Jesse Schell - The Art of Game Design

Puzzles are in all forms of games. At any point in a game when a player has to stop and think they are in the middle of solving a puzzle in the game whether it is abruptly facing you like a game where you have to move certain mechanisms to open a door or the puzzle can be subtle for instance choosing what upgrade to grab.

The Puzzle of Puzzles:
Puzzles are a part of games but are they a game?
"Chris Crawford once made the bold statement that puzzles are not even really interactive, since they don't actively respond to the player."
This is like the first explorers who first saw Penguins and would have probably not known how to define them i.e. they look like birds but cannot fly?

Scott Kim - ""A puzzle is fun, and has a right answer" The irony of that is that once you find the right answer, the puzzle ceases to be fun."

The main reason people do not class a puzzle as a game is because it is not replayable.
Which makes us think they aren't games as most games have enough dynamics to give a player the sense of replay ability.

"When a game has a dominant strategy, it doesn't cease to be a game, it just isn't a good game."

Dominant strategy - when a single strategy will defeat a game every time.

"A puzzle is a game with a dominant strategy"
They are just games which aren't fun to reply.
"Puzzles are just miniature games whose goal is to find the dominant strategy"

Aren't Puzzles Dead?:
Most people believe puzzles are old fashioned but puzzles are still in the games we play today, not as abruptly but they are still there, remember the rule, a puzzle is anything that makes the player stop and think.
In the early years of the game industry puzzles designed to test your mental ability were the craze whereas know a days the new craze is to test how quickly you can move your hands on a keypad or controller. But puzzles are still a part of both.

Good Puzzles:
Ten principles of puzzle design that can be used in any game genre:
1.Make the goal easily understood
2.Make it easy to get started
3.Give a sense of progression
4.Give a sense of solvability
5.Increase difficulty gradually
6.Parallelism lets the player rest (making the player stop and think, best way to avoid anger and leaving the game is give multiple puzzles at once so that if one appears to challenging they can move on to another and still achieve and get a sense of achievement) "A change is as good as a rest"
7.Pyramid structure extends interest (series of small puzzles which contribute to the completion of a larger puzzle)
8.hints extend interest
9.Give the answer (the aha factor of figuring out what the answer is and getting to that state)
10. Perceptual shifts are a double edged sword (like riddles you either get them or you don't, should be used sparingly in video games)

-Dan

Segregation in a Male-Dominated Industry - Julie Prescott and Jan Bogg

Women Working in the Computer Games Industry

Introduction:

"Using data extracted from a large study of female game workers, this study adds to the scarcity of research into the area of women working in the computer games industry. It would appear that occupational segregation still persists in this relatively new, male dominated industry. Findings suggest gender role identity and attitudes are important issues when looking at segregation within the industry. Implications for future research on the games industry are discussed"

"According to the Equal Opportunities Commission (EOC), occupational

segregation remains one of the strongest influences on young people's choice of

career (Miller et. al., 2004)"

"Occupations are social categories; people within an occupation share things such as preferences and experiences (Weeden and Grusky, 2005). Therefore, occupational categories are an important part of a person’s sense of self (Taylor, 2010)"

Background - Occupational Segregation:

"In a recent study, Mumford and Smith (2007) found the earnings gap between men and women in Britain is due to a combination of things such as: the different personal characteristics or traits between men and

women, workplace segregation and occupational segregation. When women are segregated into certain jobs, those jobs usually pay less, have fewer opportunities for progression, less job autonomy, and less authority within the organisation."

"Women in male dominated occupations have been found to receive less support than men

but more support in mixed gender occupations; whereas, men receive high levels of support in female-dominated occupations. Therefore, being in the minority is an advantage for men, but a disadvantage for women"

Segregation in SET and ICT Industries:

"With regards to promotion, the WWW-ICT report suggests that ICT organisations

have a flat structure with little hierarchy. Flat organisations lead to an informal

working environment, but career ladders can be short or nonexistent. A lack of

formal structures and progression processes can make it particularly difficult for

women to gain advancement."

