Fun and Accessibility

In this blog today I will be talking about what a fun game is and how a game is fun. Video games are for entertainment and learning purposes. With entertainment being half, if not all, of a game's purpose for existence, fun becomes a critical aspect of design for a game. Let's get into some more detail on fun in games.

What key elements would be used for seeing if a game is fun? Well, the dramatic elements that I talked about in my third lecture will be good to check if games are fun. More specifically, let's look at challenge, play, and story. These elements will emotionally hook your player's into your game and having a player immersed into your game will cause them to have fun.

When it comes to challenge, there are very important aspects the we need to know. First, reaching and exceeding goals is an important part of challenge. The way how a player can exceed goals is by giving them subgoals or bonus objectives to also complete while finishing the main goal. Competing against other opponents to give the player someone to compare themselves to is a natural challenge for players. Stretching a player's personal limits allows player's to challenge themselves. Exercising difficult skills gives the player the chance to master and display certain skillsets. Choice creates situations where players must weigh their choices and can be found as a challenge.

There are 7 natural types of play:

Living out fantasies
Social interaction
Exploration and discovery
Collection of things
Stimulation of senses and imagination
Self-expression and performance
Construction/Deconstruction

With each type of play in a game, there is more and more fun added to a game. Using StarCraft as an example, you can live out the fantasy of controlling a large army, you can socially interact with your team and opponent, explore the map and discover where your enemy is, collect minerals and gas, imagine being in this universe with alien races, being able to do what you want and seeing a performance report after, and finally being able to build and destroy what your opponent builds. Since StarCraft has all 7 types of play it makes the game very fun.

Continuing with StarCraft as our example, this game had one of the best stories actually winning best story award recently. Story is a powerful mechanism for engaging people's emotions. The story naturally tells the tales of a specific hero with their ups and downs in a critical time in their life. Within the story, there needs to be a created drama to make empathy. This makes the player have something to relate to as well.  The mechanic of story in StarCraft that takes their story one step above this is that it gives the player choices to how they want to go through the story. There is a choice in the order of the story. The incredible story on top of this mechanic gives StarCraft a very big fun factor for their game.

On the topic of decisions, let's briefly list and explain the types of decisions. There are 8 different types of decisions:

Hollow - no real consequences
Obvious - no real decision
Uninformed - an arbitrary choice
Informed - where the player has information
Dramatic - taps into a player's emotional state
Weighted - a balanced decision with consequences on both sides
Immediate - has an immediate impact
Long-Term - whose impact will be felt down the road

To end of this blog, I would like to discuss fun killers that need to be avoided. Excessive amounts of micromangement can kill the fun of a game. I have found this in StarCraft to be a fun killer at times but it is part of the challenge where it stretches the player's limits causing it to be fun. StarCraft stretches the player's limits just enough to not break it and kill the fun. Stagnation will also kill fun. Repetition, balance of power, and having a negative feedback loop will kill the fun in the game. I have also found that an insurmountable amount of obstacles will drain the fun out of games. Having arbitrary events will bring the fun down to a minimal. Finally, predictable paths will make the game boring from being to easy. Easy, boring games are not fun and should be avoided.

PVP Fight 2

Dark Matter.

This is my second pvp blog and this one is going to be on Emilian Cioca's game Dark Matter. I did not see or hear many people play this game but I got a chance to go at it and the game was pretty good. There was some room for improvement as well, so let me go into detail about what was good and what could have made the game better.

Let's start first with what the objective of the game is. This game is even more simple than the last one I did, even though they do still hold the same objective which is get to the other end of the level. There is very little to stop you from completing your objective. The only thing that is holding you back from reaching the other end of the level are three different colored blocks. The blocks are either red, black, or white. Depending on which color you are allows which one you can go through. So if you are a black particle, you can go through black bricks but not red or white ones. This is a cool mechanic because it can cause you to try and solve different problems with that. There is only one problem with that and it's the controls.

The controls in this game are almost non existent. You are only able to jump and change color. This can be a good thing because it is easy to learn and master. The problem with this is that the game forces you to constantly move to the end goal. This is how the game can become challenging. As I played I was anticipating quickly flipping through colors trying to make it through the level near the end. This brings me to my next point of challenge.

