I want to make my own videogames. Learning videogame design is my first step on that journey. I doubt Schell's 'The Art of Game Design' and Adams's 'Fundamentals of Game Design' will be the only two books I will ever read on the topic, despite the ambiguity in both titles these are both about videogames primarily.
The point of this is not to summarise each book individually, but rather the total.
I read these two in the title order. This might have not been the best order as Adams's book laid out and functions as a textbook with a focus on the player, while Schell's more like a reference book and is primarily focused on creating a good product using different perspectives to help. The focus of both aren't necessarily contradictory.
I did miss out on a few things intentionally. There was so little on accessibility I did not include it at all, there are the Xbox Accessibility Guidelines which seem much more relevant and would be constantly updated. I also skipped the discussion on funding, as I am not actually trying to get into the industry but rather make my own games. VR was something I also missed, although interesting technology it just isn't that affordable to me or to the vast majority. I don't love videogames enough to actually spend that much money on both a computer capable of running it and for the actual VR hardware either. Lastly I skipped out on most things in multiplayer games and social interaction as those are the games I am interested in creating.
I've also taken the liberty to flatten terminology between the two. The language really isn't settled, or perhaps I am not understanding it.
Lastly, because videogame is about design I have taken Schell's approach of asking questions in my notes. I will be naming the lens or set of questions but not actually detailing the questions themselves, there are several reasons for this: Most of the information can actually be found for free in the app 'The Art of Game Design: a Deck of Lenses'. And I have changed the lens and the questions to which they belong to and added information from Adams as well, but for now it feels more like plagiarism than anything else if I just put these notes out there. Thirdly, I want to actually test these notes by actually analysing the a game with this and seeing how it actually holds up and when I am making my own game. Finally, once again I hope these are not the last books I read on videogame design, or game design, or any type of design, so I want to leave pace to add more.
The below notes are roughly two pages long, with the questions (each occupying their own line) the full document with questions is 14 pages.
Videogame Design
Design is a coherent craft that considers a particular audience and their experience, a craft is a product that combines art and engineering. Good design examines decisions made in creating the product by considering many different lenses (ie perspectives) by asking questions. So here consider design lens and decision lens.
Emotion is the foundation of experience, thus consider the emotion lens. Emotion has three main aspects. 1 motivation lens based on Ocean's 'Five Factor Personality Model' psychological model where Vandenberghe's '5 Domains of Play' adapts this. 2 needs lens based on Maslow's 'Hierarchy of Needs' and Deci's and Ryan's 'Self-Determination Theory'. 3 pleasures lens based on Schell's list of pleasures.
One way which experience can be created is through an entertainment product, which is a designed craft that presents a recreational activity, so is entertainment product lens. An audience can be entertained by inherent interest lens, beauty lens, projection lens. Designing an experience requires a theme lens, elevate to art if resonant lens.
An entertainment product can be divided if the content changes by audience choice, if presentational then it does not, if participatory it does. Games are a form of participatory entertainment product where the player (ie participatory audience) participates through play (ie gameplay) according to certain rules to overcome challenges (ie problems, tasks, obstacles). Play is participation by rules with direction, rules are instructions of valid play and challenge, challenges are something that requires non-trivial effort to overcome. There are four main elements of any game which are technology which determines the medium the game exists in & participation which determines how player interacts with the game & storytelling engine which determines the events encountered & aesthetic which determines how the game feels to the player, thus exists game elements lens. A videogame (ie video game) is a game that is mediate by electronics, it analyses participation and rules and determines if challenges has been overcome by algorithms so player only needs to know how to play.
Technology
Any designed craft is dependent on a certain medium to exist. Any entertainment products fools the senses using technology thus technology lens which exists in a certain venue lens. Videogames requires input device to be interactive.
The gameworld (ie game world) is where the game takes place, this typically requires there to be a physical dimension lens.
Interaction divided into modes of shell modes which only affects the videogame software or shell screen if non-interactive & play (ie gameplay) mode which affects the gameworld thus play mode lens. The play mode divided into the UI (ie presentational player) which mediates between player and game through software & mechanics or the set of rules. The UI is divided into the interaction model which is how the player inputs effect the gameworld through an avatar which is the character under the player control thus has an avatar lens & camera model which is how the mechanics effect the output so camera model lens.
Saving the game which is taking a snapshot of the game's current state requires memory thus a computer with the saving game lens, there are problems which ultimately the player's fault such as potentially harming immersion and ruining dramatic tension and encourage trial-and-error and consequences losing meaning.
