Game Design
Class Note from Game Design at CMU ETC
1/16 Introduction
At the beginning, the teacher introduced the landscape of the courser asked us a simple question “Are you a game designer?” The reply might be cliché but everyone could be a game designer.
How can I become a game designer?
Later we discussed about what does game designer need to know? What skills does Game Designer need to be good at? From literature to technology, from comicbooks to animation, everyone agree that game designer need to know and be good at many things. Since no one is able to good at some many skills, Jesse thinks everyone could has his own way in. But one of the most important skill for game designer is thoughtful listening. A good game designer listens to his team, clients, audience, the game and himself and they often conflict to each other which is the most difficult part to deal with.
What makes a good game?
We discussed this topic and there are multiple answers to this questions. As a result, we got our first assignment to redesign hopscotch. In order to give a some inspiraton, Jess use Tic-Tac-Toe as example and show us how many possible variable it could be.
Adventure #1 Hopscoth Hamlet (link)
- Think about what make hopscotch fun?
- Think about what is the problem of hopscotch?
- Come out with 50 ideas of advanced version of hopscoth.
- Pick 3 to refine and pick one to do user test.
1/18 Process
Two short readings for today’s class. They are both about agile game developing or rapid prototyping “mindset”. I used mindset because I think this is a general rule but no necessarily can be applied to any cases.
There are also small things I want to take note here for reference
- Constrained increase creativity. (Brainstorming without limitation often leads to nothing)
- Choose the music first. You could easily describe the sprit of your game to others through the feeling of a song.
- Design a game is more about creating fun experience rather than solving a problem. People can easily determine whether the game is fun or not by simply playing it in a relative short time (That’s why rapid prototyping is important here.)
- The lens of the toy: Toy does not have goal but people keep interacting with it.
What is game designer’s goal?
It is all about creating fun experience. The existence of the game dose not matter at all. A game consist of two elements: The experience and the mechanics. You can’t design the experience but you can design the mechanics to create experience. The tricky thing is that if you want to learn the mechanics, you need to see through experience and it is hard to experience and analysis things at the same time.
As a result, Jesse suggest four level of approaches.
- Analyze Memories: This is the beginner’s level. You play it and analyze afterward from memories.
- Two Passes: You play it first and then re-play it again to analyze.
- Sneak Glances: You play a short amount of game, analyze it and repeat the iteration.
- Observes silently: This is the expert level. You play while analyze it.
Which come first? Experience or Mechanics.
Jesse talked about a great example. When he played Dungeons & Dragons, he really hated the battle part. It felt like two characters standing face-to-face and attack each other until one’s life point decreased to zero. How to make the combat feel like action movie in which the advantage could take turn? Based on this goal (desired experience), he invented the game to simulate same scenario.
That is a good example, but where to find inspired experience? Jesse talk about another example of him learning juggling.
What is the process?
- Think of an idea.
- Try it out.
- Keep changing it and testing it until it seems good enough.
The most important thing is to think what is your problem statement? For example, How can I make a board game that uses the properties of magnets in an interesting way? Having a problem statement could help you:
- Broader creative space
- Clear measurement of success
- Better communication
Reading
1/23 Subconsciousness
Today we have two readings, one is about human conscious and the other is slumber with key from Dali.
Jesse argues that if experience is what we design for, the medium should be our mind. However, it turns out the human mind is more complicated than we think and subconsciousness plays an important role in it. Most of time, we do not perceive the objective reality but model of reality. So what makes our mind entertainable?
- Modeling: People use their mental model to explain things happened in the world.
- Focus
- Empathy: To feel other people or even animals emotions.
- Imagination: Many, many details can be excluded and imagination fills in gaps in the model. This is why so many “unrealistic” things make for
good entertainment.
We need to know how to take care and feed our creative subconscious mind (It is hard!!!).
- Pay attention to it.
- Put your ideas on paper.
- Manage its appetites (judiciously)
- Sleep!
- Don’t push too hard
Adventure #2 The Mines of Memory
In this adventure, we are required to recall and write down 100 games you have played before. The year I played and what did I think about it when I was in that age should also be written down. After Jesse talked about subconsciousness in the class, this assignment aims to help us recollect our previous game expereince as archive for further game design.