The challenge in this game was not as challenging as it should have been. There was a good increase between skill of the player and experience with the game for the beginning. The level went through teaching the player the mechanic of jumping first, then the mechanic of the different colors. It didn't take long to learn the colors so I expected the game to pick up and increase in difficulty from the tutorial. However, the speed in which your particle moved did not accelerate to a more difficult speed. The separation of colors did not decrease much either. It wasn't nearly as difficult as it could have been and that would have been a key improvement to the gam





eplay for the level.

In terms of the feedback in the game, there was very little. There were no sounds at all so there could've been great opportunities for auditory feedback. I think a simple, yet effective form of auditory feedback would be to have sounds for when you change colors. Another possible sound for feedback would be when an incoming block is being approached and the player isn't in the right color to pass through it.  He does have visual feedback for when you are able to pass through a block which is good. When you are able to get through a block the block would turn transparent which is a nice way to visually show the player they are good to go. He also had good visual feedback of which color you have selected by directly changing the color of the particle.

I like the art in the game. It is very simple and sets a mood for the game. There is a nice color scheme to match the colors in game. I think the red should have been changed to blue and the white changed to purple to follow the color scheme for the rest of the level better.  The colors would need to be bright blues and purples so they can be distinguished from each other easily and have some sort of way to stick out from the background.

In conclusion, I enjoyed playing this game but I don't feel the need to go and play it again. I would love to go back to the game on another level that was more difficult because I am one for a challenging game. The art was simply appealing and the gameplay mechanics were creative. I would give this level a 6/10, would play again on the condition that the next level is more challenging.

PVP Fight

Hover Tank.

This is my first pvp blog and I have chosen to use Cameron Chodan's famous game Hover Tank. This game has been known as the claimer of souls for it's extremely challenging gameplay. His game teaches patience with really simple mechanics, smooth controls and decent aesthetics.






The objective of the game Hover Tank is to reach the end of the level. As anyone who has already lost their soul to this game, you will know that it is a side scroller game. This game has more objectives as you progress through the level. It begins with teaching simple mechanics like moving and moves on to jumping. Then when the platforms start moving it will teach you timing and the biggest lesson of the game, patience. The key to victory in Cam's game is timing and patience. Later in the game's level the objective graduates to activating triggers to open doors so you can move on to the finish. This is a simple to understand mechanic and it works well in a side scroller game.

Game objects that can be found in his side scroller would be the turrets that try to prevent you from completing your objectives, and triggers that will open doors. In his next level he adds pits with spikes at the bottom but for this level he just has bottomless pits.


In terms of difficulty, it has been made clear of how difficult this game can be. There is only a handful of other students who have actually beaten the level. The learning curve is too steep in the level. Although he does teach the all of the mechanics one at a time, which really helped make the game not be impossible, you get to a point in the level where you are stuck for majority of your play time because the difficulty is too high. A suggestion I would have made for this to improve the gameplay would have been to split the problems into smaller segments rather than having to do it all at once. This gives the player more relief knowing they don't have to do the same easy part of the problem every time they fail the hard part in the level.


The feedback in the game was very lacking. To start, there is no auditory feedback or any sounds at all for that matter. It would be nice to know by listening if a bullet is shot out of the turrets or if I need to hurry because something is on a timer. I did like the ant lines that were attached to the triggers in the level which gave you feedback as to what door or object they affected. He also has the ant lines change color when they are activated to give feedback. The lines also blink for timed triggers which is great feedback but I didn't realize this on my first playthrough. If there was even a picture with words saying that is what a blinking line means I would've got it. Another good form of feedback he could've added if he had controller was a vibration when the hover tank got hit by the bullets.

The controls are very simple. The player can use 'a' and 'd' to move left and right as well as 'space' to jump. These are standard controls for a side scroller. The controls were smooth and responsive. The only thing I would suggest for improvement is that the controls didn't have physics properties attached. The momentum that comes from jumping off of a platform can really cause problems for timing with jumps. This could just be a feature for Cam's level to add to the difficulty but I think this is a feature that this game could do without.

In conclusion, this game is very challenging. It is almost extremely frustrating, but it's just frustrating enough to want to beat it. Once you do beat it you feel very accomplished. I didn't really say too much about the art but I will say that it did not hinder the gameplay. If anything, the art worked well together and everything was very distinguishable. I would give Cam's level an 8/10 would play again. Well, I had to play it again for screen shots but I would probably play it another time.

