2. Universal Principles for Game Creation

The 80/20 Rule

The 80/20 rule, sometimes called Pareto’s Principle (not to be confused with his other breakthroughs—see Outcomes: Pareto Optimality), is one that many development teams should keep in mind in order to focus their development efforts on those features that will provide the highest returns and help avoid detrimental feature creep.

The theory essentially states that 80 percent of any resource is controlled or driven by just 20 percent of the controlling factors. This was first observed by Vilfredo Pareto in 1906 when he noticed that 80 percent of the land in his home country of Italy was controlled or owned by just 20 percent of the population. He then found this ratio held true in most other countries. Even today, 80 percent of the wealth in the world is controlled by just 20 percent of the population. The rule extends even beyond wealth and property—Pareto found this out when he realized that 80 percent of the peas in his garden were produced by just 20 percent of the pods.

This correlation is evident in games as well. For example, during 80 percent of the game experience, only 20 percent of the features are used.

Although many flashy features are touted in reviews and press releases, the players will spend the majority of their time (about 80 percent) interacting with some of the essential features (usually about 20 percent of them), such as jumping, fighting, upgrading, or scoring (see Core Gameplay Loop). Developers need to be cognizant of this and focus on polishing and bug-fixing these core features.

As an example, the original Legend of Zelda had very few features when compared to today’s games, but players primarily interacted with the world of Hyrule: specifically the way Link moved about and the way he attacked enemies. If we look at all the items that Link must collect in his quest for the Triforce, many extra little items, secret doors, hidden life, and other Game Tropes do help Link complete the game, but he only uses them for a very short time. Take, for instance, the Candle, Bombs, and Silver Arrows. In Legend of Zelda, all of these items are crucial to completing the game, but the player spends much more time in their play experience moving Link around the world and swinging his sword to either kill or deflect attacks from enemies.

A development team should be aware of the relative impact these features have on the overall play experience. If they spend all their time polishing the Candle, Bombs, and Silver Arrows and hurry through the construction of the game world and combat, the player could suffer through a rough, buggy experience for 80 percent of their time with the game.

The same can be seen in much larger games that have been developed in recent years. World of Warcraft is a prime example of using the 80/20 rule in their expansions. In its original release, World of Warcraft (WOW) was somewhat slow and difficult to move about in. This caused players who did not want to spend 10 minutes running across an area to turn in one quest much grief.

Just as with The Legend of Zelda, the movement balance of the player characters should have been a higher priority to World of Warcraft’s development team, even though this was just one feature. In later updates and expansions, the movement speed improved and it became easier for player characters to travel faster. This improvement was essential because the world in World of Warcraft is massive; traversing it is a feature that players use constantly, even though it’s not the flashiest, most exciting game element.

Another way to see the 80/20 rule at work is within other aspects of WOW expansions. Take a look at how fast many players reach the endgame and then turn their focus on raids. No matter what new race or flashy feature they add, the new endgame with raid opportunities gets a lot of focus and attention—even though it is only 20 percent of the content, this is where players will put 80 percent of their effort and interest.

Alternatively, in a new game, where players haven’t already built up characters and are expected to replay the game multiple times, the beginning of the game will be experienced far more often than the end and should have a proportional amount of development attention—probably approaching an 80/20 split.

Brainstorming Methods

Brainstorming is a term everyone should be familiar with. Basic methods are taught in schools to students who are facing the task of writing their first research paper. Writers use brainstorming to give their characters more depth or to fully entwine their reader in their plot. The same sort of brainstorming goes into games. From plot points to unique mechanics, brainstorming methods can assist designers in creating all pieces of a game.

Some of the most basic brainstorming techniques can come naturally if one has access to a writing utensil and a blank slate—this is referred to as the idea space. This is always the best starting point, no matter which techniques are used; the only limit that one might have while brainstorming is the amount of space with which to produce and record thoughts.

Freethinking Methods

These types of methods are good to use when there is no need to have a specific structure to the ideas. The idea is to create an open forum that allows free-flowing thought and has no pressure to produce a specific outcome.

Word bubbles and idea webs start with one or more ideas written down. From each of these starting points, more words and ideas are added that connect back to the starting points. As the ideas grow outward, ideas connect not only back to the starting point but also to other ideas on the idea space, creating an interconnected graphic of ideas that typically resembles a spider’s web. These techniques work best for the beginning stages of game development when the designer has only a basic concept for a game or the base plot for a game story.

Structured Techniques

Although open freethinking can be extremely fruitful at the beginning stages of development, later on, developers need some structured brainstorming.

Flow charts and tree diagrams start in a similar way to word bubbles and idea webs; they begin with a starting idea, and from this point the ideas and words added during the session are done so in relation to the starting point.

Flow charts are useful for the areas of game development that need a sequential structure. Each idea leads into the next with very little variance and few offshoots. Tree diagrams are useful in game development when designers need to create a hierarchy of items or actions.

Physical Techniques

Brainstorming doesn’t have to be limited to writing down the ideas; designers should act them out as well. Bodystorming is a fairly new term, but the process of it should be familiar to gamers who have played any live-action roleplaying game. Bodystorming uses the body’s movement to assist in the creative process and is useful in planning out complex character movements or (with the advent of motion controls) newer control mechanics.

All of these techniques can be used in conjunction with the others, and each should be used in the process of game development.

Consumer Surplus

If one paid attention to the games industry around 2008, they would have seen a remarkable shift in business models take place. Seemingly overnight, the old model where a consumer would walk into a store, buy a $60 game, and then play it until they tired of it was challenged by a model where games were very cheap (or even free!) and players would pay for consumable or durable in-game items.

Why this model became more attractive to game makers goes back to an economic idea popularized in the 19th century called consumer surplus.

Imagine that the 50,000 people who want to play a new game are really just 10,000 copies of the same five people:

• Abe is a poor college student. He likes games but generally doesn’t ever buy them. He doesn’t want to pay anything for them.

• Bill likes games and is curious about this one. He may buy it for $1 but wouldn’t pay more.

• Cathy likes the game and would pay up to $30 to play it forever.

• Dave really likes the game and would pay up to $60 to play it until he is tired of it.

• Ed is a fanatic. He would pay $500 over the lifetime of playing the game.

Now, in a game maker’s perfect world, they would be able to go up to each of these groups and offer them the game for the maximum they are willing to pay. The Bills would each give $1, the Cathys would each give you $30, the Daves would each give $60, and the Eds would each give $500.

But game makers can’t do that in the real world. Game stores generally set one price that everyone has to pay. If the game was set at $60, the Daves and Eds would buy it, but the Abes, Bills, and Cathys would be priced out. If the game was set at $1, Bills, Cathys, Daves, and Eds would all buy it, but the game makers would be leaving huge amounts of money on the table. Ed would give them up to $500, why would they sell it to him for $1? This amount of money left on the table is called consumer surplus.

What Free-to-Play (F2P) models allow game makers to do is allow all groups, Abes through Eds, a chance to play the game and also the opportunity to pay as much money as they desire. They do this by not charging anything for access to the game and then they monetize by selling in-game items and privileges up to the gamer’s maximum willingness to pay. By capturing that consumer surplus, the game maker can compete economically in a crowded marketplace.

Traditional retail distribution of games only allows consumers to pay a single price for a game, even if they would have been happy to pay much more. This results in unused consumer surplus. Digital distribution and modern payment methods allow consumers more flexibility to invest as much or as little as they like in their favorite entertainment. The creators then have access to the consumer surplus to use for further development.

Core Gameplay Loop

Repetition is one of the fundamental aspects of play. When people enjoy something, they want to repeat it (see Addiction Pathways). Children exhibit this to an extreme degree as they watch a movie over and over or ask for the same short storybook to be read to them five times every night before bed. It’s the same with games and play, even into adulthood. This becomes clear in video games where a few select mechanics repeat over and over throughout the experience. Almost all of the moment-to-moment satisfaction comes from diversity in these few core mechanics’ results. Fundamentally, game designers need to whittle down big-picture design goals into granular components that the audience will be compelled to complete under a variety of gratifying circumstances. Core Gameplay Loop is the principle that video game designers must clearly, carefully define, and then they must refine the central, recurring mechanics that provide the foundations of the play experience.

The core gameplay loop is the central building block of a game’s design. Usually, it consists of verbs—usually the more specific the better. Steering, Shooting, or Sneaking are just a few random verbs that start with S, but each could provide the core loop required to build a game. A superior core gameplay loop can be described in just a few words and should clearly illustrate the fun and engaging part of the experience (see The 80/20 Rule).

The “loop” of core gameplay loop comprises an action on the player’s part, the result of that action, the player’s reaction to the result, and the game requiring the player to repeat the original action to progress (see Feedback Loops).

Consider Super Mario Bros. circa 1985. Its core gameplay loop is “Jumping.” The entire game is based on jumping. Jumping interpolates movement or incorporates actions like crushing enemies, breaking blocks, navigating terrain, and more, but the repetition of jumping is the core game-play loop. In Super Mario Bros., the jumping gameplay loop remains “fresh” throughout the experience because a variety of challenges are introduced and the player experiences new combinations and results while jumping (see Synergy).

A more refined approach to the core gameplay loop is the “30 Seconds of Fun” concept associated with the Halo franchise. To summarize, 30 Seconds of Fun seeks to expand the core gamplay loop beyond the 5 to 10 seconds of only a couple of mechanics. It proposes that a number of well-designed systems, rather than just mechanics, can be the basis for repeated play, as well. Systems of mechanics can then be transported over the entirety of the game, repeated and expanded upon, and still engage players. The 30 seconds of Fun in Halo games centers around the sequence of firing weapons, tossing grenades, a close-in fight, and a short period of recovery before facing another encounter that follows a similar formula. However, by introducing new weapons, new enemy types, new terrain, and other external influences, the combat loop of Halo remains strikingly poignant.

It’s fair to say that many people consider repetitive to be a negative word. However, the art of creating video games must involve embracing repetition and providing circumstances that keep it interesting, compelling, and rewarding (see Koster’s Theory of Fun).

With this in mind, here are some time-honored tips for designing a strong core gameplay loop. It should include designing actions that are

• Easily understood

• Easily performed

• Enjoyable

• Able to provide direct feedback

• Flexible enough for multiple scenarios

• Extendable with additional actions

• Combinable with other actions

• Evolvable to provide support of other play loops

Ultimately, the core gameplay loop is key to long-term audience satisfaction. If the loop at the heart of your experience is flawed, it will be extremely difficult—and likely impossible—to use all the other elements incorporated in the game to make the experience feel fun. A core gameplay loop without depth and flexibility won’t hold up over any significant amount of time.

Finally, keep in mind that not all games have a huge scope for ambition, like Halo, that seeks to hold attention indefinitely. It is entirely possible to build a small experience that succeeds in being fun. Consider how much repetition is involved in simple games like Bejeweled. Again, it comes down to the strength of the core gameplay loop. Often a small game is a great tool in Prototyping the loop that will end up being central to a bigger experience.

A core gameplay loop is based on a player-driven action that feels fun and encourages repetition.

