Chapter Notes
In the Beginning, There is the Designer
- Argues that ‘listening’ is the most important skill a game designer needs. Listen to team, audience, game, client and self.
The Designer Creates an Experience
- the game is the medium for the experience, but the experience is *not* the game – it is facilitated by the game.
- they encourage careful reflection and reflexivity when thinking about personal experience -> trying to get to the truth of the experience and how it can be translated so that the player can experience it too
The Experience Takes Place in a Venue
- Interesting to think about the place where the game will be played, especially in terms of whether it is a private, semi-private or public place. Thinking about how can the game be made to be in harmony with the venue it is aimed to be played in.
The Experience Rises Out of a Game
- Definitions vary, but they talk about a game as ‘something you play’ (pg. 36) and that fun is ‘pleasure with surprises’ (pg. 36). The chapter has many other definitions of what a game is.
- Another definition of play ‘manipulation that indulges curiosity’ (pg.40)
- They talk about surprise and fun as being important parts of play. Also encouraging curiosity.
- The Lens of Endogenous Value: ‘A game’s success hinges on the player’s willingness to pretend it is important’ (pg. 43) – what do the players care about here?
The Game Consists of Elements
- 4 elements:
- Mechanics: procedures and rules
- Story
- Aesthetics
- Technology: Materials and interactions that make the game possible
- These elements should be in harmony with each other
The Elements Support a Theme
- Strengthening a theme:
- Figure out what the theme is
- Use every means possible to reinforce the theme
- Think about what resonates with you or others: what feels powerful or special
The Game Begins with an Idea
- Encourages iterative process starting with an idea
- Try to clearly state the problems and ways to measure if the problems have been solved
- Suggests using exercises to encourage creativity and get away from assumptions and bias -> generate as many ideas as you can at this stage
The Game Improves through Iteration
8 filters for assessing your design:
- Does this game feel right?
- Will the intended audience like the game enough?
- Is this a well-designed game?
- Is this game novel enough?
- Will this game sell?
- Is it technically possible to build this game?
- Does this game meet our social and community goals?
- Do the playtesters enjoy this game enough?
- Are there any other specific filters related to the niche of this game
they reference the spiral model of software development by Barry Boehm (1986):
- It encourages an iterative process that is build on figuring out and mitigating the greatest risks -> testing -> redesign using the same principals [Agile / Scrum principals developed out of this…]
10 tips for productive prototyping:
- Answer a question
- Forget quality
- Don’t get attached
- Prioritise your prototypes: face your biggest risks first
- You can work on multiple prototypes
- It doesn’t have to be digital
- It doesn’t have to be interactive
- Pick a fast loop game engine: so you can easily change things
- Build the toy first: think about the fun play elements and then design the game around this
- Seize the opportunity for more more testing loops!
The Game is Made for a Player
- Stereotypes about what males like to see in games: mastery, competition, destruction, spatial puzzles, trial and error
- Stereotypes about what females like to see in games: emotion, real world, nurturing, dialog and verbal puzzles, learning by example
- Empathy is key when thinking about the player
- LeBlanc’s Taxonomy of Game Pleasures: Sensation, fantasy, narrative, challenge, fellowship, discovery, expression, submission(to the world of the game)
- Bartles Taxonomy of Player Types: Achievers, Explorers, Socialisers, Killers
Source: Wikepedia (2020)
The Experience Is in the Player’s Mind
- We use mental models to make sense of the world
- Encouraging focus by encouraging flow state: clear goals, no distractions, direct feedback, continuously challenging
- Having empathy for the player and encouraging their empathy are important
- Consider how to activate imagination
The Player’s Mind is Driven by the Player’s Motivation
- Consider intrinsic and extrinsic motivation
Some Elements Are Game Mechanics
- Space, time, objects, actions, rules, skill, chance
Game Mechanics Must Be in Balance
12 types of game balance
- fairness : symmetrical or asymmetrical
- challenge vs success
- meaningful choices
- skill vs chance
- head vs hands
- competition vs cooperation
- short vs long
- rewards
- punishment
- freedom vs controlled experience
- simple vs complex
- detail vs imagination
Game Mechanics Support Puzzles
- Make the goal easily understood, make it easy to get started, give a sense of progress, give a sense of solvability, increase difficulty gradually, parallelism – let the player rest, pyramid structure extends interest, hints extend interest, give the answer
Players Play Games through an Interface
- Can you make the interface ‘juicy’ to use: pleasurable to hold and work with
- Consider mapping data that you need to travel from and to the player and considering what channels you have available to you to transmit them
- Try to reduce the chance of confusion
Experiences Can be Judged by Their Interest Curves
- Think carefully about the key moments in the story – how can these be made as powerful as possible?
- Map out the interest curves and test them out
One Kind of Experience Is the Story
- Makes the point that all storytelling is about imaginative interactivity e.g. what will happen next etc
- Branching stories can feel weak and it is usually too complicated to write multiple unified storylines
- Tragic stories are a problem and not usually done because usually anything seriously bad that happens can be undone
- They suggest that the story should be the last element to think about as it is the most flexible . If it is fixed too early, it can suffocate the rest of the game design principals.
