Chapter 2.2 Game Design

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Chapter 2.2Game Design
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Overview

• Game design as
• full-time occupation is historically new
• field of practical study even newer

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Overview

• Folk games Costikyan
• Traditional games with cultural origins
• Examples
• Tic-Tac-Toe (Naughts and Crosses)
• Chess
• Go
• Backgammon
• Poker

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Overview

• This introduction covers
• Terms
• Concepts
• Approach
• All from a workaday viewpoint

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Overview

• There is no one right way to design
• There are many successful approaches
• Specific requirements and constraints of each
  project and team determine what works and what
  does not.
• This introduction is but a scratch

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The Language of Games

• Game development a young industry
• Standards are still being formulated
• Theory
• Practice
• Terminology

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The Language of Games

• Debate continues over high-level views
• Lack of standard (concrete) definitions
• Game
• Play
• High-level concepts tricky to articulate

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The Language of Games

• Workplace differences usually low-level
• Working terminology
• Example
• actors instead of agents
• geo instead of model
• Workflow how things get done
• Individual responsibilities
• Processes under which work is performed

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The Language of Games

• Why do we play?
• Not a designers problem
• What is the nature of games?
• Not a designers problem
• How is a game formed of parts?
• A designers problem

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The Language of Games

• Our simplistic high-level definitions
• Easy to modify to fit multiple cultures
• Practical over metaphysically true
• play
• game
• aesthetics

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Play and Game

• Play
• Interactions to elicit emotions
• Game
• Object of rule-bound play
• General enough to cover everything

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Aesthetics and Frame

• Aesthetics
• Emotional responses during play
• Naïve practical approach, not classical
• Frame
• The border of a games context
• Inside the frame is in the game
• Outside the frame is real life

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Approaching Design

• Computer games are an art form
• Game design practices can be taught
• Technical discipline like music, film, poetry
• The art of making dynamic models

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Approaching Design

• A model represents something

• Mental/Cognitive
• Concepts
• Beliefs
• Maps
• Examples
• Locations
• Relationships

• Mathematical
• Equations
• Formulas
• Algorithms

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Approaching Design

• Abstract model
• Conceptual and idealized
• A tool for investigating specific questions
• Simplifies thinking to help understand problems
• May include assumptions thought to be false
• Abstract game
• One rule
• The piece is moved to the open square

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A Player-Game Model

• A model of the player game relationship

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A Player-Game Model

• Mechanics
• Things the player does
• Interface
• Communication between player and game
• System
• Underlying structure and behavior

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Control and State Variables

• Defined by Isaacs in Differential Games
• Control variables
• Inputs from players
• State variables
• Quantities indicating game state

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Play Mechanics

• Gameplay
• Feelings of playing a particular game
• Activities engaged in a particular game
• (Play/game) Mechanics
• Specific to game activities
• What the player does

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Seven Stages of Action

• Execution
• Intention to act
• Sequence of action
• Execution of action sequence

• Evaluation
• Evaluating interpretations
• Interpreting perceptions
• Perceiving states

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Seven Stages of Action

• A goal is formed
• Models the desired state
• The desired result of an action
• Examples
• Have a glass of water in hand
• Capture a queen
• Taste ice cream

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Seven Stages of Action

• Goals turned into intentions to act
• Specific statements of what is to be done

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Seven Stages of Action

• Intentions put into an action sequence
• The order internal commands will be performed

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Seven Stages of Action

• The action sequence is executed
• The player manipulates control variables

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Seven Stages of Action

• The state of the game is perceived
• State variables are revealed via the interface

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Seven Stages of Action

• Player interprets their perceptions
• Interpretations based upon a model of the system

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Seven Stages of Action

• Player evaluates the interpretations
• Current states are compared with intentions and
  goals

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Seven Stages of Action

• Donald Normans approximate model
• Actions not often in discrete stages
• Not all actions progress through all stages

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Seven Stages of Action

• Scales to
• an individual mechanic
• A primary element
• Examples
• Move
• Shoot
• Talk
• an entire game
• A generalized model of interaction

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Designer and Player Models

• Systems are built from designer mental models
• Design models may only anticipate player goals

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Designer and Player Models

• Players build mental models from mechanics
• Based upon interactions with the system image
• The reality of the system in operation
• Not from direct communication with designers
• Player and designer models can differ
  significantly

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Core Mechanics

• Typical patterns of action
• Fundamental mechanics cycled repeatedly
• Examples
• Action shooters run, shoot, and explore
• Strategy game explore, expand, exploit,
  exterminate
• referred to as the four Xs

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Premise

• The metaphors of action and setting
• Directs the player experience
• Provides a context in which mechanics fit
• Players map game states to the premise

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Premise

• Story is the typical example of premise
• Time
• Place
• Characters
• Relationships
• Motivations
• Etc.

