Game design
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Game design is the process of creating and shaping the mechanics, systems and rules of a game. Games can be created for entertainment, education, exercise or experimental purposes. Additionally, elements and principles of game design can be applied to other interactions, in the form of gamification. Game designer and developer Robert Zubek defines game design by breaking it down into its elements, which he says are the following:[1]
- Gameplay, which is the interaction between the player and the mechanics and systems
- Mechanics and systems, which are the rules and objects in the game
- Player experience, which is how users feel when they are playing the game
Games such as
Academically, game design is part of
History
Sports (see
Folk process
Tabletop games played today whose descent can be traced from ancient times include chess, go, pachisi, backgammon, mahjong, mancala, and pick-up sticks. The rules of these games were not codified until early modern times and their features gradually evolved and changed over time, through the folk process. Given this, these games are not considered to have had a designer or been the result of a design process in the modern sense.
After the rise of commercial game publishing in the late 19th century, many games that had formerly evolved via folk processes became commercial properties, often with custom scoring pads or preprepared material. For example, the similar public domain games Generala, Yacht, and Yatzy led to the commercial game Yahtzee in the mid-1950s.
Today, many commercial games, such as
Similarly, many sports, such as soccer and baseball, are the result of folk processes, while others were designed, such as basketball, invented in 1891 by James Naismith.
New media
Technological advances have provided new media for games throughout history.
The printing press allowed packs of
The first games in a new medium are frequently adaptations of older games. Pong, one of the first widely disseminated video games, adapted table tennis. Later games will often exploit the distinctive properties of a new medium. Adapting older games and creating original games for new media are both examples of game design.
Theory
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Game studies or gaming theory is a discipline that deals with the critical study of games, game design, players, and their role in society and culture. Prior to the late-twentieth century, the academic study of games was rare and limited to fields such as history and anthropology. As the video game revolution took off in the early 1980s, so did academic interest in games, resulting in a field that draws on diverse methodologies and schools of thought. These influences may be characterized broadly in three ways: the social science approach, the humanities approach, and the industry and engineering approach.[5]
Broadly speaking, the social scientific approach has concerned itself with "What do games do to people?" Using tools and methods such as surveys, controlled laboratory experiments, and ethnography researchers have investigated both the positive and negative impacts that playing games could have on people. More sociologically informed research has sought to move away from simplistic ideas of gaming as either 'negative' or 'positive', but rather seeking to understand its role and location in the complexities of everyday life.[6]
In general terms, the humanities approach has concerned itself with the question of "What meanings are made through games?" Using tools and methods such as interviews, ethnographies, and participant observation, researchers have investigated the various roles that videogames play in people's lives and activities and the meaning they assign to their experiences.[7]
From an industry perspective, a lot of game studies research can be seen as the academic response to the videogame industry's questions regarding the products it creates and sells. The main question this approach deals with can be summarized as "How can we create better games?" with the accompanying "What makes a game good?" "Good" can be taken to mean many different things, including providing an entertaining and engaging experience, being easy to learn and play, and being innovative, and having novel experiences. Different approaches to studying this problem have included looking at describing how to design games[8][9] and extracting guidelines and rules of thumb for making better games[10]
Strategic decision making
Game theory is a study of strategic
The games studied in game theory are well-defined mathematical objects. To be fully defined, a game must specify the following elements: the
Design elements
Games can be characterized by "what the player does"[15] and what the player experiences. This is often referred to as gameplay. Major key elements identified in this context are tools and rules that define the overall context of game.
Tools of play
Games are often classified by the components required to play them (e.g.
Many game tools are tokens, meant to represent other things. A token may be a pawn on a board, play money, or an intangible item such as a point scored.
Games such as
course, even with the same cars.Rule development
Whereas games are often characterized by their tools, they are often defined by their rules. While rules are
Rules generally determine turn order, the rights and responsibilities of the players, each player's goals, and how game components interact with each other to produce changes in a game's state. Player rights may include when they may spend resources or move tokens.
