Games Series
Game Studies Crash Course
Weekly Module Summaries
It’s not unusual to produce a Summary section at the end of a textbook chapter or courseware section, to succinctly summarize the key topics that have been covered in a condensed and somewhat bulleted format. What might be a bit unusual is that I feed these written summaries into AI voice-and-avatar tech to produce a video version of them, since everyone likes videos!
In the courseware, I also provide the original transcript so students have a choice of media to access for the summaries. Below, I’ve copy/pasted the summaries — both my original text and their AI video incarnations — of my entire semester-long university course (and free Udemy course) Intro to Game Studies, making this blog post in effect a fast super-condensed crash course on the entire semester’s topics!
Week 1 | Principles of Game Design Part 1
Games have their origins in play and the capacity for pretending.
Five personality traits can be related to playing styles, known as “The Big Five”:
openness to experience, conscientiousness, extroversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism. The letters of the names of these traits form an easy-to-remember acronym: OCEAN.
There are two basic strategies for playing any game with more than one participant: cooperating with the other players or competing against them.
In its most basic form, a game is just a set of rules that governs how players’ actions are penalized or rewarded.
In computer games, you figure out what you can and can’t do by interacting with the virtual world around your avatar.
In board games, however, you need to refer to the official rulebook to understand its mechanics.
Similar to how we can drive a car or make pancakes in the real world, game mechanics mimic activities we are already familiar with.
Ideation is coming up with a lot of different concepts for a certain subject without evaluating them. More is better when it comes to ideas; having a large pool to pick from improves the odds that one of them will serve as the inspiration for a successful design solution.
When designing something, it’s important to avoid getting stuck on one idea too early and refusing to change it. Being receptive to and accepting of lots of ideas, especially from others on a team, might be much more stimulating for one’s imagination.
Week 2 | Principles of Game Design Part 2
All of the game’s potential players should be taken into account throughout development.
When an idea is prototyped, it goes through a process of testing and improvement.
Developers and designers will play test their games to ensure they deliver an enjoyable experience for all players.
When we talk about fun, we’re referring to a wide range of positive feelings. Negative feelings are definitely not fun.
Perceived action possibilities, or affordances, influence players’ grasp of the game’s mechanics.
Player behaviors that are reinforced by the game’s rules and occur repeatedly are referred to as the game’s dynamics.
The game state is dynamic, changing as players take turns acting on and manipulating game pieces.
Players may act in ways that designers didn’t anticipate, a concept known as “emergent gameplay.”
The core of the game, sometimes called the game loop or the core gameplay loop, is the essence of the game’s objectives. How much experiential value a concept or feature adds to your game core, or how much it distracts from it, is a great indicator of whether to keep or discard an idea.
A Core Progression Loop defines how the difficulty of the game’s systems increases as the player’s skill increases.
European-style tabletop games, or Eurogames, are distinguished by their use of abstraction and their focus on indirect player engagement.
American-style board games, sometimes known as “Amerigames” or even “Ameritrash” are a diverse genre of tabletop games characterized by heavy reliance on chance, the dominance of a primary theme, and the fostering of direct conflict between players.
Week 3 | Principles of Game Design Part 3
Pillars are additional mechanics that supplement the core mechanic.
The feature set of a game encompasses all the components that make up its design and all the features that make the game feel complete.
Elements are the smallest discernible aesthetic and tangible bits that aren’t necessarily features.
The game state is a complete record of all aspects of a game at any moment.
A player’s decisions in a game are affected by the type of information available to them at any particular time.
In a game with continuous space, the exact position of each individual component is taken into account by the underlying mechanics, and so is more common in video games than board games.
A game’s theme is its primary or underlying concept and should be clearly conveyed to players.
Characters, events, and the setting all play crucial roles in a game’s story structure.
A game’s “scenario” is the part of the plot that establishes the rules for player actions and the goals of the characters.
A game’s “backstory” refers to the events that occurred before the scenario, as well as any information about the game’s environment that is made available to the player.
Narratives can be “embedded” or “emergent.”
“Embedded narrative” refers to a pre-written interactive storyline.
