Defining Games

Defining Games

Hey again followers. This posy is all about what defines games, and how people can get the right knowledge and mind-set to be able to start designing games.

Art of Games Design

First off we looked at The Art of Game Design by Jesse Schell and I have to say, as I read through the pages it felt a lot like I was reading some kind of self-help book. Like it was treating me like I was some kind of in-the-closet game designer who was too scared to tell people what my lot in life was. But by the time I got to the end I felt… I suppose inspired would be the best comment to make.

It sounds strange, but towards the end I was reading with a smile on my face, Jesse Shell’s words are piercing, giving a detailed look into all the different things that a games designer needs to look at and take into account, but without doubt, my favourite part was at the end there. (No, not because I had finished reading)

“I am a games designer.

I am a games designer.

I am a games designer.

I am a games designer.”

It’s almost strange how that one sentence can mean so much, and be so relevant. And there was a part in there about the difference between looking at someone and seeing someone, which in itself was quite the life lesson. Taking the time to stop and really look at something can allow a person to gain a deeper understanding. This is one of the greater skills that game designers need, the ability to look at something and see what other people can’t.

I can see why our tutor wanted us to read this one first. We as games designers need certain skills, like creative abilities. Not just art, but writing, imagination and know-how to use different ways to express ourselves. Like me, I am an artist/writer that’s how I express my talents right now, but when (or if) I learn to use code, that won’t mean my pencil will take a back seat, I’ll just have another way to bring my ideas to life. A complicated, extremely time-consuming way, but a way none the less.

Also I get the main message loud and clear; there are a hell of a lot of people who turn their nose up when I tell them what I want to do with the rest of my life. Or even worse, they would give that “Oh, that sounds like fun” remark (I really hate that one). But that’s life, you just let it slide you know? However, after reading just those seven pages, I can let it slide now with a smile, because I know what I am – I’m a games designer.

I know, that sounds corny as hell, but I actually enjoyed reading this, and hell when I get the time I’ll look into the book in full. I mean I really took something from this, is that weird?

I have No words & I must Design

So reading through this article I was instantly treated to the phrase, “What is Good Gameplay”. Okay, I’ll admit right here and now that I laughed at this, thinking that as a gamer and a self-proclaimed game designer I had a pretty good idea of what good gameplay is. Turns out, I was miles off.

Our man talks about how gameplay as a word of itself is a “pretty useless term” (Costikyan. Paragraph 2) and saying that good gameplay is an ineffective way to describe the amount of effort that when into the game. For example, when you play something and say “Halo is a great game” that is not enough to tell anyone about the amount of effort and man power that when into it, the quality of the outcome, the graphics and sounds not to mention the engine running the thing among other elements.

While I sort of agree and I can see the road that he’s going down, I'm not fully convinced that Good gameplay means nothing. I mean, when you play a pretty mediocre game these days, you just say to your mates that it was “pretty good” - they interpret that to mean that while you enjoyed the game, it didn’t wow you.

Costikyan goes on to whittle down every aspect of the games genre, like he talks about what a flimsy word Interactive is and why gamers are so addicted to competitive play. It’s strange reading something like this, were the author is taking everything you thought you knew and showing you that, in fact that’s not the case. You know what it’s like? It’s like telling your friend about that time you fell into a tank of piranha, managing to beat the odds and make it out alive, only for him to cut in and tell you that actually piranha wouldn’t come near you if you fell in. Yeah, you know the type.

Yes, so anyway, that’s the kind of feeling that I was getting as I delved deeper and deeper into the article. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that Costikyan is deliberately trying to belittle the subject or anything, he’s just breaking it all down to the very cores so that we as students of the art can see what exactly this thing know as a “Game” really is. I’m just saying that it seems like he is enjoying it.

“One of the most difficult tasks people can perform, however much others may despise it, is the invention of good games.” Is the quote (from Jung) that he finishes on, and I like it. It sounds like an ancient Chinese proverb or something, very deep.

I mean, after reading the article (and a dictionary for some parts) what I figure is that Costikyan is talking about how a gamer’s experience within the game is determined by how much the player is willing to immerse themselves inside the universe that they are thrown into. They have a goal as all games do, but a game needs to allow the player (or at least give the illusion of) having goals within goals.

Take classic Mario games, the idea was to save the princess, but also, you had a timer to see how quickly you could do the level in, you would try not to die or take damage from enemies, as well as score and coin collecting. All of these different things do not affect the outcome of the game; you still end it by saving what’s-her-face, but it makes the player take into account that they are there.

