The Royal Game of Ur

It would be a blatant lie to say this wasn't a difficult game to study, and iterating it into something interesting was a serious challenge. What passed for entertainment in the year 2 BCE explains how they got so much work done; if the games are this boring carrying an enormous boulder on your back to build a pyramid sounds like a pretty good night out.

At least it's better than Ur!

But I digress.

Our first thought was to speed up the gameplay itself.  Toward the beginning of the game especially, the pacing stagnates pretty quickly as players are unwilling to jump into the unsafe main play corridor from their start zones. A common iteration in our class was changing when you could add new pieces into play; we decided to keep the original rule of being able to play new pieces on any turn with any die roll above 0.

ITERATION 1 - KINGS

Our initial idea was to improve the mechanic of  "doubling-up" and increase the pace of the game with one stone. We turned doubled pieces into Kings, which have the ability to take pieces even when on Rosette squares (typically safe zones). Kings can only be created when a piece is moved onto a Rosette square which already contains a friendly piece. This MUST be a dedicated roll, i.e. the entire roll must be used on a single piece, and if you do not fall on the Rosette square you cannot make a King (a la finishing the game, exact rolls off the board). Each player can have only one King on the board at once.

This worked fairly well, though we came up with a few rules in medias res, which felt natural, and fed into iteration 2. Regular pieces attacking Kings resulted in the King losing a piece, but keeping it's position. Kings can also be used as "blockers", which are impassable by friendly or enemy pieces. This gave us the idea for iteration 2.

ITERATION 2 - COMBAT

We decided combat was a rather passive process in this game. The centre lane, especially toward the beginning, seemed to be entirely waiting for your opponent to move in front of you so you can take them, and then they take you etc. We reiterated combat so exact rolls are needed to take. When you take, you occupy the place of the piece taken (except with Kings). You can move past a piece if your have a high enough roll, which can be useful for accessing Rosettes or the exit.though you can divide your roll between pieces. For example:

If black is in this position and rolls 4..

He could take all 3 white pieces by dividing his roll. Unlikely, but possible.

Also, we removed some of the value of Rosette squares by having them protect you for a limited time, up to two opponent turns. This prevents "camping", keeping the game moving as no piece is permanently safe, and reduces the chance of Kings.

These combat rolls added a layer of strategy toward the end game as piece hopping became a more viable tactic in addition to simple taking.

ITERATION 3 - MORE DICE ROLLS 

A quick final addition was a board modification to further increase the games pacing. We added marked squares to the board; when a friendly piece occupies one of these squares, you gain a supplemental die roll.

A maximum of four squares are available to each player, with a potential of four supplemental rolls per turn. The squares are hard to hold for very long though; an optimal strategy is trying to hold a few early on to move pieces further down the board out of harms way.
These are a once-per-turn supplement. A Rosette stone extra roll, will not grant another set of supplemental rolls. A practical example:

If black rolled two, he could move a piece to his closest Rosette Stone...

Which would grant him an extra roll, as per the norm. As he now only has one marked square occupied, he rolls his one extra die, and does what he will with that result. On his Rosette extra roll though, regardless of the number of marked squares occupied he can only roll normally.

This had the effect of speeding up the game quite significantly, and added quite an amusing competition with territory control. This is probably my favourite iteration, especially combined with the combat iteration. Further refinements for this idea included making these marked squares harder to hold, and perhaps on a separate path on the board, as a risk/reward alternative.

Game pending.

Space of Possibility and Pacing in Casual Game Design – A PopCap Case Study

http://learn.ucs.ac.uk/bbcswebdav/pid-195672-dt-content-rid-353466_1/courses/IMDCGD110-12YRD/Week%20By%20Week%20Module%20Readings/Week%20By%20Week%20Readings%20Readings%20for%20week%207%20Space%20of%20Possibility%20and%20Pacing%20in%20Casual%20Game%20Design_A%20PopCap%20Case%20Study/Space%20of%20Possilbility%20and%20Pacing%20in%20Casual%20Game%20Design%20_%20A%20Popcamp%20Case%20Study.pdf

The article begins with by discussing the idea of casual, pick up and play: what is the "casual" design methodology. PopCap leads market, so they and their games are studied.

