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[Christian223]

I have a document where I have written lots of game design concepts that could be used as a quick reference for when you are designing a game. I had the idea to use such reference when you are stuck or when you know there is something missing but don't know exactly what to do, you could use this reference as a quick way to help your memory and see how to apply this ideas on your design.

So, I had the idea that I could use some feedback, I'll be writing here a few concepts at a time and wait for feedback on it. It is not necesary to go too deep on each concept, just enough to get the idea:

Different learning curves in sports.

Sports have a high degree of detail and learning curve, but they allow also amateur players to start playing it quickly.

A good sport has easy to understand rules that allow for play almost immediately, but can also have detailed rules for a more serious kind of play, like in profresional sports.

Different categories for the same game.

In real life sports we can find different kind of sports for the same game, we can find various types of soccer games differing in rules, court size and number of players, but the core rules remain the same. For example, this allows for children to play a more easy version of a profesional sport.

[Christian223]

The challenge is the core of a sport.

The sense of conquest a big challenge, the level of experience, the seriousness in winning, the complexity, the level of competition, the danger and fear of loosing, are all necesary elements of a good sports game.

The seriousness, and level of experience are required because in the game the players face a big, important and hard challenge that can be overcome, but only with the a big effort.

Frustrations and confidence.

The player needs a sense of confidence in his/her abilities in order to take the challenge, otherwise it will be declined for beign unfair or impossible to beat. The challenge needs to be hard enough, otherwise it will seem boring, not exiting, a chore. The players needs to fight with all his strenghts in order for it to be a good and fun challenge to overcome.

Glory and unfair challenges.

If the challenge is very hard and there is only a slim chance to win, the victory will be more glorious. The player needs confidence in his abilities in order to take this type of challenge, otherwise it will be taken as impossible, too hard. If the challenge is in truth bigger and impossible, then frustration will arise in the player and he will see it as unfair and not fun.

Tension generators.

A play experience is fun when there is adrenaline, fear, and conquest. To generate this in the player we have many techniques that we have to apply to game mechanics so that we generate this feelings in the player.

Suspense is a tension generator. When the player senses danger coming, he can think on what to do, he can measure the level of danger, he can try to think fast and search on a way to escape or a way to attack, he can think on all the possible outcomes. This generates fear, a need to act quickly because of the known danger.

If there is little time to think on the danger, and the attack comes suddenly, there is no possibility for suspense or fear, the player did not have the chance to know there was a coming danger, so there is no emotion in this case, it was dull, unfair, frustrating event.

The closer the danger, the bigger the tension and adrenaline. For example in a race, if you are first but the other cars are just behind you going at full speed.

The consecuenses of loosing must also be known to the player in order to be percieved as a danger. The bigger the consecuence, the bigger the fear.

Also the reward for conquering that challenge must be known in order to know what is at stake, so there are motivators to get the reward and avoid the consecuences, fear of loosing the reward and fear of getting consecuences.

[Christian223]

Tactics and strategy.

There can be various grades and amounts of needed stragety and tactics in a game, from very simple and superficial, to complex and detailed.

To ensure a smooth learning curve, a game should present the simple aspect of the game, so as to not overwhelm the player with complexity that will not enable him to master the simpler and core aspects of the game.

The human beign is not only action oriented, it is not suited only for quick reactions, but also  it is suited to create strategies that will allow him to overcome greater challenges or threats, by using his limited resources, map, analisis of the enemy with his weaknesses and strenghts and his own weaknesses and strenghts.

Since humans are suited for both actions and thought, there will be more fun in a game where both this aspects are well balanced.

Resources for tactics and strategy.

We can use poistion to increase our chances of success and create a strategy.
A sniper may have different position choices to be hidden and at the same time aim at different targets. The sniper may choose which target take down first, and the order may be very importat to ensure success.

In the case of a tank, he may choose which route to follow to protect team mates and attack certain positions, though the routes he can choose may be affected by the number of cover positions, and team mates that are there, which means that if a route has more team mates then that route will get more value to the player because it has more chances for survival when in a group.

The player has to learn the different details of the game in order to use those details for his advantage.
The type of detail can vary, from simple data, to the way something moves, how fast, in what maner, the attack power of friends and enemy, defence power of enemies, and how things react to each other, the choices are limitless.