Skills, Goals, and Feedback

In this blog, I will be going over three different  i like games. More specifically, I will talk about the feedback the game gives the player, the skills required and the goals in the game. The three games I am going to cover are SSX, Left 4 Dead, and StarCraft 2.

First off, in SSX there is lots of feedback given for many different scenarios. The one feedback I will be focusing on is the music. I really like when the player goes into super tricky mode, the music blends the song it's tricky and plays that while you are in super tricky mode. The song ends and blends back to your other song when the super tricky mode is over. The skills needed to play this game is how quickly you can gain and maintain super tricky mode. Once the player has access to super tricky they can move faster, and do better tricks. These are two different goals that will also be found in the game.

Next game is Left 4 Dead and this game has several different ways it shows feedback. One of the ways the player is given feedback is physically. When the player takes damage the controller vibrates to optimally give physical feedback. The most important skill in this game is teamwork. Without teamwork the survivors won't be able to make it to the safe house. This brings me to the goal of the game which is to make it to the safehouse alive.

Finally, I will address StarCraft2 and the feedback that is given in this game. There is a visual feedback provided in the game. This feedback is a blinking explanation mark on the minimap to show when something you own is under attack. Another example of visual feedback that's really nice is the green circle that shows up around your unit that is selected. Some skills that would be needed for this game would be the ability to micromanage groups of units while macro managing an economy and production of an army. The objective of this game is to eliminate the enemy player's base.

Those are the three games I have decided to talk about. I wanted to make sure I covered three different types of feedback. These three that I covered were: auditory, physical, and visual. I also wanted to make sure that in this blog there were three different skills and three different types of goals.




SSX, Left 4 Dead, and StarCraft2. Describe feedback generated. List the skills required. What type of skills do people enjoy that you could incorporate into the games i design.

Reverse Scrowdriver 2

Welcome to my second reverse scrowdriver blog. Last time I took the game Monopoly and added a new mechanic to it. This blog will take the game checkers and add a mechanic to the classic board game. Here's my new mechanic:

If you get your king back to your side of the board, you can move any piece on the board anywhere on the board.

This mechanic will add a feature that will move game pieces out of spots that they are stuck in. This often happens in a game of checkers when a game piece starts on the side and then the opposing game piece is "camping" it's only move making it unable to move. Other instances of this are back pieces are blocked by pieces in front of them.

The mechanic will also apply to your opponents pieces. With this you can move their pieces into danger. This is balanced by still giving them the chance to move their piece away or having them jump your piece.

This new ability can also be a combo. The way how this can combo is if a king jumps a game piece that is one space from being a king, as it gets back to it's own side to activate the new mechanic, it can move an enemy game piece into the same spot for a combo.

Having this mechanic active will increase the flow of the late game. In checkers there is a lot of chasing each other's kings or regular game pieces. This mechanic will hopefully improve that problem.
 

Crafting a Dekonstruer 2

I have decided to discuss the game atoms of SSX 2012.

For those who look at this and say TLDR I have three short videos at the bottom summarizing what I've written.

Players

The players in this game do not interact physically, only physically with the AI. What I mean by this is, when playing the campaign, which is offered to the player, you can push the AI as you snowboard in order to gain an edge over them. The multiplayer is player vs player in a free for all game style where everyone is pitted against each other. However, since the developers knew that not many people will be online at the same time, the online challenge only comes from the leaderboards. How they then populate the scene without player's playing the game at the same time as you, is that they created replays of other player's runs and they call them ghosts which are holographic replays of another player's run.

Objectives

There are three different objectives in this game and this goes for both of the single player and online play, and those are: race, trick, and survive. For race, the objective is to simply be the first one to the bottom of the mountain. With trick, you are trying to accumulate the highest score by lining up multiple tricks in a row while building and maintaining a combo. Finally in survive you try to escape or evade some form of elemental danger whether it be cold, low oxygen, rocks and trees, gravity, or even avalanches. Best way to complete these objectives is to explore the mountain run before attempting to set a highscore. The objectives that come with this game are: Race, Alignment, Escape, Construction, Exploration, Solution, and Outwit.

