Essential books about game design & gaming concepts - EPISODE IV

Another two good books from my particular game design library to complement the first, the second and the third posts of this subject. In the end of each topic of this post there´s a link to Google Books with previews.



•The gamification of learning and instruction by Karl M. Kapp (link)

•The Grasshooper by Bernard Suits (link)

Ludologists love stories, too: notes from a debate that never took place

By Gonzalo Frasca (Thanks for share the text in my blog!)

ABSTRACT
During the last few years, a debate took place within the game scholars community. A debate that, it seems, opposed two groups: ludologists and narratologists. Ludologists are supposed to focus on game mechanics and reject any room in the field for analyzing games as narrative, while narratologists argue that games are closely connected to stories. This article aims at showing that this description of the participants is erroneous. What is more, this debate as presented never really took place because it was cluttered with a series of misunderstandings and misconceptions that need to be clarified if we want to seriously discuss the role of narrative in videogames.

Keywords
Ludology, narratology, ludologist, narratologist, narrativism, narrativist.

INTRODUCTION
This is an unusual article. My original intention was writing a paper on the role of narrative in videogames (through cutscenes and instructions) for conveying simulation rules. When I mentioned this to a colleague, he was shocked: he thought that, since I amknown as a ludologist, there was no way I could accept any role for narrative in games. Of course, I told him he was wrong and that such idea of ludology is totally erroneous. That misconception is, I think, a direct consequence of the so-called narratology versus ludology debate. I believe that this debate has been fueled by misunderstandings and that generated a series of inaccurate beliefs on the role of ludology, including that they radically reject any use of narrative theory in game studies.

Since I guess that I have been in a privileged position to witness the development of this debate over the last four years, I decided to write down a list of the most common misconceptions that it generated. It is not my main intention in this paper to support ludology but rather making explicit all the contradictions that prevented this debate from taking place. However, I do not pretend to be totally objective neither: I do not favor narrative as a privileged means for understanding videogames for reasons that have been previously exposed by several authors and are beyond the scope of this article. Finally, I would like to make clear that I will be speaking only for myself and I am the only responsible for all the opinions expressed in this article.

CLICK HERE to download the complete document.

Essential books about game design & gaming concepts - EPISODE III

Another six good books from my particular game design library to complement the first and the second posts of this subject. In the end of each topic of this post there´s a link to Google Books with previews.

•Hamlet on the holodeck: the future of narrative in cyberspace by Janet Horowitz Murray (link)

•Game interface design by Brent Fox (link)

•Killing monsters: why children need fantasy, super heroes, and make-believe violence by Gerard Jones (link)

•Man, play, and games by Roger Caillois (link)

•Imagination and Play in the Electronic Age by Dorothy G. Singer, Jerome L. Singer (link)

•Video game spaces: image, play, and structure in 3D game worlds by Michael Nitsche (link)

Quotations of the day

Think about it:

“One of the most difficult tasks men can perform, however much others may despise it, is the invention of good games. And it cannot be done by men out of touch with their instinctive selves.” — Carl G. Jung

“My work is a game, a very serious game.” — M. C. Escher

“Play is the highest form of research.” — Albert Einstein

Jesper Juul

Jesper Juul is a video game theorist and assistant professor in video game theory and design at the Centre for Computer Game Research Copenhagen where he also earned his PhD. His book Half-Real on video game theory was published by MIT Press in 2005. Additionally, he works as a multi-user chat systems and casual game developer. In the video below you can see Jesper talking a little bit about his book, games, game design and gaming concepts:

He is one of my favorite authors and his book "Half-Real: Video Games between Real Rules and Fictional Worlds" has some excellent insights that I´ve used a lot in my classes in this year. Two quotes from this book that I want to highlight here are:

“To play a video game is therefore to interact with real rules while imagining a fictional world, and a video game is a set of rules as well as a fictional world”.

“These are the two things that video games are made of: real rules and fictional worlds”.

And I want to share an excellent diagram about the universe of the games from this book too:

And for last I want to leave a very interesting link from Jesper Juul´s site: its a "Dictionary of Video Game Theory". Click here to go to the URL.

Enjoy!

---

Reference:
JUUL, Jesper. Half-Real: Video Games between Real Rules and Fictional Worlds. USA: MIT Press, 2005.

Defining Alternate Reality Games (ARGs)

"(...) a fictional genre that unites real life, treasure hunting, live-action, games and online communities. These games are an intense series of puzzles involving websites, clues in newspapers, phone calls from other characters and much more."