1/25 More Process
We first discussed two reading. I think the one from Valve explainning how they create Half-Life worth reading.
Brainstorming
Brainstorming sometimes could be not productive at all so Jesse’s shares some of his tips about brainstorming including
- Write/Sketch is better than type/talk
- Sptial memory sometime relevant when arranging ideas on the wall.
- Numbered your lists
- Destory your assumption
- Mix and Match categories
As for how to pick ideas after brainstorm, you should Just pick and try out!
Implementation
In this part, Jesse talked about models from software developments. There are waterfall, spiral and agile. For sure, the mores time you test and improve your design, the better your game will be. So here is the agile process
- State the problem
- Brainstorm some possible solutions
- Choose a solution
- List the risks of using that solution (stop thinking positive!)
- Build prototypes to mitigate the risks
- Test the prototypes. If they are good enough, stop.
- State the new problems you are trying to solve, and go back to step 2.
So when do you know when to stop the loop? Below are eight filters.
Reading
1/30 Skill and Chance
What skills are required to play this game? This is good question to think about. Skill could be categorized in three types:
- Physical: Strength / Dexterity / Coordination
- Mental: Memory / Puzzle Solving / Observation
- Social: Reading an opponent / Fooling an opponent / Team communication.
And we could design the required skill for different levels based on FLOW model.
The opposite of skill is chance. Our reading “Randomness: Blight or Bane” has a in-depth study about the role of randomness in game design. People tend to think of randomness in games as a bad thing. Because most People want to win the game with their skill not luck. If winning or losing the game are totally determined by randomness, what is the point of playing it?
But randomness is different from unpredictable. Most of time, unpredictable does not imply random but hard to predict and our brain likes to predict and find patterns. Furthermore, in statistical view, more random test equals less randomness. Considering rolling two dices, the chance of getting 6 or 7 are much higher than getting 1 or 12. So how much randomness is right amount? Do remember that “As soon as things become predictable, they become boring.”
2/1 Dice game
Continuing from last course about chance and skill, Jesse introduced tons of dice game in class and even played some of them.
There are several topic worth mentioning about dice game.
- Still fun (though it is purely luck): LCR is a good example. It totally relies on chance. What player do is to roll the dice and transfer coins. However, it still somehow creates a excitement of getting lots of coins and winning the game.
2. The fun of rolling a dice: It is fun to roll the dice but remember that rolling two dices is much more fun than single dice. Although player does not need number higher than six, Mordak still provide two dices for players to roll.
3. The limitation of dice: Unlike card could have certain identity for players. Dice simply can not be a character. Dice is designed to be roll, not act as chess.
4. Expected value: Rolling a dice is all about probability. As a result, designer should have brief understanding about expected value. It is crucial for dice game. On the other hand, expected value is also to hard calculate. You could create illusion for player to think that the game is in favor of their choice.
Finally, chance and skill in many games still get tangled together.
- Some chance is easily quantified (ex. Die rolls, drawn cards, etc.)
- Some chance is not easily quantified (ex. Chance that my skill will succeed)
- Estimating chance is a skill (ex. Blackjack)
- Skills have a probability of success
- Estimating opponent’s skill is a skill
- Predicting pure chance is an imagined skill (ex. Gambler’s Fallacy)
- Controlling pure chance is an imagined skill (ex. Lucky charms)
2/6 Play test workshop
2/8 Vocabulary
The beginning of wisdom is a definition of terms. — by Socrates
Today, we discussed more about what is the definition of game? We read a article written by Greg Costikyan. In this article, he defines game as “An interactive structure of endogenous meaning that requires players to struggle toward a goal.” Then he further discussed each term he mentioned in this definition. I would argue that this definition obviously too complicated. Although it does not answer the question, it do ask a lot and make reader think about it.
Through the discussion, Jesse introduced many lenses in this book.
In the end Jesse defined game as “A problem solving activity
approached with a playful attitude” and he introduced the lens of problem solving.
2/13 Story
Story is our topic this week. However, I would like to mention the reading first. Considering the medium of the story, book is text-based media so what it could do is to convey idea only through text. Movie adds sensory experience. Viewer understand the scene by hearing and seeing the scene. Games provide interactivity which means you can discover further depth from doing the scene.
