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Chapter 2.2 Game Design

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Title: Chapter 2.2 Game Design


1
Chapter 2.2Game Design
2
Overview
  • Game design as
  • full-time occupation is historically new
  • field of practical study even newer

3
Overview
  • Folk games Costikyan
  • Traditional games with cultural origins
  • Examples
  • Tic-Tac-Toe (Naughts and Crosses)
  • Chess
  • Go
  • Backgammon
  • Poker

4
Overview
  • This introduction covers
  • Terms
  • Concepts
  • Approach
  • All from a workaday viewpoint

5
Overview
  • There is no one right way to design
  • There are many successful approaches
  • Specific requirements and constraints of each
    project and team determine what works and what
    does not.
  • This introduction is but a scratch

6
The Language of Games
  • Game development a young industry
  • Standards are still being formulated
  • Theory
  • Practice
  • Terminology

7
The Language of Games
  • Debate continues over high-level views
  • Lack of standard (concrete) definitions
  • Game
  • Play
  • High-level concepts tricky to articulate

8
The Language of Games
  • Workplace differences usually low-level
  • Working terminology
  • Example
  • actors instead of agents
  • geo instead of model
  • Workflow how things get done
  • Individual responsibilities
  • Processes under which work is performed

9
The Language of Games
  • Why do we play?
  • Not a designers problem
  • What is the nature of games?
  • Not a designers problem
  • How is a game formed of parts?
  • A designers problem

10
The Language of Games
  • Our simplistic high-level definitions
  • Easy to modify to fit multiple cultures
  • Practical over metaphysically true
  • play
  • game
  • aesthetics

11
Play and Game
  • Play
  • Interactions to elicit emotions
  • Game
  • Object of rule-bound play
  • General enough to cover everything

12
Aesthetics and Frame
  • Aesthetics
  • Emotional responses during play
  • Naïve practical approach, not classical
  • Frame
  • The border of a games context
  • Inside the frame is in the game
  • Outside the frame is real life

13
Approaching Design
  • Computer games are an art form
  • Game design practices can be taught
  • Technical discipline like music, film, poetry
  • The art of making dynamic models

14
Approaching Design
  • A model represents something
  • Mental/Cognitive
  • Concepts
  • Beliefs
  • Maps
  • Examples
  • Locations
  • Relationships
  • Mathematical
  • Equations
  • Formulas
  • Algorithms

15
Approaching Design
  • Abstract model
  • Conceptual and idealized
  • A tool for investigating specific questions
  • Simplifies thinking to help understand problems
  • May include assumptions thought to be false
  • Abstract game
  • One rule
  • The piece is moved to the open square

16
A Player-Game Model
  • A model of the player game relationship

17
A Player-Game Model
  • Mechanics
  • Things the player does
  • Interface
  • Communication between player and game
  • System
  • Underlying structure and behavior

18
Control and State Variables
  • Defined by Isaacs in Differential Games
  • Control variables
  • Inputs from players
  • State variables
  • Quantities indicating game state

19
Play Mechanics
  • Gameplay
  • Feelings of playing a particular game
  • Activities engaged in a particular game
  • (Play/game) Mechanics
  • Specific to game activities
  • What the player does

20
Seven Stages of Action
  • Execution
  • Intention to act
  • Sequence of action
  • Execution of action sequence
  • Evaluation
  • Evaluating interpretations
  • Interpreting perceptions
  • Perceiving states

21
Seven Stages of Action
  • A goal is formed
  • Models the desired state
  • The desired result of an action
  • Examples
  • Have a glass of water in hand
  • Capture a queen
  • Taste ice cream

22
Seven Stages of Action
  • Goals turned into intentions to act
  • Specific statements of what is to be done

23
Seven Stages of Action
  • Intentions put into an action sequence
  • The order internal commands will be performed

24
Seven Stages of Action
  • The action sequence is executed
  • The player manipulates control variables

25
Seven Stages of Action
  • The state of the game is perceived
  • State variables are revealed via the interface

26
Seven Stages of Action
  • Player interprets their perceptions
  • Interpretations based upon a model of the system

27
Seven Stages of Action
  • Player evaluates the interpretations
  • Current states are compared with intentions and
    goals

