Chemistry of Game Design: systems for design

Of course I agree with this system, and you made me want to read this book btw.

Logicaly, addiction to games just doesn't make since, why would a lot of people find Mario Bros more fun to play than Alien vs Predator? The graphics are better, storyline is immersive, and it has a rock solid concept behind it. So why on earth would someone play an older game over that?

Well, the answer is in that statment. I think any serious game designer should investigate this tool. I will admit that it remains somewhat of a mystery to me exactly how this system works, but that is why I want to dig deeper into it.

As for the "Predictable" part. That statement should be rephrased because it can be fairly mis-leading. The only thing that should be predictable in a game is the physics, the controls, and world interaction. A predictable story makes for the worst games you can play.

I'm not sure of your third question, so I'll have to read into it.

It's kind of interesting. Overly simplistic but then one has to start simple and build up. Not really usable as it is because it doesn't touch on the major concept that players define goals for themselves, as well as accepting or rejecting ideas of goals proposed by the game, and that accomplishing goals is what gives value to learning skills.

I agree entirely that the system presented seems to largely oversimplify things, but as I've not really encountered anything particularly similar except for the mentioned MDA I was wondering what other people thought of the idea and if anyone knew of anything similar out there.

As a basic system it does present a good building block for actually being able to somehow chart exactly what is going on given any particular type of gameplay and with some refinement and perhaps in conjunction with similar systems could perhaps allow a more object way to study (or design) how a particular set of gameplay mechanics might work out.


I'm also quite intrigued by the suggestion in the article of automating such a system via some form of software solution, and potentially tracking the progress of players through the flow of 'skill atoms' in order to more finely (or perhaps more accurately?) balance the gameplay experience. I'll certainly be interested in seeing the promised follow-up where he plans to apply the system to a number of well known existing titles.

My only problem with Dan's work is that he almost exclusively deals with games that are 'sport-like'... things that are very instinctive and tied to senses and reflexes. Obviously many computer games fall into this category, but it has as much in common with real life sports as it does with computer gaming, and it doesn't do a good job of describing games which are almost entirely non-sport-like, such as turn-based strategy, or stat-heavy RPGs, or text adventures. Or indeed most board games, card games, etc. You can stretch his definitions to fit these games, but at the expense of being so abstract as to gain no benefit from it.

The MDA framework does a better job at encompassing more play types, but at the expense of pretty much being meaningless. Since you get to define what constitutes a mechanic, a dynamic, and an aesthetic, all that you get are 3 categories to drop aspects of your game into. It's useful as a shared vocabulary - which I believe was one of the goals - but until there's something a bit more rigorous within, I don't think it helps design as such.

It certainly has applications, though I'm not sure how deep you can go with it. I think it's more to do with level design than your core game mechanics. For example, in Castlevania:SOTN, at some point in the game you gain a double jump. By requiring you to use this double jump to gain access to later areas of the game, the designers can then assume you know how to use it for all later sections. Contrastingly in Super Metroid, there is a section where if you fall down a pit you need to use the wall jump to get out again. Since I had never been forced to use this ability before, I didn't know how. Consequently I got fustrated and bored, and stopped playing.

There's nothing in the document that isn't immediately obvious, but that's probably besides the point. Any way of formulating such obvious necessities is a good thing; Newton wasn't the first person to realise apples fall out of trees, but giving it a formulation was a big achievement. If you can keep tabs on what your player should and can know at each point of the game it can help prevent obvious flaws in the design. Whereas good design won't necessarily make a good game, bad design almost always ruins it.

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Original post by H4L It certainly has applications, though I'm not sure how deep you can go with it. I think it's more to do with level design than your core game mechanics. For example, in Castlevania:SOTN, at some point in the game you gain a double jump. By requiring you to use this double jump to gain access to later areas of the game, the designers can then assume you know how to use it for all later sections. Contrastingly in Super Metroid, there is a section where if you fall down a pit you need to use the wall jump to get out again. Since I had never been forced to use this ability before, I didn't know how. Consequently I got fustrated and bored, and stopped playing.

Sorry for getting a little off-topic, but you just bashed my favorite game of all time! IIRC, there were very few places (I'm pretty sure there was none) that actaully required you to do the wall jump. You probably didn't think of all possible options of getting out (bombing/shooting a secret wall, ice freezing an enemy and jumping on it, etc). The wall-jump and the bomb-hop were in the game as tricks that expert players could do to get extra missile/energy upgrades earlier in the game.

But you're right about level design, it's a huge factor in determining the fun factor and success of game. If Super Mario Bros. had all their levels set to the difficulty of the first level, it would have sucked. That's why I love the Metroid series. You couldn't get to the next "stage" of the game until you found the right upgrade to help you get past the next obstacle. Not only that, you often had to think about how to use your upgrade to get past an obstacle. It was really a puzzle/action/adventure game all in one. Which is probably why Zelda/Mario/Metroid are still a staple in gaming today.

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Original post by H4L There's nothing in the document that isn't immediately obvious, but that's probably besides the point. Any way of formulating such obvious necessities is a good thing; Newton wasn't the first person to realise apples fall out of trees, but giving it a formulation was a big achievement.

A common saying is that Newton's greatest achievement is to realise that the Moon was falling. Creating a formulation to express the obvious is only useful if it helps to also go beyond what cen be done with just common sense. I am happy to see some mdoels with psychology notions inside, but for now I will keep using my simple home-made methodology : "If I find it fun, some players will also, if I find it frustrating, some people will also". It works suprisingly well.

Its a daft article, as most game design articles are, sadly.
Can anyone show me a decent game design article? At the moment I can think of 2.

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Original post by Yvanhoe "If I find it fun, some players will also, if I find it frustrating, some people will also". It works suprisingly well.

I completely agree with that philosophy, and it holds for other art forms too. The scientific side of an art should thus never be intended to override the "try it and see" method, but is more of a suggestive tool. In other words if you're faced with trial and error to find a solution, the science can help you decide which solution to try first (for instance, science alone won't enable a photographer to create an artistic picture, but it can help in deciding on lighting and exposure levels in a given scene). Of course, everybody has their own science of design in this regard (to be completely unscientific is essentially to be random), built up mainly from experience. If nothing else, a generalised science of design can act as a language in which to translate the ideas of one person to another.

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Original post by ckcornflake you just bashed my favorite game of all time!

Sorry, I don't actually think its a bad game, I was just struggling for an example. You get my basic premise though :)

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Original post by thelovegoose Its a daft article, as most game design articles are, sadly.

Why? Stating that opinion isn't very useful to the rest of us without the reasoning of why you consider it 'daft'. What flaws do you percieve, and do you have any suggestions for potential improvement?

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Can anyone show me a decent game design article? At the moment I can think of 2.

Well, what are those 2 articles? We can't really recommend more material to you without something to judge what you consider to be a decent article.

Basically same as above, the content of the article is just common sense and the implementation is nothing extraordinary. His message is overhyped - about the value of breaking down game design into measurable pieces.
People have tried to do this with writing, film-making etc, but the result is a run of the mill product - do we really need more cookie-cutter games...
Still, its a brave thing to write an article, putting yourself up for criticism and unselfish to share your ideas so fair play to him, just on this occaision didn't really do anything for me!

The articles i've read that have been very interesting recently are a couple by chris crawford (www.erazmatazz.com), and one about the importance of having certain iconic moments in a story based game on gamasutra.