However, almost all big-budget games present their narrative in a shallow way— story, gameplay, story, gameplay, with minimal overlap. The story parts often are climax of whole story, but what player do at that moment? He puts down the controller, feels relax and comfortable see through the cut scene knowing that the character in the game won’t die in the cut scene. At that specific moment of climax, the interactivty is donw to zero. Isn’t it weird?
“Games with cutscenes are the silent films of games.”
On the other hand, Portal is a good example of storytelling.
… Near the end, you are riding a slowly moving platform to what you are told is a reward for your good test performance. … and now I was being betrayed. Without thinking, my eyes lead me to an ideal surface for firing my portal gun, … For just a moment, I genuinely thought I broke the system. I had outsmarted the enemy with my wits!
The story is built-in but the storytelling make player feel they really break the system. If we define player mode as player story and the designed story as explicit story. Then the author argues that designer should use explicit story to support player story.
A good example is Journey.
In the game, the explicit story appears to be very loose. When you start out, all you know is that you’re some sort of person or creature in the desert. That’s it. There are no explicit goals, motivations, plot, conflict or dialogue. … Along the way, you encounter some characters. These are other human players, going through the same experience as you. You can’t talk to them with words, but you can communicate with body language and a singing ability. At this point, the story is different for everyone. Some people partner up with a curious new player, … Others have conflicts with the other players, …These are all great stories that are deeply meaningful to the players, since they are personal experiences that they created for themselves.
When talking about this, Jesse shared his own expereince in UO. Something about he got picked pocket and decided to chase down the guy all over the owrld. It is such a good stroy. The most exciting and interesting stories are created by players themselves.
Here are some lens when you design your stories.
Why interactive stroytelling is so hard?
It seems that we found a perfect way to tell a perfect story but why most games still have very bad storytelling?
- Good story have unity: A good story has an ideal ending. Everything happend for a reason. If Cinderella fails to become the princess, do you still like the story?
- The Combinatorial Explosion: If you let player choose their own actions and branch the stories as many as possible. The combinations will grow up and out of control very soon.
- Multiple Endings Disappoint: A game with multiple ending seems to be good enough but player always want to get to the perfect ending.
- Not enough verbs: Games are composed by action verbs such as run, jump, cast …etc, while movie are composed by mind verbs such as talk, negotiate, convince …etc. It is hard for game to show something happen in the mind.
- Time Travel Makes Tragedy Obsolete: When tragedy happens, you could reload the game an do it again. In interactive story, tragedy become not inevitable. If tragedy could be avoided, it is obsolete.
Jesse’s story tips
- Start with fantasy
- Goals + Obstacles = Conflicts
- Use Simplicity and Transcendence: For example, the story could happen in Medieval (simplicity) but with little magic (transcendence).
- Consider the Hero’s Journey (link)
- Tailor the story to technology: Stories are flexible. In Half-Life 2, engineers are able to create the effect of gravity gun. Just create a whole level for gravity gun. It will be fun and innovative.
- Make your story world accessible: You need to fit into people’s current imagination. Jesses talked about a scienece fiction novel about going to the moon in 1865. The spaceship looks like a giant bullet. Why not rocket but bullet? Because at that time, rocket was small. People could only imagine a giant cannon with giant bullet which could possibly carry men to the moon.
- Use Clichés Judiciously: Zombie, dragons, princess, …
- Sometimes a map brings a story to life
- Who am I helping?
2/15 Puzzles
“Puzzles are not even really interactive since they don’t respond to the player.” by Chris Crawford sez
Are puzzles games? It is, but it is a game which has a dominant strategy. Once you figured it out, it is not fun and not replayable.
10 Principles for Puzzles
1) Make the goal easily understand.
2) Make it easy to get started
3) Give a sense of progress: The difference between riddle and puzzles is that players don’t know the process of a riddle. (The game “20 questions” is puzzles)
4) Give a sense of solvability
5) Increase Difficulty Gradually
6) Parallelism lets the player rest
7) Pyramid structure can be good: Several little puzzles that are each part of one larger puzzle.
8) Hints can be good
9) Give the answer: Consider mystery novels — they are really puzzles — but the pleasure is not is solving them, but seeing them solved.
10) Perceptual shifts are a double-edged sword
Puzzles in story game
- Most puzzles are about finding info — the web wrecks them.
