Developing a New Major

book full of non-digital exercises for game designers - good to do in class when ya don’t have cmputers or not everyone can program yet

ch1 - Building Blocks

what’s a game - lots of definitions - an activity with rules, a form of play sometimes involving conflict, most games have goals but not all, defined start and end oints, involve plyaer decision making (not all - like candy land and chutes nad ladders)

good game design = process of creating content and rules player must follow while makng meaningful choices and goals that player feels motivated to reach, gotta be player focused and help player answer questions like what’s this game about, how do i play, how do i win, why do i want to play, and what things do i need to do

at its heart game design = create opportunities for players to make meaningful decisions that affect the outcome of the game, some games just a few decisions, other games dozens of decisions a minute (like Civilization) - l ots of little decisions that have a small but important effect on the game’s outcome, decisions have to have meaningful options - a variety of options that all might be good choice (monopoly has very few choices - roll dice and move, buy property)

game design is NOT: art, programming

some example decisions - choose which piece to move in chess, aim and fire you weapon in a fps, pick your weapon in a fps, press the right button at the right time in guitar hero

if player’s don’t understand the rules they can’t make the right decisions, they don’t see the cause and effect of action on the rules, you can lose badly and not know why

types of design for all kinds of games, not just videogames - world (overall backstory, setting and theme), system (rules and math patterns), content (characters, items, puzzles, missions), game writing (dialogue, text, story within the game world), level layout of maps and placement of objects, challenges, dungeon masters are level designers), user interface (how player interacts with the game, how player gets info and feedback from the game)

core dynamic - the single thing gameplay is about, the single play experience of the game - ex: ratchett and klank about blowing stuff up in new and exciting ways; Carcassone about acquiring territory, don’t confuse core dynamic with win/lose condition, should be able to tie all the features inthe game back to this dynamic

usually there’s a core gameplay mechanic too to go with the core dynamic - flipping cards, selling units to other players

development team usualy writes core statements or vision statements to tell others the core mechanic or core dynamic - to sum up what hte gmae is all about. Finish sentences like “The game is about…” or “the game is hte experience of being…” or “This game simulates hte experience of….”

some basic core dynamics - territorial acquisition (usually zero sum game, only so much land to go around, like Risk nad Carcassonne), prediction (like rock paper scissors, luck), spatial reasonsing (puzzle games like Tetris and connect four), survival, destruction (kind of hte opposite of survival, wreck everythingin sight dynamic, FPS have this as a core dynamic, also Nuclear War), building (RPGs have bilding of characters, Sim City and Settlers of Catan you build cities and place resources), collection (like in collectible card games, also in pattern matching games), chasing/evading (like pac-man and contact sports), trading (settlers of catan lets players trade resources - a way to have cooperative instead of competitive play), race to the end (big in kid games)

where do game designers get game ideas - play lots of varied types of games to build up your mechanic and dynamics vocabulary, look for game opportunities in everything you do, talk to/network with other designers

(chapter has a lot of vocabulary and a list of approaches to game design (MDA, IP, story, research, mechanic) and tpes of iterative design (rapid  prototyping, playtest, revise, repeat) - if playtest identifies a problem be willing to take out the bad mechanic, don’t just tinker around the edges

cool tip - dont write your rules down until you have to (like to turn in) - if you can’t keep them in your head then how do you expect players to be able to do so

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Game design, Game designer