- The hero’s journey…
Story and Game Structures Can be Artfully Merged with Indirect Control
- Thinking about the balance of the feeling of freedom with restriction
- Indirect control: constraining options, using goals, using the interface to direct actions, visual design, characters, music
Stories and Games Take Place in Worlds
- Transmedia worlds as worlds that can be entered using different mediums e.g. Star Wars books, films or soundtracks
- Everyone has secret wishes and desires: What fantasy does my world fulfil, who does the player fantasise about being, what does my player fantasise about doing there?
Worlds Contain Characters
- Characters in games are more about the physical than the mental, more about fantasy than reality, and more simple than complex
- Avatars: ideal form vs blank slate or both together
- Tips for character design:
- List the character functions e.g. hero: plays the game, minions: bad guys etc
- Flesh out the characters with character traits
- Use the interpersonal cicumplex to visualise the relationships between characters
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- Map out the relationships between the characters
- Consider behavioural markers of status (body language)
- Use the power of voice, face
- transform the characters when powerful things happen in the story
- let the characters be surprising
- if the characters look uncanny – they will ruin the connection between the player and the game – they may become creepy looking
Worlds Contain Spaces
- linear / grid / web / points in space / divided space
Some Interfaces Create a Feeling of Presence
- Idea of things that can break the sense of presence e.g. motion sickness, counter-intuitive interactions
- Presence builders: hand presence, social presence, familiarity, realistic audio, proprioceptive alignment, comedy,
The Look and Feel of a World Is Defined by Its Aesthetics
- visuals and audio
Some Games Are Played with Other Players
- Why we play with others: competition, collaboration, meeting up, exploring our friends, exploring ourselves,
Other Players Sometimes Form Communities
- tips for strong communities: foster friendships, put conflict at the heart, architecture that shapes the community, create community property, let players express themselves, support player levels (beginner -> expert) with the ability for people to confer knowledge / privileges etc to the lower levels, force players to depend on each other, manage your community, obligations to others is powerful(e.g. let’s meet up at … ) , create community events
- ‘griefing’ some players spoiling the game for others because they do not care about the game as much. Mitigation
- identify systems that are easy to grief, make griefing boring, think about if you are ignoring any loopholes…
The Designer Usually Works with a Team
- Attending to the team is a very important part of the project
The Team Sometimes Communicates through Documents
- There is no perfect template doc!
Good Games Are Created through Playtesting
- Planning playtesting. Consider:
- Why: what’s the question here?
- Who should playtest?
- When: at what point in the process?
- Where
- What: what will the game look like to test what you want to test for? Remember to be open to surprises – finding out things you didn’t expect to test.
- How will you do it?
- What data will you collect and when?
- FFWWDD (Shawn Patton)
- What was most Frustrating?
- What was your Favourite moment?
- Was there anything you Wanted to do but you couldnt?
- If you had a magic Wand to change anything, what would it be?
- What were you Doing during the experience?
- How would you Describe this game to your friends and family?
The Team Builds a Game with Technology
- What technologies will help deliver the experience I want to create?
- Am I using these technologies in a way that is foundational or decorative? If decorative, should I be using them at all?
- Is there a disruptive technology that I should consider instead?
- Think about how technology will have changed in 5 years, will this have an influence on what tech I use?
Your Game Will Probably Have a Client
- What does the client say they want?
- What does the client think they want?
- What does the client really want in their heart?
The Designer Gives the Client a Pitch
- Tips for a good pitch:
- Get in the door
- Show you are serious
- Be organised
- Be passionate
- Assume their point of view: start with the platform, audience and genre,
- confidence
- be flexible
- rehearse
- get them to own it
- follow up
- Design the pitch
- Know all the details
The Designer and Client Want the Game to Make a Profit
- Do your research on the market etc
Games Transform Their Players
- Considering transformational games: define the transformation, find experts, and don’t do too much, think about how you will measure change,
Designers Have Certain Responsibilities
Each Designer Has a Purpose
Reflections and next steps
- psychology, anthropology and design are listed as three key disciplines important to game design and I have interest and experience in all three. I think this is a good sign!
- They reference an interesting sounding book: “Diversifying Barbie and Mortal Kombat: Intersectional Perspectives and Inclusive Goals in Gaming” by Yasmin B. Kafai which I have requested as an inter-library loan as one major problem for this game is the cultural point of view – what kind of male culture should I be thinking of when designing the game?
- Interesting that comedy can increase presence alignment
- Interesting that they say the secret to teamwork is love: either love for the game or the audience. This sounds like a good value to use to ground a project.
- The book has given me an excellent framework to approach the next stage of my project: to map out the timeline and tasks in a more specific way and to get on with the ideation stage.
References
Expressing social attitudes in virtual agents for social training games – Scientific Figure on ResearchGate. Available from: https://www.researchgate.net/figure/nterpersonal-circumplex-by-Isbister_fig2_260295310 [accessed 19 Feb 2025]
Schell, J. (2018). Art Of Game Design. CRC Press.
Wikipedia (2020). Bartle Taxonomy of Player Types. [online] Wikipedia. Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bartle_taxonomy_of_player_types.