"According to James and Cardador (2007), women’s cognitions and beliefs about technology and science are more negative than men’s, resulting in a disinterest in the employment sector. One reason for a disinterest in computer games as an occupation is the long hours that have become standard within the industry  Fullerton et. al., 2008). Another reason relates to the identity of women within the industry. For instance, Wajcman (2007) argues that women are asked to exchange aspects of their gender identity for a masculine version and forsakeInternational Journal of Gender, their femininity without this de-gendering process occurring for men. It has also been suggested that in order to cope with the challenges to their own gender identity and those of the men with whom they work, women in ICT and SET industries must develop strategies (Newell, 2002). One such strategy is for women to make their gender identity invisible (Griffiths et.al, 2007) or become more masculine (Wajcman, 2007)."

‘Technologies have a masculine image, not only because they are dominated by men but because they incorporate symbols, metaphors and values that have masculine connotations’ (Wajcman, 2007, p.289)

Segregation in the Games Industry:

"The games industry is made up of a number of specialities including development, production, design, level design, audio design, art and testing (Green et.al.,2007). Recent figures contained in the 2008 Oxford Economics report suggest that the UK games industry has over 9000 employees. A report by the online games magazine, MCV (2008) suggests that the percentage of women within the games industry in core creation or developmental roles is around just 6.9%. More recent figures produced by Skillset (2009) found that women represent 4% of the game industry’s workforce, a decrease from 12% in 2006 (Skillset, 2006"

"The creative media industries workforce as a whole has declined within the three years between the two censuses. It would therefore appear that the industry is losing its battle to increase its appeal to a more diverse workforce"

"According to Krotoski (2004) only 0.4% of female employees in the UK games industry are in lead, director or management positions, whilst 1.2% of male employees hold these jobs. Research by Haines (2004) found that nearly a quarter (23%) of senior positions within the twenty UK games companies in her

study were filled by women. However, Haines study revealed that senior women were more often found in managerial and senior roles in the less technical areas of games development or in areas more associated with traditional female roles, such as marketing, rather than direct games development"

Discussion:

"The findings highlight the different attitudes of women working in the games industry. This paper has shown differences between women in different professions and grades in terms gender role identity at work and their attitudes towards the career barriers to women’s career progression and to a lesser extent their attitudes towards their own career progression. Like the wider ICT and SET industries, women need more representation in all areas and roles within the industry. With regards to vertical segregation however,women in the current study tended to be in more senior grades in contrast to the findings of women in ICT and SET. It would therefore appear that occupational segregation still persists in this new, male dominated industry"

"With regards to professional identity, the finding that executives having a significantly higher masculine gender role identity compared to artists/animators is interesting since it could suggest that women in a powerful executive positionInternational Journal of Gender, either adopt or naturally have more masculine characteristics than those in other areas of the games industry, especially those in the more creative, artistic roles in game development."

I thought to be quite a sexist remark considering the nature of this reading - "Feminine traits include warmth, kindness, selflessness and sympathy(Schein, 1973). Masculine traits include aggression, forcefulness, rationality, competitiveness, decisiveness, strength, self-confidence and independence (Schein, 1973)."

At this moment in the article i am finding the reading of it quite difficult and to be honest quite a sexist and repetitive piece as it seems the same thing is being said then repeated with fancier words in it and the fact that this article is written by women, no offence, suggests quite a negative and one sided view of the industry and broadcasts factual evidence influenced by their own personal beliefs, opinions and experiences and shows the facts to promote their views. Also it appears that the questions were not asked to both male and female workers which would also give a more swayed opinion which i believe has been given the fascade of a fact.

"The games industry may be relatively new, but it is a large industry with a significant influence over today’s media landscape. In 2009, computer games outsold films; including DVD’s and cinema tickets sold (Wallop,  2009), highlighting the importance of women’s participation in such an influential industry."

Scott Kim - Puzzle Makers Survival Kit

Two things a puzzle needs to be:
1.Fun (a very dangerous word)
2.Solvable

Motivations for taking part in puzzles:

• Challenge 
• Distraction
• As we read on we see that the motivations for puzzles are extremely similar to the motivations to play games.

Puzzle Divisions and Brief explanations of each:

Action Puzzles-

Puzzles with a mental challenge combined with a twitch skill, i.e. Tetris

Error recovery.

