Week Six - An introduction to Game Design

Wow, I'm behind...

Alright then, week six :)

First of all, english is appreciated Mr Crawford.

However, I do think he has a point, games have been a part of our culture since long before we can remember, and that a good game has many outcomes, not just one linar pathway, and that a good game needs conflict of some form in to keep the players interest as it keeps the player interacting with it at all times, for example, Call of Duty, if you look away from the screen for more then a second you will die, or Final Fantasy XI, again real time battles meaning real time deaths.

Games have been a part of everyones lives, to help them with work, play, learning, living, since the long, long before Ancient Egypt, and gameplay has played an important role in this too.

Chris Crawford says that "Game play is a crucial element in any skill-and-action game. This term has been used for some years, but no clear consensus has arisen as to its meaning. Everyone agrees that good game play is essential to the success of a game, and that game play has something to do with the quality of the player's interaction with the game. Beyond that, nuances of meaning are as numerous as users of the phrase. The term is losing descriptive value because of its ambiguity. I therefore present here a more precise, more limited, and (I hope) more useful meaning for the term "game play". I suggest that this elusive trait is derived from the combination of pace and cognitive effort required by the game. Games like TEMPEST have a demonic pace, while games like BATTLEZ0NE have a far more deliberate pace. Despite this difference, both games have good game play, for the pace is appropriate to the cognitive demands of the game. TEMPEST requires far less planning and conceptualization than BATTLEZONE; the demands on the player are simple and direct, albeit at a fast pace. BATTLEZONE requires considerably greater cognitive effort from the player, but at a slower pace. Thus, both games have roughly equivalent game play even though they have very different paces. Pace and cognitive effort combine to yield game play."

Apperently that talks about Game Play, however each individual gamer has thier own ideas, to me gameplay is the interaction between player and game, and how involved you are in the storyline, if the story grips you, making you play till the end credits roll and you think, "Let's do that again!" To me, that is good gameplay.

Games development isn't up to just one person anymore, people have to work together as a team to make a game that is playable and enjoyable, and differnt genres require different techniques and styles, after all, you wouldn't put the sort of graphics that go into say Devil May Cry, or a horror game, into something like Final Fanstay or games of that genre, the graphics would look out of place and disturbing, when the player doesn't need to be disturbed.

(I'd say half the gamers back home are plenty distrubed enough as it is, lol)

When I play a game, the graphics aren't half as important as a good storyline that has me hooked, like a good book that you can't put down, and easy to master, but absorbing interaction with the characters, and heroines and heros of the games, and if the game happens to look absolutly awesome at the same time then yeay!!!!!

So heres week six's thing, a little late but sorry.

Joey