Venturelli defines casual games as "games that offer the possibility of “pick up and play”, and experiences that can be enjoyed in small bursts and interrupted by the player without penalty or perceived penalty. 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." This definition helps avoid confusion as to what exactly constitutes a casual game.

Following this comes 5: DEFINING CONCEPTS.

 5.1 PACING

A large idea with a small tagline, pacing is the use of MDA to control game flow, and create relaxation, tension and repetition. Creates "pace".

 5.2 MOVEMENT IMPETUS, TENSION, THREAT, TEMPO

Four concepts are related to pacing, defined by Davies [2009]:

Threat is generated on the level of game mechanics, existing  as  the  power  struggle  tips  in  favor  of  the
system or the player's opponent(s). For the purposes of this work, “Tension”  is the perceived  danger  that a
player might become the weakest side on the conflict, while  “Threat”  is the  actual  power  of  the  opposing
forces  on  the  conflict  (the  system  itself  or  other players), a concept directly related to game balance.
Aesthetic resources such as graphics and sound can be used to increase or decrease Tension, but not Threat.

Movement Impetus, is the will or desire of a player to move forward through a level

Tempo is the “intensity” of play. It is the time between each significant decision made by the player.
(I had problems here: Low tempo = fast? High tempo = slow? Also, this sounds more like pacing to me than all 3 of the above concepts.)

Section 6 moves onto the ideas of the Space of Possibility and Player Experience

Space of possibility roughly equates to the amount possible within a game. Taking a definition of fun as "pleasure with surprises", no more surprises = no more fun. For e.g:

• Tic tac toe: very limited, , no surprise, boring fast
• Chess: unlimited, constant surprise, intriguing

However, it is not safe to assume that simply making a game with more patterns will turn it into a good experience. An example from PopCap is the sequel to Bejeweled, in which jewel movement is seemingly needlessly limited. However, the lead developer says that because players now have a larger space of possibility to analyze before making their moves. This made the game a lot slower and more deliberate. "No one wants to make uninformed decisions – if a player is forced to take  action  whithin  a  system  without  feeling  that he/she  has  assessed  all  the  possible  actions  and outcomes for that game state, he/she is very likely to become frustrated."Essentially, as the Space of Possibility increases, Tempo also
increases. Higher Tempo generates lower Player Impetus.

This design approach will lead to an inevitable Catch-22 while trying to find a “right balance” or a “sweet spot” between small and large spaces of possibility.

I thought this was a very interesting article. "Casual" games, and the PopCap revolution especially, are very new in gaming, having seemingly sprung up overnight. The article does a very good job nailing down the idea of pacing and its four connected concepts. I will say that THIS GOT VERY COMPLICATED AROUND THE END. Instead of tying everything together, several new concepts are bandied about on the last page alone, making it a lot tougher to swallow. Perhaps they could have used some better pacing (ha).

MDA - A Formal Approach to Game Design

MDA, or mechanics, dynamics and aesthetics, is an attempt at creating a formal approach to video game design and game research, penned by Robin Hunicke, Marc LeBlanc and Robert Zubek (and run on sentence). It is designed to help bridge the gap between game design and development, game
criticism, and technical game research, as well as help "clarify and strengthen the iterative
processes of developers, scholars and researchers alike, making it easier for all parties to decompose, study and design a broad class of game designs and game artifacts."

To begin, we must understand MDA.

• Mechanics - The particular components of a game
• Dynamics - Run time behaviour of mechanics, acting on player inputs and other dynamic outputs
• Aesthetics -Describes desirable emotional response evoked

This MDA framework formalizes video game consumption, which is necessary because of the difference between games and other entertainment (books, music, movies): game consumption is relatively unpredictable. The string of events that occur during gameplay and the outcome of
those events are unknown at the time the product is finished. MDA breaks games down into their distinct components and matching them to their deign counterpart.

