Developing a New Major

gameplay – challenges/choices/consequences, it’s what makes a game compelling, can be linked together like plot points in a story, lots of ways for player to overcome the challenges (that’s how game is different from story where route thru challenges is predetermined), emergent gameplay like sandbox games where you give player tools and a big area to play around in and let htem decide how to play the game

game rules define the moves a player can take and actions player can take (or can’t take), rules have to be communicated otthe player – rule book, tutorials in game, hints

victory conditions – what’s a player have to do to win, how does the player know they’ve met hte conditions, not all games have victory conditions – especially puzzle games (like Tetris) where puzzles just get increasingly difficult till player stops. Multiple victory conditions increas replayability and widens the appeal of hte game to different kinds of players

loss conditions – how ya lose the game, can be implicit (not being first to achieve victory conditions) or explicit (your character dies or you run out of resources)

game designer can’t create a fixed experience for the player, the game is like a language and the player puts it together to create their own experience, their own story

interactivity – part of game storytelling – different kinds: player to game, player to player, player to developer, player to platform

• - player to game: for a single player game, NPCs are the game’s representation in the game, could also be the player interacting with in game maps, environment controls
• - player to player – in multiplayer mode, developer can’t predict what players will do with each other, could set up competition, could be cooperative play too
• - plyater to developer – discussion forums and chat rooms  on game website, developers participate in the discussion
• - player to platform – input devices, battery, storage

game theory – conflicts and how players react to the conflict should be tied ot hte plot and heighten the dramatic tension in the game, can be zero-sum, non-zero-sum

zero-sum – players have completely opposing interests – can only be one winner in most games so if someone wins everyone else loses, only competitive behavior

non-zero-sum – players don’t totally have opposite goals, players can cooperate with each other and compete again others (common enemies) and sometimes you have to cooperate wiht your enemies

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  prisoner’s dilemma – type of non-zero-sum game – shows what happenbs when everyone competing against each other when they should be cooperating – when players get burned in one turn they are less likely to cooperate in the future – tit for tat strategy

• tragedy of the commons – when you make rational choices about resources and they give irrational results (rational for you is bad for everyone else) – ex: slowing down to look at a crash is rational for you but causes irrational results for everyone else who has to slow down which leads to a traffic jam

types of challenges – implicit/explicit, perfect/imperfect info, intrinsic/extrinsic knowledge

- implicit challenge – not specifically added to the game but emerges out of the game from things like how to divide up resources or which units to use first

- explicit challenge – intentionally put in by desinger, how to unlock a locked door, how to jump over a channel of fire

- perfect info – all players know the complete state of the game at all times, supports logical challenges where player can use lal hte info and pick their best course of action (like chess)

- imperfect info – players only get a part of the info about the state of the game like with cards you don’t know what cards the other people have in their hands or Battleship where you don’t know where the ships are on the other side of hte divider, fog of war where you can’t see units out of the range of your units, prinsoner’s dilemma is from imperfect info challenges players to interact with the gameworld, encourages participation – leads to unexpected plot twists and spy thillers

- intrinsic knowledge – what you learn from the game world, how machines work, how to put together moves, layouts of maps and mapzes, NPC personalities

- extrinsic knowledge – what you bring into the game from the real world – science facts, common sense for solving puzzles, rules of sports games

pattern recognition & matching – subconscious process , challenges in puzzle games and automatic thinking to master action games when you don’t have time to think but youst to react to patterns you sense subconsciously

spatial awareness – navigate thru mazes – big in race games – gotta move thru the space to reach the end

micromanagement – gives players lots of options, player gets to decide how to respond to threats, how to use resources, how to use special powers and weaons, hard on the player if they have to multitask and make lots of choices at hte same time like in RTS and FPS – the more abilities you have then the more decisions you have to make, if multiplayer then the decisions can be distributed and you can specialize on one or two kinds

reaction time challenges – like in action games – gotta respond right now, fast speed decisions

game goals: advancement (level up), race (get to the end before someone else), puzzle solving (cryptic codes, mental challenge  in puzzle and adventure gtames), exploration (move around and see new stuff – popular in RPGs and adventure games), conflict (combat, all genres), capture (take something of your enemeies witout getting caught/killed – especially in action and rts games but all genres), chase (use stealth or quick reflexes to chase after or be chased), organization (put stuff in a spcific order sometimes by using pattern matching strategies, often in puzzle games like Tetris), escape (get to safety or get others to safety, use reasoning nad resource management), taboo (get hte enemy to break the rules like in twister), construction (build and maintain objects with resource management and trade), solution (solving problems before competition does thru reasoning and usng knowledge intrinsic or extrinsic), outwit (use knowledge to defeat enemy)

(weird the game goals only got a couple of lines each – maybe this is the basis of a videogame/boardgame assignment, pick a game and figure out the game goals, add tohte description in the book)

games deliver escapism and challenge in different ratios, if too challenging then it stops being fun for most people and they don’t deliver enough escapism

balance – if player believes game is fair and consistent and fun and ease of winning hte game increases as player’s skill increases, can still have random events but in general in a balanced game a skilled player should be more successful than a less skilled player, total luck games aren’t blaanced, tweak games during testing to improve balance to put in consistent challenges that get more difficult gradually, experiences that hte player sees as fair play and the player shouldn’t be screwed over totally by mistake make at hte beginning, should not be stagnant areas where players get stuck with no where to go, all decisions should be meaningful – only require the player to make meaningful decisions, there might be some trivial decisions but htey’re not required, and give players a choice of the level they start at or adjust difficulty to match their performance

static balance – how the rules interact with each on – can be ensured if ya have obvious strategies (superior to others possibilities, specific strengths and weaknesses of players), symmetry (giving everyone the same starting conditions so who wins/loses depends on play during hte game and player skill level and not luck of hte draw initially – not logical in combat sims where not everyone starts out the same – could be that player A is stronger than player B and player B is stornger than player C so player A is stronger than player C too which is a transitive relations OR could be intransitive like rock paper scissors), can give players trade offs between resources can let players combine resoruces or characters to meet a challenge so that when ya combine resources ya get mroe power and you can give players feedback to help keep game balanced – negative feedback is when games gets more difficult for one player like by increasing costs of resources when ya reach a certain level and positive feedback where ya make the game easier for a certain player

dynamic balance where balance is changed by player actions – happens thru destruction (players want to destroy the game balance) and maintenance (object of hte game is to keep other side from overrunning your position) and restoration (where game starts out chaotic and object is to makeit orderly and balanced)

game economies – how resources are moved around in the game – money, troops, characters, weapons, property, skills, information, ammunition, health points, Castranova says all kinds of real world economic theories can be applied to multiplayer game economies to change up the game – auction systems population responses to shortages, income redistribution, urban development taxes…, having an economy makes the game experience more flexible and give players more reasons to keep playing the game, adds novelty to the game

from review questions at hte end – #4 is about board games (and board games are mentioned thruout this chapter) – says analyse board games rules, victory and loss conditions, goals… and asks them to think about how they’d create a videogame from teh board game – that would be a good assignment

I like #6 too about changing a transitive relationship between some resources to an intransitive one

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