Dave Szulborski, author of "This is not a game, a guide to ARGs"

Companies are already using mechanics of this tool in their communication strategies. If you want to know more about ARGs access this site http://argn.com/ and see the excellent video case from "Batman Dark Night ARG" below.



SZIA!

Ludic interfaces

Let's discuss in this post a very contemporary concept: ludic interfaces. According to European Masters in Ludic Interfaces program: Ludic interfaces are playful interfaces. The notion of a homo ludens, introduced by Johan Huizinga, is the conceptual backbone of the tools we are looking at. Think of devices like the Wii console, solar power operated building facades, unconventional musical instrument controllers, game art devices.

The tools and concepts applied with the concept of ludic interfaces differ from traditional technological systems as they are playful, user-generated and user-driven, flexible, low-cost and cooperative. Ludic interfaces take the best from computer games, artistic experiment, interactive media, media conversion, social networks and modding cultures and result in tools that offer an ease of use and playfulness to cope with a rapidly changing society.

The american school "QUEST TO LEARN" shows us a good way to apply these ideas in the video below:

At its core, "ludic interfaces" is a subcategory of interfaces in general. The notion is not restricted to electronics or HCI, even if the terminology was developed in respect to digital technology. Various authors suggest to use the term "ludic interfaces" for non-digital phenomena, e.g. architectural facades, skins, wearable computers, media art.

We can use ludic interfaces in publicity/promotion. A ludic interface could be a brand experience. A ludic interface could be an advertising space for companies and people. We can use ludic interfaces to teach, to learn and to create experiences.

Szia!

Free book for download

I´m talking about this excellent book named "Tabletop: Analog Game Design" by Drew Davidson and Greg Costikyan. There are a lot of good texts with great explanations and researches of the universe of analog games.

In this volume, people of diverse backgrounds talk about tabletop games, game culture, and the intersection of games with learning, theater, and other forms. Some have chosen to write about their design process, others about games they admire, others about the culture of tabletop games and their fans. The results are various and individual, but all cast some light on what is a multivarious and fascinating set of game styles.

CLICK HERE FOR DOWNLOAD.

Game design process: a second approach

By Vince

In a previous post I’ve talked about the process to create a board game. In this post I intent to discuss a different kind of game design process, I want to discuss the creation of a mobile phone game made in SMS (short message service).

The game discussed in this case is a promotional game made to a Brazilian mobile company named VIVO and the name of the game is “VIVO EM AÇÃO” (something like “live in action” in English). This promotional action was a detective game with a history focused on clues and enigmas; the player takes an investigator role and needs to solve a lot of mysteries to have more chances to gain the promotional prizes (PlayStations, mobile phones, backpacks, etc.).

The game is based in mobile text messages. So we needed to create a script with information architecture basis; the script of the game is made of what we can call “decision trees”.

This is very simple to understand: it’s very similar to an old role playing game book. You read a paragraph and the text shows you a bunch of options to go ahead in the narrative.

For instance:

“Detective, you are in front of the university. What are you going to do? Option 1: enter the building; Option 2: search for clues around; 3) Option 3: try to enter the back door”

So each chapter of the game (and we made five chapters) looks like this:

As a promotional game, it is important to create points in the narrative where we can offer pay services from the mobile company. So, we decided to put – as a help to the players – hints and tips of the game that the player can buy using services and other tools of the company.

The great challenge here is to create a game based only in limited text (because each message needed to have a maximum of 138 characters) and build an immersive and fun narrative to get the player inside the story.

This promotion had a great audience. Around 2 million of people participating in it, making it a successful Brazilian case.

It was a great challenge to create this game because of his limitations. But I think that limitations are an important piece of the game design process.

And you? What do think about that?

DIGRA 2011. Keynote: Eric Zimmerman

The award-winning veteran game designer talking about game development in DIGRA Think Design Play Conference. It´s a very short movie with the core of the presentation.



Enjoy.

All games share four defining traits

No matter the platform, the games share some essential features. May be "Tic Tac Toe" or "Gears of War 3" you can find some similarities between them. Let's see four main points:

•The goal: is the specific outcome that players will work to achieve

•The rules: place limitations on how players can achieve the goal.

•The feedback system: tells players how close they are to achieving the goal.

•The voluntary participation: requires that everyone who is playing the game knowingly and willingly accepts the goal, the rules, and the feedback.

