Game design is the art of applying design and aesthetics to create a
game
A game is a structured form of play, usually undertaken for entertainment or fun, and sometimes used as an educational tool. Many games are also considered to be work (such as professional players of spectator sports or games) or art (su ...
for entertainment or for educational, exercise, or experimental purposes. Increasingly, elements and principles of game design are also applied to other interactions, in the form of
gamification. Game designer and developer Robert Zubek defines game design by breaking it down into its elements, which he says are the following:
*
Gameplay
Gameplay is the specific way in which players interact with a game, and in particular with video games. Gameplay is the pattern defined through the game rules, connection between player and the game, challenges and overcoming them, plot and pla ...
, which is the interaction between the player and the mechanics and systems
*
Mechanics
Mechanics (from Ancient Greek: μηχανική, ''mēkhanikḗ'', "of machines") is the area of mathematics and physics concerned with the relationships between force, matter, and motion among physical objects. Forces applied to objects ...
and systems, which are the rules and objects in the game
* Player experience, which is how users feel when they're playing the game
Games such as
board game
Board games are tabletop games that typically use . These pieces are moved or placed on a pre-marked board (playing surface) and often include elements of table, card, role-playing, and miniatures games as well.
Many board games feature a ...
s,
card game
A card game is any game using playing cards as the primary device with which the game is played, be they traditional or game-specific.
Countless card games exist, including families of related games (such as poker). A small number of card g ...
s,
dice game
Dice games are games that use or incorporate one or more dice as their sole or central component, usually as a random device
In computing, a hardware random number generator (HRNG) or true random number generator (TRNG) is a device that gener ...
s,
casino games,
role-playing games,
sport
Sport pertains to any form of competitive physical activity or game that aims to use, maintain, or improve physical ability and skills while providing enjoyment to participants and, in some cases, entertainment to spectators. Sports can, ...
s,
video games
Video games, also known as computer games, are electronic games that involves interaction with a user interface or input device such as a joystick, controller, keyboard, or motion sensing device to generate visual feedback. This feedb ...
,
war games, or
simulation
A simulation is the imitation of the operation of a real-world process or system over time. Simulations require the use of models; the model represents the key characteristics or behaviors of the selected system or process, whereas the ...
games benefit from the principles of game design.
Academically, game design is part of
game studies, while
game theory studies strategic decision making (primarily in non-game situations). Games have historically inspired seminal research in the fields of
probability
Probability is the branch of mathematics concerning numerical descriptions of how likely an Event (probability theory), event is to occur, or how likely it is that a proposition is true. The probability of an event is a number between 0 and ...
,
artificial intelligence
Artificial intelligence (AI) is intelligence—perceiving, synthesizing, and inferring information—demonstrated by machine
A machine is a physical system using Power (physics), power to apply Force, forces and control Motion, moveme ...
, economics, and
optimization theory. Applying game design to itself is a current research topic in
metadesign.
History
Sports (see
history of sports), gambling, and
board games are known, respectively, to have existed for at least nine thousand, six thousand, and four thousand years.
Folk process
Tabletop games played today whose descent can be traced from ancient times include
chess
Chess is a board game for two players, called White and Black, each controlling an army of chess pieces in their color, with the objective to checkmate the opponent's king. It is sometimes called international chess or Western chess to dist ...
,
go,
pachisi,
backgammon,
mahjong
Mahjong or mah-jongg (English pronunciation: ) is a tile-based game that was developed in the 19th century in China and has spread throughout the world since the early 20th century. It is commonly played by four players (with some three-pl ...
,
mancala, and
pick-up sticks. The rules of these games were not codified until early modern times and their features gradually evolved and changed over time, through the
folk process. Given this, these games are not considered to have had a designer or been the result of a
design process in the modern sense.
After the rise of commercial game publishing in the late 19th century, many games that had formerly evolved via folk processes became commercial properties, often with custom scoring pads or preprepared material. For example, the similar public domain games
Generala,
Yacht
A yacht is a sailing or power vessel used for pleasure, cruising, or racing. There is no standard definition, though the term generally applies to vessels with a cabin intended for overnight use. To be termed a , as opposed to a , such a pleasu ...
, and
Yatzy led to the commercial game
Yahtzee in the mid-1950s.
Today, many commercial games, such as
Taboo
A taboo or tabu is a social group's ban, prohibition, or avoidance of something (usually an utterance or behavior) based on the group's sense that it is excessively repulsive, sacred, or allowed only for certain persons.''Encyclopædia Britannic ...
,
Balderdash,
Pictionary, or
Time's Up!, are descended from traditional
parlour games. Adapting traditional games to become commercial properties is an example of game design.
Similarly, many sports, such as soccer and
baseball
Baseball is a bat-and-ball sport played between two teams of nine players each, taking turns batting and fielding. The game occurs over the course of several plays, with each play generally beginning when a player on the fielding ...
, are the result of folk processes, while others were designed, such as
basketball
Basketball is a team sport in which two teams, most commonly of five players each, opposing one another on a rectangular court, compete with the primary objective of shooting a basketball (approximately in diameter) through the defender's h ...
