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[Alex May]

I agree with every word rinkuhero posted in this thread, so I won't bother highlighting any single bit of it. Go back and read his posts again instead! 

[Chris Whitman]

Yeah, I understand. Suggestions of Game Design makes a lot more sense than Rules of Game Design.

Maybe if we're going to do a fun little list we could get examples illustrating the points, both positive and negative?

Also, I'd like to add to what Rinku wrote there by bringing up something Jon Blow said in a lecture, which is that you should never assume you can predict ahead of time all the interactions possible from even a simple set of rules. Complexity from a ruleset emerges exponentially, and players have no way of knowing whether something was planned or accidental.

[salade]

yes, my point earlier was that the "go to the totoreal!" should be flashed after you died a second into the game. It's fair, because if the player never dies like that than they obviously have no use for the tutorial.

Rinkuhero, that is pure game-designing gold right there.

[Titch]

Far more important is just to play a lot of games, and to think about them.

I disagree.

Games Design is has a really weak language right now because people aren't compiling lexicons. They are coming up with their own definitions of what Gameplay is or Platforming, or Immersion. When I try and explain something to another designer it's colored by the games they learned their concepts from.

Some kind of description that the majority can agree on, or agree to disagree on is a point of reference. Something that makes it easier to communicate an idea quickly and without ambiguity. A list of design rules helps remove the ambiguity from the process and as long as there is an understanding that rules are created to make you think before you break them rather than just undeniable constants I think it's a good thing to try and establish them.

I mean, that's how everyone learns all the other fields of design; graphics, architecture, interior, photography, cinematography. These are the rules as laid out by the people that developed the design methodology; If you follow them all you can learn why certain rules exists and what happens when you break them. So many games have say a jumping mechanic that was included because the person who made based their design ideals around Mario; and not because they examined that mechanic in detail and considered if it was right for their system of rules.

[Lucaz]

I agree with Rinkuhero.

I think balanced elements, and an adequate diffculty curve are of great importance. Broken enemies/weapons/builds/etc. can ruin a game, and weird difficulty curves will ruin it.Don't matter where the difficulty curve goes, it must have a minimun of predictability to the player.

Right assesment of priorities. Set well your priorities of the game elements before making them. Wrong priorities lead to wrong results. Example: if the most important in your game is the ambient, set it as your priority, and when choosing, always choose ambience over other elements, like challenge. But be sure not to neglect those other elements, just make them secundary. 

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

I'm not saying an agreed-upon lexicon would be a bad idea, I think it'd be useful. I just don't think it's essential or important. I.e. you can be a great music composer without knowing a thing about music notation. You can also be a great poet without knowing a thing about iambic pentameter. And you can be a great writer without knowing about rising and falling action and all that stuff. And you can be a great painter without knowing about perspective and color theory. The lexicon is for academics, it's useful to them, but for the people who actually create the stuff the lexicon describes, it's not essential.

[Bob le Moche]

I found this article, by Danc from Lost Garden to be a very interesting attempt at creating "rules" for game design.

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

To elaborate, a standardized lexicon can do benefit, but it can also do harm, because it can restrict thought.

I'm a big fan of game design theory: I've read through everything on Chris Crawford's site and read his books for instance, I've probably read more books on game design and game design theory than most any person here, but I still think that stuff isn't needed. It's fun to read about, but when it comes down to it, what matters are your own thoughts, not someone else's.

[Tobasco Panda]

Titch, there are quite a few people compiling lexicons of game terms and many books have been written on the subject. It's just that no one is reading them and that even those don't have agreement on terms.

http://www.edge-online.com/features/50-books-for-everyone-in-game-industry


Really what this thread seems to be about is guidelines for teaching the player. There are no perfect rules to this end but most of what you have to think about is who do you want to be playing your game? Some audiences have patience or even like being able to read through a dense manual to learn how to play, but this isn't everyone (case in point: dwarf fortress). These aren't meant to be extremely accessible. Now, an interesting counterpoint to this is a game like The Sims, that has a great deal of complexity, but manages to be very accessible.

A lot of this really comes down to how do you reward/punish the player.

[Aik]

I'm on the same side of this fence as Titch.

I lurk a lot around indie PnP game creating forums. In the late 90s/early 00s, a certain school of development thought came about where people would construct models of how and why people play games and then design highly focused games that appeal to specific wants, using a whole heap of new techniques that their theories implied (and that they'd just come up with in play and by thinking about it, of course).

This scene focused around a theory-heavy forum called The Forge, and there are lots of games that came from or were influenced by this school of thought that could not have existed before it came about.

There are also alternative theories that bring about different sorts of games, most notably Jeepform.

The point isn't that theory is necessary to create a good game, but it can help break into new territory that wasn't possible before.

Currently, indie video games is pretty much a completely individualistic activity. Each person or group goes away, builds their game, and comes back and shows the finished product to the community. The community plays it, with each individual taking some of the lessons back to their own game making pursuits, and repeats the cycle. The lessons from the games aren't aggregated in any way, and there's no co-ordinated effort to build from what's come before.

Going back to the indie PnP games example - in Vincent Baker's game Dogs in the Vineyar there's a paragraph entitled Drive Play Towards Conflict. When this game was played by the community, the community picked up this idea, studied it, and integrated it into their framework of how RPGs work. 'Say yes or roll the dice' is an idea that was added to the collective toolbox, rather than just left lying around where others may or may not have found it. Any designer of PnP games can go and have a look at the knowledge and ideas there and pick up the ones that are useful to what they're making. There isn't the same resource for video games.

