It may not seem as though much progress was made over the holidays, but I had been busy working at home on the design document (which included compiling a collection of images for future reference when creating art assets) and preparing bits and pieces for my seminar presentation.
Time away from uni helped recharge the [KERS] batteries a little. It also gave me the opportunity to do some reading research and reflect on my game concept/ideas more closely. Were my design decisions maintaining the Box of Neutrals identity or moving further away from it? Did all features I considered adding to the game make sense in this 'world' and would they actually do anything to enhance the player experience or simply be surplus to requirement? - see seminar slides for my conclusions.
At this stage, it was vital to tie up all the ambiguous loose ends and complete my first (detailed) draft game design document as soon as possible - until everything is made clear and broken down into specifics it is very difficult to confidently move forward with development.
Although I have created the design document as a separate Word file (which I will continue to amend and add to throughout the project) I will be sure to add a blog page where people can view the latest version I am working from at any time. The added benefit of this is knowing I will always have a spare 'master' copy available online for my reference, which I can access from anywhere with an Internet connection.
Readings
I have outlined below what I read over Christmas and noted any relevant excerpts that I found particularly useful or interesting.
Dille, F. and Platten, J. Z. (2007) The Ultimate Guide to Video Game Writing and Design. New York: Lone Eagle Publishing Company. Chapters: -
Level 8 - Game Properties As Franchises (p.111-118 talks about thinking of a game idea in terms of franchise potential)
Level 9 - Inside the Creative Process (p.119-136 suggests useful and interesting ways of generating game ideas and methods of cataloguing thoughts/research for future 'mining')
Level 10 - The Team and the Dynamics of Development (p.137-149 discusses the flow of game design, and the many perils and struggles likely to be encountered)
Level 11 - Changes, Revisions and Creative Criticism (p.150-170 explains that changes and criticism are unavoidable when making games, and advises how best to respond/handle these situations, keep focused and not lose motivation)
Level 12 - Getting Down To Business (p.171-177 covers the legal and financial side of game development - contractual agreements etc.)
Smith, A.J. (2011) Be Honest, Be Nice: Marketing And PR For Indie Developers. [Online] Gamasutra; Available at:
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/134941/be_honest_be_nice_marketing_and_.php
(Accessed 09/01/12)
Quote(s) of note...
"Your aim, broadly speaking, should be to create a group of customers who are devoted to you. Your products and brand must appeal to them, and you must make it possible for them to open up a dialogue with you."
"You must create the games you believe in, find the customers who also believe in them, and then encourage them to join together in a group that starts to do some of your marketing for you, and supports your endeavours with relevant feedback and opinion."
"If people know and trust what you say, and if they are familiar with the tone because it is consistent, they will most likely feel some kind of connection with you (and your games) as a result. It's a relationship that you're embarking on, and you have the power to make it so much more personal and affecting (as well as effective) because of how close you are to your audience."
(Accessed 09/01/12)
Quote(s) of note...
"The element of uncertainty, while crucial, is not the whole of the matter. Malaby (2007) observes that a second crucial aspect of games is their capacity to generate meaning. The many kinds of situation that can occur within a game (including but in no way restricted to the goal states and final outcomes, such as winning) happen in never wholly predictable ways and are 'subject to interpretations by which more or less stable culturally shared meanings are generated.'"
"This generation of meaning is a critical aspect of the game experience, and it is thoroughly open-ended. Not only can the way games are played alter within any particular social group, but the meanings that a game can generate can also change."
"This appreciation of the meaning of the internal states of games is crucial to understanding the play of a great many games, and particular of digital games. The more complex games are not always undertaken for the sake of winning, even if this forms part of the framework of motivation."
"Malaby thus recognizes that when we play -- in games or in life -- we are adopting a particular attitude towards our activity, one that is fundamentally different from the attitude expected in the formal games of culture (such as the institution of money or bureaucracy) which 'aim to bring about determinate outcomes'."
"Thus, following Malaby, games can be understood as processes that utilize uncertainty in particular ways to create compelling and engaging experiences, while play is best understood as a willingness to improvise in the face of uncertainty. Play is thus an attitude we adopt towards uncertainty, and gamesprocesses that may make use of this disposition, contriving, simulating or even suppressing contingency so that we might interpret what results. Paradoxically, games on this reading need not be undertaken in a playful spirit, even though the notion of a game may depend upon an understanding of play."
"I want to make the further claim that this understanding of play and games extends to the world of art -- that art too can be understood as processes that make use of our attitude towards uncertainty and contingency to create compelling and engaging experiences and that invite us to interpret their states in meaningful ways."
Cook, D. (2012) A Theory About Humour In Games. [Online] Available at:
https://plus.google.com/105363132599081141035/posts/gsSLLwhi1uS(Accessed 09/01/12)
Quote(s) of note...
"Much of humor comes from the unexpected -- a twist, an insightful observation, a new/odd perspective."
"Both the theories of humor and theories of games involve an 'A-ha' moment and as such it would seem that humor might be a rich topic for whole categories of games."
