My Initial script for my Storyboard

Storyboard first draft

Beginning:

The start of the story starts with a drunken character walking down an alleyway and attempts to help a hooded figure in a fight against a group of thugs, the character gets beaten up and the hooded figure saves him but as the group runs away the hooded figure is shoot by one of the thugs and the figure falls into the main characters arms.

Then it fades to the introduction to the main character (through a flashback) that from a young age has been trained by his scientist father in all variants of martial arts and trained to his physical peek. As well as this he is home schooled and taught by his single parent dad again to his mental peek as well as his butler so that he is tuned and adapted to his peek of mental and physical capabilities.

The introduction is a jump straight into an action scene followed by a flashback which explains the initial action scene, then a brief run through of his life from a young age until just before his 21^st birthday where he has stuck to his training and is a god amongst normal men and then catches back up to the start of the story. It is also established that his father is getting older and sticking to the training but becoming in superior to his sons abilities.

Body of the story:

The week before his birthday whilst out and around town he is doing he usual shopping and meets a woman who he instantly falls for and who tempts him to disobey his dad and escape the night of his birthday as, after explaining that he is not getting a party or a big celebration she tells him they should meet up because it is his 21^st birthday so should celebrate properly.

After escaping for his birthday he returns home and takes a shortcut through an alleyway (the flashback goes back to the start of the story) and sees a hooded, costumed figure in a fight with a group of men.

As he is trained to his physical peek and a bit over confident but quite drunk as he has never experience alcohol before he sticks up for the hooded figure and gets beaten up by the attackers. The hooded figure saves our hero and once the attackers are finished with and are running away one turns around and draws a pistol and shoots the hooded figure as he is helping our hero of the floor.

The hooded figure dies in the alley with him and just before he dies he reveals that it is his dad and that he was beaten because he is getting too old, not because of him but our hero blames himself for his fathers death.

At his funeral he receives all of his dad’s possessions including his house and cars etc and is lastly given a golden key on a chain by his butler and told that his father wanted him to have it and that he would know where to use it. Attached is a letter telling him that his uncle may be able to give extra help if his butler couldn’t answer any of his questions he might.

Later it is found that his uncle is a mole and is actually working for/ leader of the enemy’s, which his father didn’t know about.

The death of his father makes our hero determined to carry on his training and take his place as the hooded figure  and avenge his death even though he knows his dad doesn’t want him to follow in his footsteps because his training was to defend himself from the threat of others in the world, but he ignores this fact and decides he must have been training him for a better purpose and to replace him because why else was he being trained to the level he is at and he wishes to avenge his death as it was “his” fault he is dead.

End:

After overcoming some challenges both mentally and physically the hero finds the attacker that killed his father and takes him down and converts or kills his uncle due to him being a mole in the organisation as well as the mob boss that is in charge of the criminals of the city.  And obviously gets the girl and becomes a well known and well feared and respected hero of the city.

Dan out x

pop cap games case study notes

Pop Cap Games Case Study - Marcus Venturelli, Kranio Studio


Intro:
First time since around 1970 that words like "accessibility" and "family friendly" have been used so frequently. This was greatly established when the realisation that Space War was too complex for a general audience and wasn't as successful than its main competitor because of this.

Casual games - games that can be picked up and player by anyone.

"Casual game design really does borrow several elements from games past - but a quick Peggle session after playing the classic version of Tetris shows that there is, indeed, a lot to be learned."

"Pop Cap leads PC Casual gaming market."

Related work:
-John Rose (2008) - How the space of possibility related to player experience.
-William Willing (2006) wrote series of articles on an online blog about casual game design.

"Casual games are not necessarily of smaller complexity" e.g. Plants VS Zombies is very complex, very quickly.

For this article casual forms is based on the notion of "Pick Up and Play"

"Through a complex iteration of smaller objects in the system that the casual game builds its own kind of "Complexity.""

Pacing is a key focus when creating casual games.

Pop Cap's success is due to:
Superb pacing, fun and polished mechanics, impeccable interface design, good balancing, great attention to detail and "a process of Q and A and iterative design that is visibly well-established after almost 10 years of maturing and is applied to all their products"

Peggle included a 9 month development process of playing and testing, then 1 year of production then finally another 9 months of polishing.

