Categories
Game Design

Continuous Meaning.

As has been discussed previously it makes no sense to analyse a game mechanic devoid of the context in  which it occurs. At an abstract level Jump is a mechanic that exists in many games from Super Mario Galaxy to Mirror’s Edge or Far Cry 2. The context within which each mechanic is performed is what […]

Categories
Game Design Game Mechanics

Show me how to play.

Getting stuck in a game is far from uncommon. The specific reasons are as varied as the games themselves, though all such situations can generally be grouped into two categories; skill based obstacles or logic based obstacles. Common to action games, skill based obstacles stem from an inability to complete a given task. The goal is obvious, the […]

Categories
Game Design Narrative Design

Narrative Context.

On several occasions I’ve recounted events that took place while I was playing a game. I’ve described in detail the actions I took and the consequences of those actions, as well as explaining my motivations and emotional reaction to such events: Jumping out I threw a Molotov at the pursuing vehicle. The Molotov hit the […]

Categories
Game Design

Exploring Meaning.

In order to consider and analyse the explorative form of games it is necessary to present the game mechanics, the logical game space, in some visual manner. The interconnected nature of objects and actions, nouns and verbs, within a game can make any attempt at a complete representation of the entire possibility space prohibitively complex; therefore some […]

Categories
Game Design

Mechanical Exploration.

Warning: This post contains mechanical spoilers for Gravity Bone. If you don’t believe that’s possible and have yet to play the game I assume no responsibility… In the comments to my previous article on the difference between literature, film and games, Chade questioned my use of the term explorative to describe games. He made two […]

Categories
Films Game Design Literature

Communicating Intent.

My previous post was vague and though some of that was intended to promote comment and discussion, I feel I may have been unintentionally cryptic in both the post itself and my comments. It was not my aim to imply any order of worth to each of the forms of media mentioned, and I also […]

Categories
Game Design

Different Vocabularies.

Games can be thought of as a language of communication by which the player communicates their intent through the use of nouns (Objects) and adverb-verb pairs (Actions) and the game responds by changing the adjectives (Properties) describing the nouns. The grammar of the game defines the type of sentences that have meaning within the current context; […]