Game Elements

 

In a previous blog post I made, which can be found here, I talked in depth about What is a Game? Today I looked into different elements within a game. The first article I read was What are the Qualities of Games? by Ian Schreiber. In this paper Schreiber explained that elements of a game include:

• Players
• Objectives 
• Rules
• Resources and Resource Management 
• Game State
• Information
• Sequencing 
• Player Interaction
• Theme (Narrative, Backstory, Setting)
• Games as Systems

He also goes into critical analysis of a game and why it is necessary. Upon hearing the word critical many of people assume that it is a negative look into a game, pointing out it flaws, but in fact it is not. Critical analysis is in fact an in-depth and unbiased look at the game at hand. This is important for game developers because if a game is fun, they want to know why it is fun so they know that that element of the game works and can be carried out in their future work. As well as pointing out the good, it is of course beneficial to a game developer to know what is not working and what they need to work on in the future.

The second paper I read today was Game Design Research by Annakaisa Kultima. It goes into depth about the difference of design research and game design research and how they are both extremely important in developing a game. 

Lastly I watched Introduction to Game Design. In this short video two game developers talked through their process of trialing out game play ideas for their new game. They described how important it is to test out various different ways of playing the game. For their game it was inspired by ping pong. To begin with they started off with the basics, using pen and paper to draw out the game layout, they then progressed to physically messing around with the game, using the ping pong table and rackets, they tried playing the game different ways. This helps develop your idea and maybe discover new aspects to add to the game. It also makes you understand what you are creating a lot more and overall greatly improves your final product.