Remediation

Remediation is the transfer of tropes/concepts from one medium to another. Our lecturer Rob showed us the movie Run Lola Run as a example of the concept of remediation.

Run Lola Run contained many possible examples of remediation. One of the most significant examples is the idea of a time pressure. In Run Lola Run Lola has 30 minutes to make 50,000 marks or her boyfriend would commit a crime. This kind of time pressure is fairly common in games.

Run Lola run also included the idea of retrying after having failed a task. This is something that gamers do all the time. Pretty much all gamers have had the experience of retrying a single task dozens of times to try and move on in the game.

Narrative in games

In his book Chris Crawford explained that stories are complex structures with hard to meet criteria. He believes that these criteria are often unmet in video games.

Chris Crawford went on to explain that stories in essence are about people. Even stories with a object as a central focus are more interested in how the object effects the people who interact with the object. Crawford believes that this is where games go wrong. In games objects are very important. Equipment obstacles and collectables are all examples of this.

He also talks about the importance of conflict in a story. Conflict can be both direct and indirect. An example of direct conflict is a war but a more indirect example would be a ideological difference between a pragmatist and ideologue for example. Crawford believes that while there is a lot of conflict in games it tends to be conflict of the simplest kind : violence.

I would have to disagree with Crawford but I would also have to give him the benefit of the doubt. The extract that Crawford wrote on this point was from 2005. I am of the opinion that games since then have advanced dramatically in their ability to tell story. Games like 'Mass Effect' and 'the Walking Dead' have really struck out in terms of story telling by offering both social conflict and proper character development.

MDA

All artifacts have a design methodology. iterative quantitative and qualitative analysis help designers by allowing them to analyses the end result and implementation by doing so they can consider a wide range of interdependencies and possibilities.

This is more important in game design where the interations between code creates dynamic complex and unpredictable behavior. These must be considered carefully and they must recognise them before rawing conclusions about the nature of the experience generated.

'MDA is a formal approach to
understanding games – one which attempts to bridge the
gap between game design and development, game
criticism, and technical game research.'

Game design covers alot of fields and designers will have to at some point consider each of them. AI is no exception. seemingly inconsequential decisions will trickle upward shaping the gameplay and all design goals must bottom out in the AI code so design and AI are linked. coherence comes when all coflicting constraints are ironed out. MDA is a proposed solution to this.

Designers create and players consume games like all consumable goods. The difference in games is that the consumption is relativity unpredictable.

The MDA formulises the consumption into :

Rules ----> System ----> 'Fun'

in terms of design

Mechanics ----> Dynamics ----> Aesthetics

Mechanics: components of the game.

Dynamics: 'describes the run-time behavior of the
mechanics'

Aesthetics: Desired emotional emotional response to the game.

Each component can be seen as a lens. To the designer  mechanics give rise to dynamics which give rise to aesthetics but from the perspective of the player aesthetics set the tone which come from dynamics which are created by mechanics.

Aesthetics:

When talking about game we are limited by our vocabulary. So we move towards less ambiguous vocabulary. this includes

'1. Sensation: Game as sense-pleasure
2. Fantasy: Game as make-believe
3. Narrative: Game as drama
4. Challenge: Game as obstacle course
5. Fellowship: Game as social framework
6. Discovery: Game as uncharted territory
7. Expression: Game as self-discovery
8. Submission: Game as pastime'

examples:

'Charades: Fellowship, Expression, Challenge.

Quake: Challenge, Sensation, Competition, Fantasy.

The Sims: Discovery, Fantasy, Expression, Narrative.

Final Fantasy: Fantasy, Narrative, Expression,
Discovery, Challenge, Submission'

Aesthetic Models:

Using aesthetic vocabulary a model can be created which help describe gameplay mechanics and dynamics. we can

New vs Old Games Journalism

During the 1960s a new type of journalism was born. This journalism differed from the norm in that rather than listing objective facts about any given piece of news it offered a first hand account of a event or occurrence offering subjective reactions in place of the objective facts. It was inevitable that after the creation of video games that the medium would be turned onto video games journalism.

Many popular pieces of new games journalism have been created but new games journalism as a genre has received much criticism. A site known as UKresistance made a post named 'seven- point manifesto on why it’s shit' The post went on to say that 'The writer is not the most important person' and 'Then shut up and go away'.

Critics said that new games journalism was not a valuable news source because of it's high subjectivity however I am of the opinion that a subjective form of journalism can have it's place. New games journalism cannot compete in terms or pure information but it need not replace old games journalism. New games journalism can be taken as a separate entity that provides more entertainment and humanity for the reader.