Define the Problem

Defining the problem is one of the first, and potentially most impactful, steps in the initial creative process for a game designer. By pursuing a poorly considered or constructed problem a designer may find themselves choosing an inappropriate starting point from which to achieve the design goals, solving the wrong problem, or performing unnecessary work. Begin to define the problem by structuring your curiosity into the form of a problem statement that will enable you to pursue an ideal solution. (Note: Effective problem statements are a good practice for problem solving in general [see Problem-Solving Approaches], not just for game design). This is an established method of defining the core approach for designing a new game.

Most effective problem statements adhere to a format that consists of common parameters, which are widely practiced and regarded as helpful in problem solving. These include the following:

• Set a specific focus with an appropriate scope.

• Provide for measurable results.

• Ensure the problem statement is clearly communicable.

Bear in mind that these parameters are suggestions, not rules (see House Rules). Use discretion in framing a problem statement in the most effective fashion, given the preferences and circumstances of the situation.

Start creating the problem statement by identifying the issue to be solved. When the design team has a specific focus in defining a problem, their best efforts are aimed at the most crucial elements of design. Is the goal to design an entire game, a system, or a specific mechanic? Each is possible, but what is the focus in this instance? An accurate, clear focus makes it easier to avoid distractions and dead ends.

Problem statements can still be quite general, such as, “How can I design a turn-based strategy game for a mass audience?”; they can be more specific, such as, “How can I design a revival of the sidescrolling beat ’em up games from the eight-bit era for tablets while including a Free-to-Play business model?”; or they can be even more specific, as in, “How can I create an advanced enemy patrol AI?”

Pinpointing the correct focus is difficult; being overly broad or narrow can have negative consequences either way. If focus is too broad, the results may be too unspecified to integrate. Starting the solution in the wrong place may waste a great deal of time, or a solution may seem correct when it is not specialized enough to solve the issue under investigation. If focus is too narrow, it may not be possible to implement the solution within the context of the existing designs, and by ruling out nonconventional solutions, creative potential may be hamstrung.

When a problem statement’s definition and focus include the proper scope, terms will be generated that allow for measuring results. A problem statement that does not uncover actionable data is less valuable to the process of problem discovery and problem solving. So, even if “How do I revolutionize the fighting game genre?” may seem like an OK first question, it lacks a specific focus and it’s too broad in scope. This problem statement is not going to provide quantifiable results that indicate a place to start researching, hypothesizing, and designing.

By narrowing the scope to “How can I create a fighting game with light RPG elements and craftable weapons?” boundaries are established and points of insertion open up avenues for drawing logical conclusions. With this second question, there are clear starting points and measurable end goals.

When defining the problem, a good test is to try to communicate it to another person. Usually a fellow designer can be a good sounding board for defining the problem. To be the most helpful, he or she should be familiar with the design issue at hand and familiar with the practice of defining a problem with a problem statement.

Additionally, communicating problems in a team setting can improve teamwork, spur conversation (which may then further refine the problem definition), and contribute to keeping the project’s common vision (see Design by Committee) on track. A common vision helps reinforce designers’ efforts to maintain consistent goals during development. Shared end goals enable cohesive results while helping designers solve the unexpected problems that will invariably arise.

Clearly differentiating the one problem being worked on from all possible problems in existence allows for a more efficient approach to game design and development. To form a clear problem statement, define scope and include measurable end goals.

Design by Committee

Creating a video game is a calculated and deliberate process of integrating theory into practice while also innovating. It’s difficult for one person, or sometimes even a team, to balance the practical concerns of making a game while also creatively pioneering. This tension, and the give-and-take relationship between team members and the final game experience, is at the heart of Design by Committee.

A designer’s passion for making games usually exhibits itself as the designer’s excitement about all the elements involved in the potential of the medium, especially when they compare them to other channels of culture. An individual’s interests may focus on Core Gameplay Loop, Interest Curve, Dominant Strategy, narrative, visual grammar, skill progression, or even music. However, it is unlikely that any one person will become an expert in all aspects of these design elements, and, even then, it is not a comprehensive list of everything that needs to be considered when designing a game. And so the balancing act begins. It is imperative that any individual communicates with and trusts others so they can enter into a partnership to design and build one cohesive experience that is bigger than the sum of its parts (see Synergy).

Diving deep into a specific design focus and becoming an expert there will require sacrificing other areas and curiosities. There are only 24 hours in a day, and if one thing is being studied, another is not. Specializing is essential, and respecting the expertise of others is also essential. Everyone hopes to be part of a team of experts with egos in check where each contribution to the project is just the right scope and integrates seamlessly. Unfortunately, that is almost never how it works out.

Game development teams are a collection of passionate, creative, and driven individuals with diverging motives and instincts. And that’s not a bad thing. If a game becomes the collective imagination of a group, then the more diverse the group, the greater the potential for a unique and non–cookie cutter design. The wider an audience it will hit home with, and the stronger their experience, the more likely it is that it will make a bigger impression. However, there is also a risk that the game will feel like an awkward patchwork without enough consistency or cohesion—all because of the amalgamation of personalities involved. Design by Committee can be a blessing for creativity, but a curse for organization and execution.

Best practices to limit the down sides of Design by Committee have been studied extensively in other industries. In game development, a production approach, such as Waterfall or Agile, can promote consistency, schedule accountability, and planning. Assigning reliable, experienced management in the form of Leads, Producers, Project Managers, and Executives is also a way to organize the chaos of game production. This also highlights the importance of leadership.

Many teams need a leader—a person who can communicate the final vision, make tough and fully informed decisions, and champion the cause of quality and standards. Common vision helps to hone the game’s Theme and speed up design decisions.

Common vision helps curb the chaos inherent in Design by Committee as it allows for the group to feel ownership and to know how to provide useful contributions. Used effectively by a trusted leader, common vision can motivate, unite, fix expectations, and answer questions before they’re asked. It acts as a touchstone of game design in written or oral form.

Leadership and Design by Committee are not inherently at odds, although conflict can result. Again, it’s a matter of moderation. Some projects need a single firm hand to be created, and games are no exception. Auteurship, or a single person’s vision, is possible in making games, but this might not be the best approach to take and can be a miserable experience for the rest of the team, depending on how the auteur treats coworkers. Ultimately, the best teams of game makers rely on honest, effective communication.

Every position on a team can make good use of skills like constructive criticism, sincere listening, and even something as mundane as holding effective meetings. How well these are implemented impact Design by Committee for good or ill. As in most types of creative pursuits, communication is paramount. Be fair, be accurate, and consider the point of view of the whole team or audience whenever delivering news, good or bad. Usually everyone in the room has a stake in what’s being discussed, so acknowledging this can show understanding. Empathy is important.

A group of experts working together with a common vision can create a cohesive whole, which is a better end result than anything an individual alone could produce.

Environmental Storytelling

The setting for a story communicates important ideas and information to the audience. In a story with a particularly strong setting, the world itself becomes as important as any of the characters. This is an idea writers have known about and employed for some time; it is often described as treating the setting as a character, giving it the same amount of attention and development any person in the tale is given. This process is often referred to as world building, especially in the context of fantasy and science fiction.

In video games, players sometimes have the ability to explore a world beyond the limited scope required by its narrative. That’s why games should always treat their settings as living environments in which to play. The more detailed and interesting the world is, the more compelled to explore the player will feel. However, even in games that don’t offer large territories of open space to explore, the setting is a crucial part of the narrative.

Imagine a world in which two political forces have reached the point of violent conflict. Such a situation requires a fair amount of explanation (what writers call exposition) before the player can fully understand the reasons behind and potential consequences of the conflict. Explaining those reasons and consequences can become burdensome to the narrative, perhaps even boring the player and diluting opportunities for entertaining gameplay. Designers need ways to show the player those ideas and facts, thereby keeping players informed about important aspects of the fiction, without using long cutscenes or blocks of text the player has to read.

This is where environmental storytelling becomes incredibly valuable to the writer. Graffiti on the walls might show us that one side in this conflict represents the interests of the lower classes or offer ominous warnings about the dangers this conflict creates on the streets. Boarded up windows and doors could suggest fear and perhaps evacuation by the world’s civilian inhabitants. A voice over a loudspeaker could, without interrupting gameplay, indirectly convey which of the warring parties is currently in power and what their goals, interests, or prohibitions include. People passing on the street might grumble about limited access to an important resource, providing a glimpse at the origins of the conflict.

From just those few bits of environmental storytelling, the player learns a lot about the world they’re playing in. They know who’s in charge, who supports them, who opposes them, what each side wants, and why they’re fighting in the first place. That’s a significant amount of exposition that the setting provides without even a single cutscene.

This same principle can supplement character development, as well. Character behaviors and dialogue go a long way toward helping players understand a person’s motives and abilities, but getting a look at the place in which they live adds to the player’s understanding. If a house is filled with books about philosophy and nature, for instance, the player knows that the character living there has an academic interest in those subjects. This fact may come in handy later in the story, or it might just supplement the development the player sees in their interactions with the character.

When designing a setting for a game, designers must remember to let the environment tell the story, too. The players will feel more deeply immersed in the narrative, more of the story will emerge during actual gameplay, and the whole experience will be more enjoyable for player and writer alike.

Experience Design

The idea of Experience Design is to recognize that there is a higher purpose other than merely assembling play mechanics to make video games. To affect an audience in a meaningful way requires more than just clever play. It demands considerable resolve. Think beyond the restrictions of “I want to make a great video game,” and welcome the chance to proclaim, “I made a fascinating experience.”

Again, understand that there is more to making games than play mechanics. Integrating advances in fields like usability and user experience design are increasingly the norm; video game play competes against other hobbies, and it’s necessary to make an easy, enjoyable experience that can trump simply turning on a movie.

Both experience design and game design now demand that designers have fully conceived their audience’s game interaction from purchase to final credits. With the rise of mass-market game consumption that has resulted from the burgeoning casual audience and the higher adoption of social and mobile games, designers must consider a full range of topics that are part of experience design; these can range from the desktop icon image and how tutorials are paced, to shop flow and purchase friction, to end game credits and social connectivity features like leader boards or achievements.

Designers now need to design the overarching experience from tip to tail. The more ancillary, but important, aspects of the game designers make that they can align to their goals, themes, and designs, the better their product stands to become. Think about successful brands and how their stores, packaging, and products are aligned. It’s cliché, but for years now, Apple design has been consistent and is distinctly Apple. Furthermore, cultural relevance should also be encouraged.

A game that does a good job of experience design is Dead Space. From its box art, prerelease webisodes, and comic books to its in-game HUD-less presentation and endogenous navigational elements, Dead Space seeks to transcend classification as merely a game, and instead wants to position itself as an experience that evokes horror, the cruelty of space, and religious zeal. Branding, transmedia aspirations, big-picture themes, and a consistent, team-supported vision are what can spur the game into becoming a memorable experience.

Remember, video games are irrefutably modern culture—a multibillion-dollar form of globally confirmed culture. And, although they are not yet as revered as other popular formats of culture like literature or cinema, games have unique, inherent qualities that satisfy their audiences and players. Specifically, the uniqueness of games comes from a couple of factors that are exclusive to their play experience.

Among these, the following are the most influential: the potential for non-linearity so that the experience differs between participants, or even time over last; greater freedom of choice—the player decides whether it’s a well-constructed morality system or a branching dialogue; and active audience engagement—the player must actually play using thought and action and they must overcome challenges to continue.