Gamasutra

So this time around, we had a quick peak at Gamasutra, by Doug Church. Interestingly it went over a few things that I hadn’t read about in other articles, so this was a welcome change of pace. In this extract, Church talked about certain tools that game designers needed to use to not only make a game but to make a fun game, so naturally, I was all ears. These tools weren’t computer based nor physical things, but were instead used as metaphors so we can get a better picture of what the author was trying to say. Two tools that Church mentioned) are Intention and Consequence.

These are two things that game designers really need to get down pretty quick, intention being the one that gives the player a choice within the game and consequence being what the player will have to deal with once he/she has made the choice. A good games designer will make it so that the game will include at least one of these choices but on a grand scale that may even change the entire gameplay for example if you choose to be a “bad guy” then you will help bring darkness and evil to the world but if you choose the “good guy” route then you will try to keep the dark at bay.

That being said, a huge choice and consequence is not vital to make a good game, in fact many, many games go on without a huge game effecting choice like this and settle for lots and lots of little choice s that grant small but noticeable changes in the gameplay. For example, every FPS a-going.

The game constantly gives you the little choices of which gun you want to pick up and use, and while it won’t affect the game on a huge scale (like in terms of story) it will allow the player to kill enemies quicker or in a different way than normal.

As said, alongside choices are the consequences. Consequences are hard to balance in games where the choices don’t affect gameplay on a large scale, because the choices wasn’t quite as clear as taking the good path or the bad path. Let’s take FPS games again, and for this example we’ll look at a game known as Duke Nukem (shudder). In this game, there would be a boss fight and the game would treat you to a weapon cache before the boss which is all well and good but what a lot of gamers complained about (amongst lots of other things) was the fact that if you didn’t take the particular explosive gun then you wouldn’t be able to beat the boss. Worse still, the game didn’t force you to take the weapon but neither did it warn you at all that the boss would be unbeatable without it. This is the kind of consequence that Church talks about and points out how often it has brought about the fault of games simply because the players felt cheated by the consequence of a decision that they weren’t even aware they had made.

There were a few other “tools” that Church mentioned. Things that you would expect to make a good game like Story, Conflict (after all, what’s a game without conflict), and other things like Co-Operation and Confusion. This by no stretch means that all games must include these to become great/successful, I mean look at FARMVILLE. Not an ounce of violence in there at all (save for the abuse you throw at people for not helping you out on the farm) yet still, people play it all the time – Actually I don’t play FaceBook games so replace Farmville with whatever’s popular right now ;)

I think the point that Doug Church is trying to make here is that you need to pick which tools are best for whatever job you need to do, a quote that many of us have heard time and again, but now that I’ve been able to identify what some of these “tools” I fell a lot better about my chances in the Game designing boots. Good show.

MDA: A Formal Approach to Game Design and Game Research

This week, we’ve had a brief look at the above title by a collation of Robin Hunicke, Marc LeBlanc, Robert Zubek, all well-known Game designers or at least well known writers of Game Design articles.

It made some interesting points and strangely enough there was a lot in this passage that the above didn’t really go into. You’d think that books on game design would start to resemble each other after a bit but I’m happy to say that so far each one has been different enough so that I don’t feel that the same message is being thrown at me again and again, but instead there is actually a new message for each of the titles.

Anyway, the main message of the text was the different views that game designer and game player have about the same game. They went into detail about how easy it is for a game designer (whilst making a game) to forget that the game is not for them, but rather for the different players that will be playing it.

We also got an explanation on how games are a different kind of media than films or books, in the way that games will always (or at least try to) have an unexpected outcome to keep the player’s interests up. This is a pretty simple lesson and one which (as game designers and gamers) we can understand well, though it is good to see it written down.

We were also taught (most importantly) about what MDA is and how it makes up a game. MDA refers to the Mechanics (pretty self-explanatory), the Dynamics (which is the mechanics as they are affected by the player’s inputs and outputs) and the Aesthetics (player emotions brought up by gameplay).

Personally, I found that the most interesting one to read about was the Aesthetics, and they must have been truly psychic as lo and behold there was an entire paragraph about it. The article gave the following list;

1. Sensation

2. Fantasy

3. Narrative

4. Challenge

5. Fellowship

6. Discovery

7. Expression

8. Submission

As the main kind of emotions that gamers feel depending on the style of the game. I agree completely with their findings here as I have often found myself falling into more than of these categories.

One of the last things we were “taught” about was a three pass system. Though I'm not entirely sure what exactly the name of this is, so I’m just going to keep referring to it as such. Anyway, the three pass system is a way of classing up a game while leaving room for improvements. For example, the first pass is designed for simple games, with very simple objectives whose targets audiences wanted a game for the sake of playing it (that kind of thing).

Second pass is to make the game harder, or more challenging (which is not the same thing in terms of game design) and just generally making it a better experience for the player. And then Third pass is the highest branch on the tree, making said game a AAA title, and one that every goes “WOAH!” at.

