Don't Be a Vidiot...

To start off, I should explain the what this word "Vidiot" means;

A "vidiot," is a person whose sole understanding of games derives from video games.

One must look further than just pc and console games from recent years to get good ideas for games, otherwise the ideas will lack originality and will be constrained by today's repeated ideas.

Non-Electronic games have explored more ideas than video games, and are good sources for ideas.

When it comes to miniatures gaming, there are 2 aspects to note from it:

-The business model: A lot more money is made than when a game is sold as a whole, once people are into the game as a hobby.

-The activity external from the game: Players collect the pieces as models, and spend a lot of time painting them.

Dungeons and dragons started off as a poorly designed game where the player takes the role of one person. The fact that a game master was required makes up for the poor design of rules. (Game made a hit regardless of poor design)

-The collectors card industry began with the publication of Richard Garfield's MAGIC: THE GATHERING in 1993 by Wizards of the Coast (which is an exceptions game)

An exceptions game has a very simple, limited rules set; but some game components have additional rules printed on them that alter, modify, or break the basic rules. As a result, they can be quite complicated when viewed in toto, but are quite simple to learn in the first instance.

***

Different categories:

Boardgaming
Miniatures gaming
Wargaming 
Science fiction and fantasy boardgaming
Roleplaying games
Collective card games
Live Action Roleplaying Games
Branching story games

Conflict: The Real Substance of a Story

Gamasutra: What Every Game Developer Needs to Know About Story by John Sutherland

"Story is a universal human experience"

"Story is conflict"

A classical story structure involves:

1) The hero/protagonist

2) His or her world is thrown out of order by an inciting incident.

3) Hero tries to live life normal, but the state of the world makes it too hard.

4) Hero then takes a risk to try to fix the problems stopping him/her to live his normal life. 

5) (This is a reversal) Something new happens, or the hero learns something new which drags him/her further into the problems in the world.

6) Hero takes bigger risks to overcome these problems.

7) (Another reversal) Something drags the hero into a position where he/she must deal with the core of the problem in order to reach whatever it was he or she desires. (ex: saving someone important or living a normal life)

3 Acts is a minimum, and a good goal for a game.

Reversals happen through actions or revelations which changes everything for the protagonist.

A good reversal adds new information to what you already knew, which flips everything upside down.

An example of a good reversal is: You initially had an enemy person or faction, but as the story unfolds, you find out that there is a new enemy which is threatening both you, and your initial enemy. This new information leaves you unsure where the real problem lies.


Another good reversal is where you were tricked into taking a wrong choice due to having limited information. And you have to deal with the consequences once the whole truth unfolds (ex: Metal Gear Solid 1, you activate metal gear yourself)


In the end Your hero has to cause the ending.

***

The Character:

Character is what the hero chooses to do when given particular situations.

A good story must put pressure in the form of difficult decisions on the hero to bring out their character.

The rest of the characters should be designed around the protagonist in order to bring out more of his/her character as well.

The world should be designed to constantly oppose the player.

Whenever something is accomplished by the hero a 'reversal' should come into play to give the hero reason to keep on going.

***

Types of Conflict:

conflicts are expressed with different levels of visuals and speech.

Personal: 

-conflict within the protagonist's head. 

-expressed naturally in novels.

Interpersonal: 

-conflict with another person.

-expressed through speech.

External: 

-conflict with society or the world.

-expressed through visuals and actions.

Usually, external conflict is more ideal for games as it brings out motive for actions you'd find in a game.

Bringing out empathy for the protagonist is easy in games because you are playing as that person.

This raises a new problem though, your ability to make choices (since you act as the protagonist) are limited.

Since the player is in action, unlike in movies, less dialog is needed. Something like a 3 minute action scene that you would find in a movie, can be stretched because as a player you are in action and thus won't get bored.

It is a good practice for games to have the player 'do' the story when possible, and only show it, if it is out of the player's control.

***

Games Need a Writer

Story writer needs to be involved from the beginning of the game but the designer, the artist, the sound creator and the developer all play a part in how well the story is told as well.

***

This has been a very interesting reading as it demonstrates a common structure that as game players we have seen used successfully over and over in the games that we play.

The Royal Game of UR - Assay

The Royal Game of Ur

When the Royal Game of Ur was discovered, the game's rules were not known, thus many people tried to come up with their own versions of how they thought the board suggested that the game would be played.

