Adventure Games Today
In the past few years, the market for adventure games has grown less steadily than the market for other genres. Adventure games depend less on display technology than fast-paced action …
What Computers Bring to Puzzles
Computers enable us to make a lot of puzzles that would be impossible or expensive to create in the real world—consider the logistics of supplying all the parts in The …
Gender Inclusiveness
To attract women players, you don't have to make the game about stereotypically feminine interests such as fashion or shopping, any more than you have to make games about monster …
Camera Models
In one-on-one sports games, the camera model is seldom difficult to manage. Choose a spot where the camera gives a clear view of the athletes and where their movements and …
Conversations with Nonplayer Characters
From the original Adventure onward, adventure game designers have faced the problem of how to create realistic NPCs. Computer role-playing game (CRPG) designers must address this problem, too, but in …
Disappearing Players
Just as players can appear at any time, they can log off at any time, or lose their connection to the game for technical reasons. If possible, your game should …
Mobility Impairments
The best thing you can do for mobility-impaired players is to reduce the time pressure required to accomplish tasks. Many people with physical impairments can manage well enough given time, …
The Need to Produce Content
When you're building a single-player game to be sold in retail stores, your job generally finishes when the gold master disc goes off to manufacturing. The players buy the game …
User Interface
CRPGs usually permit a much greater range of possible actions for the player than games of other genres. Consequently, there is a corresponding increase in the complexity of the interface. …
Gameplay
The challenges in a CMS are largely economic. The player must understand how the internal economy of the game works and how to manipulate it to produce economic growth. Growth …
Artificial Life Games
Artificial life is a branch of computer science research, just as artificial intelligence is. Artificial life, or A-life as it is sometimes called, involves modeling biological processes, often to simulate …
THE PLAYER’S ROLE
In a single-player, plot-driven game, the player's role is defined by the actions he is allowed to take and is constrained by the requirements of the story. In a persistent …
Core Mechanics
Football is brutal only from a distance. In the middle of it there's a calm, a tranquility... When the systems interlock, there's a satisfaction to the game that can't be …
ACTION-ADVENTURES
The arrival of 3D hardware also gave rise to a new sort of game, a hybrid of action game and adventure game called, unsurprisingly, an action-adventure. The action - adventure …
. Checking the Victory Condition
Bear in mind that players don't always find the solution to a puzzle the way that you envisioned when you invented it. There might be more than one path to …
A Few Generalities
Having warned you not to treat men and women as polar opposites, this section offers a small number of generalities about how male and female play patterns tend to differ …
Vehicle Simulations
Vehicle simulations create the feeling of driving or flying a vehicle, real or imaginary. In simulations of real vehicles, one of the chief goals is verisimilitude, an (apparently!) close relationship …
Mapping
When playing text adventures, players usually needed to make maps for themselves as they went along, because they found it difficult to remember how the rooms in the game world …
Real-Time Versus Turn-Based Games
Many online games take place in real time with each player acting simultaneously. This offers players maximum freedom; they always have something to do and can order their activities any …
Design Practice case study
Choose a CRPG that you believe, from your own experience of playing it, is an excellent example of the genre (or use one your instructor assigns). It should be a …
FUNCTIONAL CONSTRUCTION CHALLENGES
Construction and demolition is easy in most games: point, click, and it happens, so long as the resources required are available. If you want to make the process more of …
PERSONALITIES
Unlike almost every other computer game, The Sims tries to simulate relationships among individual people. These relationships are not terribly sophisticated, but they do include such emotions as jealousy, anger, …
The Four Types of Players
In 1997, MUD developer Richard Bartle wrote a seminal article called "Hearts, Clubs, Diamonds, Spades: Players Who Suit MUDs" for the first issue of the Journal of Virtual Environments (Bartle, …
Physics for Sports Games
During play, your game will be running a physics engine that determines the behavior of moving bodies in the match. The physical behavior of an inanimate object such as a …
THE REPLAYABILITY QUESTION
At first glance, the lack of replayability seems the greatest disadvantage of adventure games. Most adventure games consist of a sequence of puzzles, each of which has a single solution; …
Design Practice case studies
For this chapter, there are two case studies. The instructor may ask you to work on a single study or both. Choose an A-life game that you believe, from your …
Designing for Children
Video games for children differ from those for adults, just as books and television shows for them do. Nor is there one single type of game appropriate for children— their …
The Player’s Role
The player's role in a flight simulator seems quite straightforward: It's that of a pilot. In single-seat aircraft, that's all that is required. However, if you're going to simulate larger …
Journal Keeping
Another common feature of adventure games—one that is conceptually similar to automapping—is automatic journal keeping. The game fills in a journal with text as the player goes along, recording important …
COMPLAINT AND WARNING SYSTEMS
Some chat systems include complaint mechanisms designed to discourage online rudeness. Some online games give players a Report button they can push whenever they receive an offensive message. The offending …
Design Practice questions
1. Which type of game are you going to create? Is it going to be heavy on story (as in the Final Fantasy games), or will character advancement and combat …
Simulating Individuals
Many CMSs simulate the behavior of a group of people (or ants in the case of SimAnt) within an environment managed by the player. Games such as the original SimCity, …
THE SUCCESS OF THE SIMS
The Sims likely owes its huge success to two things: the unprecedented scope for creativity it offers and its emphasis on interpersonal relationships. First, it enables the player to exercise …
Creating an Avatar
Playing in persistent worlds is more than merely a form of gameplay; it's also a form of expression. The first thing a player does when she joins a persistent world …
Rating the Athletes
One of the biggest tasks you take on in designing a sports game is developing a rating system for the skills and athletic abilities of all the athletes in the …
