Digital Library Keyword Archives

game design

- 144 articles or papers

 

Newsgames – Procedural Rhetoric Meets Political Cartoons

Treanor Mike
2009 DiGRA '09 - Proceedings of the 2009 DiGRA International Conference: Breaking New Ground: Innovation in Games, Play, Practice and Theory

Video games have been created about political and social issues since the early days of the medium. In recent years, many developers are rapidly creating and releasing games in response to current events. These games are being referred to as newsgames. With an increasing number of people citing the internet as their primary news source, it would appear that newsgames could become an important part of how people understand current events and could rise to be an important and expressive video game genre. However, the word “newsgame” is currently only quite loosely defined, resulting in the term being applied to many forms of serious, or nonfiction games. Also, despite the quantity of games that relate to current events, very few newsgames can be said live up to the defining claims that newsgames are the video game equivalent of political cartoons [25] – a well developed and established medium for political expression. This paper fleshes out the political cartoon comparison in order to learn from the long history of political cartoons and give direction to the current state of fledgling and unsophisticated newsgames. It also suggests clear and flexible definitive criteria for newsgames as well as a redeclaration of their expressive power.

 

Where Do Game Design Ideas Come From? Invention and Recycling in Games Developed in Sweden

Hagen Ulf
2009 DiGRA '09 - Proceedings of the 2009 DiGRA International Conference: Breaking New Ground: Innovation in Games, Play, Practice and Theory

The game industry is often accused for not being original and inventive enough, making sequels and transmediations instead of creating new game concepts and genres. Idea creation in game development has not been studied much by scholars. This paper explores the origin of game design ideas, with the purpose of creating a classification of the domains the ideas are drawn from. Design ideas in 25 games, developed by the four main game developers in Sweden, have been collected mainly through interviews with the designers and through artifact analyses of the games. A grounded theory approach was then used to develop categories “bottom-up” from the collected data. This resulted in four main categories and a number of sub categories, describing different domains that game design ideas are drawn from. The analysis of the game design ideas also showed that all games consist of a recycled part and an inventive part, and that the ideas in the recycled part mainly come from domains that are closely related to games. This indicates that games perhaps would be more inventive if design ideas were drawn from more distant domains.

 

Design Guidelines for Learning Games: the Living Forest Game Design Case

Pereira Luís Lucas Roque Licínio Gomes
2009 DiGRA '09 - Proceedings of the 2009 DiGRA International Conference: Breaking New Ground: Innovation in Games, Play, Practice and Theory

Games have long been known for their potential in learning but, on the other hand, design challenges and issues in their use in real contexts have been recognized as well. In this paper we report on a design case for a learning game, “Living Forest”, targeted at exploring sociotechnical aspects of the relationship between Human settlements and forests. The player is presented with a management exercise where she can promote development while balancing social, economic and ecological aspects in forest space. As part of an ethnographic analysis of our development praxis we synthesized a set of guidelines for the design of serious games, i.e. games with learning purposes, that have requirements of fidelity to the Body-of-Knowledge about the phenomena being modelled and learned.

 

Modeling Games with Petri Nets

Araújo Manuel
2009 DiGRA '09 - Proceedings of the 2009 DiGRA International Conference: Breaking New Ground: Innovation in Games, Play, Practice and Theory

This paper describes an alternate approach to the modeling of game systems and game flow with Petri nets. Modeling languages usually used in this area are of limited efficiency when it comes to validating the underlying game systems. We provide a case study to show that Petri Nets can be used with advantages over other modeling languages. Their graphical notation is simple, yet it can be used to model complex game systems. Their mathematically defined structure enables the modeled system to be formally analyzed and its behavior’s simulation offers the possibility of detecting unwanted behaviors, loop-holes or balancing issues while still in the game design stage.