Designers are called to develop an appreciation for the total game experience in contrast to the deliberation they must perform to construct simply the individual parts. Keep in mind that most of a designer’s audience isn’t playing the game merely because the designer is innovative in the way they approach physics-based puzzle design or the story’s plot twist; it’s a combination of all elements. The designer’s experience grows from the process of making the game, but it needs to become greater than the sum of its parts (see Synergy).

An easy rule to embrace is this: Focus on the player. The game designer, while a participant in the game’s development, is not the exclusive enjoyer of the end product (see User-Centered Design). Although the designer has vision and passion, someone else will eventually spend time or money to enjoy what the designer created. As long as the designer remembers the end-user, they are apt to round design into an offering with greater experiential impact.

Focus on emotions and create tension. One method for doing this is to expressly plan that “this game is about unexpected delight,” or “crude humor,” or “satisfying stealth,” or “feeling like a professional athlete” (see Theme). When the designer takes the time to identify the goal of the entire experience, the path to great gameplay starts to appear.

If performed successfully, experience-focused game making will mature the medium of games; it should be actively considered in game development efforts, even if the game being made doesn’t have such lofty ideals. So, the struggle is that designers can be singularly occupied by making games that are the sum of their interactive systems to encourage fun, but fun alone will not resonate beyond the play session. Designers need to make sure the focus remains on the merit of the medium and advancing it. Use the designing experience as an opportunity to challenge broader thinking, to engage unique themes, and to delight and surprise the gamer. Remember, making games is manufacturing culture, and designers need to accept the responsibility that comes with it.

Flow

Flow is the idea that at the apex of intrinsic motivation, the mind transcends its physical perception and enters a state of performance ecstasy. It is achieved when the individual’s skills are perfectly in tune with the task or challenge at hand. The principle Flow was described by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi in the book of the same name. It is characterized by enjoying the process of the activity, being fully involved, and being fully immersed in a feeling of energized focus. Other terms for this include being “in the groove,” “in tune,” and “in the zone.”

Often, humans experience flow when performing in a sport. For instance, if a skier is swooshing down a hill that is the perfect level of difficulty for their level of mastery, they will experience flow, ideally. During this experience, time will dilate and become seeming irrelevant; the activity will be consuming of all of the skier’s focus.

Everyone has achieved a flow state at some point or another. Writers who are on a roll, craftsmen who have become completely absorbed in their task, or a game player who has become entirely absorbed in the game are all experiencing flow.

The key to flow is that the individual’s concentration is fixed and the difficulty of the challenge matches their skill level. A beginner may have laser-focused concentration but will not achieve flow because the task is generally too challenging for their skill level. When making games, this is what designers develop tutorials and introductory levels for. By making the game easier up front, designers are preparing the player to achieve flow at a later stage in the game; they slowly introduce the beginning player to the mechanics of the game.

Game designers often underestimate the importance of those beginning levels of play. Because the new player has virtually no skill at the game (unless it is a genre that the player has a great deal of experience with already and they are merely picking up the particular controls of the new game), the challenge will almost universally exceed the skill of the player. In order to entice the player to higher, more sophisticated levels of play, designers must adjust the difficulty downward to match the player’s skill level. This is not to say that it should be made ridiculously easy; the player will still need some challenge or they will become bored and abandon the game.

On the flip side, if the game immediately jumps to a mastery level of play, the player will be too frustrated by the experience and give up. Ideally, the player should be in a constant state of flux in the range between frustration and boredom. Straying too far to either end of that range will result in the player ceasing play.

One of the tools game designers can use to enhance flow is game aesthetics. Riveting graphics, a charming story, and attention-grabbing themes can help the player move through the introductory phase of the game to a greater level of mastery. At this point, the aesthetics are the reward the player gets for dealing with a new challenge. The aesthetics may pull a player in initially but they will not keep them long. To get to the meaty center of the game, the player must pass the beginner phase and make it to the practice phase.

This second phase of gameplay is when the task at hand is still a little beyond the skill of the player, but the challenge and aesthetics of the game have effectively pulled the player in. Players may spend a great deal of time in the practice phase; the game’s aesthetics, dynamics, and mechanics will pull them through this phase of learning until they reach the level of mastery required to experience flow.

Finally, when the player has reached the mastery phase, flow will keep them there. The fine balance between frustration and boredom has been achieved, and exquisite attention to the riveting content will keep the player engaged for many hours.

Four Ways to Be Creative

Many people believe that creativity is a natural talent and not necessarily one to be learned. A professor of psychology named Arne Dietrich argues, however, that all individuals can be creative in their own ways, and in some respects creativity can be a learned skill. His theory states that creativity can be

• spontaneously cognitive

• spontaneously emotional

• deliberately cognitive

• deliberately emotional

Some forms of creativity are very spontaneous; the “light bulb” in the shower or the fantastical dream that in time leads to the production of something great. Whether the ideas are acted upon or not, everyone has access to these forms of creativity and participate in them on a constant basis. Artists, writers, and those people most of us consider to be very creative types tend to have more strength in spontaneous creativity.

Then there are the forms of creativity that come from building upon and evolving a learned set of skills such as solving a problem by using current knowledge of the situation and taking the risk to find alternate solutions. This is deliberate creativity. Nikola Tesla and Steve Jobs were innovative creators that utilized their education and knowledge to create amazing products and solve problems.

So, if these are the ways in which everyone can be creative, how can we access or spur ourselves into using these forms of creativity and how is it useful to game development in particular?

By nature, games are creative. In order to get and keep the attention of the players, the game must have a hook, flow, and playability (among other aspects). Each of these pieces has a differing level of creativity applied to it.

Games that tell a story or are art heavy need the spontaneous creativity that comes naturally within visions, dreams, or daydreams. This is the spark. After the spark has taken hold, it needs to be molded into a hook. This is where learned writers and artists come in and take the time to sculpt the spark into something accessible to the players.

All games should have a Flow. Multiple types of creativity are needed to produce a game flow that does not put off or bore players. This mainly requires accessing and utilizing deliberate creativity and using current knowledge about the game—subjects, mechanics, and content—to create the flow and be able to experiment as well.

Where deliberate creativity is a conscious focusing of knowledge and is changed and experimented on, spontaneous creativity can be spurred into action by breaking away from the project for a time. Taking lunch, playing a different game, or taking a power nap can be one’s best tools in being creative.

Game Genres

Genres are categories of endeavors in the arts that have a particular form, content, technique, or similar characteristic. Game genres are wide and varied and are used to differentiate games by their interaction rather than by visual or artistic differences. So it’s not quite accurate to call “zombie games” a genre, as this is a description of the setting or story, and not the type of interaction players can expect (see Theme).

Game genres shouldn’t be seen as rigid templates. In many cases, an element from one genre can be included in another to create a new, fun experience. For instance, the game Portal could be described as a mash-up of an FPS and a puzzle game.

There is also still room for inventing new genres, though this is more likely to happen in the “indie” game development scene or the educational game industry. The large, traditional game companies have a harder time innovating that deeply because they tend to be more conservative about risk. A new genre may become a huge hit, but it may also be a huge flop. Without prior performance metrics to gauge how profitable a game will be, large companies have a harder time committing funding (see Risk Assessment).

The list of genres on the next page should not be seen as comprehensive or restrictive. It is just an overview of the most common genres, provided here for inspiration, for brainstorming, and to foster discussion.

Game Genres

Game Pillars

A game pillar is a high-level, action-centric concept or goal that acts as a development guideline. When you craft a new title, deciding on the game pillars is often the first order of business because they clarify the project’s overarching direction to the entire team. Once you have created them, arrange the pillars into a sentence to come up with a synopsis you can use to pitch a game to publishers and the public.

Because games are interactive, it’s crucial that the pillars stick to the actions users will be undertaking. Using artistic and thematic elements as inspiration for pillars (see Theme) is appropriate as long as the paramount consideration is the game’s specific functionality. To understand why, consider what happens if this isn’t the case. If developers focus their game pillars entirely on the art, they wouldn’t have a clear direction for making decisions about mechanics, and so they might fall back and borrow an existing game’s entire design and change only the art. The result would be a reskin of an old game instead of an interesting new game. That being said, pillars can be used in a nested fashion. For instance, the art team may make their own art-specific pillars, which work to support the pillars that guide the rest of the project.

Clearly defining a project’s pillars allows the team to evaluate their efforts in terms of innovation and familiarity. If all of the pillars are identical to those of another title, informed players will recognize the underlying patterns and approach the new game as a clone instead of a stand-alone experience. By extending, improving, and uniquely mashing up pillars found in a variety of games, originality can be achieved without as much risk (see Risk Assessment).

How to Create Pillars

One good method for brainstorming pillars is to ask “what-if” questions:

• What if the best elements of one genre are combined with the best of another?

• What if a failed mechanic from another title is implemented differently?

• What if this specific gameplay mechanic is extended to allow for new actions?

• What if a game replicates the experience found in this other medium?

By continually asking what-if questions, a team is forced to analyze the project, which can lead to discovering uncharted territory in the gaming world.

Restricting the number of pillars is usually beneficial as well. Three pillars is a common practice as it allows for depth without too much complexity. Six pillars is usually too many.

How Pillars Are Used

Defining the pillars at the beginning of development helps determine the appropriate scope, taking into account limitations on available time and people. Clearly defined game pillars at the beginning of a project also prevents contradictory elements from creeping in. For instance, if “accessibility” is a pillar, including a puzzle that can only be solved through trial and error is almost diametrically opposed to the tenet of accessibility. This contradiction will disappoint and frustrate players who were attracted to the rest of the accessible elements of the game.

A well-formed pillar is specifically helpful in that it outlines the requirements for the development team before they begin working. Take the pillar “fluid navigation” as an example. This pillar can dictate the perspective, character design, combat design, world design, and animation workload.

• Perspective: Third-person perspective shows off and enhances the benefits of fluid navigation. In comparison, first-person perspective suffers from fluid navigation, as motion sickness becomes a serious consideration.

• Character Design: The player’s avatar will most likely need to be more slender than stocky, so it makes sense that they navigate their environment in such a fluid manner.

• Combat Design: A character navigating their world flu-idly should extend to combat as well. Clunky, rough combat will break the player’s sense of immersion.

• World Design: The architecture and terrain need to visually support everything the player can and cannot do. A visual language for defining climbable and non-climbable surfaces is one example of necessary constructs.

• Animation Workload: Fluid navigation requires many animations that have to seamlessly transition and can over-tax hardware if not carefully planned for.

Game pillars guide the development team to create a focused and unique experience. Defining these early can mitigate many problems, make the development process more efficient, and streamline the design process.

Strong game pillars civilize the development process and elevate game design.

Game Tropes

A trope is an idea that has been used so often and so consistently across a broad swath of games that it has become accepted as normal and even standard. Some of these tropes are very useful; for instance, many games map the X button on the controller to the Jump command. There’s no law stating that it must be this way. Designers could map the Y or the A button to that action. However, it’s been used so often, players expect to jump if they hit the X button. If jumping is not an action used in the game, X is often the most-common action (see Core Gameplay Loop) because it is the easiest button to reach.

Again, this is a convention or a trope, not a law of some kind, and there are many more tropes like this one. However, if usability of a game would be improved by having “jump” mapped to some other key, it’s important to do that. This X button mapping is convenient and helpful most of the time. Players can pick up a new game and not have to think (see Krug’s First Law of Usability) too hard about learning a new control schema every time.

