Constants of Game Design

Started by magintz, Mon 21/07/2014 04:10:11

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magintz

"There are infinite paintings, but also a more finite sense of what is a great painting versus not. Similarly there are infinite games, but also a sense of what works and what doesn't. The boundless space of video games is bounded and their limitless possibilities have limits. There are, it seems, rules to game design."

http://techcrunch.com/2014/07/20/constants-of-game-design-1/

I enjoyed the 5 minute read. Nothing revelatory, but worth a read.
When I was a little kid we had a sand box. It was a quicksand box. I was an only child... eventually.

Baron

You read faster than I do.  ;)  Also, I liked the abstract perspective (game = fascination + imperfection + urgency +....): I thought it was insightful, although some of his logic falls apart on closer analysis (e.g. if Chess is "perfect" it can't be a good game, and yet lots of people enjoy playing it... (roll) ).  But still thought provoking. :)

Ghost

Quote from: Baron on Mon 21/07/2014 04:48:01if Chess is "perfect" it can't be a good game

I read it differently- Chess is merely an example of a "perfect game" where all elements are known and visible (and Poker is an example for an imperfect game). Both can be good games, it's just that when you see everything and know every rule, you have a different feeling about the game.
The logic is off though: He brings in the computer program being a black box, which makes COMPUTER chess imperfect because you don't know how it works. But technically a human opponent is just another black box because you can't really be sure about the moves he will make.

Baron

Well, either "imperfection" is a constant in game design or it's not.  Consistently having inconsistent constants makes one's arguments seem somewhat less persuasive. ;)  I play the card game "Old Maid" with my kids, and I can see plain as day what they have in their hands because they are about as good at concealing their cards as they are at picking their noses (if you're going to do it so often, at least clean that sucker out! :P ).  So, technically it's a perfect game, because I know exactly what's going to happen: the kids will tentatively touch each card in my hand, solemnly judging my facial expression until I wince visibly, which magically wins them a pair (most of the time, anyway), while Daddy has an uncanny ability to always pick the Old Maid out of their hands.  It's silly, and ever so predictable.  But surprisingly fun, once you get into it. ;-D 

So I guess we're down to "Six Constants of Game Design".  It's hard to argue with "fascination", but we could probably shoot a few holes through "urgency" if we really tried....  Does anyone remember leaving Space Quest III on for hours, just to see if you would eventually arrive at your destination without jumping to light speed?  :=

Alberth

I can see the difference between a perfect game and an imperfect game. With a game, you enter a new world (quite literally in an adventure game), and you have to find out what the rules are, how things work around here.
That discovery process can be an interesting part of a game. You stumble around, observe how things react, and learn from it. You build yourself a mental picture of the rules. That's how an imperfect game works, you try to find order in the apparent chaos even if that order doesn't match with reality.

In a perfect game however, you know all the start-values, you know all the rules, and the little edge-cases of the rules. In other words, in theory, you have sufficient information to play the game for maximum profit/points, minimal time, or whatever.
I say "in theory", because knowing the rules and the start-value doesn't mean you can achieve the maximum solution.

For 'simple' games, you can of course. The card game with your children is such an example. I don't know the game, but I guess you can easily win all the time. By systematically applying a few rules, you can perhaps even win at maximum profit. (For your children however, it's an imperfect game, they don't have all information, and are trying to discover the rule of how dads face relates to the chaos of cards.)

For less simple perfect games, you may have the start values and the rules, but you cannot oversee the consequences of applying rules. The problem then becomes which rule to apply in which order, ie you're trying to invent a strategy for applying the known rules in a known world to get maximum profit. Think of a sudoku. The rules are known, all the given numbers are in plain sight, yet zillions of people play these things. I believe they do it because they want to see the answer, they want to find out if they can 'see' each number. 'See' is a here a sequence of logical reasoning steps that they must do. The question is not what the rules are, it is what to check in which order to make solving the puzzle more simple/manageable.

The game Go is one of the more complicated perfect games. The rules are extremely simple (it takes about 5 minutes to explain them), yet the number of moves you can make is so large, you have no hope for playing it optimally, even if you start at the age of 3-4 and do nothing else for your entire life. The result is that people concentrate on strategy, and a huge number of books about good forms and bad forms in Go, how to play the first moves, how to play the end-game, etc is the result.


Urgency:
I don't see urgency at all. For me, a game is about finding out the rules first, and a strategy second. I see playing a game as an experiment to learn about the rules or the strategy. If it fails, I can always try again.

Ghost

Quote from: Baron on Mon 21/07/2014 05:41:04
Does anyone remember leaving Space Quest III on for hours, just to see if you would eventually arrive at your destination without jumping to light speed?  :=

Point well made (laugh)

Baron

Quote from: Alberth on Mon 21/07/2014 08:36:19
I don't see urgency at all. For me, a game is about finding out the rules first, and a strategy second. I see playing a game as an experiment to learn about the rules or the strategy. If it fails, I can always try again.

I reread the argument in favour of urgency as a constant in game design, and it seems almost as if the author is arguing that a constant of good game design must be that it is attention-grabbing, or at least that it can demand enough "urgent" attention from the players' minds so that they prioritize the game over other demands on their attention.  I think a better term for this constant would be "compulsion": something that draws you in and makes you want to keep at it.  I think I see why he would have avoided the term "compulsion", however, in that it is a short leap from there to "addiction", a sensitive subject among hard-core gamers.  But I think, especially for adventure games, it is the intangible quality of "compellingness" that makes you fall in love with a game (be it story arc, character development, mind-worm puzzles, etc.).  "Urgency" just seems too fast-paced a term in the context of adventure games.

   Of course, saying that a good game must be "compelling" is like saying a good animation must have movement.  And extrapolating that line of logic, why not condense the  constants of game design into one universal golden constant: a good game must be good. ;)  But then we might not gain hidden insight through the exercise of analysis, and we'd all be the poorer for it.  I'm interested in seeing the back 9 (er ...4) next week.

magintz

When I was a little kid we had a sand box. It was a quicksand box. I was an only child... eventually.

Alberth

Thanks for reminding!

Time seems a bit weird as constant. There are so many different kinds of time, so which one is it?
It looks more like interaction perhaps?

Slasher

A group of people could watch an ant going around in circles and each person will have their own views and opinions about it etc.

all the time people fit into different groups which have their own cultural/ beliefs etc you will never find utopia only a fair medium.


Alberth

QuoteA group of people could watch an ant going around in circles and each person will have their own views and opinions about it etc.
It's even worse than that, it even happens within single persons :P
I was stuck on ideas to improve performance of a program for 1/2 year or so. Yesterday just before going to bed, I realized that just changing my idea of what the program was doing, would give me sufficient leverage to make a nice improvement.

Quoteall the time people fit into different groups which have their own cultural/ beliefs etc you will never find utopia only a fair medium

Isn't this set of different groups utopia already?  :)

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