"Pacing is a concept related to the overall rhythm of the game... by indirectly crafting the player experience - through mechanics, aesthetics and dynamics - to create relaxation, tension and repetition, the designer "Paces the game"".

Four Concepts involved in Pacing: (Davies 2009)
*Movement Impetus  *Tension   * Threat   *Tempo

These happen in the lower arcs of pacing (see below)


"Conflict as a contest of powers"

Threat and Tension:
"For the purpose of this work, "Tension" is perceived danger that a player might become the weakest side on the conflict, while "threat" is the actual power of the opposing forces on the conflict a concept directly related to game balance. Aesthetic resources such as graphics and sound can be used to increase or decrease tension, but not threat."

Movement Impetus:
"The will or desire of a player to move forward through a level but in this work is is not limited to its application in level design."
The key is making the player wanting to advance by using "advancement decisions."

Tempo:
"Intensity of play. It is the time between each significant decision made by the player."

"Lower tempo represents more frantic decision making by the player" and higher tempo is opposite.

Designing a space possibility:


"Designing a game is designing a space possibility".

Space as possibility and player experience:
"When playing a game, the player is trying to figure out patterns."
"The destiny of games is to become boring not to be fun. Those of us who want games to be fun are fighting a losing battle against the human brain because fun is a process and routine is its destination (...) all of this happens because the human mind is goal driven."

"It's not safe to assume that simply  making a game with more patterns will turn it into a good experience." This is because the player will get frustrated and annoyed so will give up. When designing games it's the balance of the amount of difficulty and patterns is key to a successful game.

"Simple put giving players more things to choose from increase the tempo of the game".



Increasing difficulty as the game progresses makes a game more appealing and not boring so keeps players challenged and wanting to finish the challenges set to them.

"All games are destined to have their patterns completely absorbed by the player and, after that, become boring. On the other hand, if the patterns cannot be absorbed, the player becomes frustrated and the experience will still come to an end."

Ways to keep players interested is to completely change the patterns in a game through the mechanics e.g. every 5 levels there is a mini game making the player want to reach the next mini game more. "This keeps tempo low and movement frantic and fluid".

"The mechanics are replaced and new patterns arise, hopefully before boredom takes place, breaking the seduction and ending the experience. When such a marvellous thing happens, Player Impetus is kept constant throughout the upper arch, thus providing the sensation that the game is "impossible to stop playing""

"The quality of an entertainment experience can be measured by the extent to which its unfolding sequence of events is able to hold a guests interest" (Schell 2008)

Brenda Braithwaite: Chance & Skill: Elements of chance

Chance & Skill - Elements of Chance:
Delaying or Preventing Solvability:
"A game is "solvable" if the entire possibility space is known ahead of time and can be exploited such that a specific player, playing correctly, can always win (or draw)."

"Solvable games are not automatically bad. Chess is solvable, but the possibility of space is to large that it continues to entertain."

Games with small possibility spaces need an extra something to keep the game fresh, such as adding a "random" element.

Making play "competitive" for all players:
"Random elements that occasionally allow a less experienced player to win (or at lest offer an advantage) keep these players interested for  longer in two ways. First, there is always the chance of victory. Secondly, the sting of defeat is lessened when a player can blame her own bad luck"

Random elements can cause a game to be more fair is the players aren't of equal skill levels.

Increasing Variety:
"Adding random elements in the right ways can increase the variety of a player's experience, thus increasing the replay value" Meaning if chance or an element of chance is added games do not become tedious or repetitive.

Creating Dramatic Moments:
"The level of excitement or tension created by chance increases in direct proportion to how much one has riding on the results" Meaning chance is a great tool for creating drama in games especially when a lot is on the line depending on chance i.e. die roll or spin of a roulette wheel.

Enhancing Decision Making:
"When random elements exist in a game, there is no longer strategy that is always right. Some moves might have a high chance of failure but also a big potential pay off, making them a risky choice, other moves might be safe but with a small gain."
"Since there are unknown elements, the decisions become more complicated and thus more compelling."

