CS 4730 What is a game? CS 4730 – Computer Game Design

CS 4730 What is a game? Name some games! 2

CS 4730 Is this a game? Chess Monopoly Hopscotch Poker Roulette Golf Flight simulator Dating 3 Treaty Negotiation Tending a fire Karaoke Playing piano Investing in stocks Reading a book Writing poetry Hiking

CS 4730 What makes a game “a game”? Thoughts? 4

CS 4730 Several Definitions “Playing a game is the voluntary attempt to overcome unnecessary obstacles.” –Bernard Suits “A game is a system in which players engage in artificial conflict, defined by rules, that results in a quantifiable outcome.” –Salen & Zimmerman, Rules of Play 5

CS 4730 So… is this a game? Chess Monopoly Hopscotch Poker Roulette Golf Flight simulator Dating 6 Treaty Negotiation Tending a fire Karaoke Playing piano Investing in stocks Reading a book Writing poetry Hiking

CS 4730 All games have… Goals Rules Feedback Voluntary participation (aka “players”) Another thought: –What things are NOT listed here? 7

CS 4730 Not all games have… Winners and losers Interactivity Narrative Competition FUN And others! 8

CS 4730 Wait… NOT FUN? Why do you play games? Or why do people play games in general? 9

CS 4730 Wait… NOT FUN? Escapism Narrative Victory (a whole lot more…) Bartle’s Four Types of Online Gamers –Achiever: overcome challenges, gather rewards –Explorer: discover, understand game worlds –Socializer: interact and role-play –Griefer: distress other players in the game 10

CS 4730 “I play it for the story” What drives you to play a certain game? Do you play a game solely for the story/lore? 11

CS 4730 “I play it for the story” See, I bet most of you started thinking about video games… But let’s back up How about that riveting story in Chutes and Ladders? Candy Land? Monopoly? Okay, now video games… –Exactly how many times has Princess Peach been kidnapped? Is it even a crime anymore? 12

CS 4730 A Playcentric Approach Chapter 1 of Fullerton Gameplay MATTERS This is your job as a game designer! We will have to find graphics, audio, etc for our games, but our focus here is on GAMEPLAY How do we think about gameplay? How do we tease out game mechanics? 13

CS 4730 The World of Balance However, there has to be motivation too This is where narrative and world building comes in The Adams Approach – I want to ________ –What dream are you satisfying? –What goals does this dream create? –What actions achieve those goals? –What setting does this dream create? –What is the appropriate interface? 14

CS 4730 Start Dreaming It’s not too early to start thinking about your game! We will be building with MonoGame Think about the scale of a really good Flash game, not Halo 4 Think about building your game around a single idea/mechanic and then riffing on that Example: light/dark, gravity flip, color matching 15