VII – Gamasutra ^,^

This article by Doug Church is about how game design has been trailing behind in its evolution, which he believes is due to its lack of a common language to be employed when analysing games. In his article titled Gamasutra, he states how “the primary inhibitor of evolution is the lack of a common vocabulary”, their needs to be a shared language of games design that can be applied to any game of any genre. 

Specific genres are still coming along in leaps and bounds, but it gets stuck there, the new design techniques and styles don’t get transferred across the full field of games design and this led Church to develop the idea of FADT – Formal Abstract Design Tools. He believes that we can pick apart games, get down to the core reason of what was good / successful and what was bad / failing and that knowledge can be applied to future games design and allow better, greater games to be developed, he also makes a note to say that although some tools / features that are successful in one game, may not be so great in another. 

He lists a few tools that are common in most games, however there are many more that are not included and that as time progresses the list of tools will increase. Controls are a major tool that shapes gameplay; he states how you can play one game with one set of controls and another, similar game with a completely different set of controls. It’s these controls that shapes player behaviour in a game, once they gradually get to understand the games consistent controls, they will start to develop their own game play styles, experiment and take risks with the games physics and laws, planning on how to reach the next area for example. 

These controls involve the player in the game world, providing just a few actions in a game like Mario and giving them a lot of opportunities to use these abilities causes the player to start and understand the mechanics that makes up the game. Once they are involved in the game world they can take attempt to take control over their own path and play with how to get from one point to another. It’s when they start to experiment that the games mechanics need to be in top shape so that it can anticipate all of the player’s actions and have the character and world respond in a way that is cannon. Even if it all plays out and the player fails in whatever task they were performing, let’s say it was jumping from one tree to another, they will understand why it failed and may attempt again, however if they failed because the next tree wasn’t climbable then it won’t fit into the game state, the illusion of realism that the game was aiming for has been vanquished and the player will feel lost and confused. This ends in the player getting frustrated at the game and possibly having then quit. 

Perceivable consequences can make or a break a game. A game reacts based on your actions and input and moreover, you understand why it reacts the way it does. The player can take a chance, take the left or right road can be totally random, only to find that they took the wrong path and are now dead. This can leave the player frustrated as, how could they have known on a random decision? But in that form of free roaming game, it is that element of surprise and not knowing that can make a game great, but they draw heavily from storyline which is another tool that defines a game.

Story can often take a lot of control away from a game if it is incorporated too heavily. To compensate for this, the player is given more control over small areas of a game. Any fan of the traditional RPG genre will usually enjoy the task of going through the games set paths and getting to the end of the story, as that is one of the most thrilling parts of the game. It’s an interactive story that you control, even though control is limited. The work around for this limitation is to make each area of the game a game in its own right, such as the item system becoming a collection system, the cut scenes becoming interactive, etc.

Story has a massive effect on a game; it’s hard to play any game without a theme and story behind it. Even generic sport games are based on real life which has its own unique story to it. Intention and perceivable consequences can often take a backseat with a heavily scripted and story driven storyline, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. In recent open world sand box games, the same situation of going left or right is still in the game, and you have to guess which is the best, but you have that other option to explore the game world provided for you and finding that hidden manuscript that details the movements of a gang or rogues so you know that they are down that right path. This can add a huge sense of realism to the game, the option to research everything and go into every situation totally prepared or take to the unknown – the faster path to just complete the storyline with a harder path set before. Giving that option, the player can use intention to choose their own path through the storyline of the game.

Intention is another tool that Church talks about. The player will have some means by which to complete the tasks set before him, planning ahead with the intent of being able to pass any future obstacles with ease, moving forward with a purpose. Accumulating goals is a great away to give the player an option on how to move ahead, planning ahead on how to accomplish each goal. 

There are many other tools which Church doesn’t go into great detail about, such as cooperation, conflict and confusion, but the three big ones he talks about is intention, consequence and story. They are involved I would say most if not all games of the past decade and are only going to be so much more over used now that the topic of games design is being more precisely researched with more and more people discussing the topic.

SM – iHK

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