Mechanics of Chance:
When creating games there are a lot of ways to add randomness to it. Here are a few examples.

Dice:
Depending on the number of dice and dice faces increases the degree of randomness. I.e. rolling a six sided dice you have a 1 out of 6 chance of getting a 2 for example. If you have 2, 6 sided dice the chance is increased.
"The more dice involved, the more heavily the result skews towards the centre (Thus randomness is decreased). The greater the number of faces on each die, the greater the range (Thus randomness is increased)"
Gamblers often ignore the fact that say if a 5 is rolled there is an equal chance a 5 will be rolled on the next throw on a 6 sided dice as well as all of the other numbers. This is a "Fallacy game designers cannot afford to make"

Cards:
Cards have multiple ways of making games more and more random, for example they can be shuffled, randomising their order. They can be played face down on the table, making their information hidden from all players. They can also be dealt to players who can only look at their own cards and no one else's, giving each player privileged information. "All of these are great on their own as well as combined altogether making it very random but with this, a there are a set number of cards, upon each reveal of cards the probability and chance decreases as the players know where that card is e.g.if a card is picked up/revealed to the whole table the probability of players choice of cards is decreased from 1 out of 52 to 1 out of 51 as well as reducing the cards in their hand."

Pseudo - Random Number Generators:
Pseudo-random number computers are not able to truly generate random numbers but Pseudo-random numbers are essentially algorithms of which are near enough random and will work well within computer games. "It is technically not random, but that it is close enough for the purpose of most games."

Pseudo-random numbers can be applied to every game type imaginable "Making them extremely versatile if a designer wants to include defined amounts of chance to a game"

Hidden Information:
"When non-random information is concealed from the players, it is still random from the players perspective. For example, in the children's card game Go Fish, a player must ask another player for a card of a chosen type." This appears random but isn't in the opponents perspective as they know their own hands and what the other player needs and doesn't have.

Fog of War:
Fog of war is another example where nothing is altered only the players visibility and from this each player is responding to what they cannot see, only what they think their opponent is doing creating random dynamics.
When incorporating random elements the "players should be able to understand the consequences of their actions and be able to form some degree of strategy that takes into account the random elements of the game." If they do not understand the systems because they are hidden "Their task of understanding the game is much more difficult.

Other Game Bits:
Spinners - behave like dice
Flipping a coin - same randomness as rolling a two sided dice 50/50.
Dreidel - same as four sided die

Cardboard tiles in a bad - Similar to a deck of cards

All randomness is not created equal:
"Is poker a game of luck or a game of skill?" What is meant by this is the fact that the lower the amount of players there is more of a chance of a player to get more winning hands compared to the others. Whereas if the amount of players increases the amount of winning hands dealt out is more even and then depends on player skill I.e. if they bet high at a key point or don't risk it. "Each individual hand (or die roll or spin of the wheel) may be random, but with a sufficiently large number of them, the randomness is decreased."

Completely Random Games:
Most games, with some exceptions, have at least a small amount of skill involved even if the game is purely chance based.
Generally speaking their are only two types of games that are just random, children's games and gambling games, not saying all of them are random as some include skills but games that are purely random will most likely be a child's game or a gambling game.

Children's games:
In most games for children, who have not yet grown enough to develop skill within games, the game tells them what to do by the random outcomes produced by the game.
Most kids games incorporate a lot of tension and drama normally caused by a random event. For example random changes in fortune "such as the special spaces in Chutes and Ladders that cause a player to advance or full back suddenly."
"These games allow possibility of always coming from behind and winning so that the end result is never certain."
This is key in Chutes and Ladders/ Snakes and Ladders where the player has to land on the last space exactly which causes a high amount of tension as the person is in the lead but after each throw the loser/s are getting closer and closer, unless they land on another random event, a chute/snake making the gap wider. Tension is key and crucial in these games.

Gambling Games:
"The defining mechanic of gambling games is that real money is won or lost in the process. Without money at stake, pure-luck gambling games lose their appeal."
"The game may still be completely random, but the element of choice (amount of coins, how much to bet, what to bet on etc.) gives the players the illusion of control, since different choices lead to different outcomes"

Zotero Bibliography example

Hello there, this is just a quick entry to show how to compile a short bibliography. My bibliography was created using the Firefox plug in called Zotero. So here it is a simple and quick post showing a short and simple bibliography, sorted alphabetically and created with Zotero through Firefox, I didn't type a single word of this bibliography so this will be a good tool to use when writing our dissertations. 