This thread strikes me as a naive attempt at creating this sort of thing, but a much more concerted approach would be needed to create a resource as useful as The Forge and its toolbox are for PnP developers. We need a shared vocabulary to even begin talking about design at something above a surface level, and none of the current ones are accepted by a large enough group of people to be of any use.

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

"We need a shared vocabulary to even begin talking about design at something above a surface level"

I think that's the major part I disagree with. I don't think you need a shared vocabulary to talk deeply about something. If two people know something well, they can talk about it, whether they have commonly accepted words for it or not. I've had a lot of deep game design discussions with people (most recently Jason Rohrer) and we haven't had much trouble communicating.

I think having a standardized vocabulary for a topic has benefits and dangers, and the dangers shouldn't be underemphasized. If everyone shares a vocabulary for a subject, they also usually share a worldview for that subject. Different schools of psychological thought have completely different vocabularies and drastically different interpretations of psychological events; same with religions. At its worst, a vocabulary can be a dogma. It might be best to discuss things using common language, without a specialized vocabulary. If a great idea can't be expressed in common language, without the need for jargon, it's usually not that great of an idea and just has to do with the particularities of the jargon.

[Hajo]

... I don't think you need a shared vocabulary to talk deeply about something. If two people know something well, they can talk about it, whether they have commonly accepted words for it or not.

Usually during the exchange of ideas, there forms a set of common words and terms, and both sides will more and more use them.

[Zaratustra]

We don't, but I think he's being humorous.

But out of curiosity, I'd say the most important principles I know about game design are:

[...]

So, 'games should be fun'? That's like saying a 'principle of art making'  is 'art should be pretty to look at'. It's true, yes, but doesn't offer much insight as to -how- to do it.

Far more important is just to play a lot of games, and to think about them.

And what do you think I did there?

[deadeye]

You know, I actually don't know what these are for.

I'm not saying they're bad ideas -- I think a lot of them are good ideas -- but do we really need to write rules for game design?

Some people need structure and guidance.  Some people have no clue what they're doing.

I think writing out rules and guidelines and such is fine, nobody is saying you have to follow them.  There are rules to art as well, and nobody says you have to follow those either.  But for people who are just starting out, it's a good jumping off point.

So yeah, I think in theory a set of "rules" for making games is a good idea, just so long as you know, as with art, when it's okay to break the rules.  Who decides those rules and what those rules are is another thing entirely though.

[Chris Whitman]

I would like to see more art/game stuff done that isn't fun, personally.

I'd like to see things that are weird or unpleasant or make one uncomfortable or are simply boring. I'm a big fan of the artistic use of boredom and confusion*. Unfortunately, with distribution models and player expectation being what they are, I don't think most people would be interested in that.

* I know this sounds like sarcasm, but I am actually being serious for once.

[team_q]

The difficult part is games are known as fun, and as an escape. When Ebert suggested that games cannot be high art, he was insinuating that the fact there is a player means that you cannot force them to pay attention to certain things. How can a scene be touching if you make a character run around like a jackass throwing objects. The question isn't how do we make games something other then just 'fun', it's how to make the player care.

[nihilocrat]

I made a boring game during college. It was boring because it was more of a zero-player "life" simulation for an AI class than a game, and the game elements were sort of limited and you didn't have a huge amount of control over the outcome of the simulation. It felt pretty cool not having to see fun as the primary objective, I was basically just seeing if I could make an interesting AI and experiment with a game where, in gameworld terms, the player is not the center of attention.

[dither]

I would like to see more art/game stuff done that isn't fun, personally.

I'd like to see things that are weird or unpleasant or make one uncomfortable or are simply boring. I'm a big fan of the artistic use of boredom and confusion*. Unfortunately, with distribution models and player expectation being what they are, I don't think most people would be interested in that.

* I know this sounds like sarcasm, but I am actually being serious for once.

But if it's boring, why would you want it? I've never wanted to be bored. I can understand being engaged by something that isn't fun or pleasant, but is still interesting. Reading the memoirs of a concentration camp survivor isn't fun, but it holds your attention.

But if something is boring to you, pretty much by definition, you're neither engaged nor interested; you'd rather be doing something else. If your job is boring, you might stick with it because you need the money and can't/don't want to find other employment. But why would you stick with a boring game, when you could use the time to do something less boring?

I don't think it's a stretch to say that a boring game is a de facto failure of a game. There are plenty of them in existence, but they weren't made boring deliberately. See: all those mindless, repetitive Final Fight clones that came out in the arcades during the 90s. Very boring! Maybe useful if you're having trouble sleeping, but that's it.

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

I didn't mean fun in the usual sense of the term there. I agree that fun shouldn't always be the top priority. But I think that even in purposefully unfun games, controlling the character and moving them around shouldn't be a chore, it should be enjoyable. Unless there's a specific artistic purpose in doing otherwise, obviously, as there was in The Graveyard by tale-of-tales (where they made her purposefully slow and cumbersome to emphasize part of old age).

[qubodup]

#2: The player doesn't pay attention to anything.
#2.1: The player doesn't read the manual.
#2.1.1: The player doesn't read the readme.
#2.1.2: The player doesn't read the start screen.
#2.1.3: The player doesn't read the tutorial if they can skip it.
#2.2: The only way to get the player to read something is to not let them leave until they did.
#2.2.1: In which case they'll complain to you they can't leave and your game is broken.

Naaah, come on, *my* players will read *my* manual. I mean *I* spent so much time writing it! Come ooon, you don't really believe that *my* players wouldn't read *my* manual!?

I wonder if it is an ego problem or if it's just laziness, that there are games which are unable to teach the player how to play it in an enjoyable way.