28
Seven Stages of Action
  • Donald Normans approximate model
  • Actions not often in discrete stages
  • Not all actions progress through all stages

29
Seven Stages of Action
  • Scales to
  • an individual mechanic
  • A primary element
  • Examples
  • Move
  • Shoot
  • Talk
  • an entire game
  • A generalized model of interaction

30
Designer and Player Models
  • Systems are built from designer mental models
  • Design models may only anticipate player goals

31
Designer and Player Models
  • Players build mental models from mechanics
  • Based upon interactions with the system image
  • The reality of the system in operation
  • Not from direct communication with designers
  • Player and designer models can differ
    significantly

32
Core Mechanics
  • Typical patterns of action
  • Fundamental mechanics cycled repeatedly
  • Examples
  • Action shooters run, shoot, and explore
  • Strategy game explore, expand, exploit,
    exterminate
  • referred to as the four Xs

33
Premise
  • The metaphors of action and setting
  • Directs the player experience
  • Provides a context in which mechanics fit
  • Players map game states to the premise

34
Premise
  • Story is the typical example of premise
  • Time
  • Place
  • Characters
  • Relationships
  • Motivations
  • Etc.

35
Premise
  • Premise may also be abstract
  • Tetris operates under a metaphor
  • The metaphor arranging colored shapes
  • Encompasses all game elements
  • Player discussions use the language of the premise

36
Premise
  • Games are models
  • Activities being modeled form premise
  • Actions may appear similar in model
  • Usually are fundamentally quite different
  • Sports games are good examples
  • Playing video games isnt like playing the sport

37
Premise
  • Goes beyond setting and tone
  • Alters the players mental model
  • Basis of player understanding and strategy

38
Premise
  • Possible
  • Capable of happening in the real world
  • Plausible
  • Possible within the unique world of premise
  • Makes sense within the games premise
  • Consistent with the premise as understood

39
Choice and Outcome
  • Choice
  • A question asked of the player
  • Outcome
  • The end result of a given choice
  • Possibility space
  • Represents the set of possible events
  • A landscape of choice and outcome

40
Choice and Outcome
  • Consequence or Weight
  • The significance of an outcome
  • Greater consequences alter the course of the game
    more significantly
  • Choices are balanced first by consequence

41
Choice and Outcome
  • Well-designed choice
  • Often desirable and undesirable effects
  • Should relate to player goals
  • Balanced against neighboring choices
  • Too much weight to every choice is melodrama
  • Orthogonal choices distinct from others
  • Not just shades of grey

42
Qualities of Choice
  • Terms in which to discuss choices
  • Hollow lacking consequence
  • Obvious leaves no choice to be made
  • Uninformed arbitrary decision
  • Dramatic strongly connects to feelings
  • Weighted good and bad in every choice
  • Immediate effects are immediate
  • Long-term effects over extended period
  • Orthogonal choices distinct from each other

43
Goals and Objectives
  • Objectives
  • Designed tasks players must perform
  • Rigid requirements formal
  • Goals
  • An intentional outcome
  • Notions that direct player action
  • Scales all levels of motivation
  • From selecting particular strategies
  • to basic motor actions (e.g. pressing a button)

44
Goals and Objectives
  • Objectives and goals can differ
  • Players goals reflect their understanding of the
    game
  • Designers must consider how the game communicates
    with players
  • Affordances the apparent ways something can be
    used

45
Resources
  • Resources
  • Things used by agents to reach goals
  • To be meaningful, they must be
  • Useful provide some value
  • Limited in total or rate of supply

46
Economies
  • Economies
  • Systems of supply, distribution, consumption
  • Questions regarding game economies
  • What resources exist?
  • How and when will resources be used?
  • How and when will resources be supplied?
  • What are their limits?