Adams, E., 2010. Fundamentals of game design, New Riders.

Allen, G., 2011. Artists’ Magazines: An Alternative Space for Art, MIT Press.

Jaeger, N.L.V., 2007. My Moving Activity Journal: Activities, Games, Crafts, Puzzles, Scrapbooking, Journaling, and Poems for Kids on the Move - Second Edition 2nd ed., Soaring Moon Books LLC.

Pringle, J.J., 2008. Twenty Years’ Snipe-Shooting: Extracts from the Daily Journal of the Game-Books of the Snipery, Kessinger Publishing.

Queiroz, R. & Wiedemann, J., 2004. Animation now!, Taschen.

Thompson, J. & Berbank-Green, B., 2007. The Computer Game Design Course: Principles, Practices and Techniques for the Aspiring Game Designer, Thames & Hudson.

Dan 

Tools for Creating Dramatic Game Dynamics Notes

Hey guys below are my notes from a couple of weeks back. I have taken notes on each reading we have been set and done them all on time and now I have some more time on my hands I am uploading them all in order of readings. I hope they don't bore you too much and you are learning as much as we are in our course when you are reading them.

Many thanks

"Senate"  and "GO" are contenders for the oldest games known to man.

Games are becoming more and more compelling, "The game becomes a climatic struggle that builds to a satisfying conclusion"

"Drama us a desirable quality in a game" if not a necessity.

A lot of the time dram is what draws in and makes the player continue on the find the conclusion.

We must ensure great dram to create a great game.
But "We cannot craft the game dram directly"

"We cannot create dram only the circumstance from which dram will emerge."

MDA:


Mechanics: " all of the necessary pieces that we need to play the game" - primary rules
Dynamics: "behaviour of the game, the actual events and phenomena that occur as the game is played"
^
"What happens when the game is played"
^
Dynamics are not directly created from the rules as predicting every players moves is impossible
"A games dynamics emerge from its mechanics"
Aesthetics: Basically how the game looks and feels when playing. It's "emotional content"
"Understanding how specific game dynamics evoke specific emotional responses is one of the greatest challenges of game design"

when we play games the experience can be described as "a causal flow that starts with its mechanics, passes through dynamics, and ends with aesthetics"

Designers work opposite to what the player wants. The player wants good aesthetics but we must establish how to make the emotional responses in the aesthetics but through the mechanics, then the dynamics, before we get to the aesthetics, but we start with aesthetic goals when creating the mechanics, confusing stuff.

The dramatic arc: An aesthetic model for drama
Firstly we use a "Aesthetic model" - these models help to determine if we have achieved our aesthetic goals/ objectives, and if we are headed in the right direction.

Every aesthetic pleasure has its own aesthetics model.

Aesthetic model for drama:
               - Climax
              -            -
             -               -
Conflict-                  - Resolution

"Visualises the dramatic arc, the rising and falling action of a well- told story."

tension is a key point in creating drama

Diagram as a mathematical model:
Dramatics tension Y axis
                                                       Narrative time X axis

"The idea that tension can increase and decrease is an important one for our diagram to have any meaning"

Dramatic tension - "level of emotional investment in the stories conflict; the sense of concern, apprehension, and urgency with which we await the story's outcome"


Drama as an Aesthetic:
Dramatic arc - "Model for stories; it's a statement about how new stories convey their emotional content, and a yard stick that we can hold up to a story to see if it succeeds or fails at being dramatic"

The dramatic arc says that well told stories should posses dramatic tension "and that over time the tension should take on a particular shape, building towards the story's climax and then dissipating"

"Dramatic arc is corner stone of our aesthetic model of drama"

Drama in games:
"We must assume that our game will be dramatic, even when we don't have direct control over the narrative, a narrative that isn't scripted in advance, but rather emerges from the events of the game."