[Christian223]

No feedback of any type?... 

How to aboid the tedious and boring.

If a racing game is not about destruction derby but has a desctruction derby mini game, but badly implemented, then that mini game will be tedious. Each part has to work well in itself and in the whole to be fun.

A part of a game becomes "repetitive" when the player does not find another challenge that the test of his patience.

A game should allways challenge the player in his skills and offer new challenges that match his newly aquired skills. A game should not just be a test of endurance or patience, that is not fun.

A player can endure a boring part without much protest only to get a reward, but if the player is obligated to go through that boring part too many times, it becomes repetitive.

When nothing happens, its boring, make something happen in the game, and only give time to relax after a very big time of stress.

Tell the player where to go if there are no clues, don't let him wander with no clue where to go or what to do. Give him objectives. Otherwise the feeling is of frustration and not knowing what to do or what is expected of him.

Some tutorials are horribly boring. The reasons may be too much to read and no interaction, no challenge, nothing to do or nothing interesting happening, too much information in a small amount of time, and so on.

There should allways be new elements and data coming to the player to keep him entertained, for example in a platformer, new enemies, new platforms, new characters, new places, new abilities like in metroid, new challenges, secrets, and so on.

 This should present a new way to interact with the world, new input challenges in which the player must learn to control something new, and new ways to fight enemies, new powers, and so on.

Is any challenge a good challenge?.

If you present a player with a challenge, that's not guarantee of motivation to play your game. Some players will take a challenge, others won't.

For example, some people love the challenge of Sudoku, others avoid such challenges as the plague.

[Christian223]

Anybody interested in this things?. I have more stuff to share, but if nobody is interested it doesn't make sense to keep posting.

[William Broom]

I'm sorry, but most of these seem like common sense to me. I don't really need a game design reference to tell me that "some tutorials are boring" or "if a minigame is badly implemented, it will be tedious". You might want to try editing it a bit and trimming down to just the pieces of advice which you think are really worthwhile and not already obvious.

[Muz]

Yeah, I think these are rather common sense. Most people have all these concepts firmly in their head and can analyze when a game is becoming tedious and boring. It comes with experience to anyone who does it often enough, just like a mathematician should be able to figure out 8*22-cos(0) without a calculator.


The tough parts of game design is when you have a situation where there's no correct approach to it. When I write down a reference document, it says "A is not fun and B is not fun, but I chose A because... (how it suits this game concept)"

For example, a common problem is grinding in RPGs. You have something that is unchallenging to most people, but provides satisfaction. But if you make it more challenging, it adds frustration to a few, more satisfaction to others. How would you approach that?

[Christian223]

Well, I don't see people apply this concepts that often, so I disagree on that. But I understand the lack of interest, so this thread should be left alone to die...

About grinding, I have been thinking about that for a long time. It's a complex issue, maybe someone should create a new thread about it to discuss it.

[Muz]

Hmm.. the problem seems to be that you're documenting answers to problems that nobody experiences. I think one better way to approach this would be to document answers to problems that people do have trouble with. For example, just about every thread here is a problem. If you could get a summary of the approaches to those problems, then you have something much more useful.

[Kren]

This game design tips you are giving are stuff people learn when they make or try to make their first game, and since they are so logical there is really no reason to mention or argue with those. I mean they are useful! but only if you are just starting at game making.

[Mephs]

I would agree to an extent that many of these points may be somewhat obvious, but I'd disagree that the concept is a bad idea.

I have seen designers make mistakes that could easily have been solved with common sense and I have seen designers scoff at common sense suggestions because "they're obvious" but it's funny how these points get forgotten when they are actually useful and the design suffers from it... I have seen it often enough.

I think the problem is that design requires you to think in so many different directions at the same time that sometimes the obvious gets missed purely due to the scale of the task of designing a game.

Try taking a look at Jesse Schell's book "The Art of Game Design: A book of lenses".  It's full of common sense advice and almost all the cards are common sense "obvious" stuff, but I would argue that with those cards (or lenses as he refers to them) the design process is more efficient because you have a reference of checkpoints rather than having to analyze the design unaided and the designer is also less likely to miss something that many of us would perceive as being common sense.

So yeah, in my opinion the concept is good, the execution perhaps needs a little work to make it truly useful.

Cheers,

Steve O