47
Player Strategy
  • People usually reason with commonsense
  • A view of linear causation cause and effect
  • Complex systems do not behave linearly
  • Players need information to support linear
    strategy

48
Game Theory
  • Game Theory
  • Branch of economics
  • Studies decision making
  • Utility
  • A measure of desire associated with an outcome
  • Payoffs
  • The utility value for a given outcome
  • Preference
  • The bias of players towards utility

49
Game Theory
  • Rational Players
  • Abstract model players not real people
  • Always try to maximize their potential utility
  • Solve problems using pure logic
  • Always fully aware of the state of the game

50
Game Theory
  • Games of skill
  • One-player games
  • Outcomes determined solely by choices
  • Games of Chance
  • One-player games
  • Outcomes determined in whole or part by nature
    (chance)
  • Games of Strategy
  • Competitions between two or more players

51
Game Theory
  • Decision under certainty
  • Players know the outcome of any decision
  • Risky decisions
  • Probabilities of nature are known
  • Decision under uncertainty
  • Probabilities of nature are unknown

52
Interface
  • Interface
  • Input, presentation, and feedback.
  • Input
  • Player to game
  • Output
  • Game to player

53
Interface
  • Contains both hardware, software, and performance
    elements.
  • Hardware such as game pads
  • Software such as engines
  • Performance such as pressing a button

54
Interface
  • Graphical user interface (GUI)
  • A visual paradigm of control

55
Interface
  • Typical perspectives
  • First-person
  • Over-the-shoulder (OTS)
  • Overhead (top-down)
  • Side
  • Isometric

56
Interface
  • General categories of audio
  • Music
  • Sound effects
  • Dialog

57
Interface
  • Music
  • Powerful tool for establishing mood and theme

58
Interface
  • Controls
  • Physical input devices
  • Control inputs
  • User manipulations of the controls
  • They are not strategies
  • Example a sequence of buttons to perform a combo
  • Strategies involve deciding when to perform

59
Interface
  • Key map or control table
  • A diagram showing control input, action, and
    context

60
Interface
  • Control diagrams
  • Show input, action, and context

61
Interface
  • Front-end
  • In application software
  • The visible portion of the application
  • In games
  • GUI elements not displayed during play

62
Interface
  • HUD (Head-Up Display)
  • Displays during play
  • Shows and other information difficult to present
    directly in the game environment
  • Examples
  • Scores
  • Resource levels
  • Mini Map
  • Chat
  • Alerts
  • Level

63
Interface
  • Mapping
  • An understood relationship between two things
  • Especially the relationship of a model to its
    subject
  • Examples

64
HCI and Cognitive Ergonomics
  • HCI Human-Computer Interaction
  • Study of
  • Communication between users and computers
  • How people design, build, and use interfaces
  • Better support for cooperative work
  • Cognitive Ergonomics
  • Analyzes the cognitive representations and
    processes involved with performing tasks

65
Design of Everyday Things
  • Normans five principles of design
  • Visibility
  • Making the parts visible
  • Mappings
  • Understandable relationships between controls and
    actions
  • Affordances
  • The perceived uses of an object
  • Constraints
  • Prevent the user from doing things they shouldnt
  • Feedback
  • Reporting what has been done and accomplished

66
Systems
  • System
  • A set of interrelated components
  • Their function and relationships form a whole
  • Architecture
  • The particular arrangement of system elements
  • Game systems exist to enable play mechanics
  • Relationships between components determine how
    the system works to produce results

67
Systems
  • Objects
  • Pieces of a system
  • Attributes
  • Properties determining what objects are
  • Behaviors
  • Actions the objects can perform
  • Relationships
  • How the behavior and attributes of objects affect
    each other while the system operates

68
Systems
  • Two general approaches to design
  • Special case
  • Experiences built one scene/level at a time
  • Anticipate states while pre-scripting events
  • Solved by discovering the intentions of the
    designer
  • Systemic
  • General behaviors are designed
  • Scenes/Levels are specific configuations
  • Some events may still be pre-scripted
  • Solved by understanding the system

69
Systems
  • Emergent complexity
  • Behaviors that cannot be predicted simply from
    the rules of a system
  • Emergence
  • Coined by George Henry Lewes in 1873
  • See John Conways Game of Life

