Space of possibility and pacing in casual Game Design

For me I found this article to be quite interesting, we all know what pacing means but what does it mean to pace a game, what does it do that's so important to make a game "fun"?

The answer is that by pacing a game it allows the designers to indirectly make the players experience through mechanics, dynamics and aesthetics to create relaxation, tension and repetition. However this is just a simple way to describe what pacing does in a game; there is more to it then that.

So how do designers work out how to pace the game? With the two arches of pacing, the upper arch and the lower arch of pacing.

Now imagine two circles one big circle and one smaller circle.

The large circle is the upper arch of pacing and this represents the long term relation between the player and game, and how much time he/she is willing to invest before becoming frustrated or bored and abandoning play.

The smaller circle is the lower arch of pacing and within that are movement impetus, tension, threat and tempo, but what do these things do?

Movement impetus is the will or the desire of the player to move forward through a level, and how willing the player is to make advancement decisions.

e.g. Movement impetus in plants vs zombies represents the players will to keep planting his defences and waiting for the outcome of the play session either defeating the zombies or the zombies eat the player characters brain (how lovely) instead of abandoning play out of frustration/ perceived defeat or boredom.

Tension is the perceived (fore sight) danger that the player might become the weaker side of the conflict.

Threat is the actual power of the opposing forces in the conflict.

Tempo is the "intensity" of play, it is the time taken between each significant decision made by the player. The slower tempo provides greater space of possibility, where as if the tempo is faster the space of possibility gets less.

As helpful and interesting as this article was there is one thing I don't quite agree with. Venturelli states that when a game is finished it becomes boring. This is not always true in many cases games can still be fun after finishing with re-play value. Although re-play value is completely dependant on the player and how much they liked the game can add hours of extra enjoyment and gives the player a feel of continuation as if the characters  story isn't finished just yet.

There are several games from my own experience that I have finished, but I still enjoy playing them such as:

Fable (The Lost Chapters)
Gauntlet Dark Legacy
Gears of War
God of War (trilogy/hand held games)
Kingdom Hearts
Kingdom Hearts 2

and these are just a few of many.