Not all game tropes are as useful as this. Many were started 20 or 30 years ago and may have been useful at the time, but they have outlived their usefulness—sometimes to the point of being bizarre.

The most obvious example of this is murder. In the real world, it is an extreme act to take someone’s life. There are serious consequences and problems associated with this behavior. In video games, it is a trope that killing things—people, monsters, animals, ghosts—is the default way to interact with them (see Magic Wand).

From a designer’s perspective, tropes can be friends or foes. Sometimes they make a game interface more intuitive. On the other hand, sometimes they can get in the way of a unique theme or experimental gameplay loop. For instance, if a designer wants to portray their main character as extremely honest, they need to subvert the trope that it is OK to pick up random objects from other people’s homes or roll the bodies of enemies looking for loot.

As long as designers are aware of tropes in their designs, they can be used to their advantage—either as a way to speed usability or as a touchstone for innovation.

Here are some tropes that have grown up within games:

• Free Health: From a design standpoint, putting a white box on the ground with a red “plus” symbol on it instantly tells a player that it is a med pack that gives health to the player in the form of magic healing potions. This is great, but in real life, a first aid box may be available in an office building, for instance, but it only has Band-Aids in it, and it isn’t laid out on the floor in public every 10 feet. Med packs are so widely used in video games that many designers litter their worlds with white first aid boxes for no good reason and don’t even consider if this is the best way to balance their game.

• Stealing: In real life when someone breaks into some-one’s house to steal something, they get punished for breaking in and punished for stealing. In video games, players are often punished for not breaking into some-one’s house, and for not taking an item that belongs to someone else. They can get punished by not obtaining the points they wanted, not getting the upgrade they needed, or not getting the boss kill that gets them to the next level. In games, if it is not nailed down, you are supposed to grab it.

• Crates: Just as the real world is generally not littered with first aid boxes, it is also not usually littered with crates. Yet, a very common trope in video games is a world strewn with crates, which players can bash or shoot open; they can then take whatever is inside. An indie game called Super Crate Box has even taken this trope to an extreme; they played with it and turned the ridiculousness of the trope into the core gameplay loop.

This is an excellent example of how to turn tropes on their head or re-imagine tropes that other people have taken for granted.

The list here is by no means comprehensive, but it should provide a starting point for examining and discovering tropes in the wild.

Gestalt

We have all heard the phrase “The whole is greater than the sum of its parts,” but what exactly does that mean and where does it come from? Those are actually the easy questions. The hard question is how do we use it in game design?

It is said that the Gestalt principle of the whole being greater than its parts originated in the early 20th century with Christian von Ehrenfels, Kurt Koffka, Wolfgang Kohler, and Max Wertheimer, and that it has been tweaked over the years by numerous scholars. The principle can be found in almost everything artistic and design related, but it can be found in other places as well. The main idea behind the principle is that although everything has value, when you add those items together in a specific way, they add up to even more.

The principle also has a set of rules that go along with it. They are listed here:

• Closure/Reification: We see complete objects even if a part is missing.

• Continuance: We tend to see continuous figures and not smaller pieces.

• Similarity: We group together anything that has similarities.

• Proximity/Common Fate: We group elements that are close together or travel together.

• Symmetry: We group things based on their proximity to something else, recognition, and balance.

• Invariance: We recognize distorted or moved objects.

• Figure-Ground: We tend to see one image at a time instead of multiple images. We either see the “foreground” or the “background,” where those terms are items in relation to each other.

The Gestalt principle is used in a lot of places other than in art. A simple mathematical example can be found in Algebra: (x = a + b), where a and b are variables that are worth something when they are separate, but when they are combined, they form x, which can be drastically different from both a and/or b.

Gestalt artwork can also be used in psychology. When someone looks at inkblots known as Rorschach tests, they use figure-ground by seeing different images inside the total image of an inkblot on paper.

The following are some examples that explain how to use the Gestalt principle in game design:

Example #1: A game contains a lot of separate pieces that must work together synchronously to obtain fun game play and maintain a solid game. Each part of a game can be broken down into its own section: UI, HUD, Player, Enemies, NPCs, Levels, Mechanics, Leader Boards, and so on. Each part of the game not only has to work individually but must work seamlessly with all the other aspects to create a solid functioning game.

Example #2: Many designers and gamers have probably heard of a skill tree, where gamers can choose how and when to upgrade their skills, weapons, potions, or other abilities. A designer needs to think not only about the economy of the skill tree but also about how the levels, enemies, and artwork will ramp up over the course of the game. The designer needs to see not only how each level of a game relates to all the other levels of the game, but how each must also stand alone. From this, they will determine which levels will be grouped with other levels based on the art, design, story, and/or the mechanic. It is the same with enemies: Some enemies will fly, some will have one or two weapons, some will perform specific amounts of damage, and so on.

Example #3: Another way Gestalt works in a game is from the story aspect (see Environmental Storytelling). There is another saying: “You can’t see the forest because of the trees,” meaning that one cannot see the big picture because they are getting caught up on the small things. When developers make games, a lot of little pieces can bog them down, but as long as they keep their eye on the big picture of the finished design, they can get through it. At the same time, each piece of artwork inside a game must have the same feeling, art style, and overall look in order for it to match everything else in the game, and all of the pieces need to work together to help with a player’s immersion in the game.

Example #4: This example goes into more depth with the art examples. On Level 5 of an example game, the gamer will see two types of enemies throughout the level. After seeing both enemies on Level 2, the gamer understands that one does 5 percent damage to them while the other does 25 percent damage and jumps straight up in the air when the player is close to it. Therefore, the player understands that on Level 5, since the enemies are exactly the same, they will do the same damage as they did on Level 2. Once they get to Level 7, they realize that one of the enemies has now changed its shirt color to a darker, more evil color—from light yellow to dark red. This artwork modification tells the player that this new enemy is grouped with the Level 2 enemy in abilities, but something about it has gotten stronger . . . in this case, it could be that the enemy does 15 percent damage instead of 5 percent. This example works well with enemies, environments, and player stats. It is a visual method of explaining details and story to the player. The reason this works so well is because the human brain processes and remembers images faster and more easily than it does text.

House Rules

Everybody knows a game needs rules, but even this Game Trope can be carefully examined and used for innovation.

Rules

To start with, all games need rules, one of the foundational elements in the definition of what constitutes a game. The rules are at the heart of every game and lay out the game mechanics, setting, play instructions, and Core Gameplay Loop. In board games and card games the rules are usually enforced by participants, though tournament situations often have referees and judges. Breaking rules is considered cheating.

Video games enforce the rules through programming. In theory, it’s impossible to break the rules in video games since they are hard-coded into the system. Players often take this seriously and feel that if they can make something happen in a video game, then it must be OK (see Griefing). So if they find a bug that allows them to make thousands of coins out of nothing, they go full steam ahead doing so and usually don’t feel they are breaking the rules. (The game developers and designers often don’t agree, however; see Supply and Demand.)

House Rules

House rules are often not written down. They are the more informal, unique rules added on to a game by participants during unique instances within games. They are often invented by the players, with no input from designers. For instance, in traditional card games, the use of wild cards is often left up to house rules (see Aces High; Jokers Wild). Sometimes younger players are allowed certain advantages, or if a particular rule feels unbalanced, it may be modified by house rules. Even though video games have rules hard-coded in, it’s still possible to implement house rules. For example, if the player has three avatars to choose from with different abilities and strengths, the host of a multi-player match may dictate which avatar is “allowed.” In these cases, house rules usually add more rules to those programmed in, rather than modifying them as often happens in analog games.

Guidelines

Guidelines are even less formal than house rules. These are sometimes written down in the rulebook, whether for a card game or a video game. Guidelines usually come from the developer rather than participants. For analog games, they are usually set apart from the formal rules as a way to suggest possible house rules and let players know how to adjust the difficulty of a game according to the unique abilities of the individual players of that individual game. In video games, these kinds of difficulty settings are usually found in an optional menu. It’s also possible to see developer-organized video game tournament rules as really guidelines, since they are not hard-coded into the fabric of the game.

Suggestions

At the other end of the continuum from strict, hard-coded rules is the amorphous category of suggestions. Suggestions may be provided either by participants or developers. If they are not followed, nobody cares much. Strategy guides, collections of hints and tips, walk-throughs, and videos can be thought of as suggestions.

The most obvious way for a game designer to innovate with rules is to include guidelines and suggestions when possible, even within the fabric of a video game. Tooltip hints and directions for shortcuts buried in old journals are just a tantalizing taste of what is possible when rules are seen on this continuum from hard-and-fast to up-in-the-air and optional. House rules are an excellent way to experiment with an existing game and learn a great deal about Balancing and Tuning through hands-on play.

Iteration

Iteration is the process of repeating an action while building onto the result of its previous repetitions. That is to say, using the previous repetition’s output as the next iteration’s input. It is best to think of cycles or drafts—each step, or iteration, slowly adds to and improves on the one before, bringing what is being built to life through gradual stages of evolution, from bare bones to fleshed-out whole.

More often than not, the development of a game (or any body of work, generally) is an iterative process. A game will start off as a prototype (see Prototyping and Paper Prototyping), with crude graphics (possibly even just shapes or letters) and not a lot of functionality. With each iteration, the team builds more and more features on top of the existing code. More gameplay features are added, already developed mechanics become more complex and robust, and graphics and sound become more representational of what the team’s vision is. Iteration is an essential principle to apply to a game’s design in order to have a game that is polished, responsive, and—most importantly—glitch-free.

Beyond the internal development cycle, players see more explicit iterations as well. Most of the sports titles that receive an annual sequel are a new iteration of last year’s build, adding on newer features and fixing or improving old ones.

Games themselves can also exhibit iterative gameplay traits. Some good examples of games where iterative gameplay can be observed are

• Any tower defense game. This is an incredibly blatant example of iterative gameplay. Each wave of enemies is a new iteration: The map stays the same, but the enemies are tougher and more varied, as are the player’s turrets.

• Call of Duty: Zombies. Similar implementation as other Call of Duty games, but with ZOMBIES! (An improvement? Depends on the player.)

• The Street Fighter series. Capcom is notorious for releasing multiple iterations of their fighting games: a few new characters, a few extra features, and, of course, a new prefix or suffix added to the title.

• Metroid. As Samus progresses through Zebes (or wherever she’s wound up this time), she gradually gains new powers and abilities. These allow her to return to locations she has already traveled to and interact with those locations in new ways (new passageways, the ability to destroy previously impenetrable blocks, etc.).

• Donkey Kong. Along with many other ’80s arcade classics, once the player beats the fourth (“last”) screen, they are warped back to the first screen, but this time, it is a harder iteration—barrels are thrown faster, and now there are fireballs as well.

With the mention of Donkey Kong, it can be argued that difficulty levels can be thought of as iterative gameplay. As the player plays through each progressively harder level, they are presented with a new challenge built on the back of the previous level’s gameplay.

This game concept starts out as fairly straightforward. Each iteration sees additions and improvements to features, themes, and art.

Magic Wand

Who doesn’t remember playing cops and robbers or cowboys and Indians, gleefully shooting one another and dropping dead when fairly shot, or perhaps remember seeing a sibling or other relative engage in this deadly play? According to the research of ethnologists, this is universal behavior. Where guns don’t exist, spears or bows and arrows are used. Children, at one time, practiced hunting behaviors through play and fantasy because one day they would grow up and have to hunt for food. Today, children still engage in this sort of fantasy play even though they no longer have to hunt for food. Why is that?