Victory conditions
Common win conditions are being first to amass a certain quota of points or tokens (as in
Single or multiplayer
Most games require multiple players. Single-player games are unique in respect to the type of challenges a player faces. Unlike a game with multiple players competing with or against each other to reach the game's goal, a single-player game is against an element of the environment, against one's own skills, against time, or against chance. This is also true of cooperative games, in which multiple players share a common goal and win or lose together.
Many games described as "single-player" or "cooperative" could alternatively be described as puzzles or recreations, in that they do not involve strategic behavior (as defined by game theory), in which the expected reaction of an opponent to a possible move becomes a factor in choosing which move to make.
Games against opponents simulated with artificial intelligence differ from other single-player games in that the algorithms used usually do incorporate strategic behavior.
Storyline and plot
Stories told in games may focus on narrative elements that can be communicated through the use of mechanics and player choice. Narrative plots in games generally have a clearly defined and simplistic structure. Mechanical choices on the part of the designer(s) often drastically affect narrative elements in the game. However, due to a lack of unified and standardized teaching and understanding of narrative elements in games, individual interpretations, methods, and terminology vary wildly. Because of this, most narrative elements in games are created unconsciously and intuitively. However, as a general rule, game narratives increase in complexity and scale as player choice or game mechanics increase in complexity and scale. One example of removing a player's ability to directly affect the plot for a limited time. This lack of player choice necessitates an increase in mechanical complexity and could be used as a metaphor to symbolize depression that is felt by a character in the narrative.
Luck and strategy
A game's tools and rules will result in its requiring skill, strategy, luck, or a combination thereof, and are classified accordingly.
Most games contain two or all three of these elements. For example,
Use as educational tool
By learning through play
Play develops children's content knowledge and provides children the opportunity to develop social skills, competencies, and disposition to learn.[18] Play-based learning is based on a Vygotskian model of scaffolding where the teacher pays attention to specific elements of the play activity and provides encouragement and feedback on children's learning.[19] When children engage in real-life and imaginary activities, play can be challenging in children's thinking.[20] To extend the learning process, sensitive intervention can be provided with adult support when necessary during play-based learning.[19]
Development process
Game design is part of a game's development from concept to its final form. Typically, the development process is an
Development team
Game designer
A game designer (or inventor) is the person who invents a game's concept, its central mechanisms, and its rules.
Often, the game designer also invents the game's title and, if the game is not abstract, its theme. Sometimes these activities are done by the game publisher, not the designer, or maybe dictated by a licensed property (such as when designing a game based on a film).
Game developer
A game developer is the person who fleshes out the details of a game's design, oversees its testing, and revises the game in response to player feedback.
Often the game designer is also its developer, although some publishers do extensive development of games to suit their particular target audience after licensing a game from a designer. For larger games, such as
Game artist
A game artist is an artist who creates art for one or more types of games. Game artists are often vital to and credited in role-playing games, collectible card games and video games.[21]
Many graphic elements of games are created by the designer when producing a prototype of the game, revised by the developer based on testing, and then further refined by the artist and combined with artwork as a game is prepared for publication or release.
Video game artists are responsible for all of the aspects of game development that call for visual art.[22]
Concept
A game concept is an idea for a game, briefly describing its core play mechanisms, who the players represent, and how they win or lose.
A game concept may be "pitched" to a game publisher in a similar manner as film ideas are
Design
During design, a game concept is fleshed out. Mechanisms are specified in terms of components (boards, cards, on-screen entities, etc.) and rules. The play sequence and possible player actions are defined, as well as how the game starts, ends, and what is its winning condition. In video games,
Prototype
A game prototype is a draft version of a game used for testing. Typically, creating a prototype marks the shift from game design to game development and testing. Although prototyping in regards to human-computer interaction and interaction design are both studied, the use of prototyping in game design has remained relatively unexplored. It is known that game design has clear benefits from prototyping, such as exploring new game design possibilities and technologies, the field of game design has different characteristics than other types of software industries that consider prototyping in game design in a different category and need a new perspective[23]
Testing
Game testing is a major part of game development. During testing, players play the game and provide feedback on its gameplay, the usability of its components or screen elements, the clarity of its goals and rules, ease of learning, and enjoyment to the game developer. The developer then revises the design, its components, presentation, and rules before testing it again. Later testing may take place with
During testing, various
Video game testing is a software testing process for quality control of video games.[24][25][26] The primary function of game testing is the discovery and documentation of software defects (aka bugs). Interactive entertainment software testing is a highly technical field requiring computing expertise, analytic competence, critical evaluation skills, and endurance.[27][28]
Issues
Different types of games pose different game design issues.
