game design and theory - will wright class

• game design takes inspiration from other disciplines

• balance

• design is constraint

• what's the win state?

  • e.g. a competitive game is 0 sum (+1 win, -1 loss, 0 tie)

• story-tellers

  • will thinks the coolest stories come from the player

• games are based on agency (i did something - something happened)

  • broforce - the enemy kills you, they giggle

• emotional pallet

• maslovs pyramid - what's the motive of the character?

  • connecting base motives to larger aspirations

• abstractions/schema = (what's the difference between a dog or a cat - this is often things that are things we don't really actively think about but they typically have defined behavior)

• Player schema (how it operates/ how it behaves)

  • classification
  • causality
  • empathy
  • agency

• Player's mental model

• Enable player communities

  • every player is different
  • have the player see themselves (i.e. identity)
  • recognition (online communities around games)

• Player flow state (edge of abilities)

  • failure is interesting and understandable
  • building ability to problem solve and strategize
  • the player is the one adjusting the difficulty - player paced
  • more advanced systems use automation (dda?) to adjust difficulty automatically

• failure accelerates learning

  • the classic pottery class anecdote

• design need loops of successes and failures

  • ramp model up smoothly and gradually
  • simple model that gets more complex over time
  • variety of failure states can be humorous

• capturing metrics

• rewards and incentives

  • some of the more interesting rewards are those that players think they came up with themselves (discoveries)
  • exploits
  • purple cow
  • rewards are mechanisms to guide players
  • incentives are internal to the player