According to Murray, the first version of the royal game of Ur dates back to 2560 B.C. Four game boards were found in the royal graves of the First Dynsaty among the treasures discovered by Sir Leonard Woolley and his exploration party. There were different variations but the boards only differed in the decoration of the cells. There were different variations but the boards only differed in the decoration of the cells. (H.J.R.Murray, 2000, 19-20)

According to Bell, one of the variations had little discs of shells with red or blue centres set in bitumen which covered the wood. Another more elaborate variation has the board completely covered with an incrustation of shell plaques inlaid with lapis lazuli and red limestone, and is divided by lapis lazuli strips.

This version's game board was 8 by 3 squares as shown in the image below. It was played using four sided dice, with two of their sides having a jewelled corner, and the other two being plain.

Bell's initial suggestion of the rules of the game were that each player had seven tokens and three dice, and players would bet money before the game. Both players' tokens would start off the board and enter onto the tile indicated on the image. When the first player is decided, each player took turns at rolling their 3 dice and were able to get the following scores:

• 3 Jewelled corners up - 5
• 3 Plain corners up - 4
• 2 Plain corners up - 0
• 1 Plain corner up – 1

First a score of five is required to put a counter on the board. Players would then move one of their tokens towards the next special square (every fourth square) based on their rolling score each turn. Once a counter reached the first special square it would next move into the middle line where it risked the chance of being removed from the board by having the opponent landing on the same square. Finally when getting to the end, an exact throw is needed to get a piece off the board.

Bell also says that fifteen hundred years later, another version of the same game was being used by Egyptians. This version had different shaped game pieces and had more middle squares, however it still kept the 'special' squares every 4^th square as seen in the figure below. (R.C.Bell, 1979, 22-25)

Having played this game myself, I wanted to do a few iterations of my own, to try and make it more fun to play.

As I will be mentioning the terms 'Mechanics', 'Dynamics' and 'Aesthetics' in my iteration, I will first give a brief description of their definitions.

Mechanics are the core of the game, they refer to the rules, boundaries and the actual game pieces required to play the game.

Dynamics are the behaviors that may occur during game-play due to the chosen mechanics.

Aesthetics are the desired emotional responses that a game evokes when played.

(Robin Hunicke, Marc LeBlanc and Robert Zubek, [year])

The following is an example of mechanics, dynamics and aesthetics, and their effect on each other in context of the Royal Game of Ur.

If a player's token lands on the opponent's token, the opponent must remove the token off the board. However if a token is on a 'safety' box, the opponent may not land on the same box. These are a couple of mechanics which bring the following dynamics to life:

Players will try to stay on the safety boxes as much as possible to avoid having their tokens knocked off the board and they will move their tokens onto the opponent's tokens when possible to gain an advantage over them. These are dynamics which bring the following aesthetics to life:

The feeling of competition is caused as both players try to maintain an advantage over their opponent and dramatic tension is built whenever an opponent is about to take a roll which may possibly knock one of their tokens off the board.

Having explained the basic definition of mechanics dynamics and aesthetics I will move on to the iterations that I did to the later version of the Royal Game of Ur.

The first iteration was that when a player's token lands on the same box as another token of their own, it will give all tokens in that box increased movement the next time they are moved, and the movement increase is equal to the number of tokens in the same box.

The idea behind this iteration was to allow for more choices. Rolling a four was always the best one could hope for, however with this change players had more meaningful choices to decide on. The dynamic created by this iteration was that players could stack tokens in order to rush ahead as a trade-off for risking having more tokens knocked off if an opponent landed on them.

According to Brenda & Ian, trade-offs are when a player must make a choice to gain something and lose another, none of the choices are entirely right or wrong, but it is up to the player to decide which one to make. Such decisions are important to make the player feel involved. (Brenda Braithwaite & Ian Schreiber, 2008, chap 5-6).

After testing the game, I noticed that the game allowed more chance of landing on an opponent's token, thus the aesthetic of competition was increased, but the game was slowed down as more tokens were being sent back off the board. Due to this, adding inevitability was the next target I wanted to achieve.

In the second iteration I added an additional effect to one of the empty boxes: When a player moves a token onto this square their token would no longer be able to get knocked off the board, thus making its progress inevitable. According to Leblanc, inevitability is important as it adds dramatic tension. Drama is a desired aesthetic in games as it makes them more compelling. (Marc Leblanc, [year], 439-445)

When testing this iteration two things were noticed. This mechanic led to a dynamic where players tried to use the 'un-knockable' tokens to limit their opponents' possible movement. The other thing I noticed was a fatal flaw in the game due to a combination of both the iterations. When trying to get off the board, a 1 was required at the end, however when an 'un-knockable' token stacked up on another token right at the end, the smallest possible movement was a 2. To top it all, the opponent could not knock the tokens off due to the 'un-knockable' effect so whenever a player's tokens end in that position, that player would effectively have lost due to never being able to move those tokens again.

