Game Designer Essentials: Skills, Listening, and Experience

2. Objectives: This lesson discusses material from Chapters 1, 2, and 3 of • Introduction points • Becoming a designer • Basic skills • Kinds of listening • Being gifted is not enough • the Game is not the Experience • Examining an experience • The Lens of Essential Experience

3. Making Your First Game: Basics - How To Start Your Game Development - Extra Credits

4. I AM A GAME DESIGNER Who are you? I am a game designer . No, you’re not. I am a game designer . What kind of a designer? I am a game designer . You mean you play games. I am a game designer .

5. What Skills Does a Game Designer Need? • Animation • Anthropology • Architecture • Brainstorming • Business • Cinematography • Communication • Creative writing • Economics • Engineering • History • Management • Mathematics • Music • Phycology • Public speaking • Sound design • Technical writing • Visual Arts

6. The Most Important Skill?

7. The Five Kinds of Listening • Team (Ch 23-34) • Audience ( Ch 8,9,21,22) • Game (most chapters) • Client (Ch 27-29) • Self (Ch 1,6, and 32)

8. The Secret of the Gifted • Skill • Love

9. Do You Want to Play a Game? Unreal tournament Centipede Doom Play a game and create a Game Modification Plan Spelling and Grammar always count

10. What Did you think? What did you Learn?

11. Questions • What is the shortest time a high quality game was created? • How long do you have to go to school to become a game developer? • How much money does it cost on average for a company to make a game? • Can you make a game and sell it without anything special? • How is making games a job? • How did the first video game look when it was played? • On average how many people quit their first project? • What does history have to do with games from this generation? • Where am I able to learn about game design? • When it comes to history games, where is the balance between historical accuracy and gameplay? • How do you find ideas? • How you remember all of the code without a video? • Which skills on the list are more important? • How do you get a job in a major company? • How much do they get paid? Research 2 questions-Write answers

12. I already know the ending / it’s the part that makes your face implode / I don’t know what makes your face implode / but that’s the way the movie ends. – They Might Be Giants, Experimental Film Of the innumerable effects, or impressions, of which the heart, the intellect, or the soul is susceptible, what one shall I, on the present occasion, select? – Edgar Allen Poe, The Philosophy of Composition

13. Making Your First Game: Practical Rules - Setting (and Keeping) Goals - Extra Credits

14. The Game Is Not the Experience We must be absolutely clear on this point before we can proceed. The game is not the experience. The game enables the experience, but it is not the experience.

15. Is This Unique to Games? How can you create something that will generate a certain experience when a person interacts with it?

16. Three Practical Approaches to Chasing Rainbows There ain’t no rules around here! We’re trying to accomplish something! – Thomas Edison • Psychology --Who better for us to learn the nature of human experience from than psychologists, the scientists who study the mechanisms that govern the human mind? • Anthropology – the study of human beings and what they think and do. • Design -- musicians, architects, authors, filmmakers, industrial designers, Web designers, choreographers, visual designers, and many more. Anthropology is the most humanistic of the sciences and the most scientific of the humanities. – Alfred L. Kroeber

17. Introspection: Powers, Perils, and Practice • Peril #1: Introspection Can Lead to False Conclusions About Reality • Heavier objects fall faster than light ones • The seat of consciousness is in the heart • Life arises by spontaneous generation • Peril #2: What Is True of My Experiences May Not be True for Others • “I only design for people like me ” • Unusual tastes • Not doing this alone • Off Limits? • “Personal opinions can’t be trusted ” • Good vs. bad • Ugly duckling that can become a beautiful swan • Playtesting- infrequent

18. Dissect Your Feelings Me: What did you eat at the cafeteria today? Him: Pizza. It was bad. Me: Bad? What was bad about it? Him: It was just …bad. Me: Do you mean it was too cold? Too hard? Too soggy? Too bitter? Too much sauce? Not enough sauce? Too cheesy? What was bad about it? Him: I don’t know — it was just bad!

19. Defeating Heisenberg • Analyzing Memories • Two Passes • Sneak Glances • Observe Silently

20. Essential Experience But how does all this talk about experience and observations really fit in with games? If I want to make a game about, say, a snowball fight, does analyzing my memories of a real snowball fight have any bearing on the snowball fight game I want to make? There is no way I can perfectly replicate the experience of a real snowball fight without real snow and real friends outside in the real world — so what is the point? • The point is that you don’t need to perfectly replicate real experiences to make a good game. What you need to do is to capture the essence of those experiences for your game.