Pros "Humor-through-mechanics, when properly executed, can create evergreen humor. Sticking a knock-knock joke into the middle of Tetris does little to improve it over the long term, though it does have some novelty humor."
Cons "Humor-through-mechanics is hard to talk about. Such humor exists within the magic circle of the game and as such is often difficult to talk about or transfer to others."
"Traditional consumable humor is most likely to be found in games that make heavy use of traditional consumable evocative content. So it makes complete sense that the most common uses of humorous content would involve...Micro moments of feedback (a bird hitting a pig...hilarious the first time around)"
"Funny games exist. We just need to stop insisting they must look like Monkey Island and start realizing they can look a lot more like friends playing a game and laughing together."
Comments Ryan Crieghton - "The advantage of consumable, scripted humour...is that it's shareable, repeatable, reliable, and most importantly quotable...It's far easier to rally around a Simpson's quote or Carlin's 7 Words you Can't Say on Television than it is to rally around the guy who rides his bike off the roof of his house on YouTube, no matter how funny it was to watch...When it comes to humour, i much prefer the expensive, consumable kind for the advantages it provides... it lends itself far better to sequels and spin-offs, it extends well to other types of media, and i think it's much more relatable to mass audiences than mechanics-based humourous games."
Jera Wolfe - "The problem with humor is that a lot of it is NOT cross cultural. Even in the US, where there is a fairly hegemonized culture in Ameria, you find many jokes don't cross our sub-culture borders well. It would have to use a lot of universal commonplaces, or else constrain itself to having a possible short lived lifespan. Humor is very context sensitive, and if you don't have the right mindset and data, you'll miss the clues and the joke. Setting up jokes is something that Comedians can live on, but only a few do it well. Game designers, programmers, seldom think like Comedians."
Nels Anderson - "From a game design perspective, a joke is consumable content much like a puzzle. You pass through the loop a single time and then the insight contained within is mastered. Once you've heard the joke, it is less humorous the next time around. This seems a bit reductive. At least as far as television is concerned, a lot of sophistication in recent comedies like Arrested Development, Party Down or Community rely on the viewer having familiarity and understanding of the characters, situations, etc. Essentially, the more you "master" something like Arrested Development, the funnier it becomes. If you were just jump into Arrested Development at season 3, episode 4, you'd easily miss half the jokes (if not more). Mentions of "hop ons" and David Cross is jean cutoffs would make no sense. And even watching from beginning, there are jokes you won't catch until the second or third viewing. Rather that decreasing in humour, these shows have the potential to be even funnier the more they are watched."
McMillan, L. (2011) A Rational Approach To Racing Game Track Design. [Online] Gamasutra; Available at: http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/6477/a_rational_approach_to_racing_game_.php
(Accessed 09/01/12)
Quote(s) of note...
"The five metrics of rational track design are;
Metric 1: Race Line
Metric 2: Clipping points (and related metrics)
Metric 3: Track Width
Metric 4: Camber (Not applicable in my game)
Metric 5: Height Variation (Not applicable in my game)
Figure 2
Figure 8
"Difficulty of a corner increases if the angle between these three points is more acute and / or if the distance between these points is reduced -- as seen in a comparison between Figure 2 and Figure 8."
Quote(s) of note...
"The five metrics of rational track design are;
Metric 1: Race Line
Metric 2: Clipping points (and related metrics)
Metric 3: Track Width
Metric 4: Camber (Not applicable in my game)
Metric 5: Height Variation (Not applicable in my game)
Figure 2
Clipping Points & The Race Line "Every corner in a race track will have an ideal entry point, an ideal clipping point, and then an ideal exit point. The clipping point is a target on the roads edge that the player must aim for in order to maximize the chances of taking the shortest possible route through a corner, whilst at the same time placing the least amount of lateral force onto the vehicle (Figure 1)...From a designer's perspective, the race line may supersede the track layout depending on the approach taken."
Figure 8
"A corner can have multiple clipping points within itself; however, there will always be definite entry and exit points. The player needs these definite entry and exit points as a type of "punctuation" to help memorize the circuit. Further to this, by taking this approach, a track designer can come up with a circuit that is a combination of straights and corners. Depending on the type of vehicle dynamics system that is being used, a combination of straights and corners can help assist in game balance by allowing equal catch-up opportunities for vehicles with different attributes."
"Understanding clipping points and the how they subsequently impact on creating the race line is the most integral piece of the puzzle when taking a rational approach to track design. It is important to consider that a racing game is very much a twitch-puzzle game. What this means is that the player needs to find elegant solutions to spatial problems by using the least amount of steering, braking and acceleration input. Although vehicle dynamics have been discussed, the type of dynamics system used by the game will have a significant impact of how designers should go about creating clipping points and race lines."
Track Width "Track width is one of the common-sense type metrics that is relatively easy to understand and implement. As a general rule of thumb, making the road wider will make corners easier as it creates a more obtuse angle for the clipping points and also provides some forgiveness in the track design."
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