Old games journalism I feel will likely stay the more popular of the 2 forms of games journalism. Though new games journalism can be more entertaining journalism itself is created for the purpose of giving information and that is what drives people to journalism. It is only from there that people are introduced to the less information heavy new games journalism.

Gender and Games

Video games as a medium are generally associated with men. Nerdy unsociable men to be exact but the scope of people who play games has been expanding for quite and time and the diversity among gamers has reached quite a surprising scale.

Surveys into the proportion of people who play games have shown that woman are only few percentage points behind men. A casual observer of the games industry might find this surprising because despite how small the difference most big budget games are clearly geared towards men.

This disconnect can in part be explained by which games women play. Women generally seem to play casual games more than men and casual games tend to have lower and budget and therefore much less advertising. However the difference is not significant enough to fully explain the trend.

It would seem that the main cause is in fact a resistance to change within the industry. The popularity of gaming among women is a relativity new occurrence within the industry and the industry has had time to fully adapt. I believe that the practice of  advertising only to men is a artifact of the industry that will slowly disappear as more and more businesses come to realize that it is beneficial to cater to women.

Bibliography Task.

We were set a task to compile a bibliography containing 6 items that must follow the Harvard formula. The bibliography must contain 6 references. 2 references to full length books 2 references to contributions to books and finally 2 references to articles in refereed journals.

Full-length books:

Dovey, J (2006) Game Cultures: Computer Games as New Media. Open University Press

Schell, J (2008) The Art of Game Design: A book of lenses. CRC Press

Contributions to books:

Bittanti, M (2003) "The Technoludic Film: Images of Videogames in Movies" In Nakatsu and Hoshino., Entertainment Computing: Technologies and Applications. Springer. 307-312

Salen, K. (2002) “Telefragging Monster Movies.” In King, L., (ed.), Game On: The History and Culture of Video Games. London: Laurence King. 98-111.

Articles in journals:

Gonzalez et al. (2013) "Learning to Stand in the Other’s Shoes: A Computer Video Game Experience of the Israeli–Palestinian Conflict" Social Science Computer Review. 31. 236-243

Adachi and Willoughby. (2013) "Do Video Games Promote Positive Youth Development?" Journal of Adolescent Research. 28. 155-165.

Games Britannia 2/3

Part 2: Monopolies and Mergers.

This episode in part talked about one of the mot famous board games of all time Monopoly. The games core mechanics were taken from a old English game by the name brer fox and brer rabbit. The game was created as a critique of the tendency to buy up land in order to turn a prophet. Though the game monopoly is so famous there is much to be said that the game is not very well designed. The game is largely unplayed by board games enthusiasts.

Another game that was shown was the controversial war on terror the board game. The game was a satirical look at the concept of  the war on terror invented by the US government under George Bush. The game received much criticism because games are often not considered reasonable mediums for such criticism.

Part 3 : Joystick Generation

Part 3 of Games Britannia focused mainly on video games and their progress.

The game Elite was shown. Elite is a old space-faring trade game in which the player controls a ship and tries to reach elite status through trade and combat. What I found most interesting in the game was how i recognized many of the ideas and mechanics from more modern and still popular video games. I am surprised that these modern games have their basis in some of the earliest 3D games.

Lara croft was said in the documentary to revolutionize game characters in that she was one of the first to have character and a back-story. There was however opposition to Lara's portrayal. Lara is shown as having a supermodels body and was described in the documentary as 'Pamela Anderson solving problems'. but others disagree saying that although she started out as a caricature she evolved past that.

The episode discussed moral choices in games using the examples of 'Black and White' and 'Grand Theft Auto'. With Black and White the player is a god within the games world and can choose between help or hurting the populace of the world. The game tries to give the player not only a sense of power but a sense of responsibility. GTA however takes a different path. It allows the player to do basically whatever they want moral or not and whether something should be done or whether it is moral is entirely down to the player.

La Decima Vittima

La Decima Vittima is a old Italian film that depicts people participating in a game in which they must hunt down and kill a victim before the victim discovers and kills them first. The characters are on their 10th and final game before they achieve wealth and fame.

The movie was said to inspire the rise in a game of assassin a game in which players hunt down and mock assassinate others.