- Integrating puzzles with the action is often the best solution — but it isn’t easy.
2/20 Characters
This week we read a chapter of The Vocabulary of Comics by Scott McCloud.This is the same chapter I read in communication design studio. In that class, we talked about abstract level of icon and meaning. In Game design class, we focused on the character building.
Try to go through book, movie and game, you will find out that the level abstraction is different between medium. While you know a lot about the internal conflict in Holden Caulfield (The Catcher in the Rye), Mario is simple cartoon plumber who always fight against the evil Bowser.
How to make player have the internal conflict that Holden had? Designer need to put user into the character. The character is longer a character but an avatar of the player. There are two main approaches. The ideal form of avatar (ex. superhero)or a blank slate of avatar (ex. Mario).
Character tips
- List characters functions: Every character should have its own function in the game but give character multiple functions will be interesting as well.
- Define and use character traits: You define character traits first and you write character’s dialogue accordingly. (SUPER USEFUL!!!)
- Use the Interpersonal Circumplex:Creating a graph. One axis is hostile/friendly, and the other is submissive/dominant. Put character in the middle and map out others. You will see what you miss.
- Make a Character Web: Think about each relationship in the web.
- Use Status: There are high status and low status for each character.
- Use the power of the voice: Jesse talks about the story of Uncharted 2. Rather than just asking actor to record their own voice, actors got familiar with each other and eventually record the whole script together. The result is immersive.
- Use the power of the face: Think about facial expression on the screen. You need to amplify/exagerate the motion so that character could communicate the emotion easily.
- Powerful Stories transform characters: The character will evolve through the story.
- Avoid the Uncanny Valley
The future of game
After that Jesse shares his thoughts about the future of the game. He believes that the avatar in the game will become our virtual companion. (A bold statement!) He talks about three examples. The first one is Project Milo back in 2009. (It turns out to be fake but the concept is amazing). The second one is Façade, an open-ended interactive storytelling game. The third one is a small feature in Mass Effect 3. The player could speak out the option in the game. With Artificial intelligent evolved, this dream of virtual companion might come true.
2/22 World
This week, we talk about “Transmedia World”. When the StarWars first came out in 1977, toy manufacturer released movie figure toy to the market. We might assume that children would follow the movie narrative to play the toy. But that’s not true, toys are the gateway for them to enter the world.
- Transmedia worlds exist apart: In StarWars, the world is a separate thing from the movie. It is invisible and can only be accessed through gateways. (If the world is not good enough, no one wants to buy the gateways)
- Transmedia worlds have many gateways: Take Pokemon as an example, it starts with Gameboy then the TV show. The interesting thing is that what you learn from TV show could be applied to the game. Then, there was a Pokemon card game which added social dimension into it. Eventually, there are games, movies, cards …etc to access the world of Pokemon.
ps. If a world could last for 7 years, it will go to 20 years. (rule of thumbs) - Transmedia worlds are powerful
- Transmedia worlds have long lives: First Peter Pan and Wendy released in 1908. Walt Disney made it into the animation Peter Pan in 1953. The movie, Tinkerbell, was released in 2008. The only thing that is not changed is the world, Neverland.
- Transmedia worlds evolve over time: and people decide what stays. Think about Santa Claus. First started in eastern Europe as San Nicolas and then the Rudolph, the red-nosed reindeer. There were people try to come out with new stories about Santa Claus but nothing really stays. Because the only main narrative about Santa Claus is that if kids behave well, they will get what they deserve. Anything against or unrelated to the narrative will not stay.
What makes a good one?
- Transmedia worlds tend to be rooted in a single medium and a single creator.
- Transmedia worlds are intuitive: Example like DC universe. It exists without a doubt.
- Transmedia worlds facilitate the telling of many stories: Think about Lord of the Rings. There are so many less-detailed stories happen beyond distance mountain. It creates the world and let people’s imagination fill into the void part. As for Toy Story, there is not much room space to facilitate other stories. The world is limited.
- Transmedia worlds make sense through all their gateways: The story should be consistent. Jesse talked about his experience of making the Tinkerbell game with two contradict narrative between a book and a movie.