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Premise

• Premise may also be abstract
• Tetris operates under a metaphor
• The metaphor arranging colored shapes
• Encompasses all game elements
• Player discussions use the language of the premise

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Premise

• Games are models
• Activities being modeled form premise
• Actions may appear similar in model
• Usually are fundamentally quite different
• Sports games are good examples
• Playing video games isnt like playing the sport

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Premise

• Goes beyond setting and tone
• Alters the players mental model
• Basis of player understanding and strategy

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Premise

• Possible
• Capable of happening in the real world
• Plausible
• Possible within the unique world of premise
• Makes sense within the games premise
• Consistent with the premise as understood

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Choice and Outcome

• Choice
• A question asked of the player
• Outcome
• The end result of a given choice
• Possibility space
• Represents the set of possible events
• A landscape of choice and outcome

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Choice and Outcome

• Consequence or Weight
• The significance of an outcome
• Greater consequences alter the course of the game
  more significantly
• Choices are balanced first by consequence

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Choice and Outcome

• Well-designed choice
• Often desirable and undesirable effects
• Should relate to player goals
• Balanced against neighboring choices
• Too much weight to every choice is melodrama
• Orthogonal choices distinct from others
• Not just shades of grey

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Qualities of Choice

• Terms in which to discuss choices
• Hollow lacking consequence
• Obvious leaves no choice to be made
• Uninformed arbitrary decision
• Dramatic strongly connects to feelings
• Weighted good and bad in every choice
• Immediate effects are immediate
• Long-term effects over extended period
• Orthogonal choices distinct from each other

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Goals and Objectives

• Objectives
• Designed tasks players must perform
• Rigid requirements formal
• Goals
• An intentional outcome
• Notions that direct player action
• Scales all levels of motivation
• From selecting particular strategies
• to basic motor actions (e.g. pressing a button)

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Goals and Objectives

• Objectives and goals can differ
• Players goals reflect their understanding of the
  game
• Designers must consider how the game communicates
  with players
• Affordances the apparent ways something can be
  used

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Resources

• Resources
• Things used by agents to reach goals
• To be meaningful, they must be
• Useful provide some value
• Limited in total or rate of supply

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Economies

• Economies
• Systems of supply, distribution, consumption
• Questions regarding game economies
• What resources exist?
• How and when will resources be used?
• How and when will resources be supplied?
• What are their limits?

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Player Strategy

• People usually reason with commonsense
• A view of linear causation cause and effect
• Complex systems do not behave linearly
• Players need information to support linear
  strategy

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Game Theory

• Game Theory
• Branch of economics
• Studies decision making
• Utility
• A measure of desire associated with an outcome
• Payoffs
• The utility value for a given outcome
• Preference
• The bias of players towards utility

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Game Theory

• Rational Players
• Abstract model players not real people
• Always try to maximize their potential utility
• Solve problems using pure logic
• Always fully aware of the state of the game

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Game Theory

• Games of skill
• One-player games
• Outcomes determined solely by choices
• Games of Chance
• One-player games
• Outcomes determined in whole or part by nature
  (chance)
• Games of Strategy
• Competitions between two or more players

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Game Theory

• Decision under certainty
• Players know the outcome of any decision
• Risky decisions
• Probabilities of nature are known
• Decision under uncertainty
• Probabilities of nature are unknown

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Interface

• Interface
• Input, presentation, and feedback.
• Input
• Player to game
• Output
• Game to player

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Interface

• Contains both hardware, software, and performance
  elements.
• Hardware such as game pads
• Software such as engines
• Performance such as pressing a button

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Interface

• Graphical user interface (GUI)
• A visual paradigm of control

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Interface

• Typical perspectives
• First-person
• Over-the-shoulder (OTS)
• Overhead (top-down)
• Side
• Isometric

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Interface

• General categories of audio
• Music
• Sound effects
• Dialog

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Interface

• Music
• Powerful tool for establishing mood and theme

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Interface

• Controls
• Physical input devices
• Control inputs
• User manipulations of the controls
• They are not strategies
• Example a sequence of buttons to perform a combo
• Strategies involve deciding when to perform

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Interface

• Key map or control table
• A diagram showing control input, action, and
  context

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Interface

• Control diagrams
• Show input, action, and context

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Interface

• Front-end
• In application software
• The visible portion of the application
• In games
• GUI elements not displayed during play