The movie itself was unusual. It had plot threads that seemed to go nowhere as well as many unexplained occurrences. While watching it I had a impression that there was something that I was not getting about the movie and i suspect this was largely because it was aimed at a 60s audience (and because of the environment I watched it in.)

The controversy regarding the assassin game seems rather forced to me. The idea that people could be actually worried because they see someone chasing another person or hitting each other with fake weapons seems absurd.

Balance notes

Game balance:
Balance can mean

1. in single player games that the challenge is appropriate to the audience.
2. in asymmetrical games that neither player begins with a advantage
3. Whether one strategy is better or worse
4. Whether different objects have the same cost benefit ratio.

In single player games:

As a game goes on generally the difficulty of the game increases. In a single player game this is generally referred to as pacing. In games the problem of whether a game is too hard or too easy is solved generally by play testing. To account for the individual skill of each player you may need to have many testers. as you become more experienced at testing you will be able to better judge peoples skills and therefore require less testers.

Your game will always be too easy or too hard for some people. It is best to aim for the middle of the bell curve  in order to please the most people and use challenge modifier such as difficulty election and handicaps to allow the player to alter the difficulty.

Balance in Asymmetric Games:

Games that are completely symmetric are rare even with games like chess and go one player has to go first. In a symmetric game both players start with the same resources and positions so it may not seem like balancing is needed but other types of balancing are needed. one strategy should not be dominant.

In games the player expectation is that player should be on a equal footing unless the game itself suggests otherwise like in the Great Dalmutti. Asymmetric games are naturally harder to balance. One way of doing so is to link the player resources in some way. With games that have very different play styles between players designers should perform much more play testing to compensate.

Balance between Strategies in a Game:

 Although this might be considered a negative thing since finding the best strategy is how a game is played but the problem is that once a optimal strategy is found all other strategies are ignored. There is nothing wrong with the game having 1 winning start but then the other starts need to be removed to streamline the game.

it is worth having many viable strategies it makes the game much more interesting. Balancing strategies is mostly done with play testing by seeing which strategies are used  most and produce wins the most. Play testing does not necessarily show which games are unbalanced but they do give strong signals as to what to look at.

Balance Between Game Objects:

 Example of game objects are trading cards, units in strategy games and weapons in RPGs. There are 2 goals in balancing these objects. The first is for it to not be too weak so that it is considered useless and the second is to stop it from becoming too powerful and therefor becomes the dominant strategy.

Objects are balanced if they have the same cost/benefit value.

Three Ways to Balance Game Objects:

 There are 3 ways to balance a game. The first is a Transitive relationship more commonly known as the cost curve. This is where you try and find a desirable proportion of costs to benefits which may be linear or curved.

The next step is to try and compare the costs and benefits to see if they are where they should be. This method is most often used in trading card games. In MtG the stats of the card are balanced with the cost of the same card.

The second method is a intransitive relationship between objects. This is often known as a rock-paper-scissors relationship. In this case there is a relationship between objects such that 1 is intrinsically strong against some and weak against others. Transitive and intransitive relations may be combined which is very common among rts.

The third method of balance is to make each object so different from each other that comparisons are impossible. Since comparisons cannot work the only way to balance them is play testing

each method has associated methods. For Transitive relationships the designer has to find the correct cost curve. Intransitive relationships unless done carefully can turn into rock paper scissors and can turn into  guessing game.The third relationship is really hard to balance because you cannot use maths to balamce them

More techniques:

1. Remember the core aesthetic of the game
2. Look at the interconnections between systems. Check if one change effects others systems

Make one change at a time. If you make multiple changes it can be hard to see which change had which effect.

Comments:

A lot of the information in this reading is stuff that I have come across in following popular rts and card games. It is interesting to see all the things you must consider when trying to balance a game.

Of the three methods of balancing i prefer games that focus on the Transitive method. Games balanced around the intransitive method have a tendency to seem fine at first but in the meta transform into a game of who can predict the opponents next move. In Starcraft 2 for example the end of the game often becomes the players quickly switching builds until the opponent slips up. This isn't always the case though and only tends to happen in very long very even games.

Dicing with destiny

Games Britannia showed that games have been around for hundreds of years. I was quite surprised by how some of these games were actually quite complicated. The medieval gospel game especially showed complexity and thought that you wouldn't commonly expect from a average medieval person. It is interesting that games can give a insight into how intelligent these people were.

It showed that games were often used in religious and political rituals. It seems strange that games which we play with so casually once held such significance. The fates of lives were often decided from the outcomes of these games. This is quite a scary concept. Religion has long since lost the power to be able to make these decisions but it wrong that a person would consider it reasonable to base important decisions on these kinds of games.