Easy to learn.

Story Puzzle- 

Use the puzzle to tell a story - about the line between story and puzzle and the link you make.

Keep the story relevant

Certain genres that are more readily adaptable to Story Puzzles

Competitive Puzzles - 

Games where the players use the same area or puzzle and all attempt to complete the puzzle as quick as possible and beet the opponent.

Key is to be quick and is usually turn based games

Should be simple and quick i.e. Peggle

Construction Puzzles - 

E.G. Lego

Modularity - Meaning giving the player choices, for example in Lego you can build whatever you want due to the fact the pieces will fit together in any combination, if the player can only attach certain pieces then the players options are limited and we are restricting the player as a games designer.

Too little or Too much structure

Intensity Ramping in Puzzles:

Different Mechanics - Accelerating Puzzles - based on Twitch

Increasing difficulty through stage or levels - based on Twitch

Increasing difficulty then a new mechanic is added i.e. an upgrade then start from the same difficulty and work up to the next upgrade - difficulty range between levels doesn't greatly increase

Semi-Linear ordering - trying to offer the player complete choice with no set order only the end level or point - difficulty range between levels doesn't greatly increase

Ordered - you must complete one task to move onto the next and so on

Meta Puzzle - smaller puzzles give you a clue to solve the bigger puzzle, gives the player the sense of progression

How Should You Start?:

Enjoying the manipulation of  The Puzzle

Start them with the familiar - Introduce player to objects they can manipulate but do not alter the puzzle state

Specifying rules:

Making it clear what the player can or can not do in the game.

Building up Puzzles:

Make sense in the ordering of the difficulty of puzzles. Don't give the player a really difficult puzzle at the start because they wont do it then your game will fail.

Simplifying:

Example of simplifying - Making a puzzle about cars in a car parking space and you have to simplify the puzzle into its core component of the puzzle, getting the car and getting it out of the car park.

Editor:

Means you can quickly build and tweak a puzzle to test the puzzle components.

Level Design:

Start with a bang 

Teach techniques

Paint a picture 

Develop a theme

Scott Kim - What is a puzzle?

Scott Kim - full-time puzzle designer 1990 - present, Shufflebrain.

"puzzles are an important part of many electronic games" across all types of games and gaming platforms

What is a puzzle?

Random House Dictionary definition - "a toy or other contrivance designed to amuse by presenting difficulties to be solved by ingenuity or patient effort."

"A humorous but insightful definition is "a simple task with bad user interface""

Stan Isaacs - "1. a puzzle is fun. 2. and it has a right answer"

This defines a puzzle as a form of play but distinguishes puzzles from other forms of plays like games or toys.

Example of a puzzle Kim invented:

Is it Fun?

Puzzles enjoyability factors depend on the player entirely, as some people prefer visual challenges where other prefer word puzzles. Also some puzzles depend completely on the users knowledge i.e. chess puzzles because if you do not know how to play chess the challenge will be too great. Which means that all puzzles need to be created to a desired target market to ensure that only the target market are attracted to this puzzle. You get the point.

Does Kim's puzzle have a right answer?

With regards to this type of puzzle it is more so when the players are shown the right answer they agree that it is the best possible answer that can be given but is neither right or wrong.

Puzzles versus Games:

Chris Crawford - veteran game designer and author of Chris Crawford on Game Design states:

Designing Puzzles:

It took me a while to figure it out so i'll tell you its .... this will see if your reading my articles could you please comment the Answer to The Letter Puzzle

Many thanks again, hope you enjoy the reading, again some copy and pasting but i deemed it to be necessary.

-Dan 

Learning From The Masters

Level Design in The Legend of Zelda:
"The NES was the Wild West of game development, I thought, lawless and free... As it turns out i was totally wrong."


"I found an excellent primer in the fundamentals of non-linear game design."