 

Mechanisms of the Soul – Tackling the Human Condition in Videogames

Rusch Doris C.
2009 DiGRA '09 - Proceedings of the 2009 DiGRA International Conference: Breaking New Ground: Innovation in Games, Play, Practice and Theory

Focusing on games’ specific affectivei, procedural and metaphoricalii potential, this paper is going to explore three devices for the purposeful design of games that tackle the human condition. Device I “Fictional Alignment” matches game structures to fictional themes in order to expand games’ emotional palette through leveraging the affective strength of game emotions and shaping their meaning through fictional contextualization. Device II, “Procedurality”, discusses the potential and limits of procedural expression to enhance our understanding of the mechanisms inherent to the human condition. Device III, “Experiential Metaphor”, investigates the metaphorical potential of game aesthetics and how it can help to make abstract experiences such as emotional processes and mental states emotionally tangible. Since these devices are based on characteristics that coexist in games, they are not mutually exclusive. However, discussing them separately should facilitate their deliberate use.

 

Expressive AI: Games and Artificial Intelligence


2003 DiGRA '03 - Proceedings of the 2003 DiGRA International Conference: Level Up

In recent years, as dramatic increases in graphic sophistication began yielding diminishing returns, the technical focus in game design has been turning towards Artificial Intelligence (AI). While game AI might be considered a “purely technical” phenomenon not of interest to game designers and theorists, this paper argues that AI-based art and entertainment constitutes a new interdisciplinary agenda linking games studies, design practice, and technical research. I call this new interdisciplinary agenda expressive AI.

 

Approaches to Computer Game Design

Lankoski Petri Heliö Satu
2002 Computer Games and Digital Cultures Conference Proceedings

From the player's point of view, action is an important feature of a game. Action can be created and directed by raising expectations, building up motivations and setting goals for the players. An important tool for setting up motivations and goals for the player are well-defined characters with distinct natures and needs. Those will create the basis of conflict in the game. Expectations, which guide the choices of players, are the expectation of gaming, genre and also intermediality as a whole. Space and architecture can be used for communicating the genre, thus creating some expectations and removing others. On the other hand, by using the design of space and the rules of the game the players can be guided into using the space in a manner that endorses the gaming experience.

 

Troubling ‘Games for Girls’: Notes from the Edge of Game Design

Flanagan Mary
2005 DiGRA '05 - Proceedings of the 2005 DiGRA International Conference: Changing Views: Worlds in Play

This paper presents notes from the field focused on a large project to design an activist, multi-user game aimed at middle school girls. A thorny issue in developing games for girls is the categorization of female players and universalizing their preferences. In the paper I provide diverse feedback on current game-based research project, RAPUNSEL, hoping to provide a multiplicity in the category of "girl" so that new game designs may challenge the many stereotypes inherent in computer culture. I then discuss the game design in RAPUNSEL and how a designer may provide for multiple play styles.

 

Augmented Board Games – Enhancing board games with electronics

Peitz Johan Eriksson Daniel Björk Staffan
2005 DiGRA '05 - Proceedings of the 2005 DiGRA International Conference: Changing Views: Worlds in Play

This paper examines Augmented Board Games, the result of using computational power to extend functionality and gameplay in board games. Experimental interaction design has been used as the primary research method, through the use of numerous models and design tools, including social and functional roles, game design patterns, and task analysis. The paper is concluded with descriptions of concepts and prototypes as well as novel game design possibilities within the design space of augmented board games.

 

Cinematic Camera as Videogame Cliché

Thomas David Haussmann Gary
2005 DiGRA '05 - Proceedings of the 2005 DiGRA International Conference: Changing Views: Worlds in Play

Because the videogame camera is not an optical camera, it can be programmed to represent a potentially infinite number of perspectives beyond the classic, representational linear perspective. However, an ongoing collusion of the optical camera and the videogame camera leads videogame designs to favor cinematic visual patterns. Classic videogames show a strong tradition of non-optical, non-cinematic perspectives and prove the potential for the videogame medium to expand beyond optically-true perspectives. In fact, this paper argues the development of videogames as an expressive medium depends on an understanding of cinematic perspective as a form of visual cliché’