, invented in 1891 by
James Naismith
James Naismith (; November 6, 1861November 28, 1939) was a Canadian-American physical educator, physician, Christian chaplain, and sports coach, best known as the inventor of the game of basketball. After moving to the United States, he wrote ...
.
New media
Technological advances have provided new media for games throughout history.
The printing press allowed packs of
playing cards, adapted from
Mahjong
Mahjong or mah-jongg (English pronunciation: ) is a tile-based game that was developed in the 19th century in China and has spread throughout the world since the early 20th century. It is commonly played by four players (with some three-pl ...
tiles, to be mass-produced, leading to many new
card games. Accurate topographic maps produced as lithographs and provided free to Prussian officers helped popularize
wargaming. Cheap bookbinding (printed labels wrapped around cardboard) led to mass-produced
board games with custom boards. Inexpensive (hollow) lead figurine casting contributed to the development of
miniature wargaming. Cheap custom dice led to
poker dice.
Flying disc
A frisbee (pronounced ), also called a flying disc or simply a disc, is a gliding toy or sporting item that is generally made of injection-molded plastic and roughly in diameter with a pronounced lip. It is used recreationally and competitiv ...
s led to
disc golf and
Ultimate.
Personal computers contributed to the popularity of
computer games, leading to the wide availability of
video game consoles and
video games
Video games, also known as computer games, are electronic games that involves interaction with a user interface or input device such as a joystick, controller, keyboard, or motion sensing device to generate visual feedback. This feedb ...
.
Smart phones have led to a proliferation of
mobile games
A mobile game, or smartphone game, is a video game that is typically played on a mobile phone. The term also refers to all games that are played on any portable device, including from mobile phone ( feature phone or smartphone), tablet, PDA ...
.
The first games in a new medium are frequently adaptations of older games.
Pong, one of the first widely disseminated video games, adapted
table tennis
Table tennis, also known as ping-pong and whiff-whaff, is a sport in which two or four players hit a lightweight ball, also known as the ping-pong ball, back and forth across a table using small solid rackets. It takes place on a hard table div ...
. Later games will often exploit the distinctive properties of a new medium. Adapting older games and creating original games for new media are both examples of game design.
Theory
Game studies or gaming theory is a discipline that deals with the critical study of games, game design, players, and their role in society and culture. Prior to the late-twentieth century, the academic study of games was rare and limited to fields such as history and
anthropology
Anthropology is the scientific study of humanity, concerned with human behavior, human biology, cultures, societies, and linguistics, in both the present and past, including past human species. Social anthropology studies patterns of be ...
. As the video game revolution took off in the early 1980s, so did academic interest in games, resulting in a field that draws on diverse methodologies and schools of thought. These influences may be characterized broadly in three ways: the social science approach, the humanities approach, and the industry and engineering approach.
Broadly speaking, the social scientific approach has concerned itself with the question of "What do games do to people?" Using tools and methods such as surveys, controlled laboratory experiments, and ethnography researchers have investigated both the positive and negative impacts that playing games could have on people.
More sociologically informed research has sought to move away from simplistic ideas of gaming as either 'negative' or 'positive', but rather seeking to understand its role and location in the complexities of everyday life.
In general terms, the humanities approach has concerned itself with the question of "What meanings are made through games?" Using tools and methods such as interviews, ethnographies, and participant observation, researchers have investigated the various roles that videogames play in people's lives and activities together with the meaning they assign to their experiences.
From an industry perspective, a lot of game studies research can be seen as the academic response to the videogame industry's questions regarding the products it creates and sells. The main question this approach deals with can be summarized as "How can we create better games?" with the accompanying "What makes a game good?" "Good" can be taken to mean many different things, including providing an entertaining and engaging experience, being easy to learn and play, and being innovative, and having novel experiences. Different approaches to studying this problem have included looking at describing how to design games and extracting guidelines and rules of thumb for making better games
Strategic decision making
Game theory is a study of strategic
decision making
In psychology, decision-making (also spelled decision making and decisionmaking) is regarded as the cognitive process resulting in the selection of a belief or a course of action among several possible alternative options. It could be either ra ...
. Specifically, it is "the study of
mathematical model
A mathematical model is a description of a system using mathematical concepts and language. The process of developing a mathematical model is termed mathematical modeling. Mathematical models are used in the natural sciences (such as physics, ...
s of conflict and cooperation between intelligent rational decision-makers". An alternative term suggested "as a more descriptive name for the discipline" is ''interactive
decision theory''.
The subject first addressed
zero-sum games, such that one person's gains exactly equal net losses of the other participant or participants. Today, however, game theory applies to a wide range of behavioral relations, and has developed into an
umbrella term
In linguistics, semantics, general semantics, and ontologies, hyponymy () is a semantic relation between a hyponym denoting a subtype and a hypernym or hyperonym (sometimes called umbrella term or blanket term) denoting a supertype. In other ...
for the logical side of decision science.
The games studied in game theory are well-defined mathematical objects. To be fully defined, a game must specify the following elements: the
''players'' of the game, the ''information'' and ''actions'' available to each player at each decision point, and the
''payoffs'' for each outcome. (Rasmusen refers to these four "essential elements" by the acronym "PAPI".)
