First of all, my apologies to those who don't ‘play videogames’ or are not ‘gamers’. My trade and expertise is in games and I pull many examples from them; however I have tried to incorporate some other media in here as well. But you really should at least play a few games; saying you don't play any makes you look prudish and old. I mean the ideal answer is, “I don't really play games but I guess I played a little X” or “I’m not really into games but I remember having a lot of fun with Y”. I mean you don’t have to be a ‘gamer’ or whatever mass market trash name they have for those digital experiential enthusiasts. Nobody who matters will care if you are a nerd or not but to be honest, games are kinda hip and cool and the new design of expression for the 21st century. So, now is as good a time as any to start to engage with the new culture.
What is an Engagement Curve:
Alright, an Engagement Curve is a chart of the intensity of a book, game, movie, music album or really any experience. It shows the intensity of the moment over time. And while each experience is unique there is a target or ‘ideal’ engagement curve...
...And here is what it looks like:
Alright, an Engagement Curve is a chart of the intensity of a book, game, movie, music album or really any experience. It shows the intensity of the moment over time. And while each experience is unique there is a target or ‘ideal’ engagement curve...
...And here is what it looks like:
The Ideal curve:
It is generally recognized that most media attempts follow the same ideal curve with the same basic components. Simply put the intensity of an experience ping pongs between down moments and up moments and slowly increases over time. Also beyond simple peaks and valleys there are several known moments through an experience:
Down/Up:
People become acclimated to the level of intensity of an experience. Therefore it’s important to provide alternating high and low points to prevent them from getting over acclimated to your high point.
Aesthetic intensity:
Aesthetic intensity:
The Y axis is named the Aesthetic intensity of the experience. Basically people come to an experience because of the feeling they think it will evoke. Aesthetic intensity is the intensity of that target feeling. Keep in mind if you don't engage with a horror experience you aren't going to engage with haunted houses, horror films and horror videogames (in general of course). So as a designer of an experience you need to understand that you shouldn’t add horror (or other feelings) to experiences that people may not want.
Entry level of engagement (red line):
This is what the people expect as they enter an experience, you'll notice the engagement curve never drops below this line because the people are being constantly ‘surprised’ or having their initial expectation exceeded.
Intro:
The Introduction to an experience is about around setting the expectations of the audience and is about easing people into the experience. This is a short time before the hook to set the stage before anything intense begins.
Hook:
Hook:
Very soon after the intro things explode into the hook; this is a moment of high intensity that grabs the audience and makes sure they want to stick around to see what happens next. It’s the first big high intensity moment.
Intermediate actions:
Intermediate actions:
These are moments that bounce between low and high intensity and slowly increase in net intensity. While I show two in the example; there can be more.
Climax:
This is the moment of peak intensity; this is the big finish. This is the moment of most intensity in a media.
Denouement:
Denouement:
In stories this is where the main part of the story just wraps up; it’s not a point of high intensity, its just a point of bringing things to a close. It’s like the moments after last call in a bar, it’s your last drink and nothing more exciting is going to happen.
Timing is Everything:Experiences happen over time, so it’s important to take into account the speed of events in the the experience itself. This will help to inform you when things need to happen. Now these are not typically marked on an engagement curve; but they are needed for the creation of an experience. Remember this is an art not a science; things will not be exact.
Tempo:
This is the speed at which an experience happens. When reading a book hours can fly by, and in a car accident time seems to move in slow motion. This is the difference in tempo of the experience.
Take for instance games. Generally the slowest games are turn based, then followed by real time MMO esque RPGs, while faster games tend to be 3rd person Action Games and First Person Shooters and 3d and 2d Fighting games. While this could be measured in beats per minute (as in music) its most likely to be measured as the length of a beat.
Also look at Total War, its real time strategy combat is at a fairly slow tempo (like the turn-based overworld portion of the game) Conversely, X-Com : UFO Defense has turn based combat elements with real time overworld map which is slow moving (also note how both games with a real time element allow the player to dilate time; showing how slow that tempo really is)
Also look at Total War, its real time strategy combat is at a fairly slow tempo (like the turn-based overworld portion of the game) Conversely, X-Com : UFO Defense has turn based combat elements with real time overworld map which is slow moving (also note how both games with a real time element allow the player to dilate time; showing how slow that tempo really is)
Beat:
The smallest relevant measure of time. This is the amount of time it takes for people to measure a change in intensity of the experience. ie, if nothing happens for a beat (ie ‘you missed a beat’) the people notice that something is off. For the purposes of most experiences it should be measured in seconds.
(Sucker Punch (Infamous) stated that it took roughly 7 seconds for players to break concentration, while in Counter Strike the rounds are capped at three minutes and are often over before half of that, and hours just seem to sink away in turn based games like Civilization...)
(Sucker Punch (Infamous) stated that it took roughly 7 seconds for players to break concentration, while in Counter Strike the rounds are capped at three minutes and are often over before half of that, and hours just seem to sink away in turn based games like Civilization...)
Going Deeper:
There are some other axioms of the engagement curve remaining to be explained. I will do so, now.
