Navigation Mechanisms
Navigation mechanisms allow the player to tell a character, vehicle, or other mobile unit how to move. This section uses the term avatar to refer to anything that the player …
Turning Rules into Core Mechanics
In the early stages of design, you may have only a hazy idea of the details of your game's rules. Early on, you may say, "Players will be penalized for …
Establishing Difficulty Modes
In creating a single-player game, you should allow the player to choose how difficult the game will be, typically with three options labeled easy, normal, and hard, or similar terms. …
Platform Games
Platform games, or platformers, are cartoonish games in which an avatar moves through a vertically exaggerated environment, jumping on and off platforms at different heights, while avoiding obstacles and battling …
Toys, Puzzles, and Games
In English, we use the word play to describe how we entertain ourselves with toys, puzzles, and games—although with puzzles, we more frequently say that we solve them. However, even …
The Tuning Stage
When you went from the concept stage to the elaboration stage, you locked down the game concept—the foundations of the game. During the elaboration stage, you fleshed out the concept …
The Temporal Dimension
The temporal dimension of a game world defines the way that time is treated in that world and the ways in which it differs from time in the real world. …
Dramatic Tension and Gameplay Tension
Many designers are led astray by a false analogy between two superficially similar concepts, dramatic tension and gameplay tension. This section defines these terms, discusses their role in entertaining the …
Context-Sensitive Interfaces
A context-sensitive interface reduces complexity by showing the player only the options that she may actually use at the moment. Menu options that make no sense in the current context …
. Simultaneous Atomic Challenges
Although the player simultaneously faces several challenges in the hierarchy, she pays less attention, on a moment-by-moment basis, to those challenges that are farther up in the hierarchy. But games …
Static and Dynamic Equilibrium
It's possible to design a system in such a way that, left alone, it enters a state of equilibrium. Static equilibrium is a state in which the amounts of resources …
Ring Layouts
In a ring layout, the path returns to its starting point, although you may include shortcuts that cut off a portion of the journey (see Figure 12.3). Designers mainly use …
Design Practice case study
Choose an action game that you believe, from your own experience of playing it, is an excellent example of the genre (or use one your instructor assigns). Write a report …
Gameplay
Games provide gameplay, that is, challenges and actions that entertain. People enjoy a challenge, as long as they have a reasonable expectation of being able to accomplish it. People will …
Communicating Your Dream to Others
A dream is a fantasy that you have by yourself; a computer game is something that you make for someone else. You and your development team are entertainers. If your …
The Relationship Between Player and Avatar
Lara Croft is attractive because of, not despite of, her glossy blankness—that hyper-perfect, shiny, computer look. She is an abstraction, an animated conglomeration of sexual and attitudinal signs—breasts, hotpants, shades, …
The Story as a Drama
A small number of games treat the story as a drama that progresses at its own pace, advancing with the passage of time itself. The story takes place in real …
Character Portraits
A character portrait, normally appearing in a small window, displays the face of someone in the game world—either the avatar, a member of the player's party in a party-based game, …
Economic Challenges
An economy is a system in which resources move either physically from place to place or conceptually from owner to owner. This doesn't necessarily mean money; any quantifiable substance that …
Dominant Strategies in Video Games
Video games seldom permit players to use strategies so strongly dominant that they absolutely guarantee victory, although some, whether PvP or PvE games, allow powerful strategies that give the player …
Level Refinement and Lock-Down
After the level review, take the feedback you've received and refine the prototype, correcting any problems and implementing any new decisions made in the course of the review. This can …
Game Tree Search
In turn-based games such as checkers, chess, or Go, each player has a number of choices—possible moves that he can make—at each turn. You choose your move, then your opponent …
How Is This Book Organized?
Fundamentals of Game Design, Second Edition is divided into two parts. The first twelve chapters are about designing games in general: what a game is, how it works, and what …
The Player-Centric Approach
This book teaches you an approach called player-centric game design. This approach helps you produce an enjoyable game, which, in turn, helps it be a commercially successful one. Many other …
Progression Considerations
If your game will be a long one, the player will need a sense of progress through it. At this stage of game design, you must decide what will provide …
Character Dimensionality
In everyday language, people often speak disparagingly of characters in books and movies as two-dimensional. By this they mean that the character isn't very interesting, doesn't grow or change, doesn't …
Player-Centric Interface Design
A game's user interface plays a more complex role than does the UI of most other kinds of programs. Most computer programs are tools, so their interfaces allow the user …
Screen-Oriented Steering
In screen-oriented steering, when the player moves the joystick up, the avatar moves toward the top of the screen. Implementation details vary somewhat depending on the camera model. This section …
The Core Mechanics as Processes
If you get a job in the game industry, you will hear industry professionals talk about the core mechanics as if the mechanics actively take part in the game: The …
Understanding Positive Feedback
Positive feedback occurs when a player's achievement causes changes to the state of the game that make a subsequent achievement easier, which in turn makes further achievements easier still, and …
Fighting Games
The Definition of a Game
Defining any term that refers to a broad class of human behaviors is a tricky business, because if anyone can find a single counterexample, the definition is inaccurate. Efforts to …
The Game Design Team Roles
A large video game is almost always designed by a team. Unlike Hollywood, in which guilds and unions define the job roles, the game industry's job titles and responsibilities are …
The Environmental Dimension
The environmental dimension describes the world's appearance and its atmosphere. You've seen that the physical dimension defines the properties of the game's space; the environmental dimension is about what's in …
DESIGN RULE Randomness and Repetition Destroy Dramatic Tension
The narrative events in a game's story must not occur randomly or arbitrarily, nor should the narrative repeat itself, even if the play itself is repetitive. The Storytelling Engine To …