Participation
Acts (ie actions, verbs) are the atomic units of interaction by player with the acts lens and objects ie nouns which are atomic units interacted upon by acts with the objects lens.
Rules should be easy to learn while providing a large variety with the rules lens.
There are many common types of mechanics. Physics mechanics is the rule set governing motion and forces in gameworld but this is more of a programming issue. Tactical manoeuvring mechanics rules set governing advantage and disadvantage in a specific location so tactical manoeuvring lens; strategy considers advantage and disadvantage over the entire game thus strategy lens, there may exists dominant strategies lens which are strategies which reliably produce best outcome independent of challenges which are undesirable as no reason to use any other strategy. Risk mechanics is the rule set governing value thus value lens and risk lens. Economic mechanics is the rule set governing resource creation and consume and exchange, thus exist economic system lens and economic source lens and economic drain lens and economic converter lens and economic trader lens. Social interaction mechanics thus social interaction lens is the rule set governing relationship control over player.
Play tension is the desire to overcome challenges. Challenges exist in a hierarchy of how easy they are to solve with acts and how many are presented simultaneously and progress visibility and player immediacy, there exists both a challenge hierarchy lens and a challenge lens.
Difficulty has many aspects. Absolute difficulty which is dependent on stress, perceived time to meet a challenge, & intrinsic skill, skill level if player given unlimited time to overcome challenge; where intrinsic skill can be calculate by counting the mental and physical conditions. Relative difficulty is the absolute difficulty minus the acts. Perceived difficulty is the relative difficulty minus the in-game experience, time amount to beat a type of challenge. This is all summarised in the difficulty lens. This feels fair if analysed by the balance lens. Flow, people's performance during an enjoyable task at peak production, was first described by Csikszentmihalyi which is partially dependent on not being too hard so is not anxious and not being too easy so is not bored, using the flow lens.
Storytelling engine
Juul divides games events so events lens into being progression, mechanics governing event sequence, and emergence, event flow from rules. Both are dependent on interest curve lens. There are three major kinds and lenses of progression which are space progression lens and time progression lens and story progression lens. Emergence can be measured by acts:(tactics + strategy), so get emergence lens.
Challenges and events are presented in levels so get level lens.
One aspect of interest is using a story where for games it is almost entirely physical challenges taking place in the present tense. Story is dependent on the story stack which is fantasy-action-economy-world-story where it is easiest to change the lower levels easier, thus exist the story stack lens and story lens. Stories have characters in them so exists character lens. Also must consider player role in story machine lens.
Lastly there is play and the different play modes that exists within the game so there is the play lens. There is such a big amount of consideration for when others are involved there is a separate multiplayer play lens.
Aesthetics
Aesthetics are part of the design of the UI and gameworld and feedback by lighting & colour palette & weather and environmental effects & music & ambient audio so get the aesthetic lens. As no part of the aesthetics is infinite must also consider the imagination lens to fill in gaps.
Considering the UI and the UI lens. This can be further divided into the physical interface with the physical interface lens, interaction bw player and game world directly, and virtual interface with the virtual interface lens, which is between the physical interface and the gameworld.
There exists the gameworld lens to analyse the aesthetics of the gameworld.
Characters are likely present and there are two approaches. Visuals first uses the art-approach lens. The second considers the story role and/or situation behave and/or mechanical interaction so is story-approach lens.
Feedback refers to the game inner stated presented to the player thus there exists the feedback lens, if good it is juicy so juiciness lens which is dependent on freedom so freedom lens and control so control lens and judgment so judgment lens.
Production
The development cycle is in three stages of concept then elaboration then polishing, so there is a development cycle lens and concept stage lens and elaboration lens. Development relies on prototypes so there is prototype lens.Next I want to learn how to code in a manner appropriate for videogames. I have four books I want to read and I will summarise them like this post.
As I mentioned in the introduction, I also want to analyse a game using this. This will be Portal. I consider Portal to be my favourite videogame and so that makes sense as I am familiar with it to know quite a lot and I would not be unfairly analysing a game I just encountered, it's quite a short game so replaying is easy, and it's also been a few years since I played through it.
The reading also made me want to make my own game immediately. Although I have come up with several concepts I am not ready to. Not only do I have about another ~50 books I want to read before development. Then I have to research in the genre as well. I don't know when I'll actually get around to doing this.