Thoughts on Anna Anthropy and Naomi Clark’s A Game Design Vocabulary
These readings were slightly interesting. One of the things that caught my attention was that they said that videogames are a topic in need of its own specific vocabulary of game design. She said that currently, “The language that exists to describe videogames is facile when applied to the very real problem of discussing design” (6). She believes that the vocabulary of the time was not adequate in analyzing, discussing, or criticizing game design. She believes that the common terms that are used many times such as, “Immersive, Fluid, and Flow” are words that require much context in order to make sense of them in the setting of videogames. However, it is not just videogames that do this, many other categories in other professions or sports do the same thing. Each branch of the military uses words differently from each other and each word that they use can mean something entirely different to every day citizens’ usage. For example, if someone from the military was to say ‘Eagle Keeper’ then normal citizens would think that the person takes care of his pet eagle, but in the military this term is slang used to call someone who is the maintenance crew chief of an F-15.
In chapter 2 they start discussing that games have rules. They say that they want to “design rules that have relationships to each other” (14). When one makes a game it is like they are making their own universe. Each universe as we all know has their own laws that interact with the environment and the inhabitants. The same can be applied to videogames. In Skyrim a game that seems like it has no rules in it does not enable the player to do everything that he or she wants to do. The player is incapable of destroying buildings or killing certain characters in Skyrim. Not only that but if one suddenly decides to kill the village’s chicken then the all the villagers will get up in arms and try to kill the player. Skyrim is game that not only disables the player from doing certain actions but each action that the player can do has consequences that can negatively impact him or her as he or she is playing the game. They describe these types of games with consequences as games with robust verbs.
They also believe that it is a bad design to leave the player confused and not know what to do. They believe that, “As Creators, we want to teach and reinforce rules wherever and whenever we have the opportunity” (20). This to me is intriguing because on one hand if the player does not know how to play the game then they may get bored of it and stop playing the game. However, on the other hand if the game holds the player’s hand too much it can also be argued that that type of game is annoying to play. There should be a balance of explanation and liberty for the player to explore and discover things on his or her own.