22. All That’s Real Is What you Feel The only reality that we can know is the reality of the experience. And we know that what we experience is “not really reality. ”

23. Do You Want to Play a Game? Soul Calibur SimCity2000 Play a game and create a Game Modification Plan Spelling and Grammar always count

24. Questions • How do you make a patched video game? • How do you set milestones and goals? • How much does a game designer get paid? • How do you come up with ideas for video games? • What would be the best way to plan each feature of the game you are creating? • Why should a game be unique? • Why is the game not the experience? • How long does it take to get a game published? • How can you ensure a player enjoys the experience? • What is the most important aspect of the experience of the game? • Does any video game come out perfect?

25. What Did you think? What did you Learn?

26. Objectives: This lesson discusses material from Chapters 1, 2, and 3 of • Introduction points • Becoming a designer • Basic skills • Kinds of listening • Being gifted is not enough • the Game is not the Experience • Examining an experience • The Lens of Essential Experience

27. The Skinner Box - How Games Condition People to Play More - Extra Credits

28. Assignments Chapter 3 - The Experience Rises out of a Game Chapter 3 continues the discussion from chapter 2. The tool we will use to provide an experience will be our game. The author then spends some time building and building on definitions of key terms in game design: a game is something you play (page 26) that should be fun fun is more that just pleasure fun is pleasure with surprises This leads to the Lens of Surprise, our second lens. The point is that there must be some surprises in a game for it to be fun. If you don't think so, think about why we avoid spoilers in game reviews, in movie and book reviews, and in other things that are supposed to be fun. Why are spoilers called spoilers? Obviously, because they spoil a part of the experience. What will surprise the players in our game? Are there surprises in the story, the rules, the artwork, and/or the technology? (This is a foreshadowing. We will come back to these four things.) Can players surprise each other? Can players be surprised by the results of what they do? I have been playing a computer game for a few weeks. I have recently allowed my grandson to play it as well, while watching over his shoulder to monitor content and to advise as needed. I will note that the portions of his game that are the most fun for me are the surprises, when he finds something I did not find, or when he reacts to something in an interesting way. So, if we understand one definition of fun (and there are others) we can have a Lens of Fun, our third lens. What is fun in the game, and why is it fun? What can be made more fun in the game? Mr. Schell discusses several definitions of play, to accommodate the idea that we play games. I like the quotes from George Santayana the best: Play is whatever is done spontaneously and for its own sake. - The Sense of Beauty Work and play... become equivalent to servitude and freedom. - The Sense of Beauty I would add one from Mark Twain: The point is that play, in addition to being fun, must be something that a person chooses to do. The discussion takes a turn here and adds another aspect, that a game frequently has an element of uncertainty about its outcome. The game should answer a question for the player, if only the question of who will win. The player should be curious while playing the game. What will happen? Can I beat the old score? Will there be something new this time? These natural questions lead to the fourth lens, the Lens of Curiosity: What questions will the game cause a player to ask? How can I make the player care about the questions and their answers? What can I do to make the player more curious about the game? The author builds to a point related to playing a game for its own sake. A formal phrase is introduced: a game has endogenous meaning. The word "endogenous" just means that something originates in the game. The author adds more meaning to the phrase: there must be things in the game that the user cares about, which have no special meaning outside the game. The quests in an adventure game have no meaning to one's real life, but they are very important to the player of that game, in the game. This gives us the fifth lens, the Lens of Endogenous Value: What objects or constructs in the game do the players care about? How can I increase the value of those things to players? How does the value of an object affect the player's feelings about the game? The text builds to a list of ten qualities that a game should have, admitting that there are others we may discover as well. Assignment #1: Read the list of ten qualities on page 34 in the text. Think of a game you have played that you liked. Write a paper about the game in terms of the ten qualities. There should be a short paragraph for each quality, giving an example of how it does or does not exist in the game. The text moves on to make a point that games are often problem-solving activities. (page 36) Some games, like sudoku, have this and not much else. You could say that sudoku has no story, needs no technology, does have rules, and can be pretty or not. (Why did I pick those four things? More foreshadowing...) To summarize the ten qualities, the author offers a statement: "A game is a problem-solving activity, approached with a playful attitude." (page 37) The sixth lens, the Lens of Problem Solving: What are the problems a player has to solve in this game? Do new problems develop as the game is played? How can the system or players make new problems in the game for repeat play?

29. A rant about Definitions

30. So, What is a Game?

31. Surprise is so basic that we can easily forget about it. Use this lens to remind yourself to fill your game with interesting surprises. Ask yourself these questions: What will surprise players when they play my game? Does the story in my game have surprises? Do the game rules? Does the artwork? The technology? Do your rules give players ways to surprise each other? Do your rules give players ways to surprise themselves? Surprise is a crucial part of all entertainment — it is at the root of humor, strategy, and problem solving. Our brains are hardwired to enjoy surprises. In an experiment where participants received sprays of sugar water or plain water into their mouths, the participants who received random sprays considered the experience much more pleasurable than participants who received the sprays according to a fixed pattern, even though the same amount of sugar was delivered. In other experiments, brain scans revealed that even during unpleasant surprises, the pleasure centers of the brain are triggered. Lens #2: The Lens of Surprise

32. Lens #3: The Lens of Fun • Fun is desirable in nearly every game, although sometimes fun defies analysis. To maximize your game’s fun, ask yourself these questions: ● What parts of my game are fun? Why? ● What parts need to be more fun?

