Design Tools

Blog post 5

This week I have analysed two articles, 'Space of Possibility and Pacing in Casual Game Design - A PopCap Case Study' by Marcos venturelli and 'Formal Abstract Design Tools' by Doug Church. Both of the articles discuss the vocabulary involved in games design and the thought process of designing, Venturelli focuses on the emerging 'Casual Game' market and Church discusses games design in general.





Doug Church's Article
In Church's article he discusses key design tools that are very important and interesting - these are 'Percievable Consequence,' 'Intention' and 'Story.'

Perceivable Consequence
Perceivable Consequence is the player's understanding that their actions will effect how they play the game and it's outcomes. An example of this would be in a platformer, when the player comes across a hole that they must clear they realise that they must press the jump button to clear the hole, otherwise they will fall into it and die - to put it simply, perceivable consequence is realising how the game works and what dangers there are.

As a designer, we need to think about perceivable consequence, we need to ensure that the player knows that every action they take will have a consequence, whether it be good or bad, for example, as a gamer you should know that falling down a hole is a bad thing but that is because the designer makes it so. It is due to this that 'Perceivable consequence' is a crucial design tool.

Intention
Intention is very closely linked to Percievable Consequence, intention is when the player plans and thinks about their actions and the outcomes of these actions, therfore planning how to overcome obstacles, etc. Using the same example as for Percievable Consequence, the player knows that they will die if they fall down the hole and so, they plan to jump over and pass this obstacle.

As a games designer, it is important that we think about intention and implement it in our designs, although ultimately it is the player that makes their own intention. As designers we give the player choices on how to use their intentions.

Story
Story is the narrative thread of the game. Whether the story is driven forward by the designer and the player progresses along a pre-determined path or the player has more influence over the story, the story is the main thing that drives the game forward and gives the player a purpose to play.



Marcos Venturelli's Article
Venturelli's article discusses PopCap, and generally talks about aspects of casual games and casual games developers. PopCap is a well renowned casual game developer and so is the ideal focus for this article, from the article there are two key tools that we can take, 'Pacing' and 'Possibilty.'

Pacing
Pacing is the speed of progression and flow in the game, and how the game is affected as a result. The easiest way to describe pacing is that casual games have a fast pace and more mainstream games have a slower pace. In casual games, there is little story and very few choices for the player to make and as a result casual games are appealing as they are very fast paced, making the player make quick decisions that increases the tension and thus makes them more fun. In more mainstream games, this wouldn't work as the story and planning would be lost, defeating the purpose of designing a detailed and in-depth game.

Possibility
Possibilty is the number of options that are available to the player, the more options available, the slower the game progresses. Both tools are very closely linked and as a result casual games have very few possibilties to ensure a fast paced game. With more possibilities the player has a lot more choices to make and so spends a lot more time thinking about these choices, theerfore the pacing of the game is ultimately slowed down.

Pacing and Possibility
As designers it is our duty to find the right balance between pacing and possibility when designing a game, this can be affected by genre and other aspects, but ultimately once we find the balance we find the type of game we want to create and then we use these tools to form the basis of the experience the player has when playing our game.