[• Eric Rasmusen (2007). ''Games and Information'', 4th ed]
Description
an
chapter-preview.
br /> • David M. Kreps (1990). ''Game Theory and Economic Modelling''
Description.
br /> • R. Aumann and S. Hart, ed. (1992, 2002). ''Handbook of Game Theory with Economic Applications'' v. 1
ch. 3–6
and v. 3
ch. 43
A game theorist typically uses these elements, along with a
solution concept of their choosing, to deduce a set of equilibrium
strategies for each player such that, when these strategies are employed, no player can profit by unilaterally deviating from their strategy. These equilibrium strategies determine an
equilibrium to the game—a stable state in which either one outcome occurs or a set of outcomes occur with known probability. .
Design elements
Games can be characterized by "what the player does"
and what the player experiences. This is often referred to as
gameplay
Gameplay is the specific way in which players interact with a game, and in particular with video games. Gameplay is the pattern defined through the game rules, connection between player and the game, challenges and overcoming them, plot and pla ...
. Major key elements identified in this context are tools and rules that define the overall context of game.
Tools of play
Games are often classified by the components required to play them (e.g.
miniatures, a
ball,
cards,
a board and pieces, or a
computer). In places where the use of leather is well established, the ball has been a popular game piece throughout recorded history, resulting in a worldwide popularity of ball games such as
rugby,
basketball
Basketball is a team sport in which two teams, most commonly of five players each, opposing one another on a rectangular court, compete with the primary objective of shooting a basketball (approximately in diameter) through the defender's h ...
,
football,
cricket
Cricket is a bat-and-ball game played between two teams of eleven players on a field at the centre of which is a pitch with a wicket at each end, each comprising two bails balanced on three stumps. The batting side scores runs by st ...
,
tennis
Tennis is a racket sport that is played either individually against a single opponent ( singles) or between two teams of two players each ( doubles). Each player uses a tennis racket that is strung with cord to strike a hollow rubber ball c ...
, and
volleyball
Volleyball is a team sport in which two teams of six players are separated by a net. Each team tries to score points by grounding a ball on the other team's court under organized rules. It has been a part of the official program of the Summ ...
. Other tools are more idiosyncratic to a certain region. Many countries in Europe, for instance, have unique standard decks of
playing card
A playing card is a piece of specially prepared card stock, heavy paper, thin cardboard, plastic-coated paper, cotton-paper blend, or thin plastic that is marked with distinguishing motifs. Often the front (face) and back of each card has a ...
s. Other games such as
chess
Chess is a board game for two players, called White and Black, each controlling an army of chess pieces in their color, with the objective to checkmate the opponent's king. It is sometimes called international chess or Western chess to dist ...
may be traced primarily through the development and evolution of its game pieces.
Many game tools are tokens, meant to represent other things. A token may be a pawn on a board,
play money, or an intangible item such as a point scored.
Games such as
hide-and-seek or
tag do not utilise any obvious tool; rather, their interactivity is defined by the environment. Games with the same or similar rules may have different gameplay if the environment is altered. For example, hide-and-seek in a school building differs from the same game in a park; an
auto race
Auto racing (also known as car racing, motor racing, or automobile racing) is a motorsport involving the racing of automobiles for competition.
Auto racing has existed since the invention of the automobile. Races of various sorts were organise ...
can be radically different depending on the
track or
street
A street is a public thoroughfare in a built environment. It is a public parcel of land adjoining buildings in an urban context, on which people may freely assemble, interact, and move about. A street can be as simple as a level patch of d ...
course, even with the same cars.
Rule development
Whereas games are often characterized by their tools, they are often defined by their rules. While rules are
subject to variations and changes, enough change in the rules usually results in a "new" game. There are exceptions to this in that some games deliberately involve the changing of their own rules, but even then there are often immutable
meta-rules.
Rules generally determine turn order, the rights and responsibilities of the players, each player's goals, and how game components interact with each other to produce changes in a game's state. Player rights may include when they may spend resources or move tokens.
Victory conditions
Common win conditions are being first to amass a certain quota of points or tokens (as in
Settlers of Catan), having the greatest number of tokens at the end of the game (as in
Monopoly
A monopoly (from Greek el, μόνος, mónos, single, alone, label=none and el, πωλεῖν, pōleîn, to sell, label=none), as described by Irving Fisher, is a market with the "absence of competition", creating a situation where a speci ...
), some relationship of one's game tokens to those of one's opponent (as in chess's
checkmate), or reaching a certain point in a storyline (as in most roleplay-games).
Single or multiplayer
Most games require multiple players. Single-player games are unique in respect to the type of challenges a player faces. Unlike a game with multiple players competing with or against each other to reach the game's goal, a single-player game is against an element of the environment, against one's own skills, against time, or against chance. This is also true of
cooperative games, in which multiple players share a common goal and win or lose together.
Many games described as "single-player" or "cooperative" could alternatively be described as puzzles or recreations, in that they do not involve strategic behavior (as defined by game theory), in which the expected reaction of an opponent to a possible move becomes a factor in choosing which move to make.
