What are the qualities of Games?
There is a list of qualities that help us to define a game such as rules, conflict, goals, decision making, uncertain outcomes, they are activities, outside of reality, artificial, safe, voluntary, make-believe, representation, simulation, inefficient, art and are closed systems.
Atomic Elements of Games
Players: Games must support at least one player but most games support multiple players being either a certain number or a variable. Teams, individual play and uneven team sizes must be accounted for.
Qualities(Goals): Games must have an objective for players to follow or complete, most game elements are created in line with players being able to achieve the games goal
Rules: There are 3 types of rules in games, the set-up, things a player must do at the beginning of a new game, progression of play, aspects of play that change over the course of the game, resolution, what is the win or lose condition of the game.
Resources and Resource Management: Resources are the parts of the game which the player has control over
Game State: All parts of the game that are kept track of by the computer including the players resources and the games general resources
Information: The amount of information available to the player at any given point in a game
Sequencing: The order in which actions are taken during gameplay , the flow from one game action to another
Player Interaction: How players interact with one another, and in game objects and the world of the game overall
Theme (Narrative, Backstory, Setting): Parts of a game which do not effect gameplay but add lore and world building information to give the player more of an emotional connection to the game
Games as Systems: How all elements of a game work together to create a functional system
Critical Analysis is useful when designing games as a way of looking at the way formal elements of the game work together and as a way of making decisions about what elements of a game work and what doesn't
Game design research
Anthropology, sociology, narratology, semiotics and film studies are considered the academic origins of game researchers.
Games are examined as a phenomenon of culture, economy, social interactions and creativity.
Design in games is acknowledged as a way of problem solving and contributing to societal changes in our own world as a reaction to the way games have been designed.
Game Design can be explained as "emotional engineering" as developers design games to create an emotional connection with their players or as a form of communication without necessarily using words to give a player information.
"A game designer designs the rules of the game directly but designs the player’s experience only indirectly”
Introduction to Game Design: Prototype Your Game
Prototyping in game design is about creating the initial parts of a game to explore how a player would play, what the game world would look like, how players interact with the world.
A possible way of prototyping is to draw out the game and then creating a cut-out version of the game to test out possible ways the game could be played, and as a good starting ground to create a plan of how to code the computer version of the game.
If possible it is also recommended to try and create a live play test version as a way of testing aspects of the game with real world physics.
Testing the game repeatedly using different aspects and making slight changes helps with the prototyping by allowing designers to test various slight alterations to their game.
It is important to not settle onto one idea and to allow ideas to flow naturally to allow the prototype to evolve to a full fledged game.
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