---

Source: McGONIGAL, Jane. The reality is broken. London: The Penguin Press, 2011, pg. 21

# Why study games?

In this post I intend to show seven points of view to answer this question. There are some interesting links to download .PDF documents in the end of topics. Enjoy!

1.First of all, in the last eight years the game industry has grown more than any other in entertainment and games have overdone cinema revenues and are now the third industry in the world, being beat only by weapons and automobilistic industries.

2.Globally, the online gamer community – including console, PC, and mobile phone gamimg – counts more than 4 million gamers in the Middle East, 10 million in Rússia, 105 million in Índia, 10 million in Vietnam, 10 million in México, 13 million in Central and South América, 15 million in Austrália, 17 million in Soth Korea, 100 million in Europe, and 200 million in China.
Source: Games Segmentation 2008 Market Research Report (download link)

3.With all of this play, we have turned digital games (PC, consoles, mobile phones, etc.) into what is expected to be a $68 billion industry annually by the year 2012.
Source: NewZoo Amsterdam 2010 (download link)

4.In the USA:
• 97% of youth play computer and video games;
• 69% of all heads of household play computer and video games;
• 40% of all gamers are women;
• One out of four gamers is over the age of fifty;
• The average game player is thirty-five years old and has been playing for 12 years;
• Most gamers expect to continue playing games for the rest of their lives.
Source: ESA Essential Facts 2010 (download link)

5.Collectivelly, the planet is now spending more than 3 billion hours a week gaming.
Source: McGONIGAL, Jane. The reality is broken. London: The Penguin Press, 2011, pg. 5

6.In 2010 the first person shooter game"Call of Duty: Black Ops” has sold over U$ 1 billion in the first month.

7.The truth is this: in today´s society, computer and video games are fulfilling genuine human needs that the real world is currently unable to satisfy. Games are providing rewards that reality is not. They are teaching and inspiring and enganging us in ways that reality is not. They are bringing us together in ways that reality is not.

Source: McGONIGAL, Jane. The reality is broken. London: The Penguin Press, 2011, pg. 4

Game design process: an approach

By Vince

I would like to discuss game design in this post. More specifically, the design of a boardgame. It’s a game I’ve created and it’ll be published next month here in Brazil.

The game I'll use as an example in this post is YN (this is greek for "earth"). However, the game suffered a lot of changes from its creation until it was published. I want to show the different phases of this game design process.

Also, I would like to emphasize that this is just one way we can use to create games. I believe each game designer has his/her own techniques to create game ideas and gaming concepts.

•STAGE 1: write ideas, rough draft and pre-prototype them

First of all, I believe it is important to have a notebook to write your ideas. In this moment, use the force and let your mind flow, start to write every important thing. I use to call this process “single player brainstorm”.

While writing the ideas try to draw some rough drafts of the core idea of the game. It’s the first tests of mechanics and dynamics.

In the case of YN, I was thinking of an area control game with dices and dominos sequence mechanics. I’ve made a lot of studies and drawings to reach the balance of core mechanics, board layout, number of dices to each player and the most important: seeing if the game works

I think it's important – in this moment - to consider the idea that game design is the process of creating the content and rules of a game, and good game design is the process of creating goals that a player feels motivated to reach and rules that a player must follow as he makes meaningful decisions in pursuit of those goals. (BRATHWAITE & SCHREIBER, 2009)

So, in a few days I had a lot of rules notations and a pre-prototype board to start a beta test with some friends. In the picture below it’s possible to see the first model of the game (without an official name at this moment) made with paper, pen and a bunch of white dices.


•STAGE 2: prototype with simple layout

Well, if the pre-prototype works I think it’s fine to make a better version of the product. It’s time to make a real prototype in the computer using a minimum of layout just to give the game a clear aspect.

I always use Photoshop to create my prototypes. There’s a lot of tools in the software and it’s possible to make fast layouts in its interface.

In this part of the process I had an idea for the name of the game. I called it “Hatszög” (it means hexagon in Hungarian, I know it´s weird, but I am a hungarian language student) and I made a better board, bought good dices and even made a box with a simple illustration. And an important thing: in this moment the game had its rule book ready.

In the next picture it’s possible to see the prototype with a simple layout.

•STAGE 3: final and published version

So, we reach the third and final part of our game design process. A Brazilian company named HIDRA GAMES asked for an idea for a collection of abstracts games. This company already had a first game named AERO (with the idea of AIR element as the main theme) and was searching for a mechanics for the second game of the series: YN (with the EARTH theme).