Games against opponents simulated with
artificial intelligence
Artificial intelligence (AI) is intelligence—perceiving, synthesizing, and inferring information—demonstrated by machine
A machine is a physical system using Power (physics), power to apply Force, forces and control Motion, moveme ...
differ from other single-player games in that the algorithms used usually do incorporate strategic behavior.
Storyline and plot
Stories told in games may focus on narrative elements that can be communicated through the use of mechanics and player choice. Narrative plots in games generally have a clearly defined and simplistic structure. Mechanical choices on the part of the designer(s) often drastically affect narrative elements in the game. However, due to a lack of unified and standardized teaching and understanding of narrative elements in games, individual interpretations, methods, and terminology vary wildly. Because of this, most narrative elements in games are created unconsciously and intuitively. However, as a general rule, game narratives increase in complexity and scale as player choice or game mechanics increase in complexity and scale. One example of this is removing a players ability to directly affect the plot for a limited time. This lack of player choice necessitates an increase in mechanical complexity and could be used as a metaphor to symbolize depression that is felt by a character in the narrative.
Luck and strategy
A game's tools and rules will result in its requiring skill, strategy,
luck, or a combination thereof, and are classified accordingly.
Games of skill include games of physical skill, such as
wrestling
Wrestling is a series of combat sports involving grappling-type techniques such as clinch fighting, throws and takedowns, joint locks, pins and other grappling holds. Wrestling techniques have been incorporated into martial arts, combat ...
,
tug of war,
hopscotch
Hopscotch is a popular playground game in which players toss a small object, called a lagger, into numbered triangles or a pattern of rectangles outlined on the ground and then hop or jump through the spaces and retrieve the object. It is a chi ...
,
target shooting, and
horseshoes, and games of mental skill such as
checkers and
chess
Chess is a board game for two players, called White and Black, each controlling an army of chess pieces in their color, with the objective to checkmate the opponent's king. It is sometimes called international chess or Western chess to dist ...
.
Games of strategy
A strategy game or strategic game is a game (e.g. a board game) in which the players' uncoerced, and often autonomous, decision-making skills have a high significance in determining the outcome. Almost all strategy games require internal decisio ...
include checkers, chess,
go,
arimaa, and
tic-tac-toe, and often require special equipment to play them.
Games of chance
A game of chance is in contrast with a game of skill. It is a game whose outcome is strongly influenced by some randomizing device. Common devices used include dice, spinning tops, playing cards, roulette wheels, or numbered balls drawn from ...
include gambling games (
blackjack,
mah-jongg,
roulette, etc.), as well as
snakes and ladders and
rock, paper, scissors; most require equipment such as cards or
dice
Dice (singular die or dice) are small, throwable objects with marked sides that can rest in multiple positions. They are used for generating random values, commonly as part of tabletop games, including dice games, board games, role-playing ...
.
Most games contain two or all three of these elements. For example,
American football
American football (referred to simply as football in the United States and Canada), also known as gridiron, is a team sport played by two teams of eleven players on a rectangular field with goalposts at each end. The offense, the team wit ...
and baseball involve both physical skill and strategy while
tiddlywinks,
poker, and
Monopoly
A monopoly (from Greek el, μόνος, mónos, single, alone, label=none and el, πωλεῖν, pōleîn, to sell, label=none), as described by Irving Fisher, is a market with the "absence of competition", creating a situation where a speci ...
combine strategy and chance. Many card and board games combine all three; most
trick-taking games involve mental skill, strategy, and an element of chance, as do many strategic board games such as
Risk
In simple terms, risk is the possibility of something bad happening. Risk involves uncertainty about the effects/implications of an activity with respect to something that humans value (such as health, well-being, wealth, property or the environme ...
,
Settlers of Catan, and
Carcassonne.
Use as educational tool
By learning through play children can develop social and
cognitive skills, mature emotionally, and gain the
self-confidence required to engage in new experiences and environments.
Key ways that young children learn include playing, being with other people, being active, exploring and new experiences, talking to themselves, communicating with others, meeting physical and mental challenges, being shown how to do new things, practicing and repeating skills, and having fun.
Play develops children's content knowledge and provides children the opportunity to develop social skills, competencies, and disposition to learn. Play-based learning is based on a Vygotskian model of
scaffolding where the teacher pays attention to specific elements of the play activity and provides encouragement and feedback on children's learning.
[Martlew, J., Stephen, C. & Ellis, J. (2011). Play in the primary school classroom? The experience of teachers supporting children's learning through a new pedagogy. Early Years, 31(1), 71–83.] When children engage in real-life and imaginary activities, play can be challenging in children's thinking. To extend the learning process, sensitive intervention can be provided with adult support when necessary during play-based learning.
Development process
Game design is part of a game's development from concept to its final form. Typically, the development process is an
iterative process, with repeated phases of testing and revision. During revision, additional design or re-design may be needed.
Development team
Game designer
A game designer (or inventor) is the person who invents a game's concept, its central mechanisms, and its rules.
