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...