Doug Church’s article ‘Formal Abstract Design Tools’ is certainly one of the more helpful readings I have read this year. These are my notes regarding the article which has been expanded on and written up. Church talks about intention, story and perceivable consequence within the article, as well as some other stuff which I will cover too.
Firstly ‘intention’, in his words ‘Making an implementable plan of one's own creation in response to the current situation in the game world and one's understanding of the game play options.’ He describes intention within games as important tool to draw the player in along with perceivable consequence. Church sums up by saying when the player attempts a task and it fails they are likely to realise why they screwed it up.
Perceivable consequence follows up on this as it is used to show the player what the game would do if a certain action is performed, he says the feedback is generally visual e.g when you shoot your gun in Battlefield if you are pointing towards an enemy you know the game will react by killing the enemy once you press the button to shoot. Games which use this all the time wouldn’t be much fun just as Church said. Some outcomes need to be random or unknown in order for the player to be more involved, the example of ‘the player may decide to stay the night at an inn, and the next morning he may be ambushed. Now, it may be that the designers built this in the code or design of the game. ("We don't want people staying in town too much, so if they start staying at the inn too often, let's ambush them.") However, that causality is not perceivable by the player. While it may be an actual consequence, to the player it appears random.’ As he describes here designer may often include some outcome which are an actual consequence of the players actions but are completely unknown to the player therefore randomness is playing in the mind of the user. In role playing games players actions do not always have the same consequence as there are generally so many tasks and other things to do. This is common place within role playing games as it keeps the game fresh and is needed for the certain game genre.
Story is next on the list, This may seem obvious to be a main tool to use when making a game since a usually a good story makes a good game. Church talks about two methods of narrative one which is designer driven that binds events together in a certain sequence making the game linear, and the other player driven narrative which is when the story can change depending on the player actions within the game itself. When the story is well made and superbly done it as I said before lead to a fantastic game. When reading through my notes and the article itself again I was thinking about sandbox games and how these could be rendered under player driven stories if there is no actually story to them at first glance but the players makes a whole story up themselves. The Mount and Blade series is an example of this, in single player you are allowed to roam around capturing castles and slaying whoever you want. You can choose to make your own kingdom or join one already made, there is absolutely no story what so ever but it is so easy for imagination to set in and you target certain parties or do other stuff to flow with the story or your game.
Church at the start of the article explains some of the thinking behind making some games, he says designers often think if old ideas can be transformed into a 3d simulation and whether the game is actually going to be fun or not. As well as saying they don’t use words like fun or not fun they dissect the word and go into depth about what makes the game exciting for a certain range of people.
Overall this is an excellent article to read, and I thoroughly recommend anyone interested in games development to do so. I do understand I am crap at taking notes and writing up my ideas on an article but I hope this is ok :P It may be a bit old but I feel it can still relate to the current day.
Said article can be found here:
Doug Church, (1999), Formal Abstract Design Tools, Gamasutra
I could be mistaken, but it seems as though you missed the finer points of what this article is about.
ReplyDeleteFirst, the main point was that Game Design, as a profession, needs a working language like any other profession in order for us to be able to efficiently analyze a design and subsequently relate that analysis to another designer in an efficient and meaningful manner.
Secondly, the idea of Intention is that the player should be able, by analyzing the feedback mechanistic clues of the game, to formulate a plan and put it into action. The idea of perceivable consequence is that, regardless of the success or failure, the player should(in most cases) be able to understand why their implementation succeeded or failed. To use your example, if the player attempts to shoot an opponent in battlefield, there should be some clue as to whether they hit or missed, and why. This could include a ricochet graphic, the opponent ducking, or a even a spray of dirt to show that their aim was off.
In your understanding of Story, you are letting your personal bias affect your judgement. A good game does not necessarily have any 'designed story' as he tried to point out regarding sports games(but could have just as easily used Tetris for instance).
Over all, the important thing is that these are just tools, and not every tool is suited for every job. You have to pick the right tool to use and the right time to use it for it to be effective. I would also recommend reading up on MDA(Mechanics, Dynamics, Aesthetics) oriented game design.
It's definitely a good article though, and I hope you are doing something to pursue your interest in game design. It can be a very rewarding experience.