Rules

SSX does not enforce many rules in the gameplay. The major rule was the boundary in the game. Even though the mountains seem like you can go anywhere on it, there are invisible walls that will not bounce you back in to the world but instead suck you into a vortex that kills you. Other boundaries that kill you are the crevasses in the mountain that you can fall into.

Resources

In the game there is one major resource available and that is boost. The boost in the game allows you to be able to move faster. With this resource the player can get higher jumps to do more tricks, avoid danger easier, and make it to the bottom faster. To acquire this resource the player needs to complete tricks. Doing tricks adds to the amount of available boost. The game also offers a series of bonuses to boost, speed, trick score, and other perks for gear which can be considered resources since they need to be managed on your in game currency and when you need to use them for the runs down the hill.

Game States

One of the most noticeable game states in the game is if you are riding down the mountain. Other game states that are seen while playing the game are: idol in the helicopter, tricking, tricking in the air, tricking on a rail, using a wingsuit, a game state for each equipment and if they're being used, about to die, rewinding, tricky mode, super tricky mode, wipeout, and the finishing game state.

Information

The hud in this game provides specific information about the player's progress as well as what you are doing in terms of tricks. So in the top left it provides details such as your distance left on the mountain, speed, time for the run, and total distance traveled. The top right provides information on the other player's scores. At the bottom it shows details about your tricks like trick combo, trick score, total score, tricky state, and boost meter. There is also a status bar to tell the player how his equipment and health is doing. Everything is available to the player, the challenge ahead is what to do with all of this information.

Sequencing

When racing, the time puts a serious pressure on the player. They feel very eager to get to the bottom of the mountain. With the 3-2-1 Go! online mode that was released in a patch, it allows player's to take part in events such as race or trick in real time against each other in a free for all. This gives added tension to the player's as they play side by side without being able to see the goal they need to reach since it will be provided at the end when everyone has placed their score.

Player Interaction

As I said above, the player interaction is limited other than in the 3-2-1 Go! online mode and the competitive ladders. There is also a world events section where player's can spend in game currency to compete against each other in the attempts to win other's in game currency. Other forms of player interaction is this game mechanic called a Geotag. What a Geotag is exactly, is a marker in the world that any player can put in the world, if any player playing the game does not go to the same spot in their game where you put the marker, you achieve maximum in game currency the Geotag awards you. However, if a player does then you achieve less and the other player will gain in game currency. This is how player's can interact with each other.

Theme/Setting

Similarly in my previous Dekonstruer, I said that Greg Hasting's Paintball 2 was going for realism, SSX 2012 went for the same thing as you will see in the video I posted below. With the realistic physics for the avalanche as well as movement and control of the character, it feels very realistic and immersive. Another way they simulated realism is by using real life mountain ranges with real mountains. They also took real life environment dangers and used then as mechanics you need to survive. Only difference between my first game I analyzed and SSX 2012, is that the developers wanted to pertain to their former audience which really liked their old SSX games that were outright over the top in scale and humor. That's the only thing that draws the game from a full try hard mode to be completely realistic like Greg Hasting's Paintball.

To conclude, I leave you with a few videos of some gameplay as well as what I see to be dev diaries of the game. They cover just about everything I mention in this blog.

Crafting a Dekonstruer

I have decided to discuss the game atoms of Greg Hasting's Paintball. This game is a paintball simulator for multiple platforms.


Players

This game offers a single player campaign as well as a versus mode. With this, the player can play against the AI or other players and they then have the choice to do it locally or online. There is cooperative versus AI as well since you can add AI to the versus games.

Objectives

There are different game modes that each give different game objectives. The game modes are the same for both the single player campaign and the online experience. The game modes available consist of  elimination, capture the flag, and center flag. These were the only game modes in the first game, when Greg Hastings Paintball 2 came out they added extra objectives such as Point Capture, Assault, and Sniper & Recon.

Rules

The standard rules that are associated with this game reflect the rules from in the actual paintball sport since they tried to simulate the sport into a video game as closely as possible. These rules would be the boundaries of play, the objective at hand must be completed to win, establish the time of play per rounds, determine teams for the match, set the start point for teams, understand when a player has a solid nickel sized mark anywhere on the body or equipment that they are out, players can call paint check if they aren't sure that they are out, anyone who is out must raise their hand and exit the play area. Also follow all safety rules like wearing a mask at all times etc. The rules of play are very flexible depending on where you play and what game type you play.

