Ch1

1. FUNDAMENTALS OF GAME DESIGN AND
GAME PLAY
WHAT IS GAME DESIGN?
Presented By:
Sayed Ahmed
BSc. Eng. in CSc. And Eng.
MSc. in CSc.
Consultant
Just E.T.C Technologies Inc.,
www.justETC.net
Winnipeg, Manitoba
sayed@justEtc.net

2. DEFINE GAME DESIGN
 It’s a process that involves
 Imagining a game
 Define how it will work (the story, the interaction,
the rules)
 Define the elements of the game
 Conceptual
 Functional
 Artistic
 Others….
 Communicate the idea to the design team
 What does a game designer do?
 Perform all the above tasks 3
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3. DESIGN ARTS OR SCIENCE
 Neither purely arts nor purely science
 The imagining of ideas and concepts, and making
the game aesthetic belong to Arts
 However, to be a great game, the game also
needs to function well. Though it’s not purely
science but to implement the functionality,
concepts from science and math are highly used
 Games are crafts with highest possible level of
elegance
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4. ANATOMY OF GAME DESIGN
 Game design is
 creative and imaginative
 where inherent talent also plays a very important role
 And hence, Game design cannot be represented as
 strict step by step procedure or rules or processes
 However, game design is not a random process either
(knowingly or unknowingly).
 We may be able to identify some similarities (common/basic
components/concepts/principles) in the successful games
(may be genre dependent)
 And device some common principles that hopefully will
lead to good game design
 Can work as guidelines for the novices (or checklist for the
more experienced)
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5. KEY ELEMENTS OF GAMES
 As there is no perfect rule
 One way of seeing game design is
 Identifying common elements in a genre of games
 And Create games in that genre with similar elements but
different story, or graphics goals
 Or find out the genre of your game concept, identify the
common elements of that genre, compare, think, innovate.
Make the game more interesting
 Your ideas, stories can be great but it also needs to have
some of those common and useful elements
 Publishers usually do not go for the very innovative ideas
but want the idea similar to a recent hit with some more
twists
 The successful games are successful – there is a reason
behind this 6
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6. KEY ELEMENTS OF GAME
 Common elements
 Rules of the game (your concept should have rules)
 The player’s role
 The challenges
 ….
 Two games can have many common elements but
 different settings, rules, strategies, and balancing
 Many games have the same/similar play mechanics but
with different graphics
 Identifying common elements
 does not to encourage you to imitate/create cookie-cutter
games
 but to ensure that all essential elements are covered
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7. GROUND RULES FOR GAME DESIGN
 Game design can be broken in three specific area
 Core mechanics
 Storytelling
 Interactivity
 Core mechanics
 Storytelling
 All game has a story
 The game itself can be a story like princess of Persia
 The player can create the story (the way he plays and
reaches the goal)
 Talk about Narrative and non – narrative
 No story, the player creates the story
 Linear narrative, non linear narrative
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8. INTERACTIVITY
 Define how the interactivity will work
 Graphics
 Sounds
 User Interface
 Poor interactivity can ruin a game
 Wire wind for example
 Use right click, icon based menus, select options to proceed
 Interactivity includes the user interface as well
 Sonic the Hedgehog, and Mario 64 for Wii
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9. IMPORTANCE OF DESIGN
DOCUMENT
 All game companies now want a design document
to be written
 The design document may not include all ideas
but can write down the decisions
 Many ideas come from lunch meetings
 If a feature is not written down
 Someone has to create it on the fly
 Different team member may work to different goals
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10. TYPES OF DESIGN DOCUMENTS
 High Concept (2-4) pages
 Game treatment (10-20 pages)
 Game script (50-200 pages)
 High Concept (2-4) pages
 Got a great game idea? Write a high concept
document. Will be used to express the idea to the
publishers to fund the game
 Covers
 Premise of the game
 Intended audience
 Genre 11
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11. GAME DESIGN DOCUMENT
 Game Treatment
 Analysis of the Competition
 How your game is different
 A document to sale your game
 Some business and development details
 Game Script
 Bible of the game
 Game design decisions
 Creative, conceptual, and functional
 Does not include how the game will be implemented in
software
 The design document may help you to play the games in
paper – brainstorm, get feedbacks
 A cheaper way to evaluate the game
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12. ANATOMY OF GAME DESIGNER
 Requires both
 Talent
 Skill
 Skill Set
 Imagination
 Still if you do not have a talent for it, you can grow and
improve (through exercise of imaginations)
 Forms of Imagination
 Visual and auditory
 Dramatic
 Good character plot, motivation, emotion, climaxes, and outcomes
 Conceptual
 Relationship between ideas, their interactions, and dependencies
 Basic knowledge of the technical capabilities of the platform 13
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13. ANATOMY OF GAME DESIGNER
 Analytical Competence
 Able to recognize good part and bad part of a design.
 Self criticize and improve
 Take opinions, and process those opinions
 Mathematical Competence
 Some math concepts are essential
 Aesthetic Competence
 Writing Skills
 Technical Writing
 Fiction Writing
 Manual, Background Material, Character Description
 Dialog Writing
 Audio voice cover and cinematic materials
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14. ANATOMY OF GAME DESIGNER
 Drawing Skills
 Ability to Compromise
 Consider customer or publisher interests and adjust
 Compromise to the limitation of the platform
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15. REFERENCES
 Fundamentals of Game Design, 2nd Edition,
Ernest Adams, Prentice Hall, 2006, ISBN-10:
0131687476. ISBN-13: 978-0131687479
 http://computer.justetc.net
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