Some time ago I found this amazing video on game mechanics design by Will Wright, creator of The Sims franchise, SimCity and Spore, talks about game design principles. I like this because it really gave a lot of perspective in my game design experience. I like the way he connects the concepts and the way he uses metaphors to explain them. In particular, the definition of the possibility space for the player helped me as I started involving myself with game design.

I think it’s worth sharing, and by the way, I really think this video is much much better that the TED talk he gave.

Meta-observation:

• The best way to learn is by playing many games and learning from other designers
• Game designers must also learn to observe themselves on many levels as they play
• Some levels in playing/designing games: Mechanics, strategies, cheat/exploit, game design rules… but there are other ways to see it

Basic brainstorming:

• Be aware of, but not shackled by constrains
• Listen to what others say
• Challenge assumptions – your own and others
• Vary discussion of theme/story and gameplay mechanics (Important!)
• Try to cross-fertilize ideas even (specially) when it seems absurd
• You are finding new neural pathways
• Mixing wildly different ideas or themes can create useful tension
• Example: Art deco + bio-tech + Ayn Rand + 1960 + underwater = Bioshock
• Ideas, not egos: Critique concepts, not people
• Review constraints and question them too
• Good, not escential, to have a reason why
• Nothing is to odd or silly – low hit ratio
• It’s normal to wander – some!
• Best size around 5 +- 2
• Common ground, divergent opinions
• Avoid including managment directly (fear of firing, danger of deferring to boss)
• Consider flied trips, resources, toys
• Time pressure (optional)
• No judgments (optional, useful for dealing with people that has never done brainstorming)
• More than art as you gain experience

Great game elements (advanced techniques):

• Classic convexity structure (Start wth one node, then many, then one again)
• Appropiate inteface
• Negative feedback (Handicap)
• Self-tunning features
• Emergent complexity (Overlap various game mechanics)
• Great balance (tradeoffs again!)

Negative feedback examples:

• Exponential costs (experience, money, etc)
• Easier to aim after each failure or death
• Selling items give you less money that what you originally paid for it
• Stronger units are more restictive (specialized, only good against another specific unit, etc)

Natural Funativity Theory:

Natural funativity theory is Noah’s own work. You can find the original gamasutra article here. What I present here are only my notes on the subject, my personal interpretation of the theory. Hope you find it useful.

What is fun?

• Dictionary: Enjoyment, a souce of amusement (that does not help)
• Consider underlying reasons
• “Funativity”: Thinking about fun in terms of a measurable cause and effect
• Inevitably this leads to “Why do we commonly share the experience of fun?”

Evolutanary roots:

• We must look to our distant past
• Young mamals play to learn basic survival skills
• Games are organized play
• Human entrataiment is more complicated

Entretaiment is Learning:

• Life is either work, rest or entretaiment
• Perhaps at first it was all work or rest
• Play (and fun) may be neotenal traits
• Fun is about practicing or learning new survival skillin a relatively safe setting
• People who didn’t experience were less likely to survive to become our ancestors

Natural Funativity Theory:

• Basic concept is that all fun derives from practicing survival and social skills
• Partly learning new skills, partly mastering and mantaining familiar ones
• Key skills relate to stone-age human life, but often in modern context
• Three cathegories: Physical, Social, Mental

Physical fun:

• Sports generally enhance our strength, stamina, coordination skills
• Exploration is fun, both of local area and knowledge of exotic places
• Physical aspect to gathering “stuff”
• Hand/eye coordination and tool use are often parts of fun activities, crafts

Social fun:

• Storytelling is a social activity, a way to lean important survival and social lessons from others, our first VR
• Gossip, bonding with friends aids survival
• Flirting, showing off, finding mates is a key component in social fun
• Language has become paramount

Mental fun:

• Pure abstract reasoning practice is fun
• Pattern matching and generaion
• Music, art, puzzles, all pattern based, both perception and creation
• Gathering has also a mental aspect: categorizing and identifyng patterns

Multipurpose fun:

• Many fun activities have physical, social and mental aspects in combination
• Games that mix these aspects tend to be very popular (e.g. Blizzard games)
• Incorporate ways to practice these skills to increase popularity of games

Noah also mentioned that Diablo 2 was a great in combining the 3 types of fun. You have great physical (hack and slash mechanics, click click click), great mental (inventory, item management, etc) and of course, great social fun (multiplayer is great!).

