This document outlines the key aspects of game design that must be understood for an assessment on game design, including core mechanics like luck, strategy, diplomacy, resource management, and territory control; interactivity in both traditional and video games; aspects of narrative like structure, point of view, setting, and characters; and audio-visual components of traditional and video games and how they have developed over time. Students must complete analysis tasks on traditional and video games for each of these aspects to demonstrate their understanding of game design fundamentals.

1. Unit 30 – Design for Games
AO1
Understanding Aspects of
Game Design

2. AO1 asks you to demonstrate your understanding
of the fundamentals of Game Design. You are
going to do this by analysing traditional games
and video games.
You need to be writing about:-
Core Mechanics
Interactivity
Storytelling and Narrative
Audio-Visual Components
What do these things mean?

3. Core Mechanics
The fundamental structures, practices and rules
that allow you to get on with playing the game.
●Luck
●Strategy and Skill
●Diplomacy
●Resource Management
●Territory Control

4. Core Mechanics - Luck
● Random occurrence
– often a planned
random
occurrence
● Traditional game –
the roll of a dice or
the turn of a card
● Videogame – a
'virtual' dice roll –
does the creature
appear? Does the
shot hit you?

5. Luck – Traditional Games
Poker
● What cards are you
and your
opponents dealt?
● What cards are dealt
Some traditional in the flop, turn
games involve and river?
nothing but luck –
Snakes and
● How do your
Ladders is all opponents react?
about the dice.

6. Core Mechanics - Skill and Strategy
● Planning and planned
occurrences.
● Based on your knowledge
and understanding of the
game and the playing
contexts
● Reading and understanding
your opponent
● Planning for the short,
medium and long term in
the game

7. Skill and Stragegy – Traditional Games
● When to play and when to
fold
● When to raise, how much to
bet
● Knowing the odds for your
hand and what you need
● Knowing and understanding
likely odds on opponents
hands
● Reading bluffs
● Bluffing

8. Core Mechanics - Diplomacy
● Player interaction
● Cooperation,
colaboration and
competition
● Short term and long
term diplomacy
● 'Capture' games –
Sorry or
Frustration
● Role Playing Games

9. Diplomacy – Traditional Games
Poker
● Cooperation –
Building a pot
● Collaboration –
eliminating players
● Competition –
raising, bluffing
and betting against
opponents

10. Core Mechanics – Resource Management
● Different 'assets' for
different players and
characters
● Use now or save for later?
● High value assets
● Money, or the things
money can buy?
● Attack or defence?
● Knowledge of the game
leads to informed
choices

11. Resource Management – Traditional Games
Poker
● Using your chips
● When to punt on a
chance
● When to go with a raise
and when to raise
● Draw Poker – keeping or
exchanging cards

12. Core Mechanics – Territory Control
● Controlling game space
● Defensive lines –
defending key spaces,
players or pieces
● Games about territory
control – Risk,
Diplomacy
● Wargames

13. Territory Control – Traditional Games
Chess
● Offensive and defensive
lines
● Protecting the back rank
● Protecting the king
● Protecting high value
pieces
● Balancing offense and
defence.
● Using familiar patterns.

14. AO1 Task 1
Using the following subheadings, analyse the Core
Mechanics of:-
a) A traditional game and
b) A video game
* Luck
* Strategy and Skill
* Diplomacy
* Resource Management
* Territory Control
You can use different games to illustrate different concepts –
you don't have to stick to one traditional game and one video
game for all of them

15. Interactivity
Interactive texts do not follow a linear
course but are shaped by your
decisions and actions. You decide
where the text goes – within certain
limits.

16. Interactivity – Traditional Games
Some traditional games
are models for
interactive video
games
● 'Choose your own
adventure' books
● Territory games like
'Carcassonne'

17. Interactivity – Video Games
Videogames now are
fundamentally
interactive – your
decisions and actions
shape the future course
of the game
● SIMS – when does
'interactivity' become
'creation'
● How interactive were
early video games?

18. AO1 Task 2
Analyse with specific examples the uses and
effects of Interactivity
i) In a traditional game and
ii) In a video game

19. Storytelling and Narrative
You need to demonstrate your understanding of
a wide range of aspects of narrative in a game...
●Three Act Structure
●Plot
●
Point of View - 1st Person -v- 3rd Person
●Setting (in time and place)
●Linear Narrative -v- Disrupted Narrative
●Characters – Stereotypes and Archetypes
●Representations, messages and values, themes

20. The Three Act Structure
Situation / Complication / Resolution
Introduction / Crisis / Resolution
Act 1 – Introduction – The farmer lives a peaceful life
Act 2 – Crisis – The family and farm are destroyed by bad
guys
Act 3 – Resolution – The farmer gains vengeance on the
bad guys

21. More on Three Act Structure
Each Act will also have 'acts' or 'scenes' within it
following similar structures. So – end of Act 2
might be...
Situation – The farmer has no fighting skills
Crisis – He is tutored by a Martial Arts expert
Resolution – He becomes a Kung Fu master
ready to whup some bad guys.

22. Point of View
This can literally mean the view we have of the game –
through one character's eyes. Obvious example – a First
Person Shooter
It also means which character we follow. Doesn't have to be
a first person view, there can still be a viewpoint character.
Traditional games – Chess or Draughts– black or white- you
only see the board from your side. 'Cat and Mouse' board
games – one is trying to escape, one to capture – very
different perspectives on the game.

23. Setting (in time and space)
How 'real' is the world of the game compared to
our world?
How do we learn its rules? – anything can
happen (flying in Second Life, for example) as
long as the game is internally consistent
What signs show us when and where we are?
Why are so many fantasy games set in the past?

24. Linear Narrative -v- Disrupted Narrative
Is there one route through the game that you
have to take (Simple board games have one
track you go round. Race games take you
around one track at a time) or can things happen
in any different order and still get you to the end
(Sandbox games).

25. Characters: Archetypes and Stereotypes
Archetype – the model example of a particular
type of person – the original. Video games are
often built around mythic structures using
archetypes.
Stereotype – A personality type observed
repeatedly and summed up in an individual – an
oversimplification of what a 'type' of person is like
Heroes and villains – helpers and messengers –
experts and teachers...

26. Representations
What is your game about?
What does it have to say about the world? (This
world, not the world of the game)
What ideas does it have about good and evil?
About gender or race?
About leadership?

27. AO1 Task 3
Using the headings in Aspects of Narrative,
analyse how narrative and storytelling work in
i) a traditional game and
ii) a video game

28. Audio Visual Elements
Traditional games still work on being audio-
visually and visually interesting.
Black and White in Chess/Draughts
Visual design of board games
Audio suspense from the noise of shaking and
rolling dice
Audio stimulus in Crossfire and Kerplunk

29. Audio Visuals in traditional games
● The traditional look
of the table –
green baize,
traditional cards
● The sound of cards
shuffling and being
turned
● The look of players
bluffing

30. Audio Visuals in Video Games
● Simple visuals in
early video games
– Pong – Space
Invaders
● Developments in
displays –
Defender – Elite
● Hardware/Software
development and
improved AV

31. AO1 Task 4
i) Analyse the Audio Visual appeal of a
traditional game
ii) Analyse the developing Audio Visual appeal of
one game or one game genre as it has
developed through successive generations of
hardware and/or software

32. Assessment
All of the above work is required to complete
AO1.
Pass – Limited and superficial understanding
Merit – Broad and sound understanding
Distinction – Comprehensive and detailed
understanding
These tasks are designed so that if you complete
them in full you should be working to Distinction.