In his book Killing Monsters, Gerard Jones examines the fantasy violence of children and the role it serves. The important word here is fantasy. Fantasy play allows humans to practice adult behaviors in a safe way. It allows children to enact their fears and deal with them in an environment, the imagination, which is contained and not dangerous.

It provides them someplace to go with their frustrations. Whether they are mad about having to go to bed or disappointed that a play date is over, fantasy play provides them with a safe tool with which to act out their anger. It is a tool for harmlessly dealing with aggressions.

One of the key elements of fantasy play is that it lacks consequence (see Magic Circle). Lack of consequence is just as much a reward as an actual reward is. In the previous scenario, unless the parent acts disapprovingly, the child has reliably dealt with their fears and feelings of anger.

Similarly, such play provides children with practice at being willing to face life’s challenges to get what they want. The willingness to get “shot” and “die” in play leads to overcoming the fear of a job interview or other adult pursuits that we find challenging.

Guns or wands (or bows and arrows or spears) help children feel strong. These props allow them to project destructive power across space to knock down foes with a gesture that is almost effortless. The result is that they feel confident to handle anything that comes at them. All of these projectiles are effectively magic wands. They deliver magic power at a distance to negate foes.

The magic contained in the wand is emboldenment. The emboldenment teaches children “don’t be afraid and do what’s right.”

Remember that as adults, even as teens, we learn to dismiss the intensity of involvement with fantasy that a child has naturally. It allows small children to become something other than themselves while adults and teens can merely learn about things in the world.

Video games allow teens to take on their greatest fears (annihilation) and conquer them. Because they are less attached to their fantasies than children are, they revel in games created by someone else, by fantasies created by others.

Many offices participate in an end-of-day or end-of-week ritual of a rousing round of some first-person shooter in which coworkers kill each other. This, like children’s play, is without consequence and can allow adults the opportunity to blow off steam from a long week of dealing with the frustrations of the job without actually taking it out on their coworkers in destructive ways. Many adults are still fascinated by power at a distance. Think about all the magic users and ranged weapon users in fantasy games, whether Dungeons and Dragons or the latest fantasy RPG.

Whether it’s a magic wand, a gun, or a computer hacker, the appeal of all these ideas is not the violence, but the power at a distance and the inherent confidence this inspires.

Metagames

Many players will say the best part of a game like Magic: The Gathering or World of Warcraft is the hunt for and winning of cards or pets, respectively. Players of these games are interested in growing their collections.

Some players will spend hours upon hours playing in one section of the World of Warcraft universe in order to collect one rare pet and never see the “end game.” Similarly, some players will spend thousands of dollars on new boosters or collectors packs of cards for Magic: The Gathering, while rarely participating in other areas of the game, such as tournaments.

Designers may be tempted to think these players are missing the point or playing the game incorrectly, but in neither case are these players breaking the rules. They are just entertaining themselves almost exclusively with something originally designed as a side feature rather than the Core Gameplay Loop. This is the most basic type of metagaming. Players are not concerned about making the game developer’s dreams come true. Players only care about having fun and they will use whatever they have at their disposal to do so.

Often players will institute their own original and complex House Rules and guidelines for their metagame, making use of the environment and objects provided by the developers, but not using them in the intended way. These guidelines are often a variation on whatever the designer had in mind, but not always.

Developers have tried to get into the act of metagaming, rather than leaving it to be invented by the players, by including things like achievements on the Xbox Live platform. These badges commemorate actions in the game that don’t necessarily influence the outcome, such as opening every door in the game, or trying every type of weapon.

There is ample room for innovation with metagames. Take a player’s penchant for pet collection in World of Warcraft. There are achievements related to this, but isn’t there some interesting way to use this metagame to add to the storyline or theme? Say a player has collected all dragon whelps as pets, and when they return to a major city they’ve received a message stating that a collector has heard of their feat and would like to see their collection.

Developers who embrace metagaming invented by their player base may find a new use for existing code, or a new target market. Players who get acknowledged for their ingenuity instead of punished for it often become die-hard fans. The tradition of hiding things in games (known as Easter eggs) is another way developers have made metagaming part of the discipline (see Howard’s Law of Occult Game Design).

One type of game that takes metagaming to an extreme is the Alternate Reality Game. This genre of gaming uses every aspect of real life as the game platform, layering a metagame on top of activities as mundane as answering the phone.

Objects, Attributes, States

Try taking a step back and looking at games in an abstract, generalized view. Breaking complex things down into essential parts is an excellent route to better understanding them. So consider this: A game can be boiled down to an experience comprising 1) a space for play, 2) a piece (or two) for interaction, and 3) a player (or two) providing inputs

This ecosystem of three essential component categories provides the foundations of all interactive play. Pong, Asteroids, Tetris, Call of Duty, and Carcassonne can all be broken down into these elements.

So, in a very practical sense, designers spend most of their time defining the space and itemizing the “pieces for interaction” that are more universally known as the game’s objects. Jesse Schell spends some time talking about this idea in his book, The Art of Game Design: A Book of Lenses, but in a broader sense, it is the way programming languages function as well.

Objects are elements like the player’s character, set pieces, movable items, and more; or, practically, in a game like Super Mario Bros., they are Mario, coins, and goombas. Objects can be as simple as a non-interactive rock used to impede character movement, or as complex as a boss encounter with multiple attack patterns, stages of evolution, and physical manifestations. Fundamentally, objects are the building blocks of play; and typically, they are nouns: box, enemy, door, key, fuel, and everything else inter-actable in a game. These nouns can be described in minute detail. These coded and codeable qualities or variables of an object, which are open to change or manipulation, are known as its attributes.

Consider an object like a clay pot that a player can attack to reveal a reward of gold or health. These could be its attributes.

• Size: 0.5 meter × 0.5 meter

• Animation: Pot idle

• Player collision: Yes

• Health: 1 point

• Affected by: All damage

• Item Drop Rate, upon destruction: Time: 0.5 second spawn delay, 15 percent: 1 heart health bonus, 8 percent: 1 gold coin, 2 percent: 1 bag of 10 gold coins, 75 percent: no reward

This is a fairly basic object with fully fleshed-out attributes. These attributes describe it in detail, including how often an attack will result in a bag of coins (not very often). Of course, these are not the only attributes it could have. Most game designs list all attributes of every object in the game. This can be an extensive spreadsheet for very large games, or it can be more straightforward for card games and board games featuring fewer objects.

And attributes are not the end of the story. Objects can further be defined as having states. States are the ways that objects manifest their attributes. State changes generally result from interaction between the object and player, interactions with other objects, or from the object being scripted into action by a game designer, for instance, with a timer.

Take a look at the clay pot example again; there are really only two states here:

• Alive: The base state of the pot simply existing in the game.

• Dead: The state the pot is in after it has been attacked.

The change in state is triggered when any damage dealer attacks the pot. The attributes defined earlier indicate that when it receives greater than 1 point of damage, the pot may spawn an item according to the probabilities in the drop table. Then it will enter the state defined as Dead.

This Dead state can then have its own attributes, as seen here:

• Death Animation: Pot shatter

• Size: Small pile of rubble .1 meter × .2 meter

• Duration: Disappears after 3 seconds

• Player collision: No

• Affected by: No further interaction

These are the basic ideas behind looking at games in terms of objects, attributes, and states. With this method, it is easier to see the moving parts as interlocking gears that can be tinkered with, rather than as a monolithic experience. And indeed, the whole ecosystem is interconnected and complex. One object’s change in state can set off a chain reaction, lighting another object on fire, for instance. Or such a change could trigger an enemy to spawn two rooms away. With state changes and attributes, all the complexity of games is possible.

In addition, these words make up a baseline vocabulary for discussing game making during development that crosses disciplines. In conversations that include designers, artists, programmers, and producers, the ability to specifically classify an element within the game and describe its interactivity requires this level of understanding and fluency.

Ooh, Shiny!

How does one go about capturing a player’s attention? There are, of course, many ways of doing this, but this text focuses on “cheap tricks” designers use to garner a player’s attention.

Advertising has to be the king of attention capturing for quite some time, so look to advertising for some of the methods used to capture the audience’s attention.

First on the list is sex. As they say, sex sells. It also captures attention quickly. Sexy avatars are nothing new in the field of video games. Frequently, women are hyper-sexualized in games as a way of keeping the player’s attention focused on something in particular. For instance, the cover of the original Everquest box featured a buxom blonde babe with minimal clothing. This trope is used quite frequently both in the marketing of games and in the games themselves. Female armor is more like lingerie than armor (after all, who would expose all of their vital organs when doing combat in armor?), crafted far more for the aesthetic experience and sex as attention grabber than for the player’s protection.

Tomb Raider specifically featured a skimpily clad Lara Croft so that the primarily male players would have something to look at while running through the game. After all, who wears short shorts to go adventuring in the jungle and tombs?

Another attention grabber is faces. Most humans respond to faces. Babies are hard-wired to recognize human faces, and humans will make faces out of patterns that are not meant to be faces at all. Using a face to get a player’s attention is like waving a cookie at them. They can’t help but look at it.

Speaking of cookies, food is another attention grabber. In the case of the game Chocolatier, many players would crave the sweets depicted in the game after playing because the artwork was so compelling. Similarly, in Asheron’s Call, food items were craftable and catering services sprang up overnight to cater in-game events like weddings or parties. Using food is like playing dirty; by using it, the game maker is appealing to one of the most basic of human desires.

Another inexpensive trick for getting a player’s attention is by using movement. The player will eventually click on that little gift box that shakes every so often. A button that has an animation on it will garner similar attention. Blinking, pulsing, and small animations all grab attention easily. Keep this in mind when creating elements in the heads-up display (HUD) or user interface (UI) if the player should be paying close attention to that element.

Finally, surprise is an attention getter. Players become inured to interfaces and experiences that are constantly and repeatedly the same. By changing it up and providing a different response or graphic in a place where a player has built expectations, surprise can be achieved.

Paper Prototyping

Prototyping is a method of designing the product before spending large amounts of time and money developing the idea, and prior to fully understanding it and knowing if it will be successful or even worth developing. By prototyping it, the developer can save useful capital and resources while still becoming fully knowledgeable of their product and while gaining more data to research in order to determine if the idea is worth producing.

Paper prototyping is one method of prototyping products and ideas. It is also the easiest, fastest, and usually the cheapest method. You can paper prototype many game-related items from card games, dice games, and board games to puzzle games, user interfaces (UIs), heads-up displays (HUDs), and even button configurations.

So, how does a designer paper prototype? Well, they just grab some paper, a pair of scissors, some type of drawing utensil (crayons, pen, pencil), and an idea and then just get to work. If they want even more items to help them, they can try adding dice, cardboard, stencils, stickers, markers, paint, glue, graph paper, and any other crafting item they can find. The main goal of paper prototyping is to get an idea across with as much detail as possible, as quickly as possible, as efficiently as possible, and as cheaply as possible. Some of the more popular tools designers use are blank playing cards, blank hexagon cardboard pieces, drawing supplies, and friends to help play test their idea. Some go as far as to record the Play Testing for presentation purposes. In the animation and movie industries, that video presentation of the storyboards can also be called an animatic.