The next iteration was simply done with the intention to fix this flaw. By changing the increased movement mechanic to an optional movement increased, players would be getting even more choice, and would no longer get in a situation where they could no longer move.

Having tested the game using all three iterations, the flaw was fixed however I noticed that no new aesthetics were added to the game due to the changes. The effect of the iterations only empowered the game's original aesthetics.

In the end aesthetics are what matter to players because that is what gets players emotionally invested in a game.

Had I planned the iteration with an aim to add a particular aesthetic from the start, I would have been able to choose the dynamics that can give the desired aesthetics, and then decide on the mechanical changes required to enable those dynamics. I learnt that this is the ideal flow of thinking when designing and iterating games, because even though it is the mechanics that determine the dynamics and in turn, the aesthetics, a designer must first know the desired aesthetic in order to know which dynamics are needed and in turn, which mechanics would enable these mechanics.

Having gone through the process of iterating and assessing the changes the Royal Game of Ur, I feel I have acquired a better understanding of how particular qualities of games are placed together to achieve the end result. I look forward to every chance at researching and iterating existing games as it is through these experiences that I will inevitably improve my skills as a game designer.

Bibliography

H.J.R.Murray, A History of Board-Games Other Than Chess, 2000 , (p.19-20)

R.C.Bell, Board and Table Games From Many Civilizations, 1979, (p. 22-25)

Robin Hunicke, Marc LeBlanc and Robert Zubek, MDA: A Formal Approach to Game Design and Game Research

Brenda Braithwaite & Ian Schreiber, Challenges For Games Designers, 2008, (ch. 5-6)

Marc Leblanc, Tools for Creating Dramatic Game Dynamics, (p. 439-445)

Natural Funativity

The 3 Types of "Fun"

Physical Fun
- Anything that directly threatens our survival automatically commands our full attention. Themes of survival are effective for this reason.

- physical strength and team cooperation based sports are interesting to men. (due to relevance to survival)

- honing our hunting skill is found interesting for the same reason.

- exploration of exotic places or for finding best places for specific resources. Knowledge of our
surroundings is important for survival.

- weapon/tool usage. (for hand/eye co-ordination skills)

- Moving faster has always been an important skill for survival, that is why we find cars and racing interesting.

Social Fun
- Attracting mates (Think mates is referring to both friends as well as the opposite sex)

- social gathering activities (shopping / trading collectibles / chatting / gossiping / information gathering / social-bonding)

- story telling (leaving us with knowledge and moral values)

- Humor is another form of fun. (it relates to survival as a method of telling others that something is harmless)

Mental Fun
- Music and Poetry are patterned sound and words, our minds enjoy perceiving and manipulating the patterns.

- Games like tetris and bejeweled require pattern solving.

- Problem and pattern solving, training our minds to do it faster and efficiently.

***

These types of fun are often blended together in existing games. We find them fun because we evolved through using these skills.

When making games a designer should aim for achieving physical, social and mental fun as it is a reliable method of getting our audience's interest.

***

Closing with an interesting quote from Noah Falstein:

" when you really look at not only games, but all human entertainment, you see that at its heart it is all about learning about survival and reproduction and the necessary associated social rules and behaviors. "

MUDs and Player Types

Players Who Suit MUDs

MUD: Multi User Dimension

MUDs need a system which is a (text-based) multi-user virtual world.

Most players agree on 4 methods of getting fun out of their games:

Achievement (Achievers)

- Wanting to achieve game related goals.

- Achievers are proud of their formal status in the game's built-in level hierarchy, and of how short a time they took to reach it.

Exploration (Explorers)

- Explore the world and its physics.

- Explorers are proud of their knowledge of the game's finer points, especially if new players treat them as founts of all knowledge.

Socializing (Socialisers)

- Using communication.
- Socialisers are proud of their friendships, their contacts and their influence.

Imposition (Killers)

- Having an impact on others.
- Killers are proud of their reputation and of their oft-practiced fighting skills.

The writer argues that most people fit mostly into one of the 4 types, and mainly uses the other types only if needed or if it helps with their preferred type.

I would have to strongly disagree here as I do a bit of everything, not because I need to but because I want to, however it is true that I do focus more on some rather than others.

Player Interests

           Acting
Player     +     World
        Interacting

Player vs World & Acting vs Interacting

Player: Social elements. (Small world enhances this)
World: Exploration. (Large world enhances this)

Acting: Free action.
Interacting: Actions are limited to what options are given.