Shigeru Miyamoto creator of The Legend of Zelda


What to look for when doing in depth analysis of game levels:

• "Level Flow. How do the spaces in the level fit together? Where is the player supposed to go, and will she know how to get there?
• Intensity Ramping. Does the intensity of the experience ramp up in a satisfying way? Do monsters get more difficult as the level goes on? Does the player get a chance to learn how the enemies work and then display her mastery later on?
• Variety. Is there sufficient variety in the game play? Do enemy encounters frequently repeat themselves? Are the spaces varied in interesting ways?
• Training. If the design requires new skills from the player, does it teach and test those skills appropriately?"

Level Flow - breakdown:

"First, I analysed the critical path. The critical path is the shortest path through a level without using secrets, shortcuts, or cheats. Basically, it's the path the designer intends the player to take through the level unless she gets really clever.

It's worth noting that the critical path often doesn't require a player to complete 100 percent of a level; it just requires her to complete the mandatory objectives within the level."

"The player begins in Room 1 and can choose to go to Room 2 or Room 3. Rooms off the critical path are faded.

Optional rooms (and sometimes entire paths) branch off from the critical path and reward the player with bonuses. The levels are also full of shortcuts that cut across the critical path. If the player has bombs, for example, she can skip from Room 5 to Room 8 in the above diagram."

Analysis:

"What I found out was that the Zelda development team was able to create the illusion of very open level design by using a few very clever tricks:

1. As I've mentioned, the critical path is almost entirely linear. This means that it's much easier for the player to find her way through the dungeon without getting hopelessly lost.
2. Rooms branching off of the critical path make the level feel less linear.
3. A small bit of room re-traversal at the beginning of the level makes the level feel less linear, but because it only includes a small number of rooms the player probably won't get lost.
4. Giving small, hidden shortcuts through the level allows the player to feel clever, and allows the designer to disguise the linearity of the level.

In short, the optional paths and shortcuts give the feeling of exploration, but the linear critical path means that as long as the player visits every room in a dungeon she should be able to find her way through....It would seem from analysing the flow that the level design strikes an excellent balance between giving the player the feeling of exploration and keeping them from getting too lost."

Intensity Ramping - breakdown:

When analysing intensity ramping you should generally look for these two things:

"

1. The enemy encounters should usually ramp up in difficulty over the course of the level.
2. No encounter should be repeated twice. This gives a greater variety, and also keeps the player constantly answering new questions as she goes through your level."

When looked at in the correct order, the enemy setups ramp up in difficulty well and never repeat.

Analysis:

"The monster sets and room layouts ramp up VERY clearly along the critical path.....Basically, it's clear that the design behind these encounters and their placements in the levels were intentional, subtle, and very well executed."

Variety:

Analysis: 

"One criticism I would lay, however, is that there might be TOO much monster variety. In the 10 rooms that contain monsters, the developers use six different types of monster and a boss. In most modern games, there would be fewer enemy types and the rooms would ramp in intensity by combining monster types together. For example, if the dungeon contained only Stalfos, Bats, and Moblins (and the boss, of course) some of the later rooms could contain all three types, and would be more difficult because of those combinations.

The game does this kind of mixing much more often in later levels, so it's hard to understand why the team wouldn't do it here. Perhaps technical constraints?"

Training - breakdown:

"Many AAA games were including training in their designs, but it seemed very rare on the NES.

Interestingly enough, the original Legend of Zelda does contain some training -- though it's much different than it is in modern games. In The Legend of Zelda, training is accomplished mainly by the "black rooms" where an NPC gives you a hint."

Not the most helpful of hints, unless you're playing the Japanese version.

"The Japanese version of this game the hints were different than the American version. For example, the Japanese version of the message in Level 1 tells you that you need money to shoot arrows. This is a much more useful bit of training."

Analysis:

"This finding surprised me more than the others. I remembered the black rooms, but I'd never considered them to be training, since they were fairly useless.

Once I found out about the translation issue, that all changed. It's clear that Miyamoto and his team were trying to guide the player, and to train them on important things they need to know.

The black room method was not very successful, which is why I think they eventually abandoned it in later games."

"What Did We Learn?

• It is possible to achieve the feel of non-linear level design by taking a linear path and adding short offshoots.
• Ramping encounters up along the critical path still allows you to have a good intensity ramp even if your level designs aren't all linear.
• Miyamoto and company intended to have training in the game, but it was excluded because of localisation errors.

