Design Tools

Space of Possibility and Pacing in Casual Game Design - A PopCap Case Study by Marcos Venturelli

This article only really mentions 'Paceing' as a tool for designing games but within pace there is four core concepts to make it work well, these are Movement Impetus, Tension, Threat and Tempo.
Unfortunately he mostly quotes Davies' descriptions and adds a little extended bit of information on each but doesn't go into detail on the actual application of adding them to a game.
I did find this article very droll but here are descriptions of each of the concepts mentioned.

Movement Impetus: 'Movement Impetus, is the will or desire of a player to move forward through a level' [Davies 2009] is a quote Venturelli uses to start off his description of movement impetus but goes on to mention it is also about making 'advancement decisions', basically just the player actually choosing to continue playing the game.

Tension: This is the more atmospheric and personal version of threat. It can be altered by the music and the graphics but its more about the players personal feelings that they will fail.

Threat: This is the power struggle of the player vs the actual game mechanics and having to pull every trick out of the bag to beat it but also it relates to each life you have and the 'threat' that you will have to start the level over again. This goes hand in hand with tension as the threat alters the tension in every way, no threat = no tension, but tension does not really affect the threat.

Tempo: This is 'intensity' of the game and how quick the decision making in the game should be, Venturelli mentions this affects the fun of the game. I don't think this is always the case.

Formal Abstract Design Tools, a Gamasutra feature by Doug Church

Church has a different way of looking at 'Design Tools' for computer games, which he calls 'FADT' Formal Abstract Design Tools.

These are Intention, Perceivable Consequence and Story.

Intention: 'Making an implementable plan of one's own creation in response to the current situation in the game world and one's understanding of the game play options' as Church puts it.
Basically its the choices that the player makes when playing the game, i think this covers both Movement Impetus and also Tempo mentioned by Venturelli, as if you choose to carry on moving on with the game the tempo is also affected.

Perceivable Consequence: 'A clear reaction from the game world to the action of the player' is the main quote to sum up Church's view.
I think this covers both what Venturelli calls Tension and Threat but it could also affect Tempo as more time would be needed to decide how to take a big boss down if you really think he can kill you in one hit.
In an ideal world I think that everything in a game should affect the player but should also let the player affect the game world.

Story: 'The narrative thread, whether designer-driven or player-driven, that binds events together and drives the player forward toward completion of the game.' This is the only direct quote to use for Church's view but he also mention a lot about the player-driven side of it, for example in sports games and not just designer-driven stories in the very linear ludus style games, for example sometimes if i get an easy win on a fighting game i set myself of finishing it in a very stylish or spectacular way and that's where the 'Story' for me starts and not at the beginning of the fight.
I would say that Church's view of story would include everything the Venturelli considers as Pace. as movement impetus, tension, threat and tempo all are needed to make the story and indeed a game worth bothering with, at least in my opinion

Iterations to 15 min game

We have been looking at what exactly iterations are but also making iterations to our games we made in the first week during a '15 minute game' exercise
My game is a basic race to the end game where the player rolls two dice and chooses which to use to help them selves move forward and which to hinder the opponent by blasting them in a random direction, this direction was dictated by a six sided dice with two sides saying left, two saying right, one backwards and one forwards (so theres a chance that you will accidentally help someone).

The first problem that was very apparent was the track. it was straight and then a 90 degree turn to the left then straight again to the end, the problem was that whoever got blasted left the most one and this was not meant to help them.
I changed it so that where the original track ended there was a right turn and then straight to the end, so on the off chance someone stayed in the middle then they would win and racing up the edges would be equally slow.
After testing this I found it did help alot.

My game still had alot of problems that I was itching to tweak though, especially the dice that decided what direction the 'attacks' sent you in, when i saw people play it without my help there was much debate if forward, right, back and left was always the same like north, east, south and west or if it was relative to the way your car was facing.
I had the thought of using a 4 sided dice and reincorporating a compass on the track with the relative numbers to show which direction the car should move in.
This seemed to help a lot but a new problem arised... what happens when the car hits the side of the track?

I had an idea for the care to move backwards one space for every space that it should move off the track, for example if i was two spaces away from the right wall and got hit for five right then i would move two spaces to the wall and then backwards three.

I didn't  have enough time to play test this iteration because of helping others with there problems but I found that did help alot in thinking outside the box. The simplest changes can change the way you play the game for the better or  worse but when the game was formed in your imagination its hard to see what really needs to be changed, a fresh set of minds helping you and playing the game through does help so much.

Paidea vs Ludus

Today I have been looking at the differences between paidea and ludus games, and other definitions that I will come to later.
Paidea means a game which you would play for pleasure and Ludus is one that is very much surrounded by rules, telling you what you can and cant do.


