shot by the enemy spaceships and turrets work the same way. In fact, most of the enemy elements in video games act the same way, forcing the player to detect the pattern by repetition, so that he learns it and so he can defeat it. In some cases there might seem there are no patterns. In example, when we play against other human players. We could think that, as they aren't controlled by the machine, human rivals behave more randomly, without patterns, but it's not exactly that way, as the mechanics available for the player's character and their combinations also generate patterns. That is, when the player chooses how he will combine mechanics and repeats it, he is creating a behavior pattern. The behavior of identifying patterns, dominating them and using them to pass challenges is fun to a lot of people. In fact, it's one of the most frequent kinds of fun in video games. I would dare to say this is the most usual kind of fun in this art, which identifies and distinguish it from the others. However, let's not forget there are different kinds of fun. There are players that simply for finding themselves in a certain setting or aesthetics already have fun. So, fun is subjective. You can increase your knowledge on this cognitive perspective which points out patterns as the main way of fun in video games in the book A Theory of Fun for Game Design, by Ralph Koster. Once we've seen the cognitive dimension, let's go with the experience's social dimension. This one is focused on social aspects, those which involve relationships between people. On one side we have utility relationships. We need one or many people which aren't part of any close group, friendship or family, to use them as our enemies or allies in our match. We establish cooperation or competition relationships with them. On the other side, we have the groups generation, which imply a progression on the relationships with other people. The group is formed by people with more proximity index. There is a common interest in being part of the group, which goes further than utility to play matches. There is also a personal affinity relationship which is an incentive to the playable experience. We must take into account the role of communication in this kind of relationships. There are multi player games which have an experience more based on communication and others less. This also changes the experience. We mustn't forget the creation of players communities which share their experience, either inside or outside the game. In example, players that share their best results in rankings. Communities of people that inform and help the others in aim to pass the challenges. Or people that adds content using level editors or mods. Finally, social experience is very linked to multi-player online games. Video games have always had a part of the experience at a social level. But with the arrival of online games, this dimension has been highly empowered. Well, we have already seen the different dimensions in which experience can be analyzed. This exercise is only useful at a theoretical level, at a practical level, it is very useful when we have to design a video game. To take profit of this analysis, we must try to detail and concrete each element in each dimension. The more shaders we have, the more tools we will have to manage and adapt our design. This way, when we want to analyze the experience of a future game, we must proceed specifying: what level, kind and physical intensity will it ask the player for? Which aspects of the player we want to motivate? How do we want him to feel? Which cognitive process I want him to work out? Will it have social aspects or not? What kind of them? In example, I want to create a game with a high and intense physical activity, but focusing only on the controller. I want short games, with a lot of action in which I have to coordinate many commands at once. I want to work on motivational aspects of competition and cooperation, and of challenge and reward. I want the player to feel happiness and excitement, but also anxiety, anger and rage, looking for intense emotions, not emotions in the middle. I want it to work on basic cognitive perception and attention processes. And I want social experience to be based on creating deep relationships with other players. This description, which I just commented, can perfectly be a multi-player combat game or arcade-tradition action. As I have it clear it will be easier to think about mechanics posteriorly. We must be very careful because every time we change mechanics we can change the game experience. There are some more details to take into account about experiences. There probably exist subjective factors on each player, which cause that generalizing about the experience a game provokes isn't a 100% exact science. Also, there are even more criteria and tools for their analysis. The ones we've seen here are only a few. Finally, if when analyzing the experience we think of what we are experiencing ourselves when playing this game or a similar one we must be careful. To start it's a good exercise, But we must be careful and try not to extrapolate too much our experience, because as we just said, there can be subjective factors.