Board games
Board game design is the development of rules and presentational aspects of a board game. When a player takes part in a game, it is the player's self-subjection to the rules that create a sense of purpose for the duration of the game.[29] Maintaining the players' interest throughout the gameplay experience is the goal of board game design.[30] To achieve this, board game designers emphasize different aspects such as social interaction, strategy, and competition, and target players of differing needs by providing for short versus long-play, and luck versus skill.[30] Beyond this, board game design reflects the culture in which the board game is produced.
The most ancient board games known today are over 5000 years old. They are frequently
Traditional board games date from the nineteenth and early twentieth century. Whereas ancient board game design was primarily focused on rules alone, traditional board games were often influenced by
Recent developments in modern board game design can be traced to the 1980s in Germany, and have led to the increased popularity of "
Modern technological advances have had a democratizing effect on board game production, with services like
Card games
In Asian cultures, special sets of tiles can serve the same function as cards, as in mahjong, a game similar to (and thought to be the distant ancestor of) the Western card game rummy. Western dominoes games are believed to have developed from Asian tile games in the 18th century.
Magic: The Gathering was the first collectible card game (or "trading card game") in 1993.[34]
The line between card and board games is not clear-cut, as many card games, such as
As cards are typically shuffled and revealed gradually during play, most card games involve randomness, either initially or during play, and hidden information, such as the cards in a player's hand. This is in contrast to many board games, in which most of the game's current state is visible to all participants, even though players may also have a small amount of private information, such as the letter tiles on each player's rack during Scrabble.
How players play their cards, revealing information and interacting with previous plays as they do so, is central to card game design. In partnership card games, such as
Dice games
The line between dice and board games is not clear-cut, as dice are often used as randomization devices in board games, such as Monopoly or Risk, while serving as the central drivers of play in games such as Backgammon or Pachisi.
Dice games differ from card games in that each throw of the dice is an
Casino games
Casino game mathematician, Michael Shackleford has noted that it is much more common for casino game designers today to make successful variations than entirely new casino games.[37] Gambling columnist John Grochowski points to the emergence of community-style slot machines in the mid-1990s, for example, as a successful variation on an existing casino game type.[38]
Unlike the majority of other games which are designed primarily in the interest of the player, one of the central aims of casino game design is to optimize the
To maximise player entertainment, casino games are designed with simple easy-to-learn rules that emphasize winning (i.e. whose rules enumerate many victory conditions and few loss conditions
To maximise success for the gambling house, casino games are designed to be easy for croupiers to operate and for pit managers to oversee.[36][37]
The two most fundamental rules of casino game design are that the games must be non-fraudable[36] (including being as nearly as possible immune from advantage gambling[37]) and that they must mathematically favor the house winning. Shackleford suggests that the optimum casino game design should give the house an edge of smaller than 5%.[37]
Role-playing games
The design of role-playing games requires the establishment of setting, characters, and basic gameplay rules or mechanics. After a role-playing game is produced, additional design elements are often devised by the players themselves. In many instances, for example, character creation is left to the players. Likewise, the progression of a role-playing game is determined in large part by the gamemaster whose individual campaign design may be directed by one of several role-playing game theories.
