Games Testing

Image from here

This weeks reading was an article about constructive criticism and how to give constructive criticism.

The most important thing to keep in mind when one is giving constructive criticism is to make sure to keep the criticism valid and unbiased. In doing this you make sure that the person receiving the feedback gets the feedback that will help them improve upon whatever it is they're working on without feeling like you have insulted their idea.

Valid feedback is feedback that is tangible, credible and well-founded and unbiased feedback means feedback that is feedback that is free of individual opinion or personal tastes. This means that any feedback is concrete instead of based on personal taste or opinions. Another important thing to keep in mind when giving constructive criticism is to make your criticism clear, understandable, and relevant.

In closing not every bit of feedback can be implemented so don't take it personally if someone doesn't change their project based on your feedback. Remember when done correctly, criticism can result in positive benefits for all parties involved.

Game Stories

This week we were given two articles to read this time about story in terms of game design and development.

The first article was all about how the Hero's Journey could be applied to game development. The Hero's Journey is important because myths are important and myths convey the values of society and can guide our actions.

The Hero's Journey is a list of events that a hero goes through in nearly every book, created by Joseph Campbell. However just because Campbell made this list it doesn't mean that every story with a hero should have all of these events in them. Start with a premise for your game and, step by step, build your story from there. If you would like to know the other steps in this process click here.

The second article goes more in depth into story in games and what story is. As games have developed the demand for more in depth stories has increased because story is a universal human experience.

There are a couple of very good reasons for game developers to know about classical story structure:

It's simple and it works. Story is all about conflict, the conflict between characters, the conflict of the characters mind any sort of conflict. If you apply this to a simple three act structured story you should greatly improve it.
Story has become a crucial part of games and any game developer should work just hard on story as on the graphics in a game.

Week 9 Reading and Writing

Over the past 8 weeks I have done 8 readings and written about them afterwards. All of these readings have been in some way or another about either game design, feedback or time management, all things that are essential to me during this module.

I would say that these readings have in fact helped me in this module and not just the ones on game design that you have to know about to make a game but the ones on feedback strategies and time management as well.

I feel that no matter how many articles I read on these two subjects they will never really be something I'm great at but reading the few articles I did on them I do feel as though I have somewhat improved in both of these areas.

My favourite readings so far are probably the one on Growth Mindset and feed- forward. Because these readings were all about positivity and opening yourself up to making mistakes and learning from them because that is something I'm sure everyone has had trouble with before. Especially Growth Mindset.

But the readings aren't the only thing that has helped me, writing about the readings each week has helped me as well though not in the way you may think. Writing about the readings each week has helped me to increase my typing speed, understand game design more of course and helped me to truly understand just how many words 200 or 500 words is.

So far I feel that my biggest accomplished has been creating my own game, even if I haven't finished it yet. Figuring out the Unity engine something that I had no prior experience with and creating my own game environment is something I'm very proud of.

Image from Moving at the Speed of Creativity

This is my favourite image that I found and put into a post on my blog. The image is from my post reviewing my favourite game which is Minecraft and its my favourite image because of how pretty the colours are and because I really love the aesthetic of Minecraft in general and those two things combined makes this a really appealing image to me.

In the future to get as much out of these readings as I can, I feel that I should read the articles more then once and really try to understand any parts of it I may not, maybe bookmark the ones I find particularly interesting to read again later instead of only reading them once and then moving on and never really getting back to them.

Game Fun

Image from Flickr

This weeks readings go back to the question of what makes a game fun and how someone can quantify that fun in order to develop a game that is fun.

It turns out that the idea of something being done for fun goes way back to our hunter-gatherer ancestors and how they would pass their time. Instead of immediately going back out to hunt again after successfully catching a deer one hunter-gatherer might instead balance a piece of wood on a rock and then throw stones at it. In doing this he is building survival skills as much as he would have had he gone back out to hunt again after coming back while also having fun. This honing of survival skills through fun and play has been dubbed Natural Funativity.

Many of the aspects of games that we enjoy can be linked back to or ancestors. Sports such as football are quite easy to link back because they are physical and are much like the hunting are ancestors would have done however non-physical games such as slot machines of even Pac-Man appeal to the gather part of our ancestory because we are collecting items.