An emergent narrative develops naturally or socially as a result of the player’s actions within the game, rather than being based on a predetermined plot.
Week 4 | Principles of Game Design Part 4
Chance is when a part of a result in a game is determined by a random process.
One method of achieving a balanced game is by adjusting the weights of various outcomes and probabilities.
A player’s actions will always produce a foreseeable outcome in a deterministic game. Chance outcomes are used in nondeterministic games.
Events are triggered by the game system, and Actions are performed by the player. In-game feedback can be either positive or negative. Positive feedback rewards progress towards the goal, and negative feedback increases difficulty towards reaching the goal.
A trade-off is choosing between the potential benefits, or pros and cons, of multiple options.
In a dilemma, the player must make a difficult decision between two or more negative options.
In order to achieve a greater goal, you need to take a series of smaller, more immediate actions, called tactics. Long-term goals are typically accomplished through the strategic pursuit of a number of shorter-term objectives.
Any given game can be thought of as either simultaneous or sequential, depending on the timing of the players’ decisions and actions.
Meeting the game’s end condition is required for victory. It’s not always necessary, however, for a game to end based on someone winning.
A game’s momentum is its propensity to favor or disadvantage whoever happens to be in the lead at any one time.
Week 5 | Principles of Game Design Part 5
When designing a game, it’s important to strike a balance between challenging yet fair gameplay and rewarding strategy over luck.
Establishing a state of balance in a game requires a mathematical analysis of the relationships between variables like chance, probability, available tools, and playing styles.
In a game with two or more players, the action is symmetric if it happens at the same time for all of the participants. An “asymmetric” game is when two or more participants have radically divergent viewpoints on the action, exemplified by how a Dungeon Master’s role is totally distinct from all the other players in an RPG party.
The term “flow” is used to describe the psychological state that occurs when a person is immersed in a task that they find inherently pleasurable.
All of a game’s consumables and the mechanics that control their movement and use are part of the game’s economy.
The terms “asset” and “resource” are often used interchangeably, but the latter should be used to indicate a specific type of asset: one that may be traded for other game elements to alter (or keep) the game’s state.
There are two types of mechanics in a game economy: faucets, which supply resources, and drains, which remove them.
Professional game development usually requires the following kinds of document production:
The Game Pitch
The Game Proposal
And the Game Design Document
You can use Google to find numerous examples of these as models for your own game’s documentation.
Week 6 | Storyworlds, Game Worlds & Interfaces Part 1
The “world” of a video game is the fictional setting in which the story unfolds.
In most games, the player is introduced to the game world by a combination of visual and animated elements, musical compositions, and sound effects.
Games are fun because of their gameplay, their novelty, and the social connection they facilitate.
The stories’ various environments serve as vehicles for discovering knowledge about the game world. When the setting of a story is well-realized, it can gain significance equal to the story’s protagonists and antagonists.
The anthropological culture of the game’s population, its values, conventions, practices, social structures, governmental systems, and religious and philosophical principles are part of the game’s cultural environment.
The visual style of a game’s universe will be reflected in the game’s artwork, so give some thought to the feel you want to convey in its rendering.
The emotional context of a game not only reflects the rendered feelings of the characters virtually living there, but also the feelings and moods the designers intend the players to experience.
When we hear music, our brains release the neurotransmitter Dopamine, which is associated with heightened pleasure and happiness.
The audience will become bored with any event that is too routine. Games vary their pace using a variety of techniques based on concepts like Tempo, Tension, Rapid, and Break.
The game’s moral code determines what actions are considered appropriate and which are not.
Whether it’s a toy gun, a sword, or a fireball blast, the concept of the magic wand isn’t focused on the violent act itself; rather, the sense of power safely exercised at a distance and the assurance that comes from having that ability has psychological benefits.
Week 7 | Storyworlds, Game Worlds & Interfaces Part 2
Genres are categories based on shared conventions in terms of form, subject matter, and techniques amongst works, not just in games but commonly works of literature, film, and music.
There are two main categories of game genres, distinguished by narrative and gameplay. Story genre is used to classify narratives into broad categories, such as fantasy, history, science fiction, war, and so on. A game can also be classified by the type of gameplay that it offers — this aspect of a game’s genre describes the gameplay itself, and not the visual style or narrative.