Conflict is the key cause/ or starting point of "Drama" "Contests provide conflict" e.g. challenging players intellect, others stamina, competitions between other players, solitaire challenges for single player.

Dramatic tension consists of two factors:
Uncertainty: "The sense that the outcome of the contest is still unknown, any player could win or lose" much like an enigma in media terminology.
Inevitability: "The sense that the contest is moving forward toward resolution. the outcome is imminent"

"Neither is sufficient by itself"

Game dynamics that produce Dramatic tension:
"A games uncertainty and its inevitability are evoked by different systems and dynamics "
force - "The approach of creating dramatic tension by manipulating the state of contest itself"
"The game is close because we make it close, or at least we limit how much an advantage one player can have other another"

Illusion - "The approach of manipulating the players perceptions so that the game seems closer that it is"

Metaphorically speaking a "ticking clock is the sense of imminent resolution that gives a game its sense of momentum and forward progress" A reminder that the game is coming to its conclusion.

Feedback systems as a source of Uncertainty:
"Rules of play provides a discussion of cybernetic feedback systems, and the way in which they apply to games"

Example of feedback system found in a game:
Game state>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>Scoring Function
^                                                             |
^                                                             |
Game mechanical bias<<<<<<<<<<<Controller

"The game state is the complete status of the game at a particular moment" - think of all of the information needed to put in a "Save game" file. For board games the game state include things like piece positions and indications of who's go/turn it is"

For FPS the game state would include - name of current level, position of all objects on that level, and players health and items.

In physical games i.e. basketball - "The state includes not only the score and time left on the clock, but the complete physical and mental state of all the athletes"

"scoring function is the sensor in the cybernetic feedback system" It creates a physical measurement to determine winner and loser and the difference between them.

Examples are lap times for racing games, high scores for FPS etc.

"The games mechanical bias is the actuator of the cybernetic feedback system. It is a rule of the game that chooses which player receives the game mechanical bias"; its decision is based on the scoring function.
for example in racing games giving the losing car a speed boos to catch up. This is an example of a negative feedback system: "the scoring function is the distance between the two racers, the speed boost is the game mechanical bias, and the controller is the rule that says the speed boost goes to the losing racer." This makes the difference in score smaller.
This means that the game competition is kept close and more of a challenge and enjoyable for both players.

Positive Feedback systems:
Another feedback system is called in the "spite mode" this is the opposite of negative feedback system and would give the advantage and game mechanical bias to the player who is leading. Spite mode makes one player who is in the lead stay in the lead and makes the score difference as large as possible. Its called a positive feedback system.

Negative feedback as a source of uncertainty:
 Negative feedback systems cause dramatic uncertainty.
Positive feedback systems make the game come to a close.

Other sources of uncertainty:
Positive/Pseudo feedback: gives the appearance of a negative feedback system but no system actually exists, just gives the ILLUSION of the loser catching up, but no rule or mechanic exists for this.

Escalation:"Describes a game mechanic in which the score changes faster and faster over the course of the game, so that there are more points at stake at the end of the game than at the beginning."

Hidden energy: similar to Pseudo - feedback, but players given equal opportunities i.e. turbo but is up to the players when they chose to use it and it can give the illusion of both a negative feedback system and a positive feedback system. Much like stamina at the start of a sprint compared to stamina in a marathon.

Fog Of War:"Simulate limitations of game characters' ability to perceive and monitor the world around them"

Decelerator: "The decelerator describes an obstacle that slows the players down late in the game""Creates dramatic uncertainty by creating the illusion of a close game"

Cashing out: "Cashing out describes a game mechanic where the score of the game is reset to zero"

Source of inevitability:"The sense the contest is moving towards a conclusion" much like this blog post, happy reading
Dan out x

On The Way to Fun Roberto Dillon

Computer Space vs Space Invaders

Games take influence from other media and external sources around at the time of production.

Easier play ability makes games and game play more appealing.

On The Way To Fun: Space Invaders

Protection->Aggressiveness->Excitement

Dynamics of Aggression:

Fighting-> Mechanics of fighting-> Moving, Shooting, Hiding

Giving an "impression of defending our planet" makes Space Invaders more effective at creating aggression.