Fundamental to this framework is the idea that games are more like artifacts than media. By this they mean that the content of a game is its behavior and not the media that streams out of it towards the player.

Thinking about games as designed artifacts helps to frame them as systems that build behavior via interaction. "It supports clearer design choices and analysis at all levels of study and development."

MDA as a Lens

Each aspect of MDA framework can be seen as it's own viewpoint, or lens. It is important to consider this, as a designer, as a player will almost always have an opposite viewpoint to you.

It is helpful to consider both the designer and player perspectives. It helps us observe how even small changes in one layer can cascade into others. In addition, thinking about the player encourages experience-driven (as opposed to feature-driven) design.


The article goes on to have a very in-depth look at aesthetics, dynamics before finishing with mechanics. It was a highly useful and informative piece, and I have a feeling it will come back to haunt me in every piece of work I do on this course.To be honest I couldn't think of a better article to help me.

As a final note, a very useful resource I have used for years now is Extra Credits, an online show which attempts to formally discuss games and help games designers both green and veteran. They happen to have an episode relating directly to this topic which may be worth a watch for someone looking to supplement their knowledge.

http://penny-arcade.com/patv/episode/aesthetics-of-play

Costikiyan and Game Design Fundamentals

 After a read through of chapter 2 of Greg Costikyan's I Have No Words; I Must Design,  our Friday Design class had a look at what he was trying to say before having a more hands-on experience tweaking the rules to the classic game (and awful movie) Battleships.

No one even says the line!

 Costikyan begins his chapter by questioning the nature of games themselves, and how best to define them. After a lengthy and in-depth look at things, he settles upon: "...an interactive structure of

endogenous meaning that requires players to struggle toward a goal.". We broke this down definition down to it's constituent parts and began to reverse-engineer it to see if it works.

1. "..interactive structure.."
   
   When discussing interaction, Costikyan mentions Chris Crawford's 1982 The Art of Game Design, wherein Crawford contrasts between puzzles and games. Crawford describes puzzles as static entities, mere logic structure which requires solving. He includes the text-adventure "game" Zork as an example.
   While reluctant to condemn Zork to simply a puzzle, Costikyan thinks Crawford's idea has merit: puzzles are static with a logic structure; games need interaction. This leads into...
   
2. "..goal."
   
   Costikyan begins to discuss what interaction in games actually means. As he says, "
3. Every game 
4. is interactive; “interactive game” is a redundancy." He follows this with the idea that what turns a puzzle into a game is the need for decision making at its heart, and gives the example of chess. In class, this led to heated debate (mostly surrounding Dear Esther, which I may blog about, because I loved that game). Costikyan says games are goal-directed interaction, but goals alone are not enough; meaningful consequences - which change the game state - are a must.
   
5. "..endogenous meaning.."
   
   Endogenous is defined as substances that originate from within a body. When we apply this to games, we discuss the idea of games creating their own meaning. This sounds obvious when you think about it, but the point is most people often don't. Costikyan cites monopoly money and a weapon in an online RPG, and it can really apply to anything that would have no value to anyone outside of the game, including goals and enjoyment. For example in Minecraft, building a giant skyscraper out of blocks may look both banal and pointless to an onlooker, but to the player the goal is self-employed and fun self-derived.
   
6. "..struggle.."
   
   Costyikyan describes struggle as an important part of any game. While it can be achieved through competition, it is also achieved through overcoming obstacles, be they  AI NPCs in a shooter, or the cards in a game of Solitaire.

After we had had our discussion and debates, we moved onto Battleships...

Paidea and Ludus

 Paidea and ludus are concepts that describe two forms of playing, which can be applied when defining videogames beyond genre or gameplay, which can be difficult to pin down. James Newman refers to these ideas in his book Videogames (2004).

 Paidea is effectively defined as "playing" purely for pleasure; an example would be a child spinning in circles or skipping instead of walking. The enjoyment and pleasure is endogenous and self-derived.
 Ludus describes an experience as being more constrained by rules, which as clear definable outcome state e.g. winning or losing.
 Though you would think most games are likely to be ludus, many games - including videogames - are paidea in nature. James Newman cites the Will Wright games The Sims and SimCity as an example of paidea videogames.

