A disturbing thought occurred to me a couple of nights ago as I was slowly but surely falling in the domain of sleep: Could it be true that many indie games are seriously harmed by their designers thinking too much about the profit gain logics?

I’ve played web-based MMO rpgs and strategy games occasionally, usually in streaks. The other night I started a campaign of Imperia Online. The game is very basic turn-based (or time-based) strategy / kingdom management game, with lots of optimizing, number-crunching and prioriting to do. Basically you build resource building facilities to be able to produce your fighting forces and keep the production up as going to war is gonna eat a lot of those forces. So, in a few words, lots of fun for your war-monging geeky engineer type, right?

Despite the appealing (if not so much innovative) concept I gave up the game pretty quickly. The reason was Lue koko blogimerkintä »

Interaction Design is different for games than for other types of software. In regular software it is the ease of use, the path with minimum hurdles on the way to the end, that is the goal for interaction designers. In games, the goal is not necessarily to get to the end result in as short time as possible, but keep the player’s interaction with the game (and other players) as enjoyable as possible throughout the whole experience. This requires a different approach and therefore the traditional guidelines for software usability apply only marginally.

As a result there have been many attempts to list, categorize and capture the rules for game usability. One such effort is Interaction Design Patterns, an on-going project of Eelke Folmer, assistant Professor at the Univ. of Nevada and a game and software engineering scholar. Lue koko blogimerkintä »

Puhuin jonkin verran pelisuunnittelusta. Jos haluat tietää lisää, käänny seuraavien lähteiden puoleen:

• Salen, K. & Zimmerman, E. (2004) Rules of Play. Game Design Fundamentals. Cambridge(MA): MIT Press.
• Juul, J. (2005) Half-Real. Video Games between Real Rules and Fictional Worlds. Cambridge(MA): MIT Press.
• Björk, S. & Holopainen, P. (2005) Patterns in Game Design. Hingham (MA): Charles River Media.
• Bethke, E. (2003) Structuring Key Design Elements. Teoksessa Game Development and Production. Wordware Publishing. http://www.gamasutra.com/features/20030411/bethke_01.shtml
• The 400 Project. http://www.theinspiracy.com/Current%20Rules%20Master%20List.htm
• Zimmerman, E. (2003) Play as Research: The Iterative Design Process. Teoksessa Laurel, B. (toim.) Design Research: Methods and Perspectives. Cambridge (MA): MIT Press.
• Rollins, A. & Adams, A. (2003) Andrew Rollins and Ernest Adams on Game Design. Berkeley (CA): New Riders Publishing.
• Rollins, A. & Morris, D. (2004) Game Architecture and Design. A New Edition. Berkeley (CA): New Riders Publishing.
• Crawford, C. (2003) Chris Crawford on Game Design. Berkeley (CA): New Riders Publishing.
• Crawford, C. (1982) The Art of Computer Game Design. http://www.erasmatazz.com/free/AoCGD.pdf

Yhden napin pelimekaniikkoja käsittelen esityksessäni myös lyhyesti. Osuus (ja etenkin hieno Flash-demo) perustuu Berbank Greenin artikkeliin One Button Games (Gamasutra 2005).

Eli millä lailla pelit voivat ovat hauskoja. Tai: mikä tekee pelien pelaamisesta positiivisen kokemuksen.

MDA-mallin esittelevässä artikkelissa esitellään kahdeksankategoriainen luettelo peliestetiikan muodoista:

• Aistikokemukset
• Mielikuvitus
• Narratiivit (peli draaman muotona)
• Haaste (peli esteratana)
• Sosiaalisuus
• Löytäminen (peli kartoittamattomana alueena)
• Ilmaisu
• Ajanviete

Jo edesmennyt pelisuunnittelufirma Ion Storm taas päätyi 17 erilaiseen pelihauskuuden tyyppiin. Mikä on sinun listasi?

Yllä oleva kaavio on MDA-viitekehyksen mukainen. Viitekehyksen perusajatus on se, että pelisuunnittelija pyrkii luomaan pelin, jolla on tiettyjä peliesteettisiä ominaisuuksia. Pelisuunnittelijan työkalut rajoittuvat kuitenkin pelimekaniikkojen luomiseen, joista pelin dynamiikka seuraa emergentisti. Pelaajan pelikokemus taas on tulos pelaajan vuorovaikutuksesta pelidynamiikan kanssa. Pelaaja voi pelatessaan saada selville asioita pelimekaniikasta, mutta hänen katsantakantansa lähtee aina pelin estetiikasta.

Lisää tietoa MDA-mallista artikkelista MDA: A Formal Approach to Game Design and Game Research (Hunicke, R., LeBlanc, M. & Zubek, R., 2003).