This gives an early definition of the goal and how to achieve it .

"Computer space failed to appeal to more players due to the complex nature of its controls coupled with the lack of motivation to justify players' aggressiveness"

Asteroids:

"Asteroids was absolutely fantastic in triggering the competitive instinct of players"

"The characteristics of asteroids was the first of its kind, it made players competitive and "feel pride" about what they had achieved.

"This characteristic, obviously, kept reinforcing the competitive aspects of the game." Making players want to beat the highest score, making the first successful competitive game.

This was a short note taking session, but I still believe that this reading was still very relevant to any aspiring computer games designer and was a very short but sweet reading. Don't worry though we didn't get off easy this week, this is 1 reading of 2, I shall be posting the notes I took for the second part as soon as possible as it was quite a big read.
Many thanks
Dan x

Mechanics, Dynamics, Aesthetics - Robin Hunicke, Marc LeBlanc and Robert Zube

MDA - Mechanics, Dynamics and Aesthetics

Design methods guide to the creative thought process and help to ensure good quality work.

"Designers and researchers must consider interdependencies carefully before implementing changes, and scholars must recognize them before drawing conclusions about the nature of the experienced generated."

"MDA is a formal approach to understand games."

"Systematic coherence comes with conflicting constraints are satisfied and each of the game's parts can relate to each other as a whole."

MDA is a tool to bridge the gap between the different aspects of game creation and merge them successfully into a working, high quality, flowing game.

Rules -> System -> "Fun" 

Mechanics -> Dynamics -> Aesthetics

Mechanics - describes the particular components of the game, at the level of data representation and algorithms.

Dynamics - describes the run-time behaviour of the mechanics acting on player inputs and each other's outputs over time.

Aesthetics - describes the desirable emotional responses evoked in the player, when she interacts with the game system.

"Games are systems that build behaviour via interaction."

Designers and players have different perspectives on games i.e. the consumer/player looks firstly at the aesthetics and how it works then the, dynamics (how it works or feels during play), then mechanics and specific components of what drives the game, the code etc and the designers perspective is the opposite and    this is the order of importance for both.

------------------------------------->

Designer      M        D        A        Player

<-------------------------------------

Both perspectives need to be acknowledged when creating games.

This shows how small changes can have a "cascading" effects.

Aesthetics Breakdown:

Game Taxonomy:

1. Sensation -                                        2. Fantasy - 

Game as sense of pleasure                     Game as make-believe

3. Narrative -                                        4. Challenge -

Games as drama                                    Game as obstacle course

5. Fellowship -                                      6. Discovery -

Game as  social Frame work                 Games as uncharted territory

(Social interaction)

7. Expression -                                      8. Submission -

Game as self-discovery                          Game as pastime 

Every game includes multiple different aesthetic goals.

"Supporting adversarial play and clear feedback about who is winning are essential to competitive games."

Dynamic models:

Fellowship encouraged through ranging difficulties that a long player could not achieve.

"Expression comes from dynamics that encourage individual users to leave their mark" i.e. top of the leader board, most money etc. 

"Dramatic tension comes from dynamics that encourage a rising tension"

"Reality isn't always fun."

Mechanics:

The control the player has within a game. i.e. "Mechanics of card games include shuffling, trick, taking and betting - from which dynamics like bluffing can emerge"

"Mechanics support overall game plays dynamics."

Mechanics of "shooters" are: Weapons, ammo, spawn points; which produce dynamics such as camping or spawn killing.

Golf dynamics are: Balls, clubs, sand traps and water hazards which make the dynamics of broken clubs or drowned clubs.

                                        EVERY ACTION HAS AN EQUAL REACTION!!

Tuning:

Play testing - beta, alpha testing etc.

Need to do testing and add stages of iteration to increase the complexity, difficulty, challenge, and overall appeal, depth, enjoyment and play ability of the game by adding or taking parts out after each test stage.

Changing one element has a domino effect of which can mean the other aspects need tweaking or adjusting to improve the overall income.

Iterative testing:

Altering from test results then repeating tests and reviewing each test until the problems from the tests are solved and the testers, players and creators are happy with the final end product.

Dan x