Often, the game designer also invents the game's title and, if the game isn't abstract, its theme. Sometimes these activities are done by the game publisher, not the designer, or maybe dictated by a licensed property (such as when designing a game based on a film).
Game developer
A game developer is the person who fleshes out the details of a game's design, oversees its testing, and revises the game in response to player feedback.
Often the game designer is also its developer, although some publishers do extensive development of games to suit their particular target audience after licensing a game from a designer. For larger games, such as
collectible card games and most video games, a team is used and the designer and developer roles are usually split among multiple people.
Game artist
A game artist is an artist who creates art for one or more types of games. Game artists are often vital to and credited in
role-playing games,
collectible card games and video games.
[Exhibitions: The Art of Video Games](_blank)
– Accessed 17 November 2012.
Many graphic elements of games are created by the designer when producing a prototype of the game, revised by the developer based on testing, and then further refined by the artist and combined with artwork as a game is prepared for publication or release.
Video game artists are responsible for all of the
aspects of game development that call for visual art.
[Gamespot UK – So You Want To Be An: Artist](_blank)
– Accessed 17 November 2012.
Concept
A game concept is an idea for a game, briefly describing its core play mechanisms, who the players represent, and how they win or lose.
A game concept may be "pitched" to a game publisher in a similar manner as film ideas are
pitched to potential film producers. Alternatively, game publishers holding a game
license to intellectual property in other media may solicit game concepts from several designers before picking one to design a game, typically paying the designer in advance against future
royalties.
Design
During design, a game concept is fleshed out. Mechanisms are specified in terms of components (boards, cards, on-screen entities, etc.) and rules. The play sequence and possible player actions are defined, as well as how the game starts, ends, and what is its winning condition. In video games,
storyboards and screen mockups may be created.
Prototype
A game prototype is a draft version of a game used for testing. Typically, creating a prototype marks the shift from game design to game development and testing. Although prototyping in regards to human-computer interaction and interaction design are both studied, the use of prototyping in game design has remained relatively unexplored. It's known that game design has clear benefits from prototyping, such as exploring new game design possibilities and technologies, the field of game design has different characteristics than other types of software industries that consider prototyping in game design in a different category and need a new perspective
Testing
Game testing is a major part of game development. During testing, players play the game and provide feedback on its gameplay, the usability of its components or screen elements, the clarity of its goals and rules, ease of learning, and enjoyment to the game developer. The developer then revises the design, its components, presentation, and rules before testing it again. Later testing may take place with
focus groups to test consumer reactions before publication.
During testing, various
balance issues may be identified, requiring changes to the game's design.
Video game testing is a
software testing
Software testing is the act of examining the artifacts and the behavior of the software under test by validation and verification. Software testing can also provide an objective, independent view of the software to allow the business to apprecia ...
process for
quality control of video games.
[ Moore, Novak 2010, p. 95][ Oxland 2004, p. 301-302] The primary function of game testing is the discovery and documentation of
software defects (aka bugs). Interactive entertainment software testing is a highly technical field requiring
computing
Computing is any goal-oriented activity requiring, benefiting from, or creating computing machinery. It includes the study and experimentation of algorithmic processes, and development of both hardware and software. Computing has scientific, ...
expertise, analytic competence, critical evaluation skills, and endurance.
[ Oxland 2004, p. 301]
Issues
Different types of games pose different game design issues.
Board games
Board game
Board games are tabletop games that typically use . These pieces are moved or placed on a pre-marked board (playing surface) and often include elements of table, card, role-playing, and miniatures games as well.
Many board games feature a ...
design is the development of rules and presentational aspects of a board game. When a player takes part in a game, it is the player's self-subjection to the rules that create a sense of purpose for the duration of the game.
[Neyfakh, Leon. "Quest for fun; Sometimes the most addictive new technology comes in a simple cardboard box". '']Boston Globe
''The Boston Globe'' is an American daily newspaper founded and based in Boston, Massachusetts. The newspaper has won a total of 27 Pulitzer Prizes, and has a total circulation of close to 300,000 print and digital subscribers. ''The Boston Glob ...
''. 11 March 2012 Maintaining the players' interest throughout the gameplay experience is the goal of board game design.
[Wadley, Carma. "Rules of the game: Do you have what it takes to invent the next 'Monopoly'?" '']Deseret News
The ''Deseret News'' () is the oldest continuously operating publication in the American west. Its multi-platform products feature journalism and commentary across the fields of politics, culture, family life, faith, sports, and entertainment. Th ...
''. 18 November 2008. To achieve this, board game designers emphasize different aspects such as social interaction, strategy, and competition, and target players of differing needs by providing for short versus long-play, and luck versus skill.
[ Beyond this, board game design reflects the culture in which the board game is produced.
The most ancient board games known today are over 5000 years old. They are frequently ]abstract
Abstract may refer to:
* ''Abstract'' (album), 1962 album by Joe Harriott
* Abstract of title a summary of the documents affecting title to parcel of land
* Abstract (law), a summary of a legal document
* Abstract (summary), in academic publishi ...
in character and their design is primarily focused on a core set of simple rules. Of those that are still played today, games like go (c.400BC), mancala (c.700AD), and chess
Chess is a board game for two players, called White and Black, each controlling an army of chess pieces in their color, with the objective to checkmate the opponent's king. It is sometimes called international chess or Western chess to dist ...
