Game Design: how to use real craft to improve your game design, several examples and tips.

1. Game Design: From Rules To Craft
Pietro Polsinelli
@ppolsinelli
These slides: http://bit.ly/rulescraft

2. Transformation 1/3 Games for Social Impact

3. Friday, November 28, 2014
… to develop and implement a game infused e-learning tool to promote early access to services with neglect and abuse for young people on the move in Europe
Mission.
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4. Kids becoming aware and capable of dealing with situations of neglect and abuse.
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5. Pick a mod, just change the labels ...
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6. Collateral story gets in the way of play.
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7. Designing Games for Social Impact RE-DESIGN

8. Inspired by ...
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9. Represent notions with characters
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10. Inspired by Dumb Ways To Die. Specific mechanics.
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11. Universe made of simple atoms
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12. Inspired by Dominions: cards are characters, actions, a universe.

13. Build up of awareness defines the game mechanics.
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14. Game loop: shit happens.

15. Deal with it and keep your universe together.
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17. Designing Games for Social Impact TIPS

18. Use cards.
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19. Cards constitute a universe, not just characters and actions. Also universal language. Developers, cards are objects – classes, instances, extensions.

20. More pervasive than it looks.
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21. Plants vs. Zombies (1) was born and prototyped as a card game – actually collectible card game.

22. Complexity trains strategic thinking.
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23. Distinction between input output randomness & unpredictability: from Randomness and Game Design

24. Use ramdomness sparingly.
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25. Games with simple relations and play mechanics are simpler to evolve.
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26. Minimal viable game.

27. Keep a good state in the loop AND
supply an evolving story line.

28. Stories get deadly in loops.
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29. If Games Were Like Game Stories...

30. From Nick Case If Games Were Like Game Stories...
Games don’t’ branch, they evolve.

31. Even branching games do not have branching at their core.

32. Interact early with concept art.
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33. Black and white games: “get ready for fight or flight”

34. What I say here is based on anecdotal evidence from working experience, no data no lab.

35. Applied games definition and theory

36. An applied game (serious game) is a game designed for a primary purpose other than pure entertainment.
Take this as a sort of definition. Hard to say which are not serious. Note that in effort, style, problematic this changes little.

37. Self referential / Referring games
Both may be good or bad.
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38. You will need full game design skils – and more - to create good games that teach something.

39. Shortcuts …

40. Game design is a specific profession.
Image from Extra Credits.

41. Working in applied games is particularly complex / interesting because you are working in between systems.
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42. Motivational theory?

43. A game where you can’t win, and its not fun.
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44. This War of Mine

45. Each game is played because of a motivational framework defined by… the game itself.
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46. Transformation 2/6 Games for Health

47. Help people that are evolving towards a chronic desease by influencing behavior and disrupting this evolution.
NDA 
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48. Customer thinks (s)he knows what “game” means. This is a problem.
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49. Designing Games for Health RE-DESIGN

50. Friday, November 28, 2014
Category, competition, avatar, war, reward, levels Vs. Inclusive, mentor, path, story, transformation
A language change.
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51. Ian Bogost: gamification is bullshit.
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53. Redesigned by including negative feedback, turning avatar to mentor, building an AI.

54. Designing Games for Health TIPS

55. Distinguish (and then merge) projective experiences and couching.

56. Genre and inclusiveness.

57. Power of baptism. Comes in many forms...
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58. the greatest invention of the video game era was – and continues to be – “single-play”.
Applied game’ customers often don’t get this. Independence, absence.

59. Beyond the avatar: Discarding the relatable avatar for a meaningful voice learning from poetry

60. Transformation 3/6 Games for Change

61. This is the communication context. Few really cares about global warming, we have to make people aware of consequences.
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62. Not so cool for not geeks.
agent based model
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63. Designing Games for Change RE-DESIGN

64. Friday, November 28, 2014
Dystopic future, like in The Curfew. “Lacking food water oil”, daily life has to change.
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65. How will you prepare breakfast without electricity?
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66. Variations on daily life habits due to external changes.
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67. Designing Games for Change TIPS

68. Emergence: a set of simple rules acting on many elements. The game is an emergent behaviour Progression: a predefined set of actions to be performed to complete the game
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69. Emergence / Progression
Sim City, Braid.

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71. So?

72. Become a game designer: study, prototype, release, loop

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76. Sources www.gamasutra.com/blogs/KeithBurgun/20141015/227740/Randomness_and_Game_Design.php?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+GamasutraNews+%28Gamasutra+ News%29 http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/NickyCase/20140811/222467/If_Games_Were_Like_Game_Stories.php?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+GamasutraNews+%28Gamasutra+News%29 http://www.anglia.ac.uk/ruskin/en/home/microsites/global_sustainability_institute/our_research/resource_management.Maincontent.0021.file.tmp/Climate%2520Change_Resource%2520Scarcity_Conflict%252019-09.pdf http://www.aboutkidshealth.ca/En/Pages/default.aspx https://mysugr.com/ https://www.flickr.com/photos/littleloud/6725429655/in/photostream/ http://images4.fanpop.com/image/photos/24200000/Dominion-card-and-tile- games-24276844-502-405.jpg
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77. My twitter stream is mostly dedicated to game design http://twitter.com/ppolsinelli A blog on game design http://designagame.eu