I want to point out how awesome it is that they were making this stuff up back then. These Masters of Game Design discovered these tricks and built on them as time went by.

How fortunate we are, to be able to look back and learn from them"

Hey guys sorry for the amount of copying and pasting but i found yet again it the best and most efficient way to portray what the article was showing me, i believe it to be a very well written piece and if i can understand it then anyone can. As well as this i thought that if i had tried to translate what this article was showing me the ideas would probably become mixed and i didn't want to confuse you as i believe that this was a very good article and didn't need changing or tweaking by an amateur game designer as everything we needed was their, clear as day.

Happy Reading :)

Creating a simple level17/01/2012

My first lesson back and today we was told after reading through Ed Bryne's article, that we were going to attempt in pairs to create a simple level in a similar theme to his i.e. a puzzle, simple to understand, and with no prompt on how to complete the level the user had to be able to pick it up and play, much like last semester where we said if we haven't hooked the player within 15 seconds of picking the game up we would have failed.

Dale's and My idea:

Our idea  was a ninja that would jump from post to post to reach the end goal starting from the left of the screen and ending on the right. At the end of the level the player would have to chose out of 2 rings of fire to chose to jump through, one would go to the next level and the other back to the start. Also as well as jumping the player can swing from hooks that are strategically placed around the level.

To add more danger we also put obstacles at the top and bottom of the page that if touched would send the player back to the start.

The only goal of our game was to reach the end because your master is telling you that you mus train (like the incentive of the ringmaster in Bryne's article whom we never see but the incentive is there) and jump through the correct ring of fire which is simple, easy to use and understand and all of the aspects of the game where tied in to the theme of a ninja.

Once Rob had been round we established that we shouldn't tell the player your either wrong or right we should show them a brief insight into the correct way to finish the level. From this Rob showed us that if we did something simple like colour code the logs the ninja was jumping on and the rings of fire we could establish that the player would have to jump on the specific colours and jump through the corresponding hoop, either the same colour or through patterns thus making a game a puzzle rather than a game where the answers were already given to you at the start. 

Lastly we established that we shouldn't make it so the player controls the height and control over the way that they jump and swing as this becomes a game of skill rather than a puzzle, so we need to do some alterations to make the game more of a puzzle rather than a skill based game with puzzle elements. 

This is just a brief run through of my first lesson back and what we have done with our time.

-Dan 

Ed Bryne Building a Simple Level

This blog entry is an article from Ed Byrne which is describing the key components of level design.

Level  Design Building Blocks:
The basic components of a level or the building blocks are:

• Concept
• Environment to exist in
• Beginning
• Ending
• Goal
• Challenge to overcome between player and the goal
• Reward
• Way of handling failure

These are the basics of all games but with more advanced games like the next big block busting game they will just need more of these basic building blocks.

You need these to create a level "If any are missing, the level will almost be incomplete.You can have a great level with great flow, but if there's no challenge, it won't be fun at all."

With the original Tetris we can use the building blocks as a check list to see if they have the "basic requirements" of a game level.

"Concept: Find a place for the blocks or lose the level.

Environment: The active play area to the left of the game data.

Beginning: The player starts with an empty screen and a score of 0.

Ending: The level is over when the player either creates the correct number of vertical lines (success) or the blocks pile up to the top of the screen (failure).

Goal: Create a number of lines that meet the target requirement for success.

Challenge: The speed of descent, type of blocks, and number of lines needed.

Reward: The player moves to the next level, or receives a brief animated sequence.

Failure: The game ends and must be started from the beginning."

What About Story?:

""Shouldn't a game, and therefore its levels, also have a story?" Well, the simple answer is no-it's  not a fundamental requirement. A story can enhance a level and give the players information about what they are  expected to do, what they might need to avoid or seek out, and so on."

With chess you do not need a story as it can be played without the story of war and politics. Some games do not need background stories to be fun.

"Ideally, a level will to some degree allow the players to create a narrative as they play, even if it's just a series of personal achievements."

"A story does not need to be an epic to be entertaining."

Putting It All Together:

At this point in the article Byrne creates an example, simