Video Game Design 101

1
Video Game Design 101

• In which we attempt to demystify the video game,
  and endeavour to impart one or more slices of
  wisdom concerning matters of a game development
  nature particularly with regards to video game
  design.

2
Who are you anyway?

• Alex Darby
• Game Designer and Programmer
• alex_at_kungfufist.com

3
What are you going to talk about?

• what is a game?
• how video games work
• basic game design theory
• questions

4
What is a game?

• This is a tricky question.
• Let's consider a few traditional games
• Battleships
• Noughts and Crosses
• Dominoes
• Roulette
• Snakes and Ladders

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Snakes and Ladders isn't a game?

• That's right - it's just a pastime.
• It's not a game because players don't make any
  choices.
• This means there's no way to be any better at it
  than anyone else.

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Is it worth defining games?

• In Rules of Play Salen and Zimmerman define
  game as follows

A game is a system in which players engage in an
artificial conflict, defined by rules, that
results in a quantifiable outcome.
It sounds very nice, and it's good to be able to
regurgitate a definition when asked, but what
does it actually get you?
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So, what is a game then?

• Let's look at the fundamental components of a
  game
• Player(s)
• Rules
• Game State (and Representation)
• Start State(s)
• End State(s win / lose etc.)

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So what is a game then?

• We'll stick with board-games for simplicity's
  sake whilst we try to answer this.
• The rules and game state are strongly
  interrelated, and form a system which the player
  interacts with an interactive system.
• Once a game starts, it consists of a set of
  recurring steps until it reaches an end state
• Examine the board (i.e. game state) to work out
  available options.
• Decide on the best available option.
• The board is updated by following the rules
  associated with the chosen option.
• If the new game state is an end state, the game
  is over, otherwise back to A.
• Each iteration through these steps is known as a
  game loop. The specifics of the game loop differ
  vastly from game to game, but the general form of
  a game loop is more or less the same in all games.

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Input Process Output

• A simple shorthand way to think of the game loop
  (or indeed any interactive system) is as Input
  Process Output
• Input current game state and the player's choice
• Process apply the rules to the game state
• Output new game state
• Each output just feeds into the next
  Input-Process-Output as the current game state
  part of the Input.

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How all this relates to Video Games

• It had to be coming at some point, right?
• Believe it or not, video games are basically just
  board games where the turns are so quick you
  don't notice them happen.
• The rules are the program running on the
  computer.
• The game state is stored inside the computer, and
  represented via the screen.
• The player interacts with it using input devices
  of some kind.

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It sounds so simple...

• ...but that's what makes it hard.
• Computers are very very stupid.
• They need to be told what to do in tiny, tiny
  steps.
• The upshot of this is that the rules (i.e.
  program code) for even a simple game like space
  invaders are far more complicated than for any
  (sensible) board game.
• The good news is that, as long as you don't make
  any mistakes describing the rules, the computer
  will happily churn through vast amounts of rules
  so fast it seems instantaneous.

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So, how do they work?

• Let's work through a very very simplified
  example moving a blob around the screen as
  someone presses the arrow keys.
• The game loop for a video game is typically
• Input read input from joypad / keyboard etc.
• Process move objects around, check for
  collisions, update scores etc.
• Output draw the screen
• Over to the whiteboard for a real time demo!

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Basic Game Design Theory

• The odd thing about game design is that there is
  surprisingly little formal study of it.
• In my experience, ideas are the easy part. Even
  good ideas are 10 a penny.
• The hard part about game design is the little
  things like making sure the menus are simple to
  navigate, or that the ergonomics of the control
  system don't require any extra thumbs.
• Good design is almost invisible it is usually
  immediately obvious if a game is badly designed,
  but good design is often only noticed when you
  stop and think about it.

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What makes a game fun?

• Million pound question!
• Make sure you have a very strong vision of how
  the game will work before you try to make it, you
  should almost be able to play it in your head.
• Noted French Anthropologist Roger Caillois
  conducted a study of play in the early 1960s, and
  wrote book about it called Man, Play, and
  Games. He identified 4 main categories of human
  play behaviours
• Agon (competition)
• Alea (chance)
• Mimicry (simulation)
• Ilinx (physical sensation)
• Considering your game idea with reference to
  these aspects of the psychology of human play
  behaviour can help to add structure to your
  vision for a game.

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What makes a game not fun?

• Easier question to answer!
• Frustration is, in my experience, the most common
  cause of people not finding a game fun.
• It is typically caused by a player being unable
  to progress in a game either because they are
  unable to see what they are doing wrong and
  correct it, or (worse) because they feel that
  some inadequacy in the game system itself is
  preventing them.
• These kinds of problems are difficult to spot
  when you spend all your time working on a game,
  as you lose your objectivity, especially with
  regards to getting used to control foibles.
• The best way to tackle these types of problems is
  to catch them early regularly testing the game
  on people who have never played it before is an
  ideal way.
• Many potentially frustrating aspects of a game
  can be avoided by careful design.

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Avoiding Frustration

• These three watchwords should be applied
  throughout a game.
• The idea is to ensure that each decision made has
  had its game implications carefully considered
  before it is made.
• Consistency. The play experience should be
  consistent, and it should especially be
  self-consistent. If a game is not consistent, the
  player can't rely on being able to generalise
  from one situation to another (as in real life),
  this is very noticeable to us as humans because
  it jars with our everyday real world experience.
• Transparency. The player should always understand
  what the game is asking them to do, and the game
  design should facilitate this whenever possible.
  e.g. making use of iconic / colour conventions
  used in real life etc.
• Determinacy. The player should always feel that
  it was their fault when they make a mistake in
  the game as opposed to a glitch in the control
  system, or a glitch in the camera system which is
  entirely out of their control.

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Avoiding Frustration Again

• Considering the game as a series of Atomic
  Input-Process-Output sequences is, once again, a
  very useful design tool.
• In order for the player to be able to make the
  optimum, i.e. best informed, choice in any given
  Input-Process-Output sequence during the game, we
  need to ensure that the three watchwords
  (consistency, transparency, determinacy) are
  especially strongly applied to the following
• representation of game state to the player
• representation of player's choices
• how the player makes a choice
• how the game gives the player feedback about the
  effect of their choice

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Final Word

• The most important thing in game design is
  knowing when to stop adding new ideas and just
  get the game finished.

19
Questions?

• In which questions are asked, and Alex tries to
  minimise tangentialion.