Fractal
First the engagement curve is a fractal down to a small collection of beats (down to what would musically be called a measure or bar). What this means is every part of the experience you are attempting to design should follow the parts of the engagement curve. (as a moment, and as a whole)
Prelude
Secondly the engagement with the experience starts before the experience actually happens. People are thinking about and anticipating what will happen before they even start. When you hear your favorite band is coming to town for a concert you get your tickets and you get hyped and then you are counting down the days
.
Prelude
Secondly the engagement with the experience starts before the experience actually happens. People are thinking about and anticipating what will happen before they even start. When you hear your favorite band is coming to town for a concert you get your tickets and you get hyped and then you are counting down the days
.
Third some times media breaks it’s style, in music this can be a guitar solo, in games this can be a driving mission, sometimes it even incorporates a change in tempo as well. so if you’re going to remix the parts of your experience, do it in the middle. Its kinda misleading if it happens in the beginning, and really weird when it happens in the end. If you want have a misleading beginning, you may actually want to use this as a technique (Horror movies, Bioshock: Infinite, and many songs use this tactic).
Everything has curves
Finally every experience has a corresponding engagement curve. As a caveat, a structured experience dependent on player interaction does not always ‘go according to plan’. Let’s take a gander at these impending disasters...
“Overstays its welcome”
This is a common in experiences people DON’T enjoy. It even tries to be an engagement curve too; it just doesn't have enough interesting stuff. To be honest, this really just means your experience needs to be shorter; you are trying to make it live too long. For instance the obscure french film “Le Jettee” has a running time of 28 minutes and is told entirely with still images. Its basically the best slideshow you have ever seen. However if had lasted as long as “12 Monkeys”, a film 5 times as long, it would b
“This gets boring after a while.”
“This gets boring after a while.”
This is attempting to map the typical experience known as “Grinding” in the RPG community. This is basically doing the same repetitive actions for incremental progress and advancement often through extrinsic motivators (gold, exp, anything simply represented by increasing a number). The nuances of why this is bad is a whole post in and of itself. Also some people really engage with grinding; this curve is NOT representative of those people.
“That person at the party”
You’ve met that person, you know the one who’s really not that interesting. Sometimes they are really really cute so you wanted to talk to them; sometimes you were introduced and they won't stop talking; sometimes they are just plain weird... Yeah this is that engagement curve.
“Expectations are too high”
You need to market your experience correctly. If you promise people the world and you deliver them all of Eurasia, they are going to be disappointed (I was told there would be kangaroos and Mandrels, what is this crap?).
You need to market your experience correctly. If you promise people the world and you deliver them all of Eurasia, they are going to be disappointed (I was told there would be kangaroos and Mandrels, what is this crap?).
“It’s a great game/movie/ect but there is a weak start”
Some games are actually really good; but they have a slow start or punishing beginning or some films just take forever to get done with that backstory... for whatever reason this media is just slow to get going. Many times however the payoff is worth it, and often when you revisit the media do you only remember that, wow... that was slow to begin. This is also a very easy curve to make, basically string all your moments from least to greatest intensity.
Final caveat
Final caveat
The ideal engagement curve is kinda a lie. The ideal is almost always good but there are other engagement curves you could shoot for. For instance you may actually choose to have a slow start to mislead your audience to surprise them later. You may also may want to create a very high intensity experience and this has its own curve. It tends to work best if the audience has some expectations about what the experience is going to be and they don't need to be eased into it.
What’s the Use?
So what do you actually use an engagement curve for? it’s cool and all but how do I turn it into an actionable item? It’s not that bad. Start by making a list of moments then arrange them by their intensity. But how do I figure out how intense something is? Simple; guess and test it. Make a big guess and try out your experience. Make changes and adjustments to how you ordered things and maybe do some things differently. Iterate. I can almost guarantee things will get better. And that is why you should use the engagement curve; it gives you a baseline to measure against so you can iterate and make an experience better in an informed manner.
So what do you actually use an engagement curve for? it’s cool and all but how do I turn it into an actionable item? It’s not that bad. Start by making a list of moments then arrange them by their intensity. But how do I figure out how intense something is? Simple; guess and test it. Make a big guess and try out your experience. Make changes and adjustments to how you ordered things and maybe do some things differently. Iterate. I can almost guarantee things will get better. And that is why you should use the engagement curve; it gives you a baseline to measure against so you can iterate and make an experience better in an informed manner.
Exercise:
First, listen to some records by your favorite band. Analyse how they form the engagement curve in each song and through each record (not all records have a good engagement curve; if you can find them try and figure out why).
Now, make a playlist of your favorite band (or bands, but try and stay in the same genre), but this time instead of smashing together all the songs you love and putting them on shuffle, order and arrange them to form an ideal engagement curve. You may find yourself picking out some songs you didn't expect. This should be roughly 40-60 minutes in length.
Extra Credit:
Extra Credit:
Go to a concert and listen to the engagement curve generated from the set list.
In closing
So this is the first iteration of this document that I’ve written; so I want to hear what you have to say and I will make updates and changes as needed. Please comment and tell me what you think.