This collecting of items can also me seen in many MMO's. The players of said MMO's also tend to like the game for four reasons, achievement within the game context, exploration of the game, socialising with others and imposition upon others. In other words achievers, explorers, socialisers and killers. An easy way to remember this is by using card suits: achievers are Diamonds (they're always seeking treasure); explorers are Spades (they dig around for information); socialisers are Hearts (they empathise with other players); killers are Clubs (they hit people with them). These people of course find different parts of the game the most fun depending on what category they fall into.

All of these categories tie into aspects of a hunter-gatherer society which leads to the conclusion that part of the appeal of many games out there is in part the learning of survival skills in a fun manner evolved over time into a less dangerous pass time. This can help in the future when it comes to conceptualising new games that are fun.

Game Decisions

Image from Flickr

This weeks reading is about creating MMO games or Massively Multiplayer Online games which are notoriously tricky games to create based off of the fact that they are, as the name suggests, massive and there are many technical issues that come with it.

However there are many examples of games that do not have massive amounts of players online and are still popular. For instance Minecraft relies on small instanced servers and is still very successful. What design lessons can we take from these smaller online games?

Social game design operates within the physical and mental constraints of the human animal and so it plays to understand these constraints. This article online goes much more in depth into these constraints.

Friendship 

A friendship is a social bond between just two people. The most basic level of human-scale game design is about creating relationship bonds. The basics of growing these friendships are Proximity, Similarity, Reciprocity and Disclosure. You can place any two people together in a game and if the criteria is met it is very likely they will form a friendship.

Dunbars Layers

Robin Dunbar believed each individual has a structured distribution of relationship bonds. An individual organises their friendships by strength of their one-to-one bonds. People tend to have a maximum of 150 total friendships, including 50 good friendships, which include 15 best friendships, which, in turn, include 5 intimate friendships. Wikipedia provides much more information on this.

Social Groups

A social group of is a collection of people brought together for a shared task or interest. Groups contain multiple overlapping individual networks. The performance of said groups depends on how the friendship bonds across the entire group are leveraged. There are three dominant perspectives on what makes a group, Social Identity perspective, Self-categorization perspective, Social cohesion perspective.

Considering these constraints it would seem worth it to explore design centred around natural human social scales, if you can build a human-scale game that enables a player to spend quality time with good friends, you’ll likely improve the quality of their life.

Games GDD

Image from Pixabay

This weeks reading focuses on the smaller more look over aspects of game design, the physical presentation, especially in board and card games. These are not concrete "rules" for designing games merely suggestions as this article says. Though many of these suggestions sound like common knowledge for a board game some games look over these small details.

First we must focus on the components of the games such as the tiles, cards and the board. Each tile should be its own distinct colour and should be distinguishable from one another so that people know which piece is theirs as many people suffer from some form of colour blindness. As for the board part of the game if there are spaces for the player to put their tiles on then they should be bigger than the tiles themselves to avoid the pieces being disturbed too badly if there's more than one tile on a space. In the same vein the starting tile should be clearly marked and printed in a different colour.

When it comes to the box and packaging of the game the design can be very important because it gives you the first impression of the game inside therefore a good design can really sell the game. The name of the game must be distinct and eye catching and it should be printed on the side of the box as well as the front. The sides of the box should be printed vertically and horizontally so that the boxes can be displayed both ways on a shelf and still be legible, this would greatly help shop owners.

The theme of your game should work with the rules that you create for the game and the rules for said game should be clear and concise. Don't write intentionally vague rules that the player are meant to interpret for themselves, if the player wanted to make up their own rules they would just make their own game. The rules you do create should be blind tested on people who haven't had the game explained to them by the designer and only have the rules to go on to see if the they answer the fundamental questions. The rules of any game should answer the most important questions about the game.

The things that usually get overlooked when making a game are the small things that may seem unimportant but are actually some of the most important things. One should always test their game with others.

Games GDD

Image from Flickr

Games are very different to books or television shows because the consumption of games is unpredictable in comparison to the consumption of books and television shows. MDA breaks down this consumption of games into their components, rules, system and "fun" and their counterparts, mechanics, dynamics and aesthetics. This article explains that designers and the players both have a different views on these components and it is important when designing a game to take in both perspectives.

Aesthetics is all about what makes a game "fun". When describing a game it's best not to use that word and instead use more directed vocabulary. Sensation, fantasy, narrative, challenge, fellowship, discovery, expression and submission are several words that can be used to describe a game. For example The Sims would be described using the words, discovery, fantasy, expression and narrative.
This vocabulary helps to define models for gameplay which help describe gameplay dynamic and mechanics.