There is no central core for
Sports
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Sports games have the same rules as the sport they are based on.[39][40][41]
Video games
Video game design is a process that takes place in the
Important aspects of video game design are
.War games
This section needs expansion. You can help by adding to it. (May 2014) |
The first military
They are also played as a hobby for entertainment.Modern war games are designed to test
See also
Notes
- ^ a term used in education and psychology to describe how a child can learn to make sense of the world around them
References
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- ^ Whitebread, D., Coltman, P., Jameson, H. & Lander, R. (2009). Play, cognition, and self-regulation: What exactly are children learning when they learn through play? Educational & Child Psychology, 26(2), 40–52.
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- ^ Manker, Jon; Arvola, Mattias (January 2011). "Prototyping in Game Design: Externalization and Internalization of Game Ideas". Proceedings of Hci 2011 - 25th BCS Conference on Human-Computer Interaction. Retrieved 2 October 2018.
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- ^ Moore, Novak 2010, p. 95
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- ^ Whigfield, Nick. "Video Hasn't Killed Interest in Board Games; New Technologies Have Contributed to Revival of Tabletop Entertainment". The Irish Times. 12 May 2014.
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- ^ Shackleford, Michael. "House Edge of casino games compared". Wizardofodds.com. Retrieved 9 December 2013.
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- ^ Grochowski, John. "Gaming Guru: Tracing Back the Roots of Some Popular Gaming Machines at Casinos". The Press of Atlantic City. 28 August 2013.
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- ^ Lischka, Konrad (22 June 2009). "Wie preußische Militärs den Rollenspiel-Ahnen erfanden". Der Spiegel (in German). Retrieved 15 February 2010.
Further reading
- Bates, Bob (2004). Game Design (2nd ed.). Thomson Course Technology. ISBN 978-1-59200-493-5.
- Baur, Wolfgang (2012). Complete Kobold Guide to Game Design. Open Design LLC. ISBN 978-1936781065.
- Burgun, Keith (2012). Game Design Theory: A New Philosophy for Understanding Games. A K Peters/CRC Press. ISBN 978-1466554207.
- Costikyan, Greg (2013). Uncertainty in Games. MIT Press. ISBN 978-0262018968.
- Elias, George Skaff (2012). Characteristics of Games. MIT Press. ISBN 978-0262017138.
- Hofer, Margaret (2003). The Games We Played: The Golden Age of Board & Table Games. Princeton Architectural Press. ISBN 978-1568983974.
- Huizinga, Johan (1971). Homo Ludens: A Study of the Play-Element in Culture. Beacon Press. ISBN 978-0807046814.
- Kankaanranta, Marja Helena (2009). Design and Use of Serious Games. Intelligent Systems, Control and Automation: Science and Engineering. Springer. ISBN 978-9048181414..
- Moore, Michael E.; Novak, Jeannie (2010). Game Industry Career Guide. Delmar: Cengage Learning. ISBN 978-1-4283-7647-2.
- Norman, Donald A. (2002). The Design of Everyday Things. Basic Books. ISBN 978-0465067107..
- Oxland, Kevin (2004). Gameplay and design. Addison Wesley. ISBN 978-0-321-20467-7.
- Peek, Steven (1993). The Game Inventor's Handbook. Betterway Books. ISBN 978-1558703155.
- Peterson, Jon (2012). Playing at the World. Unreason Press. ISBN 978-0615642048..
- Salen Tekinbad, Katie (2003). Rules of Play: Game Design Fundamentals. The MIT Press. ISBN 978-0262240451..
- Schell, Jesse (2008). The Art of Game Design: A book of lenses. CRC Press. ISBN 978-0123694966.
- Somberg, Guy (6 September 2018). Game Audio Programming 2: Principles and Practices. CRC Press 2019. ISBN 9781138068919. Archived from the originalon 9 April 2022. Retrieved 18 October 2019.
- Tinsman, Brian (2008). The Game Inventor's Guidebook: How to Invent and Sell Board Games, Card Games, Role-Playing Games, & Everything in Between!. Morgan James Publishing. ISBN 978-1600374470.
- Woods, Stewart (2012). Eurogames: The Design, Culture and Play of Modern European Board Games. McFarland. ISBN 978-0786467976.
- Zubek, Robert (August 2020). Elements of Game Design. The MIT Press. ISBN 9780262043915.