33. Play is the aimless expenditure of exuberant energy. – Friedrich Schiller • Play refers to those activities which are accompanied by a state of comparative pleasure, exhilaration, power, and the feeling of self-initiative. – J. Barnard Gilmore • Play is free movement within a more rigid structure. – Katie Salen and Eric Zimmerman • Play Is whatever is done spontaneously and for its own sake. – George Santayana In ev’ry job that must be done There is an element of fun. You find the fun and snap! The job’s a game.

34. The task he has to perform on each unit that passes in front of his station should take forty-three seconds to perform — the same exact operation almost six hundred times in a working day. Most people would grow tired of such work very soon. But Rico has been at this job for over five years, and he still enjoys it. The reason is that he approaches his task in the same way an Olympic athlete approaches his event: How can I beat my record? • Work and play … become equivalent to servitude and freedom. “ What happens when I turn this knob? ” “ Can we beat this team? ” “ What can I make with this clay? ” “ How many times can I jump this rope? ” “ What happens when I finish this level? ”

35. Lens #4: The Lens of Curiosity To use this lens, think about the player’s true motivations — not just the goals your game has set forth, but the reason the player wants to achieve those goals. Ask yourself these questions: • ● What questions does my game put into the player’s mind? • ● What am I doing to make them care about these questions? • ● What can I do to make them invent even more questions? For example, a maze-finding videogame might have a time-limit goal such that at each level, players are trying to answer the question: “Can I find my way through this maze in 30 seconds? ” A way to make them care more would be to play interesting animations when they solve each maze, so players might also ask the question: “I wonder what the next animation will be? ”

36. No, Seriously, What Is a Game? • Games are an exercise of voluntary control systems, in which there is a contest between powers, confined by rules in order to produce a disequilibrial outcome. – Elliot Avedon and Brian Sutton-Smith

37. Another definition… • [A game is] an interactive structure of endogenous meaning that requires players to struggle toward a goal. – Greg Costikyan

38. Lens #5: The Lens of Endogenous Value • To use this lens, think about your players’ feelings about items, objects, and scoring in your game. Ask yourself these questions: ● What is valuable to the players in my game? ● How can I make it more valuable to them? ● What is the relationship between value in the game and the player’s motivations? • Remember, the value of the items and score in the game is a direct reflection of how much players care about succeeding in your game. By thinking about what the players really care about and why, you can often get insights about how your game can improve.

39. Q1. Games are entered willfully. Q2. Games have goals. Q3. Games have conflict. Q4. Games have rules. Q5. Games can be won and lost. Q6. Games are interactive. Q7. Games have challenge. Q8. Games can create their own internal value. Q9. Games engage players. Q10. Games are closed, formal systems. Costikyan’s definition gives us three new qualities that we can add to our list:Q6. Games are interactive.Q7. Games have challenge.Q8. Games can create their own internal value.Let’s consider one more definition of game:A game is a closed, formal system, that engages players in structured conflict,and resolves in an unequal outcome.– Tracy Fullerton, Chris Swain, and Steven Hoffman

40. What is it that people like so much about games? • Well????

41. Problem Solving 101 • Q1. Games are entered willfully. • Q2. Games have goals. • Q3. Games have conflict. • Q4. Games have rules. • Q5. Games can be won and lost. • Q6. Games are interactive. • Q7. Games have challenge. • Q8. Games can create their own internal value. • Q9. Games engage players. • Q10. Games are closed, formal systems.

42. A game is a problem-solving activity, approached with a playful attitude.

43. Lens #6: The Lens of Problem Solving • To use this lens, think about the problems your players must solve to succeed at your game, for every game has problems to solve. Ask yourself these questions: ● What problems does my game ask the player to solve? ● Are there hidden problems to solve that arise as part of gameplay? ● How can my game generate new problems so that players keep coming back?

44. Review: Fun is pleasure with surprises. ● Play is manipulation that satisfies curiosity. ● A toy is an object you play with. ● A good toy is an object that is fun to play with. ● A game is a problem-solving activity, approached with a playful attitude. The Fruits of Our Labors

45. Do You Want to Play a Game? Super Mario Sunshine Civilization Planet fall (Explorer) Play a game and create a Game Modification Plan Spelling and Grammar always count

46. What Did you think? What did you Learn?