(c.600AD) have gone through many presentational and/or rule variations. In the case of chess, for example, new variants are developed constantly, to focus on certain aspects of the game, or just for variation's sake.
Traditional board games date from the nineteenth and early twentieth century. Whereas ancient board game design was primarily focused on rules alone, traditional board games were often influenced by Victorian
Victorian or Victorians may refer to:
19th century
* Victorian era, British history during Queen Victoria's 19th-century reign
** Victorian architecture
** Victorian house
** Victorian decorative arts
** Victorian fashion
** Victorian literature ...
mores. Academic (e.g. history and geography) and moral didacticism were important design features for traditional games, and Puritan
The Puritans were English Protestants in the 16th and 17th centuries who sought to purify the Church of England of Roman Catholic practices, maintaining that the Church of England had not been fully reformed and should become more Protestant. P ...
associations between dice and the Devil
A devil is the personification of evil as it is conceived in various cultures and religious traditions. It is seen as the objectification of a hostile and destructive force. Jeffrey Burton Russell states that the different conceptions of ...
meant that early American game designers eschewed their use in board games entirely.[Johnson, Bruce E. "Board games: affordable and abundant, boxed amusements from the 1930s and '40s recall the cultural climate of an era." '' Country Living''. 1 December 1997.] Even traditional games that did use dice, like ''Monopoly
A monopoly (from Greek el, μόνος, mónos, single, alone, label=none and el, πωλεῖν, pōleîn, to sell, label=none), as described by Irving Fisher, is a market with the "absence of competition", creating a situation where a speci ...
'' (based on the 1906 '' The Landlord's Game''), were rooted in educational efforts to explain political concepts to the masses. By the 1930s and 1940s, board game design began to emphasize amusement over education, and characters from comic strips, radio programmes, and (in the 1950s) television shows began to be featured in board game adaptations.[
Recent developments in modern board game design can be traced to the 1980s in Germany, and have led to the increased popularity of "]German-style board game
A Eurogame, also called a German-style board game, German game, or Euro-style game, (generally just referred to as board games in Europe) is a class of tabletop games that generally has indirect player interaction and abstract physical componen ...
s" (also known as "Eurogames" or "designer games"). The design emphasis of these board games is to give players meaningful choices.[ This is manifested by eliminating elements like randomness and luck to be replaced by skill, strategy, and resource competition, by removing the potential for players to fall irreversibly behind in the early stages of a game, and by reducing the number of rules and possible player options to produce what Alan R. Moon has described as "elegant game design".][ The concept of elegant game design has been identified by '']The Boston Globe
''The Boston Globe'' is an American daily newspaper founded and based in Boston, Massachusetts. The newspaper has won a total of 27 Pulitzer Prizes, and has a total circulation of close to 300,000 print and digital subscribers. ''The Boston Glob ...
s Leon Neyfakh as related to Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
Mihaly Robert Csikszentmihalyi (, hu, Csíkszentmihályi Mihály Róbert, ; 29 September 1934 – 20 October 2021) was a Hungarian-American psychologist. He recognized and named the psychological concept of "flow", a highly focused mental ...
's the concept of "flow
Flow may refer to:
Science and technology
* Fluid flow, the motion of a gas or liquid
* Flow (geomorphology), a type of mass wasting or slope movement in geomorphology
* Flow (mathematics), a group action of the real numbers on a set
* Flow (psych ...
" from his 1990 book, "Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience".[
Modern technological advances have had a democratizing effect on board game production, with services like ]Kickstarter
Kickstarter is an American public benefit corporation based in Brooklyn, New York, that maintains a global crowdfunding platform focused on creativity. The company's stated mission is to "help bring creative projects to life". As of July 2021, K ...
providing designers with essential startup capital and tools like 3D printers facilitating the production of game pieces and board game prototypes. A modern adaptation of figure games are miniature wargames like '' Warhammer 40,000''.
Card games
Card game
A card game is any game using playing cards as the primary device with which the game is played, be they traditional or game-specific.
Countless card games exist, including families of related games (such as poker). A small number of card g ...
s include games with cards that are custom-tailored to the game, as in many modern games, as well as those whose design is constricted by the type of the deck of cards, like Tarot
The tarot (, first known as '' trionfi'' and later as ''tarocchi'' or ''tarocks'') is a pack of playing cards, used from at least the mid-15th century in various parts of Europe to play card games such as Tarocchini. From their Italian roots ...
or the four-suited Latin decks. Card games can be played for fun, such as Go Fish, or as gambling games, such as Poker.
In Asian cultures, special sets of tiles can serve the same function as cards, as in mahjong
Mahjong or mah-jongg (English pronunciation: ) is a tile-based game that was developed in the 19th century in China and has spread throughout the world since the early 20th century. It is commonly played by four players (with some three-pl ...
