Challenges for Computer Games Designers - Chapter 2: Games Design Atoms

We have a set text for this year, and the set text is called Chellenges for Computer Games Designers by Brenda Brathwaite and Ian Schreiber published in 2009. For one of the readings set for the week, we had to read Chapter 2 of the book, it was about Games Design Atoms.

Atoms:- in this sense, atoms are the smallest indentiable parts of a game. Understanding how the parts interact is mandatory in games design.


The book then goes on to mention a few examples I will go into.


Game Space: the space in which the game takes place, the size varies. Examples that come to mind are games like Grand Theft Auto have a big game space as the game is free roam. Astroids has a limited game space, the game takes place in space on a screen.


The book also mentions avatars. There are two types of avatars, you can get avatars in digital games and avatars for non digital games. Digital Avatars are used to present the player in a game so MMO games like Champions Online, Runescape, DC Universe Online all have avatars that respresent the player on the screen in-game. Whereas Non-digital Avatars can be represented by the pieces on a game board, the book uses the pieces of Monopoly as an example as players pick the piece they want to control and that piece represents the player going around the board buying property and what not.


Game bits - physical items in a board game. Things like dice, plastic cards, the plastic army pieces in Risk and so on. In videogames, these bits are known as "art assets". These can be things like 3D Models, synthetic and photographic bitmaps, etc.


The chapter then goes into detail about game mechanics. Game Mechanic is a term that others would call a rule. But in the industry, the term is more of a commonplace. How things work really, Monopoly was used as an example as the game has a simple mechanic, if you land on a property you can buy it (which leads to you CRUSHING the competition).


There are a couple of "Common classes" of mechanics that are usually found in games:-
Setup - the start.
Victory conditions - one rule how the game is won. If a game has no rule to win, then it's not really considered a game.
Progression of Play - 
Player actions - the actions the player makes within the game space. An example (computer game wise) would be killing the enemies within the game and how it affects the games state. It's an action and it takes place within the environment and the affect is that there is one less enemy to kill.


Gaming Dynamics - pattern of play that comes from the mechanics once they're set in motion by players. This was probably the bit of the book that kinda got me a bit confused, so at the risk of typing up what I don't understand, I won't be going into any detail about it.


Goals: pretty straightforward, it usually means the victory condition. usually done done by doing through a variety of "missions" or "quests". In some cases, goals can be used to motivate, I mentioned FPS' having a variety of goals, depending on what game your playing (be it a Team Deathmatch, Capture the Flag, etc.)In  The Age of Discovery the player's goal is to discover new lands at sea.


The last bit of the chapter goes on to say that when it comes to developing game, it can go in any order (game state, avatars, machanics, dynamics and theme). I agree with this because sometimes you can start of with a character and depending on how your character acts and looks (depending on the game), when creating the game, it's all pretty self explanatory.


That's all for now, will be back with more stuff soon.