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Designing Games for Game Designers

Note : Turn on “Notes View” to see the outline of the talking points. Several images are temporary. Most of them will be enhanced. Designing Games for Game Designers. Stone Librande Creative Director, EA/Maxis. Overview. Class Philosophy Fundamental Exercises Advanced Exercises

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Designing Games for Game Designers

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  1. Note: Turn on “Notes View” to see the outline of the talking points. Several images are temporary. Most of them will be enhanced. Designing GamesforGame Designers Stone Librande Creative Director, EA/Maxis

  2. Overview • Class Philosophy • Fundamental Exercises • Advanced Exercises • Designing your own “design games”

  3. Class Philosophy • CogswellPolytechnical College, Sunnyvale, CA. • Paper, cards, dice (no computers) • 2 to 3 hour workshops • Focus on one specific topic

  4. Warm Up Design Goals: • A chance for the class to get acquainted • Focus on physical rather than cerebral

  5. What is a Game?

  6. Goals Design Goals: • Goals come in many forms • All the rules stay the same, only the goal can change • How does changing the goal change the game?

  7. Rules Design Goals: • How do you structure rules? • What are the key words to prevent ambiguity? • Players make up games from scratch by adding one new rule each turn

  8. Decisions Design Goals: • It’s not enough to put decisions in your game, you need “interesting decisions” • The rules and goals don’t change • The players are given a character and must create three actions. Only one action can be taken per turn.

  9. Obstacles Design Goals: • Use the items in a room to build an obstacle course • Players must try to get a ping-pong ball into a cup • Start with a par 1 hole, then slowly add obstacles until the hole becomes par 5

  10. Balance Design Goals: • Make an asymmetric game where the two sides are balanced • One side is a giant robot that operates autonomously • The other side is a squad of 4 tanks under the players’ control

  11. Odds Design Goals: • Learn how to calculate odds while playing a game • Start with simple calculations and slowly progress in difficulty • Show how statistics can give you more information than play tests

  12. Rewards Design Goals: • Show the students how powerful rewards can be • Roll dice as fast as possible and try to get a double 6. • Do this for an hour!

  13. Entertainment Design Goals: • Using the lessons on odds and rewards, make a casino game • Balance the player’s payout with the houses ability to consistently make money • Make the rules simple, but give the player options

  14. Mash Up Design Goals: • Bring in a board game but ignore the rules • Combine it with another random board game

  15. World of Rulecraft Design Goals: • MMO style game where the rules change as the game is being played • Each player is either a wizard, thief or warrior and levels up by battling other players • Guilds tend to form naturally, which opens up new rule requirements

  16. Paper Simulation Design Goals: • Take an existing video game and recreate it using cards and dice • After removing the graphics, sound and controllers, what will survive?

  17. Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater

  18. Asteroids

  19. Making games for designers • The base game must be simple • Let the students/players do the work • Iterate the lesson constantly

  20. Thank you! Detailed rules and materials for many of thes games can be found at: www.stonetronix.com

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