A trope is a concept that has been used so frequently and consistently in so many games that it is now considered to be a norm or cliché for that genre.
In his book Homo Ludens, historian Johan Huizinga argued that games require their own unique spaces for play where reality is different from the everyday world, which he called The Magic Circle.
Video game world maps provide players with an overall perspective of the game’s setting.
Navigating from one’s current location to a desired destination requires the ability to “wayfind,” or orient oneself in relation to the world.
Knowing where one is in relation to objects and other people is a key component of spatial awareness and is a common feature of computer-generated environments. It’s also used in some board games, though the players’ creativity is often required more in that context.
Game worlds often employ the same techniques architects use to shape space in such a way that it also shapes our experience.
Week 8 | Storyworlds, Game Worlds & Interfaces Part 3
There are many other names for a level, each with its own specific meaning: round, wave, stage, act, chapter, map, and world.
The level designer is in charge of creating the game’s physical setting as well as the player’s immediate, emotional reaction to the game’s events.
Avatar-based video games rely heavily on the design of their environments to create a compelling adventure.
Lighting, color palette, weather, visual effects, music, ambient audio, and sound are the biggest drivers in creating an immersive environment in a video game.
As players go through a game’s levels, the game’s core mechanics should get more complex. Strategies for leveling up include:
Each new level can be taught through a series of tutorial missions, letting players get a handle on the mechanics and get comfortable with the game’s difficulty level before continuing on.
If a video game features a story, the player’s development within the game should reflect that of the protagonist’s growth in the narrative.
Increasing a player’s character’s stats or giving them a new costume are two ways developers keep gamers invested in their games. But designers can also help characters develop in a more literary way, by turning them into more complete persons.
A flat and unappealing character is the result of a lack of development, especially after a substantial amount of story-driven gaming.
Week 9 | Agency
If you want your audience to feel like they have a role in the story’s progression and the characters’ fates, you should design for agency.
There are differing views on agency.
In one view, we take up ‘positions’ within the sociocultural matrix and negotiate our actions within a severely constrained field because of the stifling effects of our environment. This is the World-to-Subject direction of agency.
The other view is that we are free to act and define ourselves however we choose, and thereby exert a strong influence on our environment. This is the Subject-to-World direction of agency.
Other arguments about human agency fall somewhere in the middle of these two extremes.
Janet Murray created a typology of symbolic dramas in interactive narrative, such as:
I encounter a confusing world and figure it out
I encounter a world in pieces and assemble it into a coherent whole.
I take a risk and am rewarded for my courage.
These can be called Masterplots, Metanarratives or Macrostructures, providing a high level logic for narrative progression.
Traditionally, the video game industry has distinguished between “hardcore” gamers who invest significant time and effort into a game and “casual” players who only play once in a while.
Games shouldn’t haphazardly combine unrelated components in an effort to make a game that will enjoy a wide audience with universal appeal, as this usually results in games that lack cohesion.
Attracting individuals with inclusive design is preferable than excluding them with alienating features since it increases the likelihood of the game’s success.
Week 10 | Systems Part 1
Students from prestigious universities with computer labs and members of the armed forces were the first to write code for video games in the 1950s.
The earliest arcade games were rendered using either vector graphics, which are visuals built from lines described by math, or raster graphics, which are built from a grid of pixels.
Three distinct types of arcade video game machines — the uprights, cocktail tables, and cockpits — dominated the industry in the early 1980s.
Arcades proliferated throughout many countries by the middle of the 1980s.
In the late 1990s, arcade games started taking on new form factors that resembled the ride-like attractions found in theme parks.
By the late ’90s, the graphics quality of home consoles caught up to or surpassed those of most arcade machines, and arcades evolved into gathering places for people interested in both real-life and virtual-world activities, exemplified by LAN gaming centers and internet cafes.
A system is a set of interconnected parts working together to achieve a goal.
The concept “system of systems” can be used to define or analyze a wide range of complex technological objects. A digital video game can be viewed as a system that consists of multiple subsystems.