Dynamics work to create aesthetic experiences, an example of this is challenge which is created by things like time pressure and opponent play. Using monopoly as an example we can make our discussion of dynamics as concrete as possible. In monopoly as the leaders become more wealthy it has more negative effects on the other players. As this continues the dramatic tension and agency disappear and the players who are not in the lead lose interest. Using aesthetics and dynamics we can come up with ways to keep these players interested, maybe rewarding the players that are behind or giving the player in the lead more obstacles.

Mechanics are the actions, behaviours and control mechanisms that players have in the game. This combined with the  games content, the mechanics support overall gameplay dynamics. Adjusting those mechanics can help to fine tune a games overall dynamics. Lets use our monopoly example again. Applying changes such as bonuses for poorer players or penalties for richer players could keep the players behind the leader interested for longer.

Moving between these three parts of MDA helps us to develop techniques for iterative design and improvement and help to control undesired outcomes.

Discussing Game Elements

Image from Wikipedia Commons

This weeks readings went more in depth into the vocabulary of game design by discussing how to analyse a game and figure out what makes it fun and the types of tools there are and can be used to create good games. This links in with the post I wrote about last weeks reading, which was about the lack of vocabulary that there is to help explain games without using comparisons to other games.

Most people when asked about their opinions of a game will either say that the game was fun or that it wasn't fun. This does not help designers to pinpoint what makes the game good however, most people don't know how to explain the elements of themes that they like or dislike because they lack the vocabulary. Some of the things designers can look at while making a game include players, how many players can a game support and how does it effect gameplay, objectives, what is the goal of the game and rules, the rules of the game.

Formal Abstract Design Tools (FADT) by Doug Church goes over some of the tools that designers use to create games while using examples of real games such as Mario 64 and Tekken to help in explaining these tools and how they help the player have fun in each game. He begins by explaining the types of things that fall under "formal" "abstract" "design" and "tools". This article doesn't go over every tool but it does go over a few good ones that will get the players enjoying your game and it gives an overview of the ideas behind FADT.

Mario 64 , which is used as the first example, has an element of open-ended exploration while also having a clear direction to the goal of all areas of the game but the player is allowed to decide which path they want to take first through the worlds, usually starting with the easiest path first.

The game also has a set amount of controls that always work in that set way. Because of this the player knows what they can and cannot do in terms of gameplay, and while there is different environments to explore and conquer the player does so with those set controls. This means that the player can look at a situation in the game and formulate their own plan using these controls, allowing the player to feel involved in the game.

This lead to two tools under FADT, intention and perceivable consequence. RPG's often use the perceivable consequence tool, often not in a clear cut way, but RPG's also use another tool under FADT, story. The story is revealed through the characters interaction with the world and other people in it. The game may lack the player involvement if the designer chooses to priorities story over perceivable consequence, which works for some games but not all.

These are some of the tools discussed in this weeks reading. These tools are there to help game designers create good and enjoyable games and to help players understand what it is they enjoy or don't enjoy about the game.

Opinions On Game Design

Image of game from Wikipedia

Recently I read about what makes a game and game design, there is no definitive definition for what a game is nor specific words for the different components of a game which of course makes it hard to talk about games without comparing them to other games that are already out there, as the article talked about.

Many people are trying the make words for the elements of games more common so as to make it easier to discuss games but this is not as easy as it seems. However the elements that make up a game are agreed upon, what makes a game is much less agreed upon. There are people who debate on whether things such as Rubik's cubes or Dungeons and Dragons are games, often because they have no obvious end goal.

I thought that this blog explained it very well.

Image of game design from here

The title game design encompasses many things as explained here, level design, content design and system design just to name a few but despite the common misconception it does not involve art, animation or programming. System design focuses on defining the rules of the game currently being made, how the game begins, what the players can do and how that affects them and the end goal of the game. This blog goes more in depth about iterations in and interesting way.

In order to do this the game designer must be an architect, to design blueprints for buildings in the game, lawyers, to define the rules of the game and artists. Game design can involve all these things and more. A key element to game design is iteration, iteration can help bring a game from  just playable to a likeable game, it brings the game from its original idea to the end result.

Games and game design is an interesting, diverse and complicated subject that will be satisfying to learn more about.