Some paidea games of which I know personally would be the original Grand Teft Auto (forgive me if I refer to them as GTA games from now on...) you didn't have to do any objectives unless you go looking for them, the world is yours to do what you want, providing that its shooting people and stealing there cars then running away from the police, i guess you could argue thats a hint or ludus in there. The later GTA games forced you to earn the right to explore the whole world. Except for in the online 'Free mode' where there are weapons littering the streets and absolutely nothing to do other than have fun, of course players like myself enjoy setting our own goals, like racing friends, killing everyone in sight, sitting on a tall building next to a long bridge and waiting for a player in a very nice sports car to be racing across then shooting out the tyres and following it with a rocket. Now in the Red Dead Redemption they have a similar mode but with actual objectives to complete, although you are not forced to do them in any way.

Iam not really a fan of very direct ludus games like sonic where you are told to complete the level as quick as possible but with also picking up lots of collectibles on the way, it should be one or the other or at least design the level so there is a route to collect everything at high speed.

My favorite game i have ever played would still be 'The Legend of Zelda: The Ocarina of Time' for the N64, the story was amazing, the graphics are dated now but the style still holds its own compared to the gamecube Zelda game. It was my first experience of playing a game (other than gta 1) where i didnt actually have to go anywhere, sure sometimes you had blocked paths and had to do a mission to progress but that was always outnumbered by the numerous intresting and some times quite funny places you had unlocked previously.
The more I learn about what makes a game good I realise why i loved the game.

Ocarina of time is such a vast game it does have elements of all the game types Newman writes about in 'What is a videogame'.
There are a few times that you need to use skill to beat a competition so there is several Agon elements.
In the early stages of the game when you are exploring the forest (which was done i a very interesting way) you always have three doors but only one will lead you to where you need to be (the trick was to get close and see if theres a small light at the bottom of the door but not so close that you go through it, an element of chance/randomness, Alea. Another example of this is the random skeletons (i forget the term used in the game) that constantly spawn in the plains of Hyrule during the night and no matter when you run they will still spawn there or you can just enjoy hacking and slashing through the waves.

Linx means movement and there is plenty of movement and exploration in this game especially once you have completed it and can go back in time to sow special seeds that will aid you the get into places in the future and also because of the time trave element you can always find everything in the game and stuff you might just interesting, lots of beautiful sunrises.

Mimicry is used to describe simulation and role-playing games and i guess the game is both as it is, magic aside, very realistic and you spend a lot of time playing the ocarina, riding your horse and using a bow/catapult.

thanks for reading, sorry for the late post

KS1 Game Review

So...

I have been playing and analysing the BBC Bitesize Key Stage 1 'Shape Lab' game, although the game is not aimed at me i think that with what i have learned so far and from reading Costikyan's 'I have no words & I must design' article.
Here is a hyperlink to the game : http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/ks1bitesize/numeracy/

The interaction in the game is very basic in the way that every question is always a 3 answer, multiple choice question, so the only interaction is choosing which of the answers you think is correct.

The goal of the game is to help an inventor to build a robot (for reasons not stated but i doubt they are farming equipment!) he must be a great inventor as the 'robot' is made entirely of  basic shapes but sometimes he needs one that is symmetrical and sometimes one that is only partially coloured. I doubt any children playing these games are looking as deeply as me into each other the character's motives but I am quite wary of both of them, i resume he doesn't needs the shapes at all and he is just trying to keep your character interested so she doesn't feel like the dunce her voice would lead you to believe.

I wouldn't say there was any struggle in this 'game' (i would call it an educational puzzle personally) as there is no penalty for getting questions wrong except the answers shuffling them selves, presumably having a memory is viewed harder than the questions in the key stage 1 syllabus.

There is a structure to the game in it having 5 levels which need to be completed in order the beat the game.

the only endogenous meaning to the game is building the 'robot' for the 'inventor' you don't gain much apart from the sense of accomplishment.

My personal evaluation of the 'game' is that it isn't a game at all and it is just an educational puzzle, it lacks the struggle which is so important for games. If there was a life system or if you were proposed a new question after you gave a wrong answer then i would happily call it a game but as it stands you could complete the game by giving every possible answer very rapidly quicker than a child would spend pondering each one. The game also doesn't explain why exactly your answer is wrong and no doubt some children using it to help them will be left with no gained knowledge even after being there to get help on a subject they obviously think they haven't completely come to grips with yet.
I think that whom ever 'designed' this 'game' obviously doesn't deserve the title of game designer but it has helped me feel more confident about my place in the industry in the future as this game was actually bought and possibly commissioned by BBC Bitesize! and they thought it done the job.