Seth out.

Ok, continuing with my notes on game design, here you have the fundamentals that Noah Falstein teach us:

Identify your constrains:

• Creative: expectations and goals
• Technical (including platform)
• Bussiness, marketing, sales, distribution
• People: skills and personalities
• Internal politics
• Serious games – add teaching/training and real world content constraints

Game design fundamentals:

• Creative plagiarization: Take only what is appropiate, make it your own
• Sid Meier’s rule: Fun for the player, not for computer or designer
• Albert Einstein: Make it as simple as possible, and no simpler
• Make it familiar, yet new
• Easy to learn, hard to master
• Easy, clean, deep
• Emphasize exploration and discovery
• Have a clear short, medium and long term goals
• Natural funativity: hunting and gathering

A great game:

• A series of interactive choises in the persuit of a series of well stablished and compelling goals
• Must be a series of choises or it’s too simple to be a game
• Must have a goal or it’s a software toy
• With Sim City and The Sims players may bring heir own goals
• Choises need to be meaningful
• If choises are dull could be that:
• Easy to code that way
• Lazy designer
• Meaningful choises are perceived by the player as having significant consequences
• May not have actual consequences

Goals:

• Clear goals: it’s not fun to flounder aimlessly
• Avoid “the protagonist with amnesia” cliché
• Compelling goals are goals that follow the concepts in natural funativity
• Surival is always a compellin goal

Flow:

• Combine intense learning with practical gameplay
• Start with a relatively low stress level
• Combine rapid difficulty increase with slower increase. That maximizes fun.
• High difficulty increase: Boss battles, climatic battles, quest resolutions
• Low difficulty increase: Bonus levels, new resource ad tresure-rich areas, series of easy minion enemies
• Overlap introduction of new skills, areas to explore, tools, enemies

Last month I took a very interesting course of Game Design with the professional game designer Noah Falstein, fomous for working at LucasArts (formely Lucas Film Games), DreamWorks Interactive, and now his very own game consultant company: The inspiracy

I asked Noah for permission to share my personal notes about this course, so, here you have them. The stuff presented here may be the basics of game design, but I really learned from them.

In this first part I collected my notes about what is a game designer, his role, and the types of game designers.

Game Design with Noah Falstein:

How to spot a game designer:

• Obsessive game players, moviegoers and readers. Be in the popular culture!
• They easily get mistaken for the standard programmer and common nerd
• Wonders how things work and why: Rules!
• Smart but quirky
• In-depth knwoledge of many different areas

Tips:

• Know a lot of things: If you only specalize in one thing, all your games will be the same
• Story & design should support each other: they both will become stronger that way
• Reuse characters, that will add more to them
• DON’T make your first level first! Always start designing at the middle of the game
• Don’t stay in the kwnon landscape, explore!

Game designer types:

• Lead designer/Design director:
• Combination of managment and design
• Assistant designers/co-designers
• Take charge of subset, may share vision
• Level designers
• Often hybrid of artist, architect, designer
• Playtesters
• Separated from QA (PT = fun, QA = bugs)

How to become a game designer:

• You need experience
• The chicken and egg problem (do something else)
• Specialize in different areas (if you only know a subject all your games will be the same)
• If you only want to be a game designer, probably you shouldn’t become one

Game designer fundamentals:

• Clear overall vision
• Keep the audience in mind
• Consider the player’s experience
• Concentrate on the decisions made
• Chris Crawford says: “Verbs, not nouns”
• Do stuff, don’t show it

The next part of my notes are about game design in general, I’ll post them soon.