The systems of a game are the numerous features that accept the player’s input and produce the desired outcomes.
Emergent gameplay is the result of interactions between game mechanics rather than between mechanics and player actions.
The game industry has adopted finite state machines as a primary artificial intelligence architecture. Finite state machines follow Unified Modeling Language specifications in their design.
Week 11 | Systems Part 2
An algorithm is similar to any step-by-step process, such as following a recipe. Flowcharts are a uniform visual language developed to diagram their representation.
Algorithms describe mechanics, but they are not mechanics in themselves.
Algorithms are developed using pseudocode, a natural language representation of the logical flows.
Each system in a game serves a specific function, such as combat resolution, character development, user interface display or resource management.
To simulate intelligence, game designers encode a few rules in system-generated agents to make them behave meaningfully and interestingly for gaming purposes.
Model-based AI makes use of more sophisticated techniques such as machine learning and deep neural networks, to emulate human cognition.
If there are no constraints on the player in terms of time or resources, then the game allows for freeform creative play.
In sandbox mode, the game is more like a tool, so the player is free to do whatever they want.
On rails games have a set path that the player must follow which helps them concentrate on specific goals and strict deadlines.
Players in a game that isn’t “on rails” have the freedom to decide which of many possible routes they want to travel.
Most sandboxes begin as on-rails in order to orient players, and some on-rails stop to allow for sandbox play.
Week 12 | Systems Part 3
A game’s “core mechanics” are the data and algorithms that precisely describe the game’s basic rules and internal processes that apply at all times.
During gameplay, the core mechanics create and manage gameplay for the player, monitor the game world, adjust the game state, and support the presentation of the story.
An entity is a resource or its game world state. Attributes provide information about entities.
Compound attributes are used when entities need multiple attributes to describe them completely, and can include a mix of quantitative and qualitative attributes.
A one-time occurrence that results from a specific set of circumstances is called an event. Processes are started in response to player actions or game events and continue until a stop condition is fulfilled.
Both events and processes can be thought of as ordered series of computational operations.
Mechanics that only work on one level or game mode, or define the artificial intelligence of non-player characters are not considered core mechanics.
Some examples of non-core mechanics are interacting with other players, making purchases, and moving forward in the game’s narrative and timeline.
These are often not central to the main gameplay but rather add important dimensions to the overall experience.
Samaritans help people because they want something in return from the community.
On the other hand, griefers take pleasure in causing trouble for other players.
Allowing griefers to remain in the game costs developers money in the long run due to customer support complaints and other technical hassles, even though they only account for a small fraction of the game’s overall income.
The majority of game developers agree that permanently prohibiting griefers is the most effective way to deal with them.
Bonus Material
We all make choices in life, but in the end our choices make us.
What is better? To be born good or to overcome your evil nature through great effort?
How many are there in you? Whose hopes and dreams do you encompass? Could you but see the eyes in your own, the minds in your mind, you would see how much we share.
A hero need not speak. When he is gone, the world will speak for him.
No gods or kings. Only man.
Most test subjects do experience some cognitive deterioration after a few months in suspension. Now you’ve been under for quite a lot longer, and it’s not out of the question that you might have a very minor case of serious brain damage. But don’t be alarmed, alright? Although, if you do feel alarm, try to hold onto that feeling because that is the proper reaction to being told you have brain damage.
The best solution to a problem is usually the easiest one. And I’ll be honest, killing you is hard. You know what my days used to be like? I just tested. Nobody murdered me, or put me in a potato, or fed me to birds. I had a pretty good life. And then you showed up. You dangerous, mute lunatic. So you know what? You win. Just go. It’s been fun. Don’t come back.
You are not a good person. You know that, right? Good people don’t end up here.
Nothing is more badass than treating a woman with respect!
Often when we guess at others’ motives, we reveal only our own.
Protocol one, link to Pilot. Protocol two, uphold the mission. Protocol three, protect the Pilot.
Grass grows, birds fly, sun shines, and brother, I hurt people.
Hard to see big picture behind pile of corpses.
Tell me Bats. What are you really scared of? Failing to save this cesspool of a city? Not finding the Commissioner in time? Me, in a thong?