Resources

There are two resources that the player needs to manage during play and that is their paint or ammo, and the compressed air they use to fire the paint. The paint can be reloaded at any point but they only have a certain amount they can reload in a match. The player's can't reload their air tanks during a round so they need to pick a tank that can last them the match and fire the amount of paint they can carry during a round.

Game States

There are only a few noticeable game states when playing. There is active in the round or shot out. If the game were to be saved at any point in the game, some information that would need to be saved would start with if the player is in or out, then if they're in the info needed for a save would be position, orientation, stance, amount of paint, amount of paint refills, and amount of compressed air. The same info would be needed for each AI in the round. Lastly, objective information would also be needed such as how many flags have been captured or how many players are out.  

Information

Most of the gamestate information for others in the round is not visible to you. You are only given your own information and then your teammate's positions. This is done because the opponent is trying to shoot you, so you want to conceal as much information about yourself as possible. The opponent will try to do the same thing because you have the same goal as your opponent which is to shoot him.

Sequencing

\When it comes to the sequencing of play for Greg Hastings Paintball, the start of a speedball match can be frantic since you are exposed initially. The game is hot, fast paced, and intense from start to finish but there is a moment of what feels like silence once each player is in their spot. The real time  play allows for the gameplay to be quick and thrilling.  

Player Interaction

So there are two different ways players can interact in this game. The players on your team can share information with you about where the opponents are and the opponents have a direct conflict with you.

Theme/Setting

The theme of the game for Greg Hastings Paintball is authenticity. They tried to simulate replicate settings seen in the actual sport such as professional speed ball tournaments with professional and rookie AI's all named after actual players. The tournament setup is similar to real life and so is the way each arena layout is designed. Even the weapons and accessories are all authentic replicas of their real life counterpart.

To conclude, I really like what the development team did when making this game. They did a great job pulling off the authentic paintball experience for only the price of the game. Anyone who knows paintball knows the price, pain, and problems that come from playing paintball, so the development of this game has turned the sport into an enjoyable experience for all. I remember when I played on my team the viewers had a hard time spectating games especially when we played in the woods.    

Balancing

In my next blog about the content I learn in lectures, I will talk about balancing in games. Now balancing usually comes in near the end of the development cycle but all sorts of balancing can be made before that. For example, in our game Aeolus we needed to do some tweaking for the flying to make sure it was skill balanced. Making sure it wasn't too difficult while maintaining realistic helicopter flying.

When it comes to balancing, there are four different types, I mentioned one of them already and that was skill balancing. The other three types of balancing are: variables, dynamics, and starting conditions.

We will be balancing the variables of the attack and armor for the players and enemies once the attacking is put into the game. This will help improve the quality and fun of the game. To define variable balancing it would be to take the game objects properties such as attack and armor and change their numbers to work with other game objects they interact with.

I don't think we will encounter dynamics balancing until next semester when there are PvP matches in our game. As we balance we want to avoid dominant objects, making sure that there are no "super" units in the game. Every object in the game needs to have it's advantage and drawback. For example, in our game we have a laser that shoots fast but does little damage. So it will be good for light units but bad against armored units.

Our game avoids move issues with positions since we are a helicopter game. There is not much balancing needed for positions unlike in CoD where there would be lots of balancing for positions to avoid campers and spawn campers.

As we talk about spawn, for the next semester when we have multiplayer, spawning in our game will be important. We will have cross map symmetrical spawning, and to avoid spawn camping there will be no respawns.

There are different techniques for game balancing. The four main techniques for game balancing are:

Think Modular
Purity of Purpose
One Change at a Time
Spreadsheets

The technique we are currently, One Change at a Time, has been really effective so far. We don't have much to balance at the moment. I am seeing in the future, once we have lots of different components that can be attached to the helicopter, spreadsheets will be very effective for balancing the game mechanics.

Reward Systems

Welcome to my next blog on what I learn in class. This week I will be going over reward systems in games. Let's jump right into it.