This was a great read, as in their own example they talked about a single game that was easy and they improved it with each pass, which as a game designer we have to be able to do ourselves.

Tools for Creating Dramatic Game Dynamics

 “We cannot create drama: we can only create the circumstances from which drama will emerge.”

This speaks volumes to me. This part of our marathon Book cycle is all about building dramatic arc and introducing gripping stories (known as plots) to games.

LeBlanc gives a detailed explanation of each of the Mechanics, Dynamics and Aesthetics, giving physical examples for each (Such as showing how they work in Baseball and Mario), to give even us laymen a clear understanding of how each one works.

I could really tell that LeBlanc believes that mechanics are always “on” even when the game is unused, which actually makes sense if you think about it, while Dynamics are only in effect while the game is being played. It’s very guru like the way he says it. Leblanc also says that game design should start at the Aesthetics before going to Dynamics and finally Mechanics, which is a good way to view it, although none of the other authors so far have even hinted at this, so I remain sceptical – I follow the crowd.

Finally we come to the feature presentation, where we get to see how a dramatic arc works, which is a great lesion to learn if you intend to do stories like myself, although I am bound by law to say that we don’t make the dramatic arc, but we set up the game so that the player will discover the arc themselves. I learnt that Uncertainty and Inevitability go hand in hand if you wish to build dramatic tension, though the Inevitability must rise as the game goes on but Uncertainty must fall.

Challenges for Games Designers

For the next part, we will look over what Challenges for Game Designers teaches. The abstract from this one was pretty short and to the point, focusing on the Mechanics of Games. This time however, we were looking at a few different examples of game mechanics in detail. Here’s what I learnt from it, also trying out taking the notes in bullet point form as suggested by Rob my Tutor.

·         Chance

• ·               Makes games winnable for players of all skill levels
• ·               Opens the game up, making it more approachable
• ·               More people will play
• ·               Makes the game “Unsolvable”
• ·               Means you cannot master the game ergo adding replay values  
• ·               Solvable games’ outcome can be predicted like Tic-Tac-Toe
• ·               Chess is an extreme example as it can be solved by very intelligent people or computers
• ·               Increases variety in the game
• ·               Increases Drama (remember we talked about this)
• ·               Offers the player(s) Risk and Reward
• ·               Enhances decision making

·         Skill

• ·               Players can master Patterns
• ·               Tetris is a good example of Players being able to recognise patterns and use them to help them deplete multiple rows at a time

·         Flow

• ·               Gets the player fully concentrated on the task
• ·               High difficulty = Anxiety for the players and often “Rage quits”
• ·               Low difficulty = Player boredom
• ·               Designers must aim to keep players locked in the flow
• ·               Player’s actions affect the outcome of a game in some way
• ·               Adds the feeling of satisfaction once the game is over

·         Good Decisions

• ·               Obvious Decisions should not be presented to the player
• ·               FPS games : When a gun is out of ammo, the game should auto reload it rather than wait for the player to tell it to reload
• ·               These decisions always benefits the player
•  

·         Meaningless Decisions

• ·               Doesn’t change anything in the gameplay
• ·               Asking the player which of the three chests they want to open first when the player gets to open them all anyway
• ·               Not all meaningless decisions are bad, giving the player the choice of what pattern to put on their gun changes nothing gameplay-wise but gives the player a sense of originality

·         Blind Decisions

• ·               Making the player chose without providing them with any or at least very little prior information
• ·               Makes the player guess
• ·               Often a bad thing, but if the decision comes at a point in the game where the story changes slightly at the point of outcome it can cause added replay value.
• ·               Mass Effect was good at this providing the player with a split second chance to kill/attack another character based solely on the main character “Shepard’s” feelings toward said character

·         Trade Off

• ·               Choices come with a clear Advantage and Disadvantage
• ·               There is no Right or Wrong

·         Reaction

• ·               Twitch skill is vital
• ·               Tactics
• ·               How to achieve an overall goal

·         Auction

• ·               Open
• ·               Everyone can bid at once
• ·               All info about the other bidders revealed
• ·               Silent
• ·               Risk Involved
• ·               More tactics needed
• ·               Players may grossly over/under bid for an item and not know about it

·         Purchasing

• ·               Players can choose to spend a resource to get a resource
• ·               Money for health items for example
• ·               Save up money to buy the better things but means that the player will have to go longer without buying anything to do so

Okay, Okay! I've put you through enough this time. So that’s everything I learnt that involves defining what game designing really is. It’s a mixture of being able to use your head and following the rules that all games follow (MDA), but knowing what and when to step it up and follow through with you own initiative. I also got that BIG games need a good story to go along with them and being able to recognise and define what a dramatic arc is helps a lot (naturally).

Ha. I feel much better now.