70
Systems
  • Dynamics
  • The behavior of systems over time
  • Generalizing dynamic behavior is hard
  • Dynamics determined by a given architecture

71
Systems
  • Cybernetics
  • Study of communication, control, and regulation

72
Systems
  • A basic cybernetic system has
  • Sensor detects a condition
  • Thermometer
  • Comparator evaluates the information
  • Switch
  • Activator alters the environment when triggered
    by the comparator

73
Systems
  • Feedback
  • The portion of a systems output that is returned
    into the system
  • Feedback Loop
  • The path taken by the feedback

74
Systems
  • Positive feedback
  • Leads to runaway behavior
  • Difficult to make use of
  • Negative feedback
  • Leads to goal seeking behaviors
  • Most common form in systems

75
Systems
  • Negative feedback
  • Stabilizes the game
  • Forgives the loser
  • Prolongs the game
  • Magnifies late successes
  • Positive feedback
  • Destabilizes the game
  • Rewards the winner
  • Can end the game
  • Magnifies early successes
  • Marc Leblanc

76
Systems
  • System Dynamics
  • Created by Jay Forrester 1956, MIT
  • A discipline for modeling and simulation
  • Originally a tool for policy analysis
  • Applicable to any system

77
Constraints
  • Platform
  • General description of hardware and software
  • Personal computer PC, Mac, etc.
  • Console Game Cube, PlayStation, Xbox, etc.
  • Handheld DS, Game Boy Advance, PSP, etc.
  • Mobile device Cel Phones, NGage, PDA, etc.
  • Arcade custom vending games (e.g. Time Crisis)

78
Constraints
  • Game Saves
  • Save triggers
  • Save-anywhere
  • Save points
  • Coded text saves

79
Genres
  • Genre a category describing generalities of
    conventions, style, and content

80
Genres
  • Action
  • Adventure
  • Arcade
  • Casual
  • Education
  • Fighting
  • First-person shooter
  • Platform
  • Racing
  • Rhythm
  • Role-Playing (RPG)
  • Simulation
  • Sports
  • Strategy
  • Puzzle
  • Traditional

81
Audiences
  • Target audience
  • Group of expected consumers
  • Demographics
  • Study of relevant economic and social statistics
    about a given population
  • Demographic variables
  • The relevant factors

82
Audiences
  • Market
  • Demographic segmentation of consumers
  • Market segments
  • Smaller sub-segment of the market more tightly
    defined
  • Demographic profile
  • Typical consumer attributes in a market

83
Audiences
  • Heavy Users
  • Those of the numeric minority of potential users
    responsible for majority of sales of any product
  • 80/20 rule
  • Hardcore gamer
  • Game industry term for heavy video game users
  • Casual gamer
  • Game industry term for all other gamers

84
Audiences
  • Typically assumptions of the hardcore
  • Play games over long sessions
  • Discuss games frequently and at length
  • Knowledgeable about the industry
  • Higher threshold for frustration
  • Desire to modify or extend games creatively
  • Have the latest game systems
  • Engage in competition with themselves, the game,
    and others

85
Audiences
  • Why We Play Games Nicole Lazzaro
  • Internal experience
  • Enjoyment from visceral activities
  • Hard fun
  • Challenge of strategy and problem solving
  • Easy fun
  • Intrigue and curiosity exploration and
    adventure
  • Social experience
  • Stimulating social faculties competition,
    teamwork, bonding, and recognition

86
Iterating
  • Waterfall method
  • Development methodology
  • Design and production are broken into phases
  • Iterative development
  • Practice of producing things incrementally
  • Refining and re-refining the product

87
Iterating
  • Prototypes
  • Early working models of the product
  • Used to test ideas and techniques
  • Physical prototypes
  • Non-electronic models physical materials
  • Software prototypes
  • Used regularly during iterative development

88
Iterating
  • Software testing
  • Process of verifying performance and reliability
    of a software product
  • Tester
  • Person trained in methods of evaluation
  • Bug
  • Discrepancy between expected and actual behavior
  • Problem/Bug report
  • Description of the behavior of the discrepancy

89
Iterating
  • Focus test
  • Testing session using play-testers
  • Testers represent the target audience
  • Lots of feedback at one time
  • Data can be compromised by group think

90
Iterating
  • Tuning
  • Developing solutions by adjusting systems
  • Iterations are faster
  • Changes are less dramatic
  • Balance
  • Equilibrium in a relationship
  • Player relationships, mechanics, systems, etc.