Initially in our class we went over the eight reward forms from Wang and Sun.

1. Score Systems
2. Experience Leveling Systems
3. Item Granting System Reward
4. Collectible and Usable Resources
5. Achievements Systems
6. Feedback Messages
7. Plot Animations and Pictures
8. Unlocking Mechanisms

After the different forms of rewards we discussed the four reward characteristics.

1. Social value of rewards (show skills, compare level)
2. Effect of reward on gameplay
3. Suitability of a reward for collection and review
4. Time required to earn or receive a reward

There are a lot of lists in this lesson so I want to be able to get through them all quickly. On the next list we have hoe player's use these rewards.

1. Advancement - progress in skill and power
2. Review - entertainment, accomplishment, memories
3. Sociality - establish social status
4. Cooperate/Compete - sharing resources, set items

Next up we have Schell's Reward Categories in Games. There are 9 different categories.

Praise
Points
Prolonged Play
A gateway
Spectacle
Expression
Powers
Resources
Completion

When Ivan Pavlov discovered classical conditioning he came up with another list of three.

Pavlov's dogs - salivation triggers, metronome vs food
Stimulus - neutral/unconditioned, conditioned
Response - neutral/unconditioned, conditioned

Now there are three types of game rewards. With these come two engagement processes, wanting and liking. Wanting a reward gives the player ambition and drive. Liking the reward makes it fun and a delight.

Emotional
Individual
Collective

Tom Chatfield has for us, another list of 7. This one contains game reward lessons.

1. Experience bars measuring progress
2. Multiple long and short-term aims
3. Rewards for effort
4. Rapid, frequent, clear feedback
5. An element of uncertainty
6. Windows of enhanced attention (memory and confidence)
7. Other people (strong social pull of collaboration)

The list that goes with the motivations for a player to achieve these rewards.  The list after will be for abilities and then opportunities.

1. Make people aware - form mental models
2. Help people understand - connect to emotions, values
3. Make people care - appeal to and satisfy needs

Ability

Goal-setting and Supporting Visions
Mindfulness and Willpower
Self-efficacy
Actual Ability
Habits
Social Support

Opportunity

Time - rhythms and timings
Space - action opportunities
Cues - create wanted and remove unwanted cues
Reminders

The final list I have in today's blog is increasing the engagement of the player for achieving the awards.

Completeness
Positive Reinforcement
Loss Aversion
Saving for tomorrow
The power of Free
Susceptible Moments.

To finish off this blog, I would like to talk about how we plan to implement rewards in our game Aeolus. So the reward we are looking to have is a score system for the first semester. The score will accumulate as you destroy turrets and complete objectives. Next semester we plan to upgrade our reward systems to Item Granting System Reward as well as Collectible and Usable Resources. The way how we plan to do these are to give the player in game items after completing objectives and reaching a certain score in the game. These items will be collectible items and resources that the player can use later in the game.

We wanted to also add Plot animations and pictures with our art gallery but when our game gets displayed at game con, it won't be available for anyone to see since it would all be locked. But it would be extra rewards just like the parts to the helicopter.

Properties of Living Structures

In this blog I will be going over Alexanders 15 properties of living structures. In Christopher Alexander's more recent work he claims these are properties of natural, as well as deisnged, beauty. These properties of good design are supportive of life and growth. These can be applied to different things but today I will apply it to the game Assassin's Creed. Below I've listed the 15 and under each I will provide briefly what it is and how it is seen in the game Assassin's Creed.

Alexander's 15 Properties of Living Structures

Levels of Scale

Where there are large scale architectural designs. In assassins creed there are many buildings that from the top, the player can view pretty much the entire play space.

Strong Centers

This is when there are strong areas of focus or weight to an environment or entity in the game. When using eagle vision you get a good example of strong centers where there is a strong focus on your goals and other entities in the world.

Boundaries

These are limitations for space, rules, and actions. In assassins creed you are acting out a memory and certain walls, if crossed, will cause a memory desync.

Alternating Repetition

This is when there is a repetition of elements to give sense of order and harmony. In assassins creed much of the architecture in the game looks similar and the missions are also similar. More importantly, the alternating factor would be switching missions, go assassinate this person, go talk to so and so, steal this, buy this, then go assassinate this other person.