, a game similar to (and thought to be the distant ancestor of) the Western card game rummy. Western dominoes
Dominoes is a family of tile-based games played with gaming pieces, commonly known as dominoes. Each domino is a rectangular tile, usually with a line dividing its face into two square ''ends''. Each end is marked with a number of spots (also ca ...
games are believed to have developed from Asian tile games in the 18th century.
'' Magic: The Gathering'' was the first collectible card game (or "trading card game") in 1993.
The line between card and board games is not clear-cut, as many card games, such as solitaire, involve playing cards to form a "tableau", a spatial layout or board. Many board games, in turn, uses specialized cards to provide random events, such as the Chance cards of Monopoly (game), or as the central mechanism driving play, as in many card-driven wargames.
As cards are typically shuffled and revealed gradually during play, most card games involve randomness, either initially or during play, and hidden information, such as the cards in a player's hand. This is in contrast to many board games, in which most of the game's current state is visible to all participants, even though players may also have a small amount of private information, such as the letter tiles on each player's rack during Scrabble
''Scrabble'' is a word game in which two to four players score points by placing tiles, each bearing a single letter, onto a game board divided into a 15×15 grid of squares. The tiles must form words that, in crossword fashion, read left ...
.
How players play their cards, revealing information and interacting with previous plays as they do so, is central to card game design. In partnership card games, such as Bridge
A bridge is a structure built to span a physical obstacle (such as a body of water, valley, road, or rail) without blocking the way underneath. It is constructed for the purpose of providing passage over the obstacle, which is usually somethi ...
, rules limiting communication between players on the same team become an important part of the game design. This idea of limited communication has been extended to cooperative card games, such as Hanabi.
Dice games
Dice game
Dice games are games that use or incorporate one or more dice as their sole or central component, usually as a random device
In computing, a hardware random number generator (HRNG) or true random number generator (TRNG) is a device that gener ...
s are among the oldest known games and have often been associated with gambling. Non-gambling dice games, such as Yatzy, Poker dice, or Yahtzee became popular in the mid-20th century.
The line between dice and board games is not clear-cut, as dice are often used as randomization devices in board games, such as Monopoly or Risk
In simple terms, risk is the possibility of something bad happening. Risk involves uncertainty about the effects/implications of an activity with respect to something that humans value (such as health, well-being, wealth, property or the environme ...
, while serving as the central drivers of play in games such as Backgammon or Pachisi.
Dice games differ from card games in that each throw of the dice is an independent event
Independence is a fundamental notion in probability theory, as in statistics and the theory of stochastic processes. Two events are independent, statistically independent, or stochastically independent if, informally speaking, the occurrence of o ...
, whereas the odds of a given card being drawn are affected by all the previous cards drawn or revealed from a deck. Dice game design often centers around forming scoring combinations and managing re-rolls, either by limiting their number, as in Yahtzee or by introducing a press-your-luck element, as in Can't Stop.
Casino games
Casino game design can entail the creation of an entirely new casino game, the creation of a variation on an existing casino game, or the creation of a new side bet on an existing casino game.[Lubin, Dan. "Casino Game Design: From Cocktail Napkin Sketch to Casino Floor". Available]
. Retrieved 13 December 2014.
Casino game mathematician, Michael Shackleford has noted that it is much more common for casino game designers today to make successful variations than entirely new casino games.[ Shackleford, Michael.]
Ten Commandments for Game Inventors
. Wizardofodds.com. Retrieved 13 December 2014. Gambling columnist John Grochowski points to the emergence of community-style slot machine
A slot machine (American English), fruit machine (British English) or poker machine ( Australian English and New Zealand English) is a gambling machine that creates a game of chance for its customers. Slot machines are also known pejoratively ...
s in the mid-1990s, for example, as a successful variation on an existing casino game type.
Unlike the majority of other games which are designed primarily in the interest of the player, one of the central aims of casino game design is to optimize the house advantage and maximize revenue from gamblers. Successful casino game design works to provide entertainment for the player and revenue for the gambling house.
To maximise player entertainment, casino games are designed with simple easy-to-learn rules that emphasize winning (i.e. whose rules enumerate many victory conditions and few loss conditions[), and that provide players with a variety of different gameplay postures (e.g. card hands).][ Player entertainment value is also enhanced by providing gamblers with familiar gaming elements (e.g. dice and cards) in new casino games.][
To maximise success for the gambling house, casino games are designed to be easy for croupiers to operate and for pit managers to oversee.][
The two most fundamental rules of casino game design are that the games must be non-fraudable][ (including being as nearly as possible immune from advantage gambling][) and that they must mathematically favor the house winning. Shackleford suggests that the optimum casino game design should give the house an edge of smaller than 5%.][
]
Role-playing games
The design of role-playing games requires the establishment of setting
Setting may refer to:
* A location (geography) where something is set
* Set construction in theatrical scenery
* Setting (narrative), the place and time in a work of narrative, especially fiction
* Setting up to fail a manipulative technique to ...
, characters, and basic gameplay rules or mechanics. After a role-playing game is produced, additional design elements are often devised by the players themselves. In many instances, for example, character creation is left to the players. Likewise, the progression of a role-playing game is determined in large part by the gamemaster whose individual campaign design may be directed by one of several role-playing game theories.