Although paper prototyping is efficient and inexpensive, it does have its drawbacks. Some professionals consider it unprofessional and unorganized. Paper prototyping can also hinder the design if the application of the paper does not make sense or the idea does not come across well. There are good ways to circumvent both drawbacks, however. Get creative with paper prototyping and add as many details as possible; as a result, the work will look more professional. For example, use different colored paper with different textures and thickness to separate ideas, menus, windows, backgrounds, and other items in the prototype. Using different styles of writing, drawing, and different colors of ink to write with can also improve the prototype . . . follow basic graphic design principles such as color theory, rule of thirds, grid systems, and so on. When the prototyping starts to become unorganized, find methods of keeping it clean by creating a folder structure to carry the work in, think about the design’s Flow, and use more paper prototyping knowledge to create a presentation board to showcase the prototype.

As electronic devices become smaller with touchscreen capabilities and drawing devices, more paper prototyping is being done as digital paper prototyping that can be done at any time from any location without paper, scissors, and so on. Current technology is allowing developers to create, edit, and move items around the screen with the touch of a finger; it also lets the developer take notes directly on top of the design, and then present the design around the world with the click of a button. This way they can showcase their ideas to testers, designers, producers, and anyone else who needs to see the improvements they’ve made.

Pick Two: Fast, Cheap, Good

The trifecta developers have to balance in every project is fast/cheap/good. In a perfect world, a perfect game would be all three—created quickly, without much expense, and demonstrating super high quality. This is an impossible ideal, however. Almost no team can ever do it and one of the features must always be sacrificed.

To illustrate, the relationship between fast and good is easy to see. Ambitious plans often come into conflict with tight deadlines. This is where the idea of a project’s scope comes from. Sometimes by planning a smaller, less ambitious project (a smaller scope) and ruthlessly avoiding feature creep (staying within scope), the quality of the project can be relatively high without taking too much time.

However, quality work is never inexpensive. The usual objection to this is the prototypical indie developer who can single-handedly create a masterpiece. Most people who think of this quintessential figure forget that it takes years for this person to do the work involved in creating something so ambitious. Even if it is good and cheap (requiring a budget for just one person), it will never be fast.

One famous, rigorous work on this subject is the book The Mythical Man-Month: Essays on Software Engineering by Fred Brooks. He recommends Prototyping as one way to move production forward, since this is pretty much the definition of sacrificing quality in the above equation. He also points out that “Nine women can’t make a baby in one month.” Some projects will take as long as they take and can’t be speeded up, no matter how much money and how many people are devoted to it.

When faced with making the decision about what gets sacrificed—speed, money or quality—remember that nobody has to sacrifice the same thing in every situation. Different parts of a project can have their emphasis on different elements of the trifecta. So although a game’s pre-production phase may have to be fast and cheap, sometimes the production phase can be fast and good (ergo, expensive). And of course, some of the less-important features can sacrifice quality and get done quickly so that the budget and talent can focus on the big features and Core Gameplay Loop (see Details).

Sadly, the inverse of this principle isn’t a corollary. Turning this principle on its head doesn’t work. It is entirely possible to be all three at the same time: slow, expensive, and clunky.

Play Testing

Play testing is the art and science of playing a game to ensure that it communicates effectively with the player, does what the design planned on having it do, does not confuse or frustrate the player, and ensures a quality experience for the player.

Something that sounds like a good idea in the concept phase doesn’t always turn out to be a good idea in practice. For example, think about cooking. Anybody can brainstorm new recipes, but until eggs get cracked, heat is applied, and someone tastes the final result, there’s no way to know for certain that the recipe will be as good as it sounds. Even then, one diner may find the new dish delectable, while someone else just isn’t impressed. No product can please everyone, but play testing helps find out if it pleases anyone.

The purest form of play testing is just that: Hand someone the game and have them try to play it. This will reveal many incorrect assumptions the developers made during game development as well as the things that the game makers thought were obvious and are entirely opaque to the player. It is during play testing that they find out what they need to put into a tutorial (that shows the player how to use the interface of the game and what they can do in it), places where they might want to add help text, and how the player actually plays the game.

There are many forms of testing. One is called the Kleenex test. In this form of testing, a given tester is used only once, like a tissue, and discarded after the play session. This method of testing gets at the concepts and mechanics that need to be communicated to the player, how the game feels to the player, and similar functions. Testers are used only once because once they’ve learned how to do things in the game, they’ve lost value as a tester. This type of testing is to examine the first encounter with the game (or sections thereof) and how well the game lets the player know what is going on and how to proceed.

Another form of testing is called black box testing. In this form of testing, the player has no idea how the game is supposed to work; they simply play the game and see how it does work. This method not only reveals bugs in the system, but also shows the game makers how players actually play the game, which is often different from the way the game makers intended. Black box testing should figure into test plans early on to help dispel assumptions the team has made concerning the game. It should be repeated late in the process to ensure that the changes that have been made are in keeping with the actual play patterns of the players.

Another key type of play testing is white box testing. In white box testing, the players have some idea of what is supposed to happen in a given circumstance and can rely on test scripts to ensure that the game is doing what the game makers intended. This is where most bugs are revealed; after they are fixed, the game must be retested (regression testing) to ensure that something else did not get broken with the fixes to the bugs.

Although not strictly play testing, load testing is another form of testing used in online and multiplayer games. In this form, a number of testers enter the game simultaneously and play to ensure that the code and server can withstand the load of packets being moved back and forth. Eventually, this process is automated with simulated players numbering in the thousands.

Finally, the greatest reason for play testing over strict Quality Assurance (specifically looking for bugs) is to ensure that the game experience is fun. Kleenex testers and black box testers can both find out this information and are key to creating good games. If play testers are not having fun, players will not either.

Problem-Solving Obstacles

It can be said that games are just a series of complicated problems that a player needs to solve. The interesting part is that this sounds like a mathematical word problem, and those are usually no fun and are often too complicated. So, how does a game make these problems fun for the player to solve, and why does a player try repeatedly to solve them?

Cognitive psychology focuses on how people acquire and process knowledge (how people think) and store information (how people remember things). It also dives into how people perceive things and how they learn.

When a player comes to a point in a game where they must make a decision, something happens. The player becomes immersed in the game, takes ownership of the character, controls the story, makes a decision based on the issue at hand, and comes to a conclusion based on the surroundings and factors associated with the issue. This process happens in games almost constantly—the player asks themselves, “Do I jump over the object, land on top of it, shoot it, talk to it, kill it, friend it, give it something, unlock it, lock it, bash it, upgrade it, build it, destroy it, summon it, set it on fire, or just save the game?”

Most of the time the problems that need solving are simple and can be conquered very easily, but every now and then, a player just cannot solve an issue. This unsolvable problem can lead the designer to add in a tip, the player to ask a friend for help, the player to skip that part of the game, or the player to stop playing the game forever. When this happens, there are usually up to four reasons why:

• Functional Fixedness: A player understands how to solve the problem after doing it a few times, but when the problem is adjusted slightly, they cannot solve it. This happens because they learned the equation, but they do not see the new variables that have been added to it. A good example of this is when a player understands that a brown crate can be broken at any time and with any weapon so they can get an item, but they do not understand what to do with a blue crate. Do they break it, shoot it, stand on top of it, carry it, or blow it up? It is a crate, and the player knows what to do with a crate, but now that it is a different color, what does that mean? The player then must change the way they think in order to figure it out.

• Irrelevant Information: When playing a game, the player must understand what is relevant to the problem at hand and disregard the rest. When the player is dual wielding pistols and is not allowed to swap weapons out in the game, then why would they bother to pick up knives or rockets if they can pick up the bullets and ammo boxes? In game design, a game must contain as much detail as it can to maintain the immersion, but some games offer so much detail that the player gets bogged down. A game needs to have just the right amount of information for the player to stay immersed without containing irrelevant information.

• Assumptions: Everyone has heard the saying “You should never assume anything.” This is true in game design as well. When playing a game, a player might not make a jump because they think it is too far, especially if they would have to start over at the beginning. Some designers could assume that everyone or no one will make the jump and then redesign the jump altogether. In either assumption, this could be poor judgment on the designer’s part. A player should never be stopped from playing a game due to false information, and a designer should not assume a design is poor until it is tested. Because games become harder, some designers give save points or save abilities to the players, which leads to fewer assumptions and more death—meaning the players tend to jump in head first when they can save right before they jump so they can start over right before the jump if they mess up. As a designer, consider ways to have the surrounding area of the game warn the player that the jump is too far or that the player will be safe if they make the jump. Designers can accomplish this using visual art clues, sound effects, or background music, or they can introduce a wall jump or wall climb ability or many other methods.

• Mental Set: This refers to the ability to learn from experience and have common sense instead of being book smart and only learning one way to do something. Game players are actually great at this and tend to game the game, but sometimes they do need help. A very simple example of this could be when someone is playing a sidescrolling run and gun game like Contra. After pressing all the buttons the player will know how to run and shoot enemies. However, some obstacles in the game require the player to jump and shoot and run and shoot at an angle at the same time. In parts, the perspective of the game even changes completely from a 2D side-scrolling platformer into a 3D third-person shooter game. Some players will learn the first set of game mechanics and then have a hard time switching to the second set. However, experience playing the first set should have taught the player that the down button still lies down, one button still shoots, one button still jumps, and the left and right buttons still move the character from side to side. The only thing that changed was the art, but it was enough to throw some players off.

Assumptions are a common obstacle to solving problems. Approaching a problem with incorrect assumptions can lead to the problem seeming unsolvable, when in reality it is just a different problem than was originally assumed.

Prototyping

Most products developed by a person or company originated as an idea, were sketched on paper (see Paper Prototyping), and were artistically designed over numerous Iterations. The entire production pipeline for product development also includes testing groups, marketing, advertising, mass production, and then distribution into the market (see Play Testing). Games are no different.

Testing and prototyping are valuable tools during every phase of the design process, starting with the initial idea and lasting until the game is in the hands of players. For live environments like social games or massively multiplayer online games (MMOs), prototyping becomes valuable even after players are starting to interact with it.

Prototyping is the process of building a representative model of an idea for the purpose of testing and iterating. It provides opportunities for checking the viability and believability of a new design, and its usability, uniqueness, marketability, and x-factor, without taking on the full risk of developing the idea fully before testing it. Individual mechanics or features may be prototyped on their own before being combined, though most times a prototype is most useful if it is as close to complete as possible.

Data collected on prototypes can be sorted into categories such as things to remove, things to add, issues with current design, new ideas based on testing, new features based on testing, a possible work-around for development, possible changes to the product’s design, and more.

Prototyping can come in many forms. In the film and animation industry, a movie is prototyped in the form of storyboarding, and this is also quite useful in games. Storyboarding is the process of telling a story visually on a series of pieces of paper.

As mentioned above, another form of prototyping is Paper Prototyping. Other times basic middleware is used to work out the essentials of a design, even if proprietary software is used to plan for the final product. When a game is part of the physical world, inexpensive 3D printing in plastic is often used for prototyping.