So “Hatszög” turned into YN and a lot of things changed. In the mechanics we added a new element: a stone token that creates different setups on the board; so now it’s possible to put a sequence of dices from your pool and sometimes block the opponent’s strategy (and we made a lot of new beta testing sessions to adjust this new feature in the game). Just to remember and explain, the goal of the game is to place the biggest amount of dices as possible in the board, with the purpose to finish the game with the smaller sum of numbers on the remaining dices.

Well, the name has changed and the game gained a brilliant art from Marcelo Bissoli (a specialist in boardgame layout). He made a lot of changes like removing hexagons and putting circles in place. Marcelo also made a very beautiful volcanic background to the board and a spectacular box with a very vibrant and strong logo. Now we a have a finished game in all phases.

And the text behind YN’s box tells us: “Billions of years ago, when the earth was just an incandescent globe that began to cool - big masses of rocks and ores, that were before in a liquid state, started to solidify, creating what we call today a terrestrial crust. The magma, still boiling and liquid, started big waves around an unstable soil and this huge rock layers collided and rose from the soil, creating the mountains. In YN a player will experience the idea of creating these mountain rages using dices in a scenario that simulates the Earth at its formation process”.

Let´s see a little bit of the final layout of the game:

In a few words I think I transmitted the core idea of a game design process. I intend to show, in another post, the game design process to a narrative game, more specifically a mobile phone game where the player uses only SMS (short message service) to play. There are a lot of differences to show.

Viszontlátásra! =)

---

•REFERENCE:

BRATHWAITE, Brenda & SCHREIBER, Ian. CHALLENGES FOR GAME DESIGNERS: non-digital exercises for vídeo game designers. USA: Cengage, 2009.

Games inside movies - episode I

There's a lot of good movies with games as the main plot. I want to show some of my favorites in this blog. In this first post I´ll show to you three great productions.

I'm talking about: The Game (1997), Existenz (1999) and Gamer (2009).


THE GAME (David Fincher, 1997). Is the story of a wealthy financier named Nicholas Van Orton that gets a strange birthday present from wayward brother Conrad: a live-action game that consumes his life. There are good references about ARGs (Alternate Reality Game) and transmedia storytelling in this movie.



EXISTENZ (David Cronenberg, 1999). A game designer on the run from assassins must play her latest virtual reality creation with a marketing trainee to determine if the game has been damaged. Very weird movie.



GAMER (Mark Neveldine & Brian Taylor, 2009). In a future mind-controlling game, death row convicts are forced to battle in a 'doom'-type environment. Convict Kable, controlled by Simon, a skilled teenage gamer, must survive 30 sessions in order to be set free. This one is not a favorite of mine, but still a very fun movie.



Enjoy!

My DIGRA 2011 publication: Using a game as an advertising piece for a brazilian politics campaign

I´ll share my DIGRA 2011 publication in this blog. I presented this case in 15th september (2011) in the Think Design Play Conference at Utrecht School of Arts and Technology (Hilversum). Enjoy!

•ABSTRACT
We seek to analyze the use of a game as an advertising piece for a brazilian politics
campaign. We discuss the impact of a game in the mediatic scene of internet and how
important it can be for a new political scene in the contemporary world. Keywords: Serious game, internet, politcs, casual game

•INTRODUCTION
In this presentation we seek to analyze the use of a game as an advertising piece for a politics campaign. We are talking about the game “Pacto pelo Pará” (Pact for Pará –
Pará is a brazilian state), that was used on the elective campaign of governor Simão
Jatene in the year of 2010.

•DESCRIPTION AND SOME THOUGHTS
The game consists in a very intuitive interface, based on the well-known internet game
named Bejeweled. It has four stages and instead of gems, social problems (education,
sportes, healthcare) are presented, to be solved. The player needs to click in similar
ortogonal icons to eliminate them of the screen. A lateral score shows how much of the
objectives were accomplished. In the picture below, it´s possible to see the game interface.

Figure 1: the interface of the game. There´s a time counter, a score for points and a bonus multiplier. The icons in the center of the screen reflects social problems to be solved. (design and code by Cenildon Muradi Jr.)

The player, at the end of each stage, has the opportunity of sending their collaboration on a 140-character text form. The opinions expressed by each player at the end of each stage are put in a weblog and belong to an idea of a collaborative government. Obviously there’s a filter to ban the posting of offensive content. At the end of the fourth stage, the player has the opportunity of taking a picture using their webcam along with the point record achieved in the game, and challenging a friend to make a higher score. In the picture below, it´s possible to see this feature of the game.

