How far does your money take you?

Air New Zealand has a neat feature that displays how far you can fly for your dollar.  By intuitively adjusting the expense slider, you can tune your trip to see exactly what locations are available to you, within your budget.

On the one hand, this is quite handy to get a broad look at the destinations your money will take you.  On the other hand, however, how often do you travel without a destination in mind?  While this is a neat plaything, I suspect it will never be much more than just that: a toy.

In game design, it’s important to fill the player’s experience with entertaining diversions and fun things to explore, but they should always have an underlying purpose–a function that they serve.  Games aren’t utilities, however, so a feature’s purpose may simply be to enhance the player’s emotional state.  Particle effects, for example, are not strictly “necessary”, but they often reward players with a satisfying display of achievement, and serve as clear positive feedback.

Do you ever implement a feature or mechanic in your game without justifying the reason for its existence?  How does it (or does it not) complicate the game?  Does its emotional value justify the cost spent developing it?

[Read More] [via Information Aesthetics]

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 4th, 2007 at 12:36 pm and is filed under Game Design, Interface Design. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.