When life gives you lemons, don’t make lemonade. Make life take the lemons back! Get mad! I don’t want your damn lemons! What am I supposed to do with these?! Demand to see life’s manager! Make life rue the day it thought it could give Cave Johnson lemons! Do you know who I am?! I’m the man who’s gonna burn your house down! With the lemons! I’m gonna get my engineers to invent a combustible lemon that burns your house down!
You have died of dysentery.
This path should lead us straight to the grave. The World’s Grave. Not ours.
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Course Bibliography
- A Game Design Vocabulary: Exploring the Foundational Principles Behind Good Game Design by Anna Anthropy and Naomi Clark
- A Theory of Fun for Game Design by Raph Koster
- Advanced Game Design: A Systems Approach by Michael Sellers
- An Introduction to Game Studies by Frans Mayra
- Basics of Game Design by Michael Moore
- Blood, Sweat, and Pixels: The Triumphant, Turbulent Stories Behind How Video Games Are Made Blood, Sweat, and Pixels: The Triumphant, Turbulent Stories Behind How Video Games Are Made by Jason Schreier
- Board Game Design Advice: From the Best in the World vol 1 by Gabe Barrett
- Building Blocks of Tabletop Game Design: an Encyclopedia Of Mechanisms by Geoffrey Engelstein and Isaac Shalev
- Character Development and Storytelling for Games by Lee Sheldon
- Chris Crawford on Game Design by Chris Crawford
- Clockwork Game Design by Keith Burgun
- Elements of Game Design by Robert Zubek
- Fundamentals of Game Design by Ernest Adams
- Fundamentals of Puzzle and Casual Game Design by Ernest Adams
- Game Design Foundations by Brenda Romero
- Game Design Workshop by Tracy Fullerton
- Game Mechanics: Advanced Game Design by Ernest Adams and Joris Dormans
- Game Writing: Narrative Skills for Videogames edited by Chris Bateman
- Games, Design and Play: A detailed approach to iterative game design by Colleen Macklin and John Sharp
- Introduction to Game Systems Design by Dax Gazaway
- Kobold Guide to Board Game Design by Mike Selinker, David Howell, et al
- Kobold’s Guide to Worldbuilding edited by Janna Silverstein
- Level Up! The Guide to Great Video Game Design, 2nd Edition by Scott Rogers
- Narrating Space / Spatializing Narrative: Where Narrative Theory and Geography Meet by Marie-Laure Ryan, Kenneth Foote, et al.
- Narrative Theory: A Critical Introduction by Kent Puckett
- Narrative Theory: Core Concepts and Critical Debates by David Herman, James Phelan, et al.
- Narratology: Introduction to the Theory of Narrative, Fourth Edition by Mieke Bal
- Practical Game Design by Adam Kramarzewski and Ennio De Nucci
- Procedural Storytelling in Game Design by Tanya X. Short and Tarn Adams
- Professional Techniques for Video Game Writing by Wendy Despain
- Rules of Play by Salen and Zimmerman
- Storyworlds Across Media: Toward a Media-Conscious Narratology (Frontiers of Narrative) by Marie-Laure Ryan, Jan-Noël Thon, et al
- Tabletop Game Design for Video Game Designers by Ethan Ham
- The Art of Game Design, 3rd Edition by Jesse Schell
- The Board Game Designer’s Guide: The Easy 4 Step Process to Create Amazing Games That People Can’t Stop Playing by Joe Slack
- The Cambridge Introduction to Narrative by H. Porter Abbott
- The Grasshopper, by Bernard Suits
- The Routledge Companion to Video Game Studies by Bernard Perron and Mark J.P. Wolf
- The Routledge Encyclopedia of Narrative Theory by David Herman
- The Ultimate Guide to Video Game Writing and Design by Flint Dille & John Zuur Platten
- Unboxed: Board Game Experience and Design by Gordon Calleja
- Video Game Storytelling: What Every Developer Needs to Know about Narrative Techniques by Evan Skolnick
- Writing for Video Game Genres: From FPS to RPG edited by Wendy Despain
- Writing for Video Games by Steve Ince
- 100 Principles of Game Design by DESPAIN