91
Iterating
  • Intransitive relationships
  • Multiple elements offer weaknesses and strengths
    relative to each other as a whole
  • Balanced as a group
  • Example Rock-Paper-Scissors (RPS)

92
Creativity
  • Ability to create
  • Ability to produce an idea, action, or object
    considered new and valuable

93
Creativity
  • Classic approach - Graham Wallace
  • Preparation
  • Background research and comprehension
  • Incubation
  • Mulling things over
  • Insight
  • Sudden illumination Eureka!
  • Evaluation
  • Validating revealed insights
  • Elaboration
  • Transforming the idea into substance

94
Creativity
  • Brainstorming
  • Generating ideas without discrimination
  • Evaluation after elaboration
  • Can be unfocused

95
Creativity
  • Six Thinking Hats
  • White Hat neutral and objective
  • Red Hat intuition, gut reaction
  • Black Hat gloomy, naysayer
  • Yellow Hat Pollyannaish, optimistic
  • Green Hat growth and creativity
  • Blue Hat process and control
  • Symbolize perspective worn by people involved in
    the creative endeavor
  • Edward de Bono

96
Inspiration
  • Board games
  • Spatial relationships
  • Card games
  • Resource management
  • Paper RPGs
  • Dynamic narratives
  • Books
  • Fantasy and agency
  • Sports
  • Team competition
  • Film
  • Continuity techniques
  • Television
  • Serialized stories
  • Music
  • Temporal systems
  • Martial arts
  • Discipline in action
  • Children
  • Invention

97
Communication
  • Documentation
  • Methods vary widely
  • Written, descriptive model of the game
  • Depth varies according to the needs of the game

98
Communication
  • Treatment
  • A brief, general description of the game and the
    fundamental concepts
  • May include
  • Concept statement
  • Goals and objectives
  • Core mechanics and systems
  • Competitive analysis
  • Licensing and IP information
  • Target platform and audience
  • Scope
  • Key features

99
Communication
  • Other document types may include
  • Preliminary design document
  • Initial Design Document
  • Revised Design Document
  • General Design Document
  • Expanded Design Document
  • Technical Design Document
  • Final Design Document

100
Communication
  • Flowcharts
  • A typical technique for diagramming steps in a
    process
  • Most developers are familiar

101
Communication
102
Communication
  • Associative diagram
  • Drawing that helps manage and organize
    information visually
  • Mind Map
  • A style of associative diagram
  • Key words and figures are placed on branches

103
Psychology
  • Working Memory
  • Holds roughly 7 2 items at one time while other
    cognitive operations on them

104
Psychology
  • Attention
  • Method of enhancing perceptions relative to other
    stimuli in the same environment
  • How we focus on important things
  • Limited capacity

105
Psychology
  • Classical conditioning
  • Reaction to stimulus is conditioned by pairing
    with another stimulus that elicits the desired
    response naturally

106
Psychology
  • Unconditioned stimulus Meat
  • Unconditioned response Salivation over meat
  • Conditioned stimulus Tone
  • Conditioned response Salivation over tone

107
Psychology
  • Operant conditioning
  • Learning by encouraging or discouraging
  • Operant
  • A response the action in question
  • Example pressing a button
  • Reinforcement contingency
  • Consistent relationship between the operant and a
    result in the environment

108
Psychology
  • Reinforcers
  • Increase the probability an action will be
    repeated
  • Positive reinforcement
  • Positive stimulus that reinforces the behavior
  • Ex. Use umbrella and be dry
  • Negative reinforcement
  • The removal or prevention of a negative stimulus
  • Ex. Use umbrella and keep from getting wet
  • Punishment
  • Reduces the likelihood of a behavior with a
    stimulus
  • Ex. Being burned by a hot stove
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