- Transmedia worlds fulfill wishes
- Transmedia worlds mean something: For example, the central idea of Pirates of Carribean is freedom.
- Fit the hopes, dreams, and lives of their audience: People always want a better world.
2/27 Balancing
There 12 types of balance to be considered in games.
- Fairness: It could be symmetrical or asymmetrical game.
Rock-paper-scissors is a good example of circular symmetric but remembers creating more balanced gestures does not necessarily make game more fun. - Challenge vs. Success: How to keep player staying in flow state?
(ex. You could increase difficulty with each success.) - Meaningful choices: Bruce Shelley says a good game is:“interesting decisions, a competitive environment, and a satisfying conclusion.” You don’t want to have a choice always better than others. It is called dominate strategy. Another intersting way to look at is:
Choices > Desires overwhelmed
Choices < Desires frustrated
Choices = Desires feeling of freedom and mastery
- Skill & Chance: See the dice game part.
- Head & Hand: Mindless action or intellectual challenges
- Competition vs. Cooperation: Some games could do both at the same time. (Joust)
- Short vs. Long: How to control the length of the game?
- Rewards
- Punishment: Possible punishment increases challenge.
- Freedom vs. Controlled Experience
- Simple vs. Complex: Innate complexity or emergent complexity (GO)
- Detail vs. Imagination
How you balance?
- Let the players do it?
- Use the Lens of the Problem Statement
- Doubling and Halving. Don’t adjust little by little.
- Train Your Intuition by Guessing Exactly
- Document your model
- Tune your model as you tune your game
- Plan to Balance
- Magic moment: If you don’t know what to do, the game is balanced.
3/6 Motivation
The reading for this week is kind of ancient. It mainly talks about how to define “play” in the perspective of psychology but it links back to our topic this week “Why people play?”. Or we could ask how to motivate people to play?
First thing, we need to know who are our target players? We could segment by age (0–3 infant / 4–6 preschooler / 7–9 kids (7 is the age of reason) / 10–12 tweens / 13–18 teen / 19–24 young adult / 25–34 adult / 35–49 thirties and forties (family) /50+ fifties and up) or gender. You could also follow frameworks such as Bartle’s Taxonomy of Player Types or The Big 5 personality type to define the player types. One trick (and the laziest way) is to say “I want to make a game for people who like … (ex. OverWatch)”
As for creating motivations, there are several psychological model we could follow. For example, flow theory, Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs or Self-Determination Theory (PENS model). In Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, many games fall in self-esteem level while social games represent the love and belong level. and games like minecraft or Simcity represent self actualization leve.
Finally, we talk about intrinsic and extrinsic motivation. Make a game intrinsically fun is hard. Jesse talks about a metaphor of the Big red button. If you own a company that manufactures and sells the big red button. Once user pushes it, it completes a task for you. It is ideal to complete the thing you must do. But if you push the button and you win the game, the game will be the worst ever. People seek for efficiency for the things they must do and seek for fun for the things they want to do.
Jesse mentions about three big motivators:
- Novelty: People like novel things. Even the thing is novel, if you brings up in unexpected schedule, people will like it. (Unpredictable rewards)
- Judgement
- Plans: Plan creates imagination for people to think about and they will more willing to execute it. A experiment shows that games which only provide trailers in Steam sell best.
3/8 Playtesting
Before we talk about the execution part, we need to understand why playtesting is so hard? One word “Denial”. So even before the test starts, put your ego away and listen to what players say.
Before planning for the test, ask thes five questions first.
- Why: What is the purpose of the test? (ex. Do players understand how to play? / What strategies do players find on their own? / …etc)
- Who: Developers / Friends / “Expert Gamers” / “Tissue Testers”
- Where: Playtest lab / public avenue / home / Internet / …
- What: Things you are looking for vs. Things you don’t know you are looking for.
- How: What should you tell them up front? / What other data should you collect during play? / What data should I collect after? / …
One trick Jesse mentioned is that if you write down exactly what is told to the player, it could become the tutotrial.
This video is from Barbara Chamberlin in NMSU Learning Games Lab. Testing educational game with K-12 children. Below are useful tips provided in the video.
For you to be able to tell me why you like something: (HARD!)
- Know you like it
- Know why
- Move beyond noticing
- Overcome influence
As a result, what you need to do is asking the right questions.
