6 ms·

It’s interesting to note the similarities between theme park design and video game design—both involved worlds that appear “realistic”, but feature many of thes

It’s interesting to note the similarities between theme park design and video game design—both involved worlds that appear “realistic”, but feature many of these tricks to make them more entertaining, more easily navigable, more conducive to discovery. In both cases, the worlds can feel “big”, but a are in reality much compressed from what their real-life dimensions would be, to keep people from getting bored/tired while moving about. Both involve intentional variety/uniqueness, features of interest at regular intervals, shortcut travel methods, landscape features to encourage travel to desired locations, etc. In many ways, this kind of design thinking could be useful in designing real-world spaces as well.

bmitc 3y ago
> In many ways, this kind of design thinking could be useful in designing real-world spaces as well. They already are used. The difference in urban design, which is what I assume you mean by real-world spaces, is that in theme parks and video games, the designers effectively have complete control over the entire system from top tp bottom and bittom to top. In urban design, that is not the case and one needs to deal with decades and centuries old organic, ad-hoc design and evolution of the urban system.
- philwelch 3y ago
  This is exactly the thought process that led Walt Disney to want to build a planned charter city in Florida, the “Experimental Prototype City Of Tomorrow” (EPCOT), inside of Disney World. The plan didn’t survive his death, but the extraordinary legal privileges required to build a charter city survived until very recently.
  - hammock 3y ago
    Florida has The Villages now
Dalewyn 3y ago
I'm always amused at how "cities" in games are often just three to five houses, one or two general stores, and an inn/hotel. Like, I get it, but sometimes the suspension of logic can get a bit challenging. :V
- bombcar 3y ago
  When you realize it’s a city for one person (the player) all the other stuff becomes unimportant. Even the “massive” cities of MMORPGs are the size of a small neighborhood.
- tiltowait 3y ago
  Once you start to notice it, it becomes impossible to ignore. For me, I always notice how silly-short travel distances are. It's only a few minutes' walk between "major cities" in Skyrim, and it's one of the reasons I don't find any game (outside of VR) "immersive". Some games do a better job by means of a different cheat (though I'm not sure you can even call it that). For instance, making it clear you're only accessing a very small part of the city. PoE2, among others, does a great job of this with a "city map" that shows you moving through many districts before reaching the spot where the story actually takes place. Distances, meanwhile, can be demonstrated by other means. The old Fallouts, for instance, had the in-game date swiftly advance while travelling in the overworld.
robertlagrant 3y ago
IKEAs are designed like this as well.
- bombcar 3y ago
  IKEAs design is just stolen from one of Dante’s levels of Hell. The only saving grace is the fire Marshall doesn’t like it so you can follow the fire exit signs to escape.
  - InitialLastName 3y ago
    The real saving grace is that the website tells you where everything is in the warehouse, and nothing stops you from going in the "back" door, picking up what you want, paying and leaving.
  - FreshStart 3y ago
    I particularly love the fuel of lost souls, when you leave the bazaar of decoration, were they compress all the customers shoulder to shoulder, reminding them of the competition before they are allowed to storm the self service furniture pack storage area.
vjk800 3y ago
I've been puzzled by how much more entertaining exploring cities, forests, or whatever is in games compared to the real life. I play games like GTA or Skyrim and, after being awestruck by their vast, beautiful open worlds, go outside to explore the real world in the same way and get bored much faster. Why is that? Real life has more detail and complexity, so real world exploration should be more interesting, right? You probably have the answer there. Even if the real world holds a larger number of interesting things than a game, the distance between the things is so much larger than in games that I have to spend most of the time just navigating between them. In games, I can get from one interesting thing to the next in minutes or seconds.
- iamjackg 3y ago
  Nintendo actually spent a considerable amount of time balancing exactly that metric for Zelda Breath of the Wild, according to a presentation they did in 2017. They replicated some Osaka landmarks in the engine to gauge how to space landmarks in the final game. Here is one of the few remaining traces of this, since they asked for all conference slides to be taken down a few years ago: https://twitter.com/pixelpar/status/1286425979615936513 https://twitter.com/pixelpar/status/1286425979615936513
- dylan604 3y ago
  >go outside to explore the real world in the same way and get bored much faster. Why is that? you don't have to exert any physical effort in a video game. once physical exercise comes into play, the brain calculates an "is this worth it" equation. i'm guessing most decide it's not.
  - yencabulator 3y ago
    This and video games generally let you move at an impossible speed. Sprinting, fast travel, riding a horse a full gallop forever, and so on, never encountering hindering traffic, red lights, or such.
  - js2 3y ago
    As an avid runner and hiker, I have the opposite perspective. A view from a mountain or hill top or distant location in a forest that I had to work to get to is, to me, much more enjoyable than one that is easily accessible. When you happen upon another person, there's a shared acknowledgement of not just the view, but the effort you each put in to get there.
Spellman 3y ago
There's actually a classic GDC Talk about this very subject! They talk about using big visible markers (called weenies) for orientation and to help draw players. Having seemingly multiple paths that actually end up in the same destination. Tiny rewards for exploration. Good stuff Talk: https://www.gdcvault.com/play/1305/Everything-I-Learned-About-Level https://www.gdcvault.com/play/1305/Everything-I-Learned-Abou... Slides: https://mrbossdesign.blogspot.com/2009/03/everything-i-learned-about-game-design.html https://mrbossdesign.blogspot.com/2009/03/everything-i-learn...
paulmd 3y ago
I was just thinking that it was an interesting pivot for Disney from movies/animations into theme parks. You can tell that they obviously put a lot of thought into "experience engineering", and I was kinda wondering what the connection was. Obviously the IP provides a nice jumping-off point, and there are broadly similar themes around building a new reality etc. But it's not intuitively an obvious leap from moviemaking to theme park building. The idea of theme parks as "real life video games" provides some continuity to that.