In game design, there are several parts that will undergo prototyping. The first prototyping session will be creating a basic game level or area in order to test the game mechanics. This is to see if the idea is fun, within scope (based on the platform and current technology), or even worth pursuing with more resources. It might contain level design elements, characters, weapons, basic programming, and a few other items that are needed for the core game play of the main game idea. Multiple iterations of prototypes are often enlightening.

A large company might have specific teams just for prototyping or play testing. In a smaller company, often the same team works from prototype through final product. There are different philosophies about whether prototypes should be tossed out entirely before starting development of the final game, or if the prototype should be used as the first iteration of the final.

At any rate, the key to prototyping is to do it. When timelines are tight, the temptation is to skip early stages and get right to the final game development. However, prototypes often shorten development time and costs because so many problems can be worked out before a codebase gets large and unwieldy (see Pick Two: Fast, Cheap, Good).

Prototyping can even be used as a brainstorming tool in a game-jam style approach to finding fun. Beginning to build something real, instead of using only words on paper, can energize a project and move it forcefully out of the vaporware stage.

Risk Assessment

Risk Assessment is a foundational game design principle that pits player choice against uncertainty. At a basic psychological level, humans are risk averse. People seek to avoid situations with uncertainty, especially if they cannot determine any benefit from engaging in risky behavior. Consequently, risk assessment determines which choices provide the highest benefits with the least exposure to failure or detriment; it’s a cost-benefit analysis (see Minimax and Maximin as well as Satisficing vs. Optimizing and Min/Maxing).

Good game designs compel the player into frequent states of risk assessment. If risk assessment motivates player choice, it becomes an exercise in maximizing benefit or minimizing exposure to harm; and, when the player chooses properly, they are typically rewarded in a satisfying way by gain, or at least by preventing loss (see Loss Aversion). Engaging designs integrate risk assessment directly into gameplay and moment-to-moment interactivity by regularly forcing players to make decisions. In this way, players engage in the behavior of risk assessment almost the whole time they play a game, whether they are consciously aware of this thought process or not.

As a common example, many sidescrolling, shoot-’em-ups provide players with a bomb, or other power weapon, that clears the screen of enemies. When action is intense, this is a valuable weapon for survival, but is it more or less valuable to the player in an upcoming boss encounter? Players must decide whether to use this advantage they’ve got in the current, urgent situation or hold onto it for later. This circumstance is a nagging instance of risk assessment that helps raise suspense in a game.

As bombs and power weapons are usually strictly rationed to the point of scarcity (see Supply and Demand), players often engage in nearly obsessive risk assessment when deciding how to use them. Sometimes players complete the game without deploying the power weapon at all. During play, they assessed the risk of not having the bomb or weapon as being greater than the benefit of ever deploying it. This is an example of risk assessment driving a hoarding behavior, and it highlights the psychological power of game design.

Jesse Schell talks about risk assessment in terms of triangularity in The Art of Game Design: A Book of Lenses. Triangularity means providing the player with branching pathways that segment the risk and reward of the challenge awaiting. The idea is for the design to provide at least two choices: One is a lower risk or challenge branch with a lower reward, whereas the other is more challenging and risky but promises greater rewards. Designers can make triangularity explicit with visual indicators, such as signage or atmospheric effects, or they may hide it so that players must rely on trial and error.

To visualize triangularity, imagine the player standing at a fork in a road; one branch is a lower risk/reward option and the other offers higher risk/rewards. The player is free to pick their poison, and, from the player’s position, they appear to have two choices, both of which achieve roughly the same progression through to the next stage of the game.

Designers face a couple of notable dangers when designing risk assessment scenarios. Rewards players gain must be meaningful and shouldn’t deviate too far from their expectations. If the reward economy (see Supply and Demand and Variable Rewards) is too unpredictable or unfulfilling compared to the implied values a player determines through risk assessment and play experience, then the player will feel a lot of frustration. This is true even if the rewards received are greatly to the player’s benefit.

The principle of Risk Assessment has life outside the foundational mechanics of game design and is a practice applied to game development, as well. Similar to players who need to assign value to the risks presented before them, developers need to weigh the risks in game development. Risk assessment is a periodic process that takes the temperature of the game in progress as a way for the player to evaluate the project’s health and any outstanding threats and to guide iteration.

Usually game makers practice risk assessment in a rhythm dictated by the production methodology they have implemented; for example, in a traditional Waterfall style of software development, milestones and deadlines are usually good points from which to take a snapshot of the production progress and from which to perform risk assessment. In Agile development processes, the risk assessment usually happens during sprint planning meetings. The job of risk assessment can be undertaken on an individual basis but is often more beneficial in a team setting, provided there is a strong structure to support what may become a rigorous conversation.

Part of the attraction of playing games is that they offer an experience where risk assessment can be practiced in a relatively safe environment. The risk of drag racing in a video game is much less than in reality, but the game version can be almost as fun.

Triangularity is the idea that a player is offered two ways to progress to the next level in the game. One is low risk, but also low reward. The other is higher risk, but also higher reward.

Supply and Demand

Supply and Demand is a key component of economics, but it comes into play in games constantly—and not just in massively multiplayer online (MMO) auction houses. The fluctuations of supply and demand show up in the pursuit of rare items, the desire to personalize avatars, and the interplay of dominant races or play styles.

To understand the basics of supply and demand, think about a grocery store heading into the end-of-year holiday season. Most of the time, they sell cans of pumpkin for $1.25 and there is always a full shelf. However, when the holidays start to approach, the store knows demand for this seasonal treat is going to increase, so they know they need to increase their available supply to keep up with demand and to sell as much as they can.

So instead of arranging perhaps six cans on a low shelf, they make a huge display of 200 cans and put them in a prominent place and on sale to catch shoppers’ attention. It’s exactly the same product as it is every other time of year, but the increased demand—because of the time of year—means cans move off the display at a good clip; they may even need to be replenished from stock in the back room. If they had left it at just six cans, they would have run out very quickly.

Imagine how much two warring chefs would be willing to pay for the last can of pumpkin? Way more than $1.25. The price can increase dramatically when there is a short supply and a high demand.

And yet, this balance is always fluctuating. The holidays will end, and for a while, the store may not be able to sell a can of pumpkin to anybody for any price, since everyone is tired of it and thinks of it as tied closely to the already passed holiday. A huge supply with little demand can cause prices to plummet.

When making a game instead of pumpkin pie, this still applies. Look at the popular card game Magic: the Gathering. In this game, players collect cards that have different values and abilities. Certain cards are worth more than others, and certain cards are easy to find whereas others are very rare. These rare cards are in high demand and yet are hard to find. The combination of a very useful card in limited supply means owners can ask a high price if they are willing to sell.

When designing a game, it is important to carefully plan how the supply and demand of items in the game will work, and it should cover a wide range. Some objects/weapons/spells/pets should be very easy to obtain but have little value while still being necessary to the game. Then some items should be a little tougher to obtain and have an increased value and usefulness. These items shouldn’t be as abundant as the lesser items, but they shouldn’t be impossible to obtain, either. The last objects are the ones that are few and far between. These rare objects should be very hard to obtain and also hold a high value for the player. This range of different levels of supply and demand mimics a free market and feels natural to players. However, keep in mind that economies of all kinds (in games) require play testing and experimentation to find the right balance (see Balancing and Tuning).

When supply and demand is tuned correctly, a game will have a solid balance that makes it immersive, challenging, and yet still appealing. If either supply or demand is out of control, players usually get frustrated and quit.

The field of economics devotes much research and theorizing to the intricacies of these concepts. From price elasticity to purchasing power and market equilibrium, there is a great deal more to supply and demand than can fit here.

Magic: the Gathering is a game that uses principles of supply and demand to increase engagement and fun.

Synergy

Synergy is when two or more elements combine to produce a new, more powerful impact than either could have had on its own. It’s often summed up like this: The whole is greater than the sum of its parts.

When applied to game development, synergy refers to the possibility that the output of many individuals will come together to produce something greater than the output of those individuals independent of each other (see Design by Committee).

Players experience synergy as they see mechanics, art, and technology come together into a cohesive, larger experience. The game is more fun with all of these things combined than it would be with the individual parts. Both types of synergy increase efficiency and productivity.

Synergy Found in Games

In order to understand how synergy is created in games, it’s useful to relate it to a chef constructing a new dish. Chefs take their professional knowledge of various individual ingredients and experiment by mixing them together using a host of well-known techniques. Successful mixtures often turn into reusable recipes.

In games, players also create their own “recipes” or insert “ingredients” into an existing “recipe” by experimenting with and combining mechanics and systems, or by crafting inventory items. In both circumstances, synergy is born when the gamer produces a new maneuver or item by manipulating something that was already present. The discovered synergy results in the player progressively mastering their environment. This, in turn, encourages them to search and experiment further in order to feel the happiness that comes from complete mastery.

Combining Mechanics

The most obvious way a game can invoke synergy is by allowing players to discover unique maneuvers from skillfully executing combinations of mechanics. For example, a game that relies on melee combat could allow players to string together light and heavy attacks in specific orders to create new, more powerful maneuvers. Pressing light attack twice, followed by heavy attack once, for instance, could result in a devastating maneuver whose damage values and status effects exceed that of the individual attacks.

Synergy with mechanics is also encountered when players start adding Metagames. Multiplayer instances of games, like the skateboarding simulators in the Tony Hawk franchise, may not be set up with programming or rules to support multiplayer games like King of the Hill or obstacle course races, but players who enjoy a certain virtual environment will often invent new synergies that allow them to play these kinds of metagames with each other, using the game world as more of a toy and finding synergies the designers never anticipated. It’s important to note that players are exploring in these ways because they love the experience and want to expand and continue it, not because they are intentionally trying to break the game or play it the “wrong” way.

Crafting

Another way to allow players to feel the surprise and excitement of synergy is through crafting. Although this varies from game to game, the core idea involves mixing found or purchased items together to create a new, more valuable or useful one. A simplistic example can be found in early Resident Evil titles, where combining herbs results in more powerful plants that contain unique status effects. More complex examples are evident in Minecraft, Farmville, and most massively multiplayer online games (MMOs).

The first step to creating a crafting system is to list out every permutation of item combinations. Break each item into as many individually useful component parts as possible in order to increase the number of available combinations. From there, figure out what each combo could logically craft. It’s important the game makes the player feel like they figured out the combination on their own, so obvious mixtures should be common early in the game.

It’s OK if certain combinations do not yield any unique items, but crafting works best when all of the logical combinations are handled (see Theme). Although separate from crafting itself, it’s also important that crafting be rewarding by having benefits outside of the new object created. The aforementioned Resident Evil titles would limit the amount of items a player could carry, thus organically rewarding the player for crafting because doing so would reduce the number of held items and create an open slot in their inventory.

Synergy is the magic that happens when the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.

Theme

Theme can be a tricky idea to comprehend. It’s often confused with similar concepts like motif and genre, partly because they all address stylistic decisions that influence one another. However, theme is an especially important part of the design process, whether the focus is mechanical, narrative, or artistic.

Here’s why: Theme is the central idea your design will convey. It’s the one big concept that drives all of the work you do. It’s the part of your design that adds substance and makes people see value beyond the fun they’ll have or the skills they’ll learn. It’s also a valuable tool to help guide your design process.