Figure 2: in the end of a stage it's possible to send opinions, critics and praise about the social problems to the political group.

For a better understanding of the game there´s an internet adress for it in
http://www.vincevader.net/conference/

This game fits on the Casual Game category, that, according to Gregory Trefay, can be
defined as games that are quick to play, accessibles and with a simple mechanics. In this kind of game: the rules and goals must be clear; players need to be able to quickly reach proficiency; casual game play adapts to a player´s life and schedule; game concepts borrow familiar content and themes from life.

It also enters the category of Serious Game, that following the thoughts of Nick Iuppa and Terry Borst, is explained as a game with a professional, educational or pedagogical use. a kind of game that mixes storttelling with a mechanics to send a serious message to the players envolved in the process.

We recently observed that the campaign for the U. S. President Barack Obama, amongst many other tools, used games and advertising inside games (in-game advertising) in it. We notice the importance of using a gamelike language to reach the digital-native audience. On the game Pacto pelo Pará, we notice the importance of using the game as an instrument of gathering, with an interface for social network and thus, becoming a viral marketing tool for the candidate’s campaign.

In this context, we use the idea of Johan Huizinga, author of the book Homo Ludens, in which he explains that in the human nature there is a tendency to play games or other ludic activities.

With this work, we sought to collaborate with the entertainment industry and the gamedeveloping area, specifically politic games.

•PDF PRESENTATION

View more presentations from vincevader

---

•REFERENCES

HUIZINGA, Johan. Homo Ludens. São Paulo: Perspectiva, 2005.

Iuppa, Nick & BORST, Terry. Story and simulations for serious games: tales from the
trenches. Burlington: Focal Press, 2007

TREFY, Gregory; KAUFMANN, Morgan. Casual Game Design. Burlington: Morgan Kaufmann, 2010

PopCap Games. (2000). Bejeweled. [Intrenet, first version], PopCap Games, USA: played january, 2011.

What is Game Design?

I´ll talk a little bit about game design in this post. I think it's an important discussion to bring to the blog.

Game design is a process of: imagining a game; defining how it works; describing the elements that are going to be part of the game (concept, art, foundation); passing these data on to the team that will produce it.

And we can't forget to talk about game key-components . Game key-components are: core mechanics (the kernel of the game); the challenges and actions ; interface (how the player interacts with the game ); and storytelling engine (the immersive screenplay itself).

The graph below show us this idea:

We can use this ideas in any platform: board games, video games, war games, etc. It´s important to have a good sinergy between the player, the interface and the core mechanics.

If you like this concepts i'll suggest a very good book named Fundamentals of Game Design (ADAMS, Ernest. Fundamentals of Game Design. New Riders: 2009).

Enjoy!

How about "ludification"?

By Vince

Last week, I had the opportunity to participate at Think Design Play DIGRA 2011, a congress in the city of Hilversum, Holland. During the three days of the event, many themes were discussed, among them: the main tendencies for the game industry, the use of games in education and politics, new interactive interfaces using game mechanics and the influence of violence in electronic games. I took part on a “advertising and games” panel, where I exposed some cases and concepts of games used in political campaigns, from a category called “serious games”.

I had the chance to participate in many panels and see excelent key notes, but it was during a presentation of Professor Espen Aarseth – a major figure in the emerging fields of video game studies and electronic literature – that I had the insight that led me to start writing on this blog.

Aarseth criticized the use of the term “gamification” in the present scenario, meaning that there’s much more in the term - we are forgetting some previous and extremely important concepts when we talk about inserting game mechanics in a non-game atmosphere.

In order to continue Aarseth’s argument, I propose a term to dwell on: "ludification", instead of "gamification". When we discuss "gamification", we are only talking about games, and I believe the idea is to go beyond that. When we use the word ludus – latin for “play” – we realize that the idea is to instert much more than just game mechanics for processes that are not games.

I believe that, when talking about "ludification", we are thinking of playful interfaces in a broader way. It can be a game mechanic, as well as a deeper way of telling a story. I can be common element to the language of games, like the rolling of a dice, as well as it can be a cartoon in a different context.

My point is that this is the century of playfulness, and more than just thinking of a way to offer games to a diverse audience, we should learn how to offer varied languages of entertainment – where the game is also inserted.

Now on to your opinion!