The Stages of the Design Process
Now that you have learned about the player-centric approach to game design and the key components and structure of a video game, you are ready to start thinking about how …
Game Worlds
Games entertain through gameplay, but many also entertain by taking the player away to an imaginary place—a game world. (This book uses the terms world, setting, and game setting interchangeably …
Key Concepts
Before we look at the design processes required to put a story into your game, you need to understand a number of key concepts, because they come up again and …
Letting the Player Do What She Wants to Do
Now you can begin devising an appropriate control mechanism to initiate every action the player can take that affects the game (whether within the game world or outside of it, …
The Hierarchy of Challenges
When you're up to your in alligators, it's hard to remember that your original objective was to drain the swamp. —Unattributed In all but the smallest games, the player faces …
Drains
A drain is a mechanic that determines the consumption of resources—that is, a rule specifying how resources permanently drop out of the game (not to be confused with a converter, …
Genre-Specific Level Design Principles
Some principles of level design apply only to games within specific genres. Since there isn't room to present a comprehensive list of principles specific to each genre, this section offers …
Core Mechanics Features
The core mechanics of action games should be simple and obvious. Action games have small numbers of resources, and the relationships among these resources arestraightforward: Being hit by an enemy …
Presenting a Game World
Because a game world is fictional—a fantasy world—the game designer can include imaginary people, places, and situations. The players can think of themselves as make-believe characters in a make-believe place. …
Game Concepts
Designing a video game begins with an idea. This chapter discusses how to turn that idea into a game concept, a more fleshed-out version of the idea that can be …
Game Modifications
To give your players the utmost creative freedom with your game, you can permit them to modify the game itself—to redesign it themselves. Game modifications, or mods, are extremely popular …
Granularity
Granularity, in the context of games that tell a story, refers to the frequency with which the game presents elements of the narrative to the player. Consider StarCraft, which tells …
Other 2D Display Options
This section lists a few approaches to 2D displays that are now seldom used in large commercial games on PCs and consoles but still widely found in web-based games and …
Pattern Recognition Challenges
Pattern recognition challenges test the player's ability to spot visible or audible patterns or patterns of change and behavior. One of the most common instances of a pattern recognition challenge …
Uniform Distribution
When a computer generates a random number, it ordinarily does so with a uniform distribution. That means the chance of getting any one number exactly equals the chance of getting …
Design to Level Design Handoff
In the first stage, the game designers will tell you in a general way what for the level: its setting, mood, key gameplay activities, and events. You then generate a …
The Presentation Layer
Strategy games often have extremely complicated core mechanics. Consequently, the design of the presentation layer is critical, even more so if the game is in real time and the player …
Design Practice questions
1. As a potential designer, do you see yourself as an artist, an engineer, a craftsman, or something else? Why do you see yourself that way? 2. Do you agree …
Dangers of Binary Thinking
You can't make a game for everyone, so your target audience is necessarily a subset of all possible players, a subset determined by your answers to the questions "Who will …
Color Palette
As you work on your character's appearance, also think about creating a color palette for him—specifically, for his clothing. People in games seldom change clothes, which saves money on art …
Other Considerations
This section wraps up the discussion of interactive stories by addressing the frustrated author syndrome and episodic and serial delivery, and includes a few thoughts about how the industry may …
Two-Dimensional Input Devices
Two-dimensional input devices allow the player to send two data values to the game at one time from a single device. DIRECTIONAL PADS (D-PADS) Directional pads (D-pads) are the most …
To Save or Not to Save
A few designers don't allow players to save their games within certain regions of the game or even to save at all. If the player can save and reload where …
Factors Outside the Designer’s Control
In managing the difficulty of a game, you command a number of factors, but a few remain outside your knowledge or control. You cannot know how much time the player …
Rction Games
When most people hear the phrase video game, they tend to think of action games. The reason is historical: Almost all the earliest video games were action games, and some …
Gameplay Modes
Because CRPGs try to duplicate (within limits) the flexibility of tabletop role-playing games, they offer more kinds of activities than any other genre. Among these activities are exploration, tactical combat, …
The Elements of Game Design
Part One of Fundamentals of Game Design examines the essential principles of designing video games. The first chapter proposes a philosophy of what video games are and how they entertain. …
The Concept Stage
Client 2: Do I take it that you are proposing to slaughter our tenants? Mr. Wiggin: Does that not fit in with your plans? Client 1: Not really. We asked …
The Purposes of a Game World
Games entertain by several means: gameplay, novelty, social interaction (if it is a multiplayer game), and so on. In a game such as chess, almost all the entertainment value is …
Narrative
The definition of narrative is open to debate, but this book uses a definition that conforms pretty closely to that used by theorists of storytelling. Narrative consists of the text …
Managing Complexity
As game machines become more powerful, games themselves become increasingly complex with correspondingly complex user interfaces. Without a scheme for managing this complexity, you can end up with a game …
Informing the Player about Challenges
Video games normally tell the player directly about some challenges, called explicit challenges, and leave her to discover others on her own, which are called implicit challenges. In general, games …
Production Mechanisms
Production mechanism describes a class of mechanics that make a resource conveniently available to a player. These include sources that bring the resource directly into the player's hands, but they …
Layouts
For games that involve travel, especially avatar-based games, the layout of the space significantly affects the player's perception of the experience. Over the years, a few common patterns have emerged, …
Victory Conditions
Not all action games have victory conditions because not all games can be won—in some games, the most the player can aspire to is a higher score. The object of …