Positive Space

This is where the shapes in the scene compliment each other and that the background reinforces rather than detracts. Assassins creed did a good job of this making sure they had complementary architecture and even colors.

Good Shape

Having simple forms that are pleasing. In assassins creed the buildings are really well shaped so that it was pleasing for the player.

Local Symmetries

Have small entities and environments with internal symmetry. In assassins creed the horse carriages and ships are very symmetrical.

Deep Interlock and Ambiguity

This is when the designer loops the interconnected structures to promote unity and grace. Like scaling a building then using eagle eye in assassins creed to spot your target, dropping a smoke bomb and performing an aerial assassination on your target and his guard.

Contrast

Use strong opposites to achieve forcus between the friendlies and opponents. For example, the assassins mostly wear white and the templar mostly wear black.

Gradients

Proportional use of space and patterns to promote harmony in the story for example. This is like how in assassins creed they gradually increase the challenge curve by adding more complex environment puzzles that you need to get your character through to reach the end goal.

Roughness

Texture and imperfection conveys uniqueness and life. Similarly in assassins creed, there are buildings that are old and broken down.

Echoes

This is a pleasing, unifying repetition in the environment and story. So in assassins creed, you had a satisfying repetition of assassinating enemies bosses.

The Void

This is when one creates calm and contrast through empty spaces or pauses in challenge. For example, when the player is free roaming and they climb to the top of a building for a sync.

Simplicity and Inner Calm

This is where there are simple rules and mechanics and you only use the essentials. This is most often seen early in the game as you only have what you need to kill someone in the most bare way, you wouldn't have fellow assassins, bombs, guns, throwing knives, traps, etc. I would see the player only having their assassins blade and a sword.

Not-separateness

This is when all the elements in the game are connected and complementary. For example, the player is scaling a building then using eagle eye in assassins creed to spot your target, dropping a smoke bomb and performing an aerial assassination on your target and his guard.

These 15 properties of living structures really enhance the visual experience of the player. It can really bring out the "beauty" of a game.

Play Spaces and Level Design

Welcome back to my blog!

Today I will be going over what we learned in class about play spaces and level design. To recap really quickly, game designers design the gameplay rules and level designers design how a player is confronted with them.

Now, level design is putting theory into practice. The theory of what I have been talking about in my blogs for the lectures in my class is applied to the structure of a level. The golden rule of level design is to be consistent. The mechanics need to stay the same. If the player needs skills for a level that you have not taught yet, don't make them do it.

Incremental learning in level design for example, would be if you find a new weapon, learn a new ability, or from a designers perspective, find a new mechanic in the game, the player would then be taught how to use this new mechanic. It is important to break down the core components of this new mechanic and make sure the rules are understood. Proceed to challenge the player with their new mechanic by putting obstacles that challenges their skill of the new mechanic.

For example, in our game Aeolus, we have a complicated mechanic of flying and shooting so we will make sure that the flying is well understood before the player is given the ability to shoot. We will further break down the flying mechanic by giving them an easy tutorial of flying from one point to another with no obstruction and when they are comfortable, add some obstacles to their path from one objective to the next.

The same would apply to the shooting mechanic, we will teach them to shoot at a static object that will not be shooting back, then when they are comfortable with that we will add the obstacle of the turret shooting back. From here we would start to add any other mechanics that the player needs to learn.  

What do you teach players? Well you need to teach them the physical rules and limitations of the environment. The abilities the player's in-game character has is also important to teach the player. The enemies behaviors are also important to teach the player. Most importantly, the game's reward system is critical for the player to know or else they do not know what they are playing for.

There are three types of levels, linear, semi linear, and non linear levels. Linear levels are good for their consistency, story development, and pacing. The learning curve is also good. Semi-linear levels are good because they create the illusion of freedom where there is enough freedom for players to feel they are authoring their experience. NonLinear levels are great to give the player maximum control and a sense of gameplay ownership. Some problems with each type of level would be linear constrains player's freedom, semi-linear leaves players to their own devices at inappropriate times. Non-linear levels are extremely hard to test and that can give many loopholes in gameplay logic.

Objectives In My Favorite Games

Welcome back!

