A game design vocabulary : exploring the foundational principles behind good game design Upplaga 1

Since the first arcade videogames appeared in the 1970s, publishers have invested billions of dollars in developing more powerful technologies to deliver richer player experiences. Games have often taken a central role in popular culture; in fact, organizations are even attempting to gamify traditional business processes. However, our language for understanding, discussing, and designing games has remained primitive and this has made it more difficult to create great games or intelligently evaluate them. A Game Design Vocabulary fills this gap, offering a complete shared framework for understanding and evaluating game design as creators, as players, as students, as game industry decision-makers. Anna Anthropy approaches games through the lens of storytelling and vocabulary, examining the structure of a game, identifying its verbs, adverbs, objects, and showing how game designers develop these elements over the course of a game. Anthropy uses extensive examples to illuminate abstract concepts in game design. In multiple case studies, she dissects samples from existing games. Every chapter concludes with hands-on design challenges and learning exercises that promote deeper insight and can be done with or without access to any game development technologies. Coverage includes: Verbs and objects, the fundamental game characters Scenes, which we use to develop those characters Context, using video and audio to communicate game rules Resistance, our ability to reward or to waste the player's time Designing games holistically, rather than as a collection of parts Chapters will end with design challenges and exercise. There will be additional materials for instructors including, interactive examples, test questions, and group project ideas.