With a theme in mind, there is a clear guide for each design decision. When a designer adds a feature to their game, the first consideration will be whether or not it makes thematic sense. It’s possible for a new feature to completely undermine the theme, conveying the opposite emotion or message that the designer intended to get across in the big picture. On the other hand, new features—or particular implementations of features—can echo and enhance the larger theme. Theme can be the razor’s edge that helps determine whether a potential feature is a good idea for this game or just a generally good idea.

For theme to be the most useful, it needs to be as specific and targeted as possible. As an example, “war” is simply too broad to be a helpful theme. Is the game about the horrors of war? Or maybe about honoring the soldiers who fight? In looking at just those two thematic ideas, some very important differences dictate significantly different implementations in design.

A game about the horrors of war would highlight the civilian toll, the torment of post-traumatic stress, and other negative aspects of the experience. A game about honoring those who serve as soldiers would focus on acts of heroism, selfless sacrifice, patriotism, and achievement.

It could be disastrous to mix these thematic elements. For example, if the soundtrack to a game about the horrors of war fits better with the theme of honoring soldiers—strident, upbeat, patriotic—the end result is a sense of glorifying the sad scenes you’re trying to present as terrible. Not only would this fail to show the horrors of war, but players could be confused or angry.

To find the right theme for a design, focus on what feeling or thought players of your game should walk away with. If they had to try to describe what they experienced while playing this game, what would that be? The thought or feeling that sticks with them is a beginning point for crafting a theme. Consider what players should learn about the situation they’ve been in and what thoughts are top of mind for events they’ve just witnessed or created. Putting that into words is the heart of your theme.

It’s important to note that theme is independent of any genre, setting, or trope (see Game Tropes). It’s possible to have a theme such as “Anything is possible with good friends” set in King Arthur’s court, a modern battlefield, or outer space. A theme like “It is worth it to sacrifice one’s life to preserve a greater peace” could be set in ancient China, the mythic Mount Olympus, or a modern high school. Having this fully fleshed-out theme will allow the design to be flexible enough to incorporate new ideas, but solid enough to identify when an element doesn’t fit.

As theme relates to narrative, in particular, the main character’s story arc (the change in a character from the beginning of the story to the end) usually acts out the theme most clearly. In almost every case, whatever the protagonist of the story learns or experiences is what the player will learn or consider. The protagonist who learns to become less selfish teaches the audience the virtue of selflessness. The protagonist who becomes more self-reliant demonstrates the danger in dependency.

A strong theme is the backbone of a good design. It will be a guide throughout the creative process and offer the player meaning and value beyond the fun of gameplay.

Theme: Love Conquers All
Note: Although this theme seems to fit most easily in the 1750s social scene, it’s possible—and even a bit more interesting and unexpected—to set it on a modern battlefield instead. The ideas seem deeper and more fresh.

Theme: Courage Is the Most Valuable Virtue
Note: This theme seems tailor-made for a modern battlefield, but if it’s set in the social scene of the 1750s, we are able to see the ideas in a whole new light instead of feeling like they are boring and recycled.

Time and Money

Imagine two players:

1. Abe is a ramen-chomping college student. He only has classes three days a week, so he basically lazes about playing online games on his off days.

2. Zack is a high-powered suit-wearing executive. He likes games quite a bit but finds it hard to fit them into his day.

Abe has a surplus of time and is constrained by money; Zack has a surplus of money and is constrained by time. Both players enjoy the games and want interesting stuff to happen, but they have different resources that they can spend to unlock that content. In fact, there is a whole spectrum of gamers between Abe and Zack. Some people have both a moderate amount of money and time that they are willing to spend.

If the up-front monetary price of the game is high, all of the Abes are turned away. They just don’t have the money to get in the door. If the time price of the game is high (the amount of time one needs to invest before getting to “the good stuff”), then all of the Zacks and their ilk are turned away.

But if the game allows players to trade money for time and time for progression, the need to turn any player away for lacking either of these disappears. If Abe can get to the good content without ever paying (meaning the game is free to play) and if Zack can pay some cash and get to the best content quickly (meaning the game offers items or progression for real money), then both types of players and all of the spectrum in-between can be satisfied.

What if players have neither time nor money? Riot Games has a solution for this with their League of Legends game. Since the game is very social by nature, they allow players to buy gift cards—for other players. This allows players with surplus money to give in-game rewards to players with neither the time nor money to amass them on their own. Many other games now allow the gifting of useful items via either in-game actions or purchase.

Of course, tying an in-game economy to real-world currency in any way opens up a myriad of complications and problems not yet fully understood or taken into account in public policy and legislation. For instance, at what point does the exchange rate for Interstellar Kredits (the currency in Eve Online) become just as important as the exchange rate for Euros in the real-world economy? And at what point, then, does the game qualify as a bank, with all the regulations required there?

There have already been extended court cases as people accuse each other of stealing objects—furniture, items, jewels—that only ever existed in a game. So although this exchange of time for money in an online, persistent world is an exciting boundary to push for game designers, it also adds a layer of complication to managing the real-world side of the game.

User-Centered Design

At the highest level, user-centered design (UCD) is a term applying to user interfaces that take into account the needs, limitations, and desires of the end user of a production at every phase of the design. This is an approach that requires extensive usability testing throughout the process to understand users’ actions and predict their behavior early on in the design. Designers need to analyze and predict how users will utilize a product and then test those assumptions with actual users. This real-world testing is critical because designers often have a difficult time predicting what the initial experience of users using their software will be and what each user’s learning curve is like.

It is deceptively easy to believe as a designer that the needs and desires of the end user are known and understood intuitively. The chief factor separating UCD from other design methods is making an effort to study and capture how users will want, need, and expect the product to function rather than making the user conform to the designer’s expectations.

The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) describes six principle keys to UCD. The design is based upon an explicit understanding of users, tasks, and environments.

• First, users are involved throughout design and development of the product.

• Second, user-centered evaluation drives and refines the design. This is an iterative process.

• The whole user experience is addressed in the design. An understanding of users, tasks, and environments is explicitly understood and taken into account by the design.

• Finally, the design team must comprise multidisciplinary skills and perspectives.

There are many questions that must be answered when creating UCD. Who are the users? Are they middle-aged housewives or hardcore 25-year old men? What tasks and goals are users trying to achieve? Are those tasks and goals clear to the user? What is the user’s experience level and what is their experience level dealing with games like the one being created? Also, if it is a totally new genre, the learning curve will be very steep and accounting for that must come into play.

More questions to ask include: What functions do players need and how will they access them? What information and in what form do users need to play the game? How do players think the game should work? What are the extreme environments in which the game will be played? (If it is a mobile game, this is very difficult to answer as the environment could be nearly anywhere.) Is the player multitasking or are they playing the game exclusively? What is the input for the game? Is it spoken, gestural, touch, or orientation? Again, with mobile games for devices like the iPad, this will be very different than for a game that is played exclusively on a PC.

The designer must consider the visibility, legibility, accessibility, and language used in the game for the player. The designer must also account for “who” the user is. This includes age, gender, ethnicity, geographical location, education level, and so on. What is the purpose of the game? What are the cultural and contextual settings for the game? How do these relate to the user?

There are a number of tools available to the designer in UCD. The three primary ones are persona, scenarios, and use cases. Persona is the player’s representation in the world. It is the fictional accounting of the player. Scenarios are the settings for the persona and are circumstances of how the world around the player looks when the persona is engaging with the game. Finally, use cases are the careful breakdown of the possible actions and results the player or persona may encounter.

Answering all of these questions can be time consuming and expensive, which is why UCD is often overlooked for games. However, the more UCD is utilized for a game, the better the game will be and the more likely it will be a hit.

Wayfinding

Wayfinding is the process of orienting one’s self in relationship to the world and navigating from the current position to the desired destination. Humans instinctively find their way using Spatial Awareness, context clues, landmarks, well-structured paths (see Affordance Cues), and lighting. All of these clues communicate direction for the player without supplying something as overt as a glowing arrow pointing the way. Successful wayfinding dynamics empower players with a sense of mastery over the world.

One way to illustrate this principle is to see wayfinding at its worst; in this case it is used as an environmental puzzle. In the original 1976 text-adventure game Colossal Cave Adventure, the player eventually discovers a part of the cave that the game describes only as “You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.”

Every move the player makes, in every direction, is met with exactly the same response: “You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.”

There is no way a player can navigate out of this maze using the usual methods of orientation and planning. The wayfinding for a human’s brain is completely broken. There are no landmarks, no affordance cues—nothing.

The solution to this classic puzzle is for the player to drop an item in whatever room they are standing in—effectively creating their own landmark. (This has the added benefit of working with the Theme, as the classic way to get out of any maze is to drop breadcrumbs.) The description of the room now looks something like this: “You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike. There is a glove here.”

So the player moves on to an adjacent nondescript room and drops another object. Continuing in this way eventually lands them back in a room containing an item they dropped previously—a familiar landmark. Now that the rooms have unique identities, the player can map and solve the entire cave.

Unless the environmental puzzle of a maze is the entire point, games should provide clear wayfinding for players so they can focus on the appropriate content (see Attention vs. Perception), rather than spend their time trying to orient themselves.

The basic techniques for good wayfinding in games are as follows:

• Landmarks. Landmarks are any aesthetically distinctive architectural or geological feature in the game world. Landmarks are exceptionally useful to wayfinding when they are associated with decision points. Mechanically, they serve as a decision node and can also be used as a fixed object for determining one’s position in the local game space. The dynamics of landmarks instill confidence in the player’s navigation decision. In order for landmarks to maintain value, they should be a scarce resource and serve the game world’s larger purpose, as too many may just add confusion to the navigation.

• Weenies. Aesthetically, weenies are architectural or geological landmarks with a wow-factor. They tend to be large and define a land’s region or territory with their presence. These special case landmarks have the tendency to demand the player’s attention and make the game’s location memorable. Mechanically, they serve as reference points from which to gather one’s bearings in the game world. The dynamics of weenies pique the player’s interest and beckon them nearer as they anticipate action or the furthering of the game’s story arc. Think of it as holding out a piece of hotdog as a treat for a puppy. They can’t take their eyes off it and will do anything to get to it.

• Birth Canals. Birth canals are aesthetically linear, claustrophobic spaces which first funnel, then constrict, and finally release the player into agoraphobic spaces (see Spatial Awareness). The mechanics of birth canals direct the player and clearly delineate game regions spatially. They can be used as safe zones or combat zones. The dynamics of birth canals build anxiety and anticipation in the player and often result in a sense of relief or awe when they are finally over.

• Well-Structured Paths. Well-structured paths are navigation routes that aesthetically communicate a clear start point, journey, and end point from either direction. Paths can be defined by either the physical (a paved road) or the negative space (a forest clearing) in the scene. A well-structured path serves as a mechanism to guide and move a player through the game space. The dynamics of a well-structured path afford the player with the perception of progress in the game world and the story arc.

• Lighting. Lighting is the means by which the game’s atmosphere and mood are communicated to the player. Lighting can convey feelings and emotions, temperature, direction, and meaning. A warm yellow light is comforting. Cold, blue light can be forbidding. In wayfinding, the dynamics of lighting are akin to a moth to a flame; players instinctively seek the brightest areas, and thus these areas communicate an intrinsic direction they should go. This relationship allows designers to create non-structured paths for drawing the player forward.

Wayfinding at its best: A clear path, checkpoints at unique landmarks, and a dynamic weenie.