In this blog I am going to discuss the objectives in some of my favorite games. The bonus to this blog is you will learn my top ten favorite games currently. This list was very difficult to come up with since there are so many good games out since I've started gaming and so many I see right over the release horizon. Well with this list I tried to stick to the games that have recently been released.

As a reminder, my games have multiplayer but I'm only going to refer to their single player since not everyone has the ability to play their game online. If you haven't read my second blog about the elements of a game I recommend you go read up on the objectives part of that blog since this blog will be referencing that section. So lets get right to it.

Ten Favorite Games

10 Halo

I've been playing the Halo series since the very first one on the original Xbox. The objectives in this game are: Rescue or Escape, Exploration, Solution, and Outwit.

9 Call of Duty

I have a feeling this game will make it onto most gamers top ten but I don't think it would be so far away from number 1 on everyone else's list. There are just so many better games than the CoD series in my opinion. The objectives in this game are: Chase, Race, Rescue or Escape, and solution.

8 Left 4 Dead

This game has logged many hours with friends of mine during my last summer before university. It's a great game with many game mechanics that blend together really well. The objectives in this one are: Race, Rescue or Escape, Solution, and Outwit.

7 Dead Rising

I spent the last couple weeks of my summer before third year beating this game over and over again with my buddy James. The objectives in this one are: Rescue or escape, construction, exploration, solution, and outwit.

6 Guitar Hero / Rock Band

I have been playing Guitar Hero since the second one was released and from time to time I still love to shred the plastic guitar with friends on weekends. The objectives in this one is simply Alignment.

5 SSX

I just recently got into SSX since it was released in 2012 but before it's release I was playing a different snowboarding game called Amped 3 which wasn't quite as fun so SSX takes spot five. The objecties in this one are: Capture, Chase, Race, Escape, and Exploration.

4 Battlefield

Instead of going to an after party for prom at somewhere like Wasaga I played BF:BC2 for almost 2 weeks straight and it was way better than some party on a beach. I still play Battlefield over CoD any day. The objectives in this one are: Capture, Solution, and Outwit.

3 GTA

Since the release of GTA3 I have been hooked on this game and it's amazing free roam world. I still play GTA5 today and I have played everything in between. The objectives in this one are: Capture, Chase, Race, Rescue and Escape, Forbidden Act, Exploration, Solution, and Outwit.

2 Gears of War

Owning the entire Gears series and even purchasing the limited edition Gears of War 3 plus the emblem as my lock screen on my phone as well as nearly buying the life size retro lancer and comic con puts this game at number Two in my books. I would have to say my favorite of the four games would be the third Gears game and that Judgement is my least favorite. The objectives in this one are: Capture, Chase, Rescue and Escape, Solution, and Outwit.

1 StarCraft

Finally the number one game out there is StarCraft. For anyone who knows me this is very clearly obvious since I have almost everything StarCraft from my mouse pad, to posters, collector edition copies of the games, and Sarah Kerrigan just about everywhere on my computers. I have played this game the longest out of any game I've ever played since I have been playing it from the release in 1998. This also means I have been playing this game since I was 5 years old. So, the objectives in this one are: Solution, and Outwit.

Honorable mention: NHL

The NHL games make the honorable mentions for my list of top ten favorite games. The objectives in this one are Solution, and Outwit.

Capture, Chase, Race, Alignment, Rescue or Escape, Forbidden Act, Construction, Exploration, Solution, and Outwit.

Reverse Scrowdriver

Welcome to blog that changes a game mechanic in an already existing game!

So for this blog I have chosen to change a game rule in the classic Monopoly. This rule change will be affecting the game mechanics. This game mechanic is based on luck so it will not break the game unless someone is really lucky or unlucky.

The rule I have added is if you roll a 7 you move in the opposite direction you were initially going before rolling the 7.

The way how this will change the game is that players will have more chances to get a property or specific tile they want in the game. This will speed up the game as well since there are more chances to also land on someone else's property.

There have been many times in my games of Monopoly I wished I could go back the other way and try to complete my set or even collect go just one more time. I can see this mechanic being over powered if the player managed to bounce back and forth over the 'GO' tile constantly collecting $200. This is highly unlikely since getting 7 several times in a row would be highly improbable. I think this mechanic will really increase the fun that Monopoly already brings to the dinner table.