Fundaments of Game Design Ch 4 Richard Gesick

Digital to Physical If you can’t design a non-digital game from a digital game, if you can’t work “backward,” you don’t truly understand the nuances of the pure design underneath the art and realized through programming non-digital design is very exposed and tends to reveal bad gameplay mechanics rather quickly. People will have more faith in you, and you’ll have more faith in yourself as a game designer, if you can succeed in a non-digital medium, too.

But this never happens Everything from Halo to Sid Meier’s Civilization to World of Warcraft has been turned into non-digital games Just as great action movies are sometimes made into video games, so too are great video games made into non-digital games

Where to start There are multiple places to start a non-digital version of a digital game. Literal conversions attempt to re-create the gameplay experience as closely as possible in a non-digital medium for which it is ideally suited. Super Mario Kart is an excellent example of a game that could be converted to a race to the end board game with little modification to the game structure.

Thematic conversions take the basic theme of the digital game and apply that to a traditional style of non-digital game. make the original Super Mario Bros. into something similar to a Dungeons & Dragons traditional RPG.

More conversions borrow the storyline but not the mechanics Mechanic conversions take a particular, common mechanic in the digital game and use it as the basis for a non-digital game Finally: Think of a game, and consider how it might work in a non-digital format. A good match doesn’t feel forced