There is no central core for tabletop role-playing game theory because different people want such different things out of the games. Probably the most famous category of RPG theory, GNS Theory assumes that people want one of three things out of the game – a better, more interestingly challenging game, to create a more interesting story, or a better simulation – in other words better rules to support worldbuilding
Worldbuilding is the process of constructing a world, originally an imaginary one, sometimes associated with a fictional universe. Developing an imaginary setting with coherent qualities such as a history, geography, and ecology is a key task f ...
. GNS Theory has been abandoned by its creator, partly because it neglects emotional investment, and partly because it just didn't work properly. There are techniques that people use (such as dice pools) to better create the game they want – but with no consistent goal or agreement for what makes for a good game there's no overarching theory generally agreed on.
Sports
Sports games are made with the same rules as the sport the game portrays.
Video games
Video game design is a process that takes place in the pre-production phase of video game development. In the video game industry, game design describes the creation of the content and rules of a video game. The goal of this process for the game designer is to provide players with the opportunity to make meaningful decisions in relation to playing the game.[ Elements of video game design such as the establishment of fundamental ]gameplay
Gameplay is the specific way in which players interact with a game, and in particular with video games. Gameplay is the pattern defined through the game rules, connection between player and the game, challenges and overcoming them, plot and pla ...
rules provide a framework within which players will operate, while the addition of narrative structures provide players with a reason to care about playing the game. To establish the rules and narrative, an internally consistent game world is created, requiring visual, audio, and programming development for world, character
Character or Characters may refer to:
Arts, entertainment, and media Literature
* ''Character'' (novel), a 1936 Dutch novel by Ferdinand Bordewijk
* ''Characters'' (Theophrastus), a classical Greek set of character sketches attributed to The ...
, and level design. The amount of work that is required to accomplish this often demands the use of a design team which may be divided into smaller game design disciplines. In order to maintain internal consistency between the teams, a specialized software design document known as a " game design document" (and sometimes an even broader scope "game bible" document) provides overall contextual guidance on ambient mood, appropriate tone, and other less tangible aspects of the game world.
Important aspects of video game design are human-computer interaction and game feel.
War games
The first military war games, or Kriegsspiel, were designed in Prussia
Prussia, , Old Prussian: ''Prūsa'' or ''Prūsija'' was a German state on the southeast coast of the Baltic Sea. It formed the German Empire under Prussian rule when it united the German states in 1871. It was ''de facto'' dissolved by an ...
in the 19th century to train staff officers. They are also played as a hobby for entertainment.
Modern war games are designed to test doctrines
Doctrine (from la, doctrina, meaning "teaching, instruction") is a codification of beliefs or a body of teachings or instructions, taught principles or positions, as the essence of teachings in a given branch of knowledge or in a belief system ...
, strategies and tactics in full scale exercises with opposing forces at venues like the NTC, JRTC and the JMRC, involving NATO
The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO, ; french: Organisation du traité de l'Atlantique nord, ), also called the North Atlantic Alliance, is an intergovernmental military alliance between 30 member states – 28 European and two No ...
countries.
See also
* Gamification
* Play (activity)
* Video game design
Video game design is the process of designing the content and rules of video games in the Video game development#Pre-production, pre-production stage and designing the gameplay, environment, storyline and characters in the Video game development#P ...
Notes
References
Further reading
*
* Baur, Wolfgang. ''Complete Kobold Guide to Game Design''. Open Design LLC 2012.
* Burgun, Keith. ''Game Design Theory: A New Philosophy for Understanding Games''. Publisher: A K Peters/CRC Press 2012.
* Costikyan, Greg. ''Uncertainty in Games''. MIT Press 2013.
* Elias, George Skaff. ''Characteristics of Games''. MIT Press 2012.
* Hofer, Margaret. ''The Games We Played: The Golden Age of Board & Table Games''. Princeton Architectural Press 2003.
* Huizinga, Johan. ''Homo Ludens: A Study of the Play-Element in Culture''. Beacon Press 1971.
* Kankaanranta, Marja Helena. ''Design and Use of Serious Games (Intelligent Systems, Control and Automation: Science and Engineering)''. Springer 2009. .
*
* Norman, Donald A. ''The Design of Everyday Things''. Basic Books 2002. .
*
* Peek, Steven. ''The Game Inventor's Handbook''. Betterway Books 1993.
* Peterson, Jon. ''Playing at the World''. Unreason Press 2012. .
* Salen Tekinbad, Katie. ''Rules of Play: Game Design Fundamentals''. The MIT Press 2003. .
* Schell, Jesse. ''The Art of Game Design: A book of lenses''. CRC Press 2008.
*
* Tinsman, Brian. ''The Game Inventor's Guidebook: How to Invent and Sell Board Games, Card Games, Role-Playing Games, & Everything in Between!'' Morgan James Publishing 2008.
* Woods, Stewart. ''Eurogames: The Design, Culture and Play of Modern European Board Games''. McFarland 2012. 978-0786467976
*Zubek, Robert (August 2020). ''Elements of Game Design.'' The MIT Press.
{{Types of games
Game theory
Leisure activities