Games have been shown to have a history with gambling. The game of Hazard was condemned by the church not only because it was gambling but because dice were thought to show the will of god and hazard was said to trivialize this. To think that so many people lost their wealth over games is frightening but not unexpected even today people lose a lot in casinos. From what i can tell though modern casinos seem some what safer. In modern days casinos must be careful as to not cause outrage and must therefore be caeful of completely destroying the wealth of the person.

The documentary questioned whether games should be games of skill, chance or both. I personally believe that games should be games of skill and that chance should be kept to a minimum. In my experience a game that relies to heavily on chance in it's core mechanics is frustrating at best and boring at worst.

The documentary finished off by discussing chess. Chess I think is a great example of game of skill. Although the game is technically solvable it is so complicated that no human could ever solve it because of this it escapes the problem of chance based mechanics while still retaining the tension associated with chance based games.

Space of Possibility and Pacing in Casual Game Design and Rounds, Levels, and Waves notes.

Space of Possibility and Pacing in Casual Game Design

In recent years expressions like 'accessibility' and 'family friendly' have been used a lot more in the games industry. It is commonly said that the change is nothing more than a return to basics and that the new games are similar to Tetris and Pac-man.

'The Casual Games
SIG/Whitepaper available on IGDA's Wiki website
[Casual Games 2009] states that casual games are
“games that generally involve less complicated game
controls and overall complexity in terms of gameplay
or investment required to get through the game”.'

'Casual games are not necessarily of smaller complexity – not in their mechanics, nor in production.'

'Putting it simply, the key element is not the complexity of the system and its mechanics, but how this complexity is presented to the player.'

Putting it simply, the key element is not the complexity of the system and its mechanics, but how this complexity is presented to the player.


4 concepts related to pacing need to be established  Movement Impetus, Tension, Threat and Tempo. These happen in both the lower and upper arc of pacing.

Ur essay

In this essay I will be discussing the Royal game of Ur. In 1920 The Royal Game of Ur was discovered in royal tombs in the ancient city of Ur in Mesopotamia. The tombs themselves are dated as being from 2600 B.C making the games older than the pyramids of Giza. 5 gaming boards were found each found with unique variations of the decorations of the board. 2 groups of designs were found 1 set with very simple counters and a simple wooden board. The other with a very elaborate design and counters made with expensive rocks. All boards had special decorations 5 tiles decorated with rosette patterns. R.C.Bell (1979)


The board has 2 different designs from different time periods. Both designs contained a total of 20 cells but both games had the cells placed differently. Both designs feature a bank of 4 cells at either side of the board and both boards feature a centre column but of different sizes. The centre column in the earlier board was 8 tiles long while the later board had a column that was 12 cells long. In place of the 4 cells the original design has 2 extra banks that are 2 tiles in length (bell)

According to Kendall(1982) The game is played with the board lengthwise between them the players then use dice throws to move their pieces into the their respected safe zones which are the banks of 4 cells and towards the corner. From the corner the players would move their pieces in the opposite direction down the middle row with the objective of moving all their pieces off the end first. Both players then use their respective dice throws to fight for control of the centre column by blocking cells and taking their opponents pieces by landing on the same cell as them.

In the original variation of the board the players would move their pieces onto the secondary bank of 2 cells on their respective sides of the boards this acts as another safe zone for the players as the player cannot move their pieces into their opponent’s banks to capture their pieces. This change was probably made to increase the excitement of the game because the players are able to be taken until the end of the board.

The game traditionally used 4, 4 sided dice that can each either give a result of 0 or 1. In the variation of the game we played the rosette tiles gave a player that landed a piece on it an extra roll. Because the rosette tiles were spaced 4 tiles apart  a roll of 4 (the maximum roll) is significant because it allows a piece to go from one safe rosette tile to another and gain another roll.

I was given the task of iterating the Royal Game of Ur to try and improve the game and try to make it more entertaining. I find that games with elements of skill are more entertaining to a lot of gamers and I therefore am aiming to improve the skill aspect of the game in my iterations.

From my original play-throughs of the game I found that the major flaw was the lack of meaningful choices. The game offered the player a choice of which piece to move with each throw but the choice has no perceivable consequence because the randomness of the game means that the other player is unpredictable.

