Video games seem to often suffer from a lack of awareness of other fields; it’s not so much that video game designers and developers don’t know what they’re doing but rather that they seem to not communicate with other complementary fields. One of the things I’ve noticed as a game reviewer is that many games do not fully take advantage of known animation principles to provide a greater sense of immersion and activity to their environments. Continue reading “Game Design: Applying Animation Principles to Game Environments”
Tag: Game Design
Game Design: Creating an Investment Friendly Narrative
One of the things that really makes a game succeed or fail is the quality of its narrative. A game that tells a good story will be entertaining. This is a little difficult, but there are a few things one can do when writing a game’s story and plot that will help players get attached to the characters and events that the game is centered around.
Continue reading “Game Design: Creating an Investment Friendly Narrative”
Game Design: Interface and Mood
One of the things that players of games notice intuitively is their user interfaces. Small things make a game’s interface fluid or clunky, and ugly or beautiful. A designer who isn’t careful can introduce unnecessary elements or hide crucial information and functionality, crippling their game while working on a part of it that is often underrated. Furthermore, interfaces set the mood of the game before any of the other art and mechanics come to the forefront.
Game Design: Encouraging Social Play Part 1: Scales of Play
It’s generally well accepted that players who have an enjoyable social experience in game have a higher rate of coming back to a game and will generally enjoy it more than players who are alone, especially in a massively multiplayer environment. This requires designers to take a certain approach to the design of their games that is social play oriented, rather than just play oriented. Continue reading “Game Design: Encouraging Social Play Part 1: Scales of Play”
Game Design: Play Economics
One of the important things to consider as a game designer is that players approaching your game will consider things in the game environment as being very real; sometimes holding incredible amounts of value. As a result, it is important to consider the bad economic decisions that players will make in order to prevent frustration and regrets, encouraging players to have a more positive experience with the game. Continue reading “Game Design: Play Economics”
Game Design: Open Puzzles
One of the most immersive ways to offer player experiences comes in the form of open puzzles. As a designer, one of the best things you can offer your players is an opportunity to engage in meaningful play, and open puzzles provide an interesting mix of dynamically flexible content and a capacity for hand-crafted outcomes by allowing a number of solutions to a problem based on emergent solutions rather than explicitly pre-determined outcomes. Continue reading “Game Design: Open Puzzles”
Game Design: Raising a Point
Games have an incredible potential as ways to tell a message just as easily as they can entertain, but the actual creation of a game that is capable of handling its source material with grace while providing a vehicle for players to form opinions is difficult, and, ultimately rare. There’s a few crucial considerations when it comes to raising a point in games that few people keep in mind. Continue reading “Game Design: Raising a Point”
Game Design: Skill Exclusion
Sorry about this article going up late; I’ve been studying for a final and it slipped my mind. Skill exclusion in video games is a common trend; if a player’s skill is below a certain level, they may not be able to play a certain game with players who have a high degree of skill, at least at a competitive level. It’s not necessarily the break-in point for the game, but rather the degree to which skill determines outcome. What I’m going to look at today is skill exclusion in three games that play very similarly at least on a conceptual level, but have different levels of skill required.
Game Design: Impermanence
Impermanence plays a role in many of the most engaging games on the market. It adds a lot of interesting opportunities in games, but it can also frustrate and anger players who miss out on opportunities. However, sometimes it also allows players to customize their play experience and can create a more concise and meaningful narrative than having a messy jumble of content waiting to be played.
Game Design: Creating Immersive AI
Artificial Intelligence in games is usually a misnomer. Rarely is it possible to create artificial intelligence that is truly capable of responding correctly to a human player; some AI may be too “smart”, acting instantaneously and without any reason to complete whatever objectives it is given, but it’s also possible to create AI that are not challenging or lack an element of life. Finally, there are concerns with the development side of AI that need to be addressed. The four primary problems with AI are the computing load, task management, player interaction, and vivacity that all need to be addressed.