Game Design How to actually design a game is impossible to define on a large scale. The type of game being created has a big impact on the game design. Trade offs Tradeoffs creates risk and hence strategy in a game. Most games have some strategy in them. Tradeoffs need to be easy for the user to […]
Player’s role during production Players can be invaluable in shaping a game. Olli Sotamaa categorized player uses into these categories: Designer’s Muse, designer’s Patient, Player as Designer’s Adviser, and Player as Designer. I will summarize what he said about using players for these different purposes. (Sotamaa, 2007) Player as Designer’s Muse Players can be used to gather ideas. Often […]
Using Game Mechanics In the last section we talked about which game mechanics should be used. Now I am going to talk about using those game mechanics in a way that will make a game fun. Feedback Loop According to Carlo Fabricatore, the main source of fun should come from feedback loops. A feedback loop is part of […]
Preventing Failure In 1997 Dan Lavin from Dataquest Inc. figured that only 4% of commercial games make money. (Armstrong, & Hamm, 1997) With such a big failure rate it is important to understand what needs to be avoided when developing a game. Research has shown that some of the most common reasons why games fail are unrealistic […]