Game Design Flashcards
0
Q
Describe how game designers can set goals for human experience.
A
- Developers should observe and find out what the essential features of the human experience he is trying to create are and incorporate this in the game.
- Defining essential features for the experience developers want players to feel give designers goals to work toward.
1
Q
Explain what game designers are trying to create
A
- Game designers are not trying to create games per se. Rather, they are trying to create an experience and games are just a mean to that end.
- This makes games hard to make since we can only inspect games and not the human experience we are actually trying to achieve.
- So in order to make good games, we must use a lot of combination of introspection understand your own experience and listening to players deeply to understand their experience.
2
Q
Describe where games are played.
A
- When designing a game, consider where they are played. Is it at a hearth, private workspace, reading nooks, arenas, museums, casinos, table, etc? These surroundings provide contexts for the game and the game should fit the surroundings.
3
Q
- Explain why ‘surprise’ is something we should strive to create in a game.
A
- The experience of ‘surprise’ or to see something unique or innovative or outside of normal experience is something we are hardwired to enjoy. Striving to create this experience leads to fun games.
4
Q
Explain how curiosity plays a role in good games.
A
- People play when they do something for its own sake. Most of the time, they do this because they are curious.
- Give players some questions they’d like to answer so they stick with your game. Somethings such as can they finish the game in some time limit, how will the story end, what will the next animation look like, etc.
5
Q
Describe what makes a game a game.
A
- At the heart of all games is really problem solving.
- One of the first things we do is to state the problem we are trying to solve, that is, define a clear goal (Q2). Next, we frame the problem. We determine its boundaries and the nature of the problem space. We also determine what methods we are allowed to use to solve the problem; that is, we determine the rules of the problem (Q4). How we do this is kind of hard to describe. It is not a completely verbal process. It is almost as if our minds are equipped to set up an internal, minimized, simplified version of reality that only includes the necessary interrelationships needed to solve the problem. This is like a cleaner, smaller version of the real-world situation, which we can more easily consider and manipulate or interact with (Q6). In a sense, we are establishing a closed, formal system (Q10) with a goal. We then work to reach that goal, which is usually challenging (Q7), because it involves some kind of conflict (Q3). If we care about the problem, we quickly become engaged (Q9) in solving it. When we are occupied in doing so, we kind of forget about the real world, since we are focused on our internal problem space. Since this problem space is not the real world and just a simplified version of it and solving the problem is important to us, elements in the problem space quickly gain an internal importance, if they get us closer to our goal of solving the problem, and this importance does not need to be relevant outside the context of the problem (Q8). Eventually, we defeat the problem or are defeated by it, thus winning or losing (Q5).
- In addition to this, we play games willingly rather than by obligation.
6
Q
Describe the 4 components that all games are made of.
A
1) Mechanics. This is what set games apart from other types of media. Games define certain set of rules or mechanics through which the players interact with the game.
2) Technology. Games are made with certain technology from paper and pencil to console games.
3) Story. Games should have some story to tell.
4) Aresthetics. This is the art and the music.
When creating a game, you can focus on one thing and make the other 3 fit with what you focus on. Alternatively, you can combine all of them. Whatever you do, you have to make sure the 4 items work in harmony to produce the best game possible.
7
Q
Explain how themes are important to games.
A
- Good games should have a theme - What the game is essentially about.
- This allows us to decide what things to include/exclude, what details should and should not be in a game.
8
Q
Explain what makes a good theme.
A
- Truth-based themes that resonate with player’s experiences are the best.
- Themes like love is stronger than death as shown in Titanics and work vs play in Toontown online helps tie stories together and resonate with something players subconsciously understand but can’t express.
9
Q
Explain 8 filters you should run your game ideas through to make sure it’s going to be viable.
A
- ADEIBESP is the best way to remember this
- Art - is the game visually and through audio satisfying?
- Demographics - will this game be liked by target demographics?
- Experience - does the game provide a good experience?
- Innovative - does the game provide somthing different and innovative?
- Business - is the game financially viable?
- Engineering - can the game be made at all?
- Social - what kind of social support does the game need? How viral does it need tobe?
- Playtesting - Do people like it while playtesting?
10
Q
Explain what you should do after coming up with good ideas.
A
- Follow the Rule of the Loop. This means you should create, test as many time as possible to get immediate feedback.
- To loop on the right things, you should come up with the list of prioritized risks to mitigate.
- To loop on these things faster, you should build prototypes that help answer whether these ideas are viable quickly.
- It’s best if you follow agile process, with short sprints and goals and prioritized backlogs for development.
11
Q
Explain the 10 rules to making a good prototype.
A
- Answer a question. The prototype should be made with the aim of answering questions such as can we render this much detail, will this game mechanics be fun.
- Forget about quality. We want something fast and rough. Not polished.
- Don’t get attached. Prototypes are meant to be thrown away. Don’t get attached to it.
- Prioritize important prototypes. Some prototypes are more important and invalidate other ones. Do these first.
- Parallelize prototypes. If you have teams working on different parts, parallelize them to make it go faster.
- It doesn’t have to be digital. You can test the essence with paper a lot of the time if you are a bit creative.
- some prototypes don’t even need to be interactive if the question you have doesn’t require interactivity to answer.
- Pick a fast loop language for prototype. Writing prototypes in compile time language is a slow arduous process. Best to avoid.
- Build a toy first. A lot of great games are built on top of toys. Toys don’t have goals or rules like games. They just exist. Try building a toy like an open world city or some monsters walking around, then find the most fun part of the toy then build on top of it. This tends to create great games.
12
Q
Describe the best way to estimate how long a game takes.
A
- Don’t estimate until you have looped until you have at least 2 level of your game complete.
- A good rule of thumb is you used 30% of your budget by that point
- In addition, you should plan to have a shippable game at your 50% mark, so that if things go wrong, you still have resources to make it great.
13
Q
Explain the four types of mental activities that make games possible
A
- Modeling. We don’t really know what the real world is. We only make models of the real world and work with this model in our head. Games are enjoyable because they create a simple model for us to understand and work with.
- Focus. Good games successfully balance between player’s skill and challenge. If challenge is too difficult for a skill level, player become frustrated. On the other hand, if challenge is too easy, player becomes bored. Good games find the right balance as player’s skills improve. In addition, a really good game doesn’t do this linearly, but in cycles of easier to harder as players obtain more powerful items.
- Empathy. This is important to how players empathize with stories we create.
- Imagination. This is important for both story telling and problem solving.
14
Q
Explain how to analyze game mechanics in terms of space.
A
- You can ask yourself whether the game is discrete or continuous, 2d or 3d, and what the bounds of the space is.
- Thinking in this way allow us to abstract away the artistic details and get a clearer picture of how the game actually works.