- Avoid using Do, Is. Using “tell me…” , “How…”
- Write it down first. The forced pause when you look through the questions is good for conversation.
Furthermore, using multiple ways to ask questions and get feedback and train your tester. Last but not least, you need to know when the tests are enough that answers move beyond usability to personal preference.
Readings
An interesting story about the designer in Telltale games did a usuability test on an adventure game with his mother-in-law. One thing I learned is that it is important to make player switch the mindset of the real world to the digital one so that they could understand the game more easily.
A story in Wired talked about the playtest of Halo3. For Microsoft, Halo 3 is a game changer for Xbox360. In this article, how comprehensively a playtest could be.
3/27 Interfaces
What makes a good or bad interface?
Make it fun to use!
- Juicy = rapid feedback with lots of secondary effects
- Fun = pleasure with surprises
Touch as an intuitive way to control
Feedback
Modes
Any complicated game will require different mod of control, here are some tips.
- Use as few modes as possible!
- Avoid overlapping modes
- Make different modes look as different as possible
Reading
4/3 Level design
What is level design?
It is a way to indirect control the player. As a result, game designer could learn from architecture. The architecture of level design includes:
- Linear: ex. Monopoly, Super Mario Brothers
- Grid: ex. Chess, Settler of Catan
- Web: ex. Zork. This is useful when there are several places you want players to visit but you want to give them a number of choices.
- Points in Space: ex. Bocce. This is an uncommon one, usually for games that wandering the desert and occasionally return to the oasis. Or for game that player defines the play space.
- Divided Space: ex. Zelda Ocarina of time. Game the try to replicate real-world map.
Pattern Language
Jesse came out with an example from Max Payne. The top-left one is what the living room looks like in real-world (but it is hard to interact). The second one expands the room size (The ratio of space and furniture become unreal). The third one increases the space of furniture. The last one is the final design (super un-real, if you see through a rational lens)
Then, Jesse talks about Christopher Alexander and his pattern language. Based on that, he talks about many examples of game level that matched the ideas in the book.
Summary
Game Spaces are not sculpted based on reality. You will sculpt them so that:
- Give rewards and challenges appropriately
- Build and break the suspense
- Create certain feelings
- Send a message
- Allow for the game action you would like
- Help people find their way
- Clarify some things, obscure others
- Stay within limits of your technology
- Control people into the experience you want
Reading
4/5, 10 Business
Total Game Industry Revenue: ~$100B
- Console: 5%
- PC: 25%
- Mobile: 70%
(The data shocks me…)
Reading
4/12, 17 Pitch
Have a Good Idea
- Ideas: $0.0083 each
- Cool Ideas: $5 each, easily
- Good Ideas: $100 each, on a good day
- A good idea: In the right place / At the right time / Sold convincingly is worth $1 Million.
How to explain your game
- Type of game
- Coolest unique thing about it
- Context: tell us the fantasy
- Describe an example of play
Jesse’s Pitch Tips
- Assume their Point of View
- Have a Good Idea
- Get in the Door
- Show you are Serious
- Know all the Details
- Be Confident
- Design the Pitch
- Practice the Performance
- Be Flexible
- Get them to Own It
- Show your PASSION
Sample Pitch Structure
- Who are you?
- What are you going to pitch today? ex. We are going to present our concept for an action platforming game on iOS and Android
- Who is the audience for this game?
- What gap does this game fill?
- What is the feel of this game?
- Show the GAMEPLAY — any way possible!
- Why will people play?
- Why will people pay?
- What are the risks? How will you manage them?
- How much money will this game make? Why?
- How much time and money will it take to make? Why?
Reading
4/24 Technology
5 Patterns
- Foundational Technology Makes the Biggest Changes (Don’t mix up foundational and decorational technology)
- The Hype Curve
- Disruption: The innovator’s dilemma.
- Technology mostly diverges
- History keeps repeating
Reading
4/16 Ethics
Jesse’s Opinion
- Games can do good. We know this.
- Who is responsible for using the medium for good? -> You are.
- Mostly, no one will pay you to do good. You must do good in secret if
you are to succeed. - But won’t doing good compromise my game?
The Deepest Theming
- Why are you making games?
- If you don’t know, how can you make good decisions?