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Interface

• HUD (Head-Up Display)
• Displays during play
• Shows and other information difficult to present
  directly in the game environment
• Examples
• Scores
• Resource levels
• Mini Map
• Chat
• Alerts
• Level

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Interface

• Mapping
• An understood relationship between two things
• Especially the relationship of a model to its
  subject
• Examples

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HCI and Cognitive Ergonomics

• HCI Human-Computer Interaction
• Study of
• Communication between users and computers
• How people design, build, and use interfaces
• Better support for cooperative work
• Cognitive Ergonomics
• Analyzes the cognitive representations and
  processes involved with performing tasks

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Design of Everyday Things

• Normans five principles of design
• Visibility
• Making the parts visible
• Mappings
• Understandable relationships between controls and
  actions
• Affordances
• The perceived uses of an object
• Constraints
• Prevent the user from doing things they shouldnt
• Feedback
• Reporting what has been done and accomplished

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Systems

• System
• A set of interrelated components
• Their function and relationships form a whole
• Architecture
• The particular arrangement of system elements
• Game systems exist to enable play mechanics
• Relationships between components determine how
  the system works to produce results

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Systems

• Objects
• Pieces of a system
• Attributes
• Properties determining what objects are
• Behaviors
• Actions the objects can perform
• Relationships
• How the behavior and attributes of objects affect
  each other while the system operates

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Systems

• Two general approaches to design
• Special case
• Experiences built one scene/level at a time
• Anticipate states while pre-scripting events
• Solved by discovering the intentions of the
  designer
• Systemic
• General behaviors are designed
• Scenes/Levels are specific configuations
• Some events may still be pre-scripted
• Solved by understanding the system

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Systems

• Emergent complexity
• Behaviors that cannot be predicted simply from
  the rules of a system
• Emergence
• Coined by George Henry Lewes in 1873
• See John Conways Game of Life

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Systems

• Dynamics
• The behavior of systems over time
• Generalizing dynamic behavior is hard
• Dynamics determined by a given architecture

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Systems

• Cybernetics
• Study of communication, control, and regulation

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Systems

• A basic cybernetic system has
• Sensor detects a condition
• Thermometer
• Comparator evaluates the information
• Switch
• Activator alters the environment when triggered
  by the comparator

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Systems

• Feedback
• The portion of a systems output that is returned
  into the system
• Feedback Loop
• The path taken by the feedback

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Systems

• Positive feedback
• Leads to runaway behavior
• Difficult to make use of
• Negative feedback
• Leads to goal seeking behaviors
• Most common form in systems

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Systems

• Negative feedback
• Stabilizes the game
• Forgives the loser
• Prolongs the game
• Magnifies late successes

• Positive feedback
• Destabilizes the game
• Rewards the winner
• Can end the game
• Magnifies early successes

• Marc Leblanc

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Systems

• System Dynamics
• Created by Jay Forrester 1956, MIT
• A discipline for modeling and simulation
• Originally a tool for policy analysis
• Applicable to any system

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Constraints

• Platform
• General description of hardware and software
• Personal computer PC, Mac, etc.
• Console Game Cube, PlayStation, Xbox, etc.
• Handheld DS, Game Boy Advance, PSP, etc.
• Mobile device Cel Phones, NGage, PDA, etc.
• Arcade custom vending games (e.g. Time Crisis)

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Constraints

• Game Saves
• Save triggers
• Save-anywhere
• Save points
• Coded text saves

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Genres

• Genre a category describing generalities of
  conventions, style, and content

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Genres

• Action
• Adventure
• Arcade
• Casual
• Education
• Fighting
• First-person shooter
• Platform

• Racing
• Rhythm
• Role-Playing (RPG)
• Simulation
• Sports
• Strategy
• Puzzle
• Traditional

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Audiences

• Target audience
• Group of expected consumers
• Demographics
• Study of relevant economic and social statistics
  about a given population
• Demographic variables
• The relevant factors

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Audiences

• Market
• Demographic segmentation of consumers
• Market segments
• Smaller sub-segment of the market more tightly
  defined
• Demographic profile
• Typical consumer attributes in a market

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Audiences

• Heavy Users
• Those of the numeric minority of potential users
  responsible for majority of sales of any product
• 80/20 rule
• Hardcore gamer
• Game industry term for heavy video game users
• Casual gamer
• Game industry term for all other gamers

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Audiences

• Typically assumptions of the hardcore
• Play games over long sessions
• Discuss games frequently and at length
• Knowledgeable about the industry
• Higher threshold for frustration
• Desire to modify or extend games creatively
• Have the latest game systems
• Engage in competition with themselves, the game,
  and others