Player focus is all about communication, but "when all sense of elsewhere-presence is lost, you no longer have a MUD."

According to the writer, the following are the methods that can be used to increase or reduce the desired player types:

To increase the number of achievers:

• reduce the number of killers, but not by too much.
• if killer numbers are high, increase the number of
  explorers.

To decrease the number of achievers:

• increase the number of killers.
• if killer numbers are low, reduce the number of
  explorers.

To increase the number of explorers:

• increase the number of explorers.

To decrease the number of explorers:

• massively increase the number of killers.

To increase the number of socialisers:

• slightly decrease the number of killers.
• increase the number of socialisers.

To decrease the number of socialisers:

• slightly increase the number of killers.
• massively increase the number of achievers.
• massively decrease the number of achievers.
• decrease the number of socialisers.

To increase the number of killers:

• increase the number of achievers.
• massively decrease the number of explorers.
• increase the number of socialisers.

To decrease the number of killers

• decrease the number of achievers.
• massively increase the number of explorers.
• decrease the number of socialisers

A MUD can't focus on just 1 player type, but must focus on and try to balance all four to be rightfully called a MUD.



***

This is a very biased reading against "killers", it seems the writer may have had a rough gaming experience in a player killing environment.

The "killers" that he speaks of do exist, however I believe he is only referring to a small share of this player type. I do not believe it is true that most "killers" gain their fun out of causing distress to other people.

My opinion is based on other similar readings to this which were a lot less biased.

Also, a lot of statements used didn't quite click with my experiences while playing online. However times may have changed, and I'm trying to understand MUDs in the context of my MMO knowledge, so I could possibly be off.

3 Types of Segmentation

Segmentation of gameplay describes how a game is broken down into smaller or shorter units of gameplay.


3 Types of Segmentation:

• Temporal Segmentation

Limiting player action within the game with turns and real time.
Used for temporal co-ordination and as a temporal resource.

• Spacial Segmentation

The virtual space broken down into sub-locations such as: levels, maps, and worlds.

In referencing a strong sense of spatial segmentation, it is important that the player perceives he or she is participating in a virtual space larger than its onscreen representation and that this space is traversed in parts.

Levels are evident the through discontinuity in gameplay, they represent different locations.

Checkpoints break down locations into sub locations which can be used as a progression alternative to levels, without discontinuity.

• Challenge Segmentation

Sub-units of gameplay which contain challenge.

Challenge segmentation comes in forms of boss challenges, puzzles, and waves.

Waves suggest an intended increase in difficulty to the player.

Puzzles add challenge to a game, without making the player encounter enemy characters. Puzzles often must be solved to progress to the next puzzle.

Boss segments spike the challenge in the game as they require more effort and new strategies to overcome.

Bonus stages refers to a phase in the game where the player can't lose.

***

I feel there was too much focus on labeling segments of games, as opposed to when how or why to use these segmentation types.

Space of Possibility and Pacing in Casual Game Design

Casual Games Definition (according to Marcos Venturelli):

Casual games can be played without having to learn how to play them right away and offer gameplay which can be interrupted at any time without consequences. Complexity can still be added later on.

The human brain is goal driven, we automatically try to turn the game into routine as we play, to make the game easy, which in turn can lead to the game becoming boring.

Space of possibility: This refers to the amount of options and choices are allowed within the game's system.

A simple game is easy to get into, but will be solved by our brains quickly and therefor becomes boring quickly.

A game with a larger space of possibility will take long to master, meaning it stays entertaining for longer, however players might be frustrated due to not knowing how to play properly.


There should be minimal use of tutorials in a casual game, this should happen as the game progresses in order to keep the player from investing big amounts of time learning instead of playing.

Ideally the game starts simple with minimal space of possibility, and consistently builds up by adding or replacing mechanics, keeping the player happy because s/he is hardly interrupted from the game, and yet, patterns are always being added while they play, to prevent them from getting bored.

***

I think the methods used to hook players at the start, and keep them hooked by adding complexity are very effective for new players, however from my experience, these games tend to have a drawback: Bad replay value.

When replaying a game, after knowing all of the game's complexity, it is very frustrating being limited to basic mechanics at the start. I think the solution to this problem is to create a different type of gameplay such as a skirmish mode, in strategy games, where players can continue playing, using the full knowledge they have gained, in a balanced, repeatable scenario.

Having considered this reading, it seems digital games have an advantage over non digital games.

Since all the learning required must be done before playing a non digital game, these games suffer the inevitability of  being too simple in the long run or too complex at the start.