In order to try and counter this I introduced a change of giving the players the ability to split their throws. By this I mean that if a player were to roll a 3 they could choose to move 1 piece 3 times move 1 piece 1 cell and another 2 cells or move 3 pieces 1 cell each. I anticipated that this change would make the game more engaging by making the player feel that he is having more of an impact on the outcome on the game because they can make all these choices.

When trying out the interaction I found that the game was more enjoyable but for a different reason than I had anticipated. The ability to split the rolls allowed the player to repeatedly hit the rosette tile by making certain pieces hit by giving them the exact required number of moves. Because the rosette tile gave the player an extra roll this meant the player would often get more than 2 rolls a turn. This made the player feel like his is really making a difference in each turn and gave him satisfaction because of this. However the core problem was not entirely fixed since the choices the player makes are obvious and once the player realises this he soon loses interest putting his wins and losses down to chance. Ultimately a player must feel that he is winning because of his/her skill for to really enjoy a game.

To try and fix the problem of choice being obvious I made a second iteration of not allowing more than 1 piece on the same square. I intended this change to reduce the amount of throws a person can achieve in 1 turn by forcing a player to remove a piece from a rosette tile in order to then get another extra roll. The rationale behind wanting this to happen was that if a player has a piece near a rosette square they would try to conserve their extra roll till they are either safe to move or their opponent is in a position to be taken. It was my hope that this would make it easier to overcome the chance aspect of the game.

While i tried this iteration i found that the game had gotten worse. The game as I had predicted had a lot less instances of multiple rolls in a turn however the players quickly realised that by placing a piece on the first rosette tile in the middle column and leaving it there. they could gain a very significant advantage. The piece being on a rosette tile was unable to be taken and a also blocked. this created a area  between the safe area and the first rosette which was extremely hazardous for the other player. The players pieces would have it’s movement stunted by the fact that it cannot land on that rosette square and if they moved past the rosette square they would easily be taken. by the piece on the rosette tile. This advantage while not unbeatable is strong enough to reduce the entertainment value of the game significantly because the player has a valid excuse for their losses which reduces how connected they feel to the outcome of the game..

To fix this I tried a final iteration of not allowing players to have a piece remain on a rosette tile for for more than 2 turns. With this i change i was confident that such a situation could not occur again. I intended this change to make the game more in line with how i expected the game to end up after the previous iteration. I hoped that the chance aspect of the game would be reasonably reduced.

The outcome of the iteration was not entirely successful. The game did have a increase in tactical gameplay but not enough so to really improve the game significantly. Chance could still make the more skillful player lose the game. The game itself did now have some meaningful choices but all they add to the game is a improved chance of winning.

Through my iterations I tried to remove meaningless choices from the game. I wished to make the game to entertaining by making the player feel like they themselves are causing their wins rather than believing that they were just lucky. I felt that the game as it was did not the player with a feeling of control. When i tried to do the iterations they were largely unsuccessful

My iterations taught me that when a game has chance built into it’s core mechanics it is very difficult to change the nature of the game through making iterations to it’s extraneous mechanics.The core mechanics of the game a really the deciding factor on what aesthetics a game will give to the consumer of that game. So if a game’s core mechanics rely heavily on a element of chance the resultant aesthetics of the game will be those of a high tension but also those of a disconnection to the outcome of the game and also often that of boredom.However if a game is fundamentally based on checks of a player's physical or mental ability then the resultant aesthetics will be those of satisfaction achievement or frustration.. Because of this I have therefore learned that if a game is fundamentally chance based it is a better idea to start a new game than to try to turn the game into a game of skill.

In future attempts at iterating games I will use what I have learned and will try to take into account how difficult it is to change a nature of a game and try to make the game more entertaining as the type of game it is.

Building a simple level.

Level building blocks:

• Concept
• Enviroment to exist in
• Beggining 
• Ending 
• Goal
• Challenge to overcome between the character and goal
• Reward 
• Way of handling failure

These are what are generally required to build a level. There are other elements but these are crucial. Without them the level will feel incomplete. Story is not one of these elements be although story can enhance a game it is far from needed.

Key lessons:
Dissonance is when a part of the game may seem out of place or goofy to a player.
The best gameplay mechanics are those that don't require explanation making the player feel clever and keeping the designer behind the scenes.
'Game logic' s where a player can assume that certain situations or objects would behave more predictabley than in real life.
The less the player can blame the designer for failure the better. Being able to blame the designer reduces incentive for the player to continue playing the game.
The more the player can complete the level through simply interacting with the game the better.
Completing a level can be a reward in itself.