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Audiences

• Why We Play Games Nicole Lazzaro
• Internal experience
• Enjoyment from visceral activities
• Hard fun
• Challenge of strategy and problem solving
• Easy fun
• Intrigue and curiosity exploration and
  adventure
• Social experience
• Stimulating social faculties competition,
  teamwork, bonding, and recognition

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Iterating

• Waterfall method
• Development methodology
• Design and production are broken into phases
• Iterative development
• Practice of producing things incrementally
• Refining and re-refining the product

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Iterating

• Prototypes
• Early working models of the product
• Used to test ideas and techniques
• Physical prototypes
• Non-electronic models physical materials
• Software prototypes
• Used regularly during iterative development

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Iterating

• Software testing
• Process of verifying performance and reliability
  of a software product
• Tester
• Person trained in methods of evaluation
• Bug
• Discrepancy between expected and actual behavior
• Problem/Bug report
• Description of the behavior of the discrepancy

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Iterating

• Focus test
• Testing session using play-testers
• Testers represent the target audience
• Lots of feedback at one time
• Data can be compromised by group think

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Iterating

• Tuning
• Developing solutions by adjusting systems
• Iterations are faster
• Changes are less dramatic
• Balance
• Equilibrium in a relationship
• Player relationships, mechanics, systems, etc.

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Iterating

• Intransitive relationships
• Multiple elements offer weaknesses and strengths
  relative to each other as a whole
• Balanced as a group
• Example Rock-Paper-Scissors (RPS)

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Creativity

• Ability to create
• Ability to produce an idea, action, or object
  considered new and valuable

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Creativity

• Classic approach - Graham Wallace
• Preparation
• Background research and comprehension
• Incubation
• Mulling things over
• Insight
• Sudden illumination Eureka!
• Evaluation
• Validating revealed insights
• Elaboration
• Transforming the idea into substance

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Creativity

• Brainstorming
• Generating ideas without discrimination
• Evaluation after elaboration
• Can be unfocused

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Creativity

• Six Thinking Hats
• White Hat neutral and objective
• Red Hat intuition, gut reaction
• Black Hat gloomy, naysayer
• Yellow Hat Pollyannaish, optimistic
• Green Hat growth and creativity
• Blue Hat process and control
• Symbolize perspective worn by people involved in
  the creative endeavor
• Edward de Bono

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Inspiration

• Board games
• Spatial relationships
• Card games
• Resource management
• Paper RPGs
• Dynamic narratives
• Books
• Fantasy and agency
• Sports
• Team competition

• Film
• Continuity techniques
• Television
• Serialized stories
• Music
• Temporal systems
• Martial arts
• Discipline in action
• Children
• Invention

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Communication

• Documentation
• Methods vary widely
• Written, descriptive model of the game
• Depth varies according to the needs of the game

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Communication

• Treatment
• A brief, general description of the game and the
  fundamental concepts
• May include
• Concept statement
• Goals and objectives
• Core mechanics and systems
• Competitive analysis
• Licensing and IP information
• Target platform and audience
• Scope
• Key features

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Communication

• Other document types may include
• Preliminary design document
• Initial Design Document
• Revised Design Document
• General Design Document
• Expanded Design Document
• Technical Design Document
• Final Design Document

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Communication

• Flowcharts
• A typical technique for diagramming steps in a
  process
• Most developers are familiar

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Communication
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Communication

• Associative diagram
• Drawing that helps manage and organize
  information visually
• Mind Map
• A style of associative diagram
• Key words and figures are placed on branches

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Psychology

• Working Memory
• Holds roughly 7 2 items at one time while other
  cognitive operations on them

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Psychology

• Attention
• Method of enhancing perceptions relative to other
  stimuli in the same environment
• How we focus on important things
• Limited capacity

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Psychology

• Classical conditioning
• Reaction to stimulus is conditioned by pairing
  with another stimulus that elicits the desired
  response naturally

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Psychology

• Unconditioned stimulus Meat
• Unconditioned response Salivation over meat
• Conditioned stimulus Tone
• Conditioned response Salivation over tone

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Psychology

• Operant conditioning
• Learning by encouraging or discouraging
• Operant
• A response the action in question
• Example pressing a button
• Reinforcement contingency
• Consistent relationship between the operant and a
  result in the environment

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Psychology

• Reinforcers
• Increase the probability an action will be
  repeated
• Positive reinforcement
• Positive stimulus that reinforces the behavior
• Ex. Use umbrella and be dry
• Negative reinforcement
• The removal or prevention of a negative stimulus
• Ex. Use umbrella and keep from getting wet
• Punishment
• Reduces the likelihood of a behavior with a
  stimulus
• Ex. Being burned by a hot stove