Character Physical Types
We'll begin with the basic body types of game characters, and some of the ways that they may be depicted. HUMANOIDS, NONHUMANOIDS, AND HYBRIDS Characters in video games fall into …
Benefits of Scripted Conversations
Although scripted conversation forces the player to say only the lines available in the script, it produces a sequence of plausible remarks and replies. It also gives you a way …
Terminology
The following discussion uses the game industry's standard terminology for the kinds of data that control devices send to the processor as the result of player inputs. You may find …
Consequences for Immersion and Storytelling
Saving a game is not always beneficial to the player's experience. The act of saving a game takes place outside the game world and, as a consequence, saving harms the …
Making PvE Games Fair
Because the challenges in PvE games come from the environment rather than from other players, making a fair game involves more than giving all players equal opportunities to succeed. In …
Don’t Show the Player Everything at Once
As they say in theater, "Always leave them wanting more." This advice applies to the overall progression of the game, so both game designers and level designers need to be …
Adventure Games
Like adventure games, CRPGs often have rich storylines with highly detailed characters. Both types of games also involve a lot of exploration. However, in modern adventure games the player's avatar …
Why So Many Tabletop Games and Old Video Games?
As you read, you will notice that I frequently refer to tabletop games—card games such as poker, board games such as Monopoly, and so on. I do this for three …
. Shell Menus and Screens
Whenever the player is taking actions that influence the game world, that is, actually playing the game, the game is in a gameplay mode. However, most games also have several …
Other Devices
Games show up on all sorts of other devices these days. The more specialized the device, the more important it is to understand clearly its technical limitations and its audience. …
Why Put Stories in Games?
Game designers, game theorists, and players have debated the subject of stories in games for many years, disputing issues such as whether stories belong in games at all and, if …
Telling the Player What He Needs to Know
What, apart from the current view of the game world, does the player need to see or to know about? What critical resources does he need to be aware of …
Finding the Fun Factor
There's no formula for making your game fun, nothing that anyone can set out as a reliable pattern and tell you that, if you just slide in a really cool …
The Internal Economy
An economy is a system in which resources and entities are produced, consumed, and exchanged in quantifiable amounts. Most games have an internal economy, though the complexity and importance of …
Key Design Principles
Two types of design principles will help you design a level: universal level design principles aimed at designing levels in any kind of game, and genre-specific level design principles, which …
Player Actions
Action games routinely allow moving or maneuvering an avatar; aiming and shooting; selecting, collecting, manipulating, or modifying objects; and various kinds of fighting moves—punching, kicking, defending, and so on. Platformers …
Hiding the Rules
Unlike conventional games, video games do not require written rules. The game still has rules, but the machine implements and enforces them for the players. The players do not need …
The Ability to Synthesize
Synthesis, in this context, means bringing together different ideas and constructing something new from them. Different people on the development team and at the publishing company have concerns about their …
Storytelling Play
Some players enjoy creating stories of their own, using features provided by a game, which they can then distribute online for others to read. The Movies, by Lionhead Software, stands …
PREMATURE ENDINGS DON’T COUNT!
By ending we mean a true conclusion to the story, not a premature ending caused by the player failing to meet a challenge. Although dying in the middle of a …
Aerial Perspectives
Games with party-based or multipresent interaction models need a camera model that allows the player to see a large part of the game world and several different characters or units …
Factual Knowledge Challenges
Direct tests of the player's knowledge of factual information generally occur only in trivia and quiz games. In any other type of game, you must either present all the factual …
Random Numbers and the Gaussian Curve
So many games use random numbers that, although you may not know any programming, you should understand how to use random numbers in a computer game. When a computer generates …
A Note on Duties and Terminology
The nature of a level designer's job varies considerably depending on both the genre of the game and the technology that implements it. A few years ago, level designers were …
Future (Science Fiction) Settings
Science fiction (SF) settings remain popular and allow a lot of scope for invention, but unless you have a compelling world to present, you run the risk that your fantasy …
Design Practice exercises
1. Create a competitive game for two players and a ball that does not involve throwing it or kicking it. Prove that it is a game by showing how it …
Defining Your Target Audience
Many game designers make the mistake of thinking that all players enjoy the same things that the designer enjoys, so the designer has only to examine his own experience to …
Clothing, Weapons, Symbolic Objects, and Names
When designing ordinary human beings, body shape is only the beginning. In the real world, we have only a limited ability to change our bodies, so instead we express our …
When to Write the Story
A strict design rule, which first appeared in Chapter 3, "Game Concepts," specifies that you must not write the story during the concept stage of design but only later during …
Three-Dimensional Input Devices
A three-dimensional device delivers three data values simultaneously. Such devices are rare but are becoming more common as the game industry begins to adopt motion-sensing devices like the Wii Remote. …
Ways of Saving a Game
Over the years, designers have devised a variety of different ways to save a game, each with its own pros and cons for immersion and gameplay. PASSWORDS If your game …
Managing Difficulty
Psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi observed that people performing tasks enter an enjoyable state of peak productivity, which he calls flow, when (among other things) their abilities balance the difficulty of the …
The Genres of Games
People need a way to talk about the kinds of games they like to play, and game retailers like to display similar games together. The concept of genre helps them …
Progression
RPGs almost always tell a story, characterized as a long quest in pursuit of some important goal. The quest is broken down into a number of episodes that progress in …
Who Is This Book For?
This book is aimed at anyone who is interested in designing video and computer games but doesn't know how to begin. More specifically, it is intended for university students and …