bmitc 3y ago

> In many ways, this kind of design thinking could be useful in designing real-world spaces as well. They already are used. The difference in urban design, which is what I assume you mean by real-world spaces, is that in theme parks and video games, the designers effectively have complete control over the entire system from top tp bottom and bittom to top. In urban design, that is not the case and one needs to deal with decades and centuries old organic, ad-hoc design and evolution of the urban system.

philwelch 3y ago
This is exactly the thought process that led Walt Disney to want to build a planned charter city in Florida, the “Experimental Prototype City Of Tomorrow” (EPCOT), inside of Disney World. The plan didn’t survive his death, but the extraordinary legal privileges required to build a charter city survived until very recently.
- hammock 3y ago
  Florida has The Villages now

Dalewyn 3y ago

I'm always amused at how "cities" in games are often just three to five houses, one or two general stores, and an inn/hotel. Like, I get it, but sometimes the suspension of logic can get a bit challenging. :V

bombcar 3y ago
When you realize it’s a city for one person (the player) all the other stuff becomes unimportant. Even the “massive” cities of MMORPGs are the size of a small neighborhood.
tiltowait 3y ago
Once you start to notice it, it becomes impossible to ignore. For me, I always notice how silly-short travel distances are. It's only a few minutes' walk between "major cities" in Skyrim, and it's one of the reasons I don't find any game (outside of VR) "immersive". Some games do a better job by means of a different cheat (though I'm not sure you can even call it that). For instance, making it clear you're only accessing a very small part of the city. PoE2, among others, does a great job of this with a "city map" that shows you moving through many districts before reaching the spot where the story actually takes place. Distances, meanwhile, can be demonstrated by other means. The old Fallouts, for instance, had the in-game date swiftly advance while travelling in the overworld.

robertlagrant 3y ago

IKEAs are designed like this as well.

bombcar 3y ago
IKEAs design is just stolen from one of Dante’s levels of Hell. The only saving grace is the fire Marshall doesn’t like it so you can follow the fire exit signs to escape.
- InitialLastName 3y ago
  The real saving grace is that the website tells you where everything is in the warehouse, and nothing stops you from going in the "back" door, picking up what you want, paying and leaving.
- FreshStart 3y ago
  I particularly love the fuel of lost souls, when you leave the bazaar of decoration, were they compress all the customers shoulder to shoulder, reminding them of the competition before they are allowed to storm the self service furniture pack storage area.

vjk800 3y ago

I've been puzzled by how much more entertaining exploring cities, forests, or whatever is in games compared to the real life. I play games like GTA or Skyrim and, after being awestruck by their vast, beautiful open worlds, go outside to explore the real world in the same way and get bored much faster. Why is that? Real life has more detail and complexity, so real world exploration should be more interesting, right? You probably have the answer there. Even if the real world holds a larger number of interesting things than a game, the distance between the things is so much larger than in games that I have to spend most of the time just navigating between them. In games, I can get from one interesting thing to the next in minutes or seconds.

iamjackg 3y ago
Nintendo actually spent a considerable amount of time balancing exactly that metric for Zelda Breath of the Wild, according to a presentation they did in 2017. They replicated some Osaka landmarks in the engine to gauge how to space landmarks in the final game. Here is one of the few remaining traces of this, since they asked for all conference slides to be taken down a few years ago: https://twitter.com/pixelpar/status/1286425979615936513 https://twitter.com/pixelpar/status/1286425979615936513
dylan604 3y ago
>go outside to explore the real world in the same way and get bored much faster. Why is that? you don't have to exert any physical effort in a video game. once physical exercise comes into play, the brain calculates an "is this worth it" equation. i'm guessing most decide it's not.
- yencabulator 3y ago
  This and video games generally let you move at an impossible speed. Sprinting, fast travel, riding a horse a full gallop forever, and so on, never encountering hindering traffic, red lights, or such.
- js2 3y ago
  As an avid runner and hiker, I have the opposite perspective. A view from a mountain or hill top or distant location in a forest that I had to work to get to is, to me, much more enjoyable than one that is easily accessible. When you happen upon another person, there's a shared acknowledgement of not just the view, but the effort you each put in to get there.

Spellman 3y ago

There's actually a classic GDC Talk about this very subject! They talk about using big visible markers (called weenies) for orientation and to help draw players. Having seemingly multiple paths that actually end up in the same destination. Tiny rewards for exploration. Good stuff Talk: https://www.gdcvault.com/play/1305/Everything-I-Learned-About-Level https://www.gdcvault.com/play/1305/Everything-I-Learned-Abou... Slides: https://mrbossdesign.blogspot.com/2009/03/everything-i-learned-about-game-design.html https://mrbossdesign.blogspot.com/2009/03/everything-i-learn...

paulmd 3y ago

I was just thinking that it was an interesting pivot for Disney from movies/animations into theme parks. You can tell that they obviously put a lot of thought into "experience engineering", and I was kinda wondering what the connection was. Obviously the IP provides a nice jumping-off point, and there are broadly similar themes around building a new reality etc. But it's not intuitively an obvious leap from moviemaking to theme park building. The idea of theme parks as "real life video games" provides some continuity to that.