 Though these are good ideas, on their own they are very limiting. Newman supplements then with four terms Callois (2001) adapted from Huizinga (se Newman, 2004, pp. 22-26):

• agon: competition
• alea: chance/randomness
• ilinx: movement
• mimicry: sims, make-believe, role-play

In class we drew up a table incorporating sll four of these against a paidea/ludus scale. This gave me an idea for a more advanced Venn diagram, which I've included below.

I don't know how easy that is to see, but I think its pretty good. I know it doesn't quite work (opposite circles can't be selected without a third) but I arranged the circles specifically to counter that flaw; I couldn't think of many chance/movement games, competitive sims.

Hope you like, thoughts?

MANDATORY INTRODUCTORY POST P//#001

Hello, whomever may be reading this. I'm Jack. I study Computer Games Design at University Campus Suffolk, and this blog is going to be hard work, so don't be expecting much in the way of entertainment. It's the internet; you know where to go for that. Anyway.

Last week we had ourselves another meet and greet, and though it was an admirably better effort than the first attempt organized by Rob (shoes or trainers discuss?!) it still reeked of nerd on nerd awkwardness, a speciality of mine I might add. Here's the question run down; feel free to peruse at your leisure:

• What is/was the title of the last fiction book you are currently reading/last read?
  
  The last fiction  book I read was the excellent re-imagining of Jesus' life, The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ by Philip Pullman.
  Phillip Pullman is a famous atheist, and his fantastic trilogy His Dark Materials was seen by many as anti-Christian; The Good Man Jesus however is an actually quite sympathetic and low-key story, where Jesus Christ is actually two people: the older brother Jesus and the younger Christ. It remains faithful to the source material, and you realize how it all comes together it's genuinely moving. I'm as atheist as they come, and it was nothing like what I expected.
  I'll shut up now because I could talk all day, but go give it a go, whatever you believe.
  
• What is/was the title of the last non-fiction book you are currently reading/last read?
  
  Not as interesting, probably The 3DS Max Bible, which is not exactly light reading. I'll need a strong drink and a long evening before I can make much headway with this bastard.
  
• What was the last live performance you attended?
  
  Sunn O))). Words cannot describe the sheer physical experience of seeing Sunn live. They are a drone/doom metal two piece from America, and one of my absolute favourite bands on the planet. They don't write or play song's in the conventional sense; drone metal is slow, drawn out and almost punishing. Live, they play loud. Extremely loud. To the point where you can feel your bones vibrate. Not an exaggeration.
  You can't put their music into words (or maybe I cant do them justice), so I'd just say don't write them off. Pick up Monoliths and Dimensions, or maybe Black One, turn the lights down one evening, and play the whole album start to finish with a decent pair of headphones or surround sound with a good bass range. They are truly unique.
  
• What was the title of the last film you saw?
  
  The Perks of Being a Wallflower. Only one film has ever made me cry, but this came pretty damn close. I was definitely at the perfect age for this, and I'm so grateful I got to watch it when I did.
  It's an incredibly heartfelt, utterly sincere movie about the very best and worse sides of teenage experience; love, sex, secrets, and that hyperreality of teenage senses fading slowly into adulthood, and like that transition the film leaves you both happy its over but sad that you'll never experience anything like this again.
  
• How often do you read the newspaper?
  
  The Guardian online is pretty good; it's neither a rightwing ragsheet or pretentious intellectual drivel like The Independent. Plus Charlie Brooker is a comedy goldmine that just keeps on giving.
  
• Which art gallery/museum/exhibition did you last visit?
  
  EUROGAMER EXPO!
  THERE WAS SWAG!
  AND HALO!
  
• How many hours a week do you spend playing video games?
  
  Haha, you're asking someone who can now pass off playing video games as research. Anywher between 10-20 hours.
  
• How many hours a week do you spend playing games other than video games?
  
  Erm, drinking games count right? Pfft, like 2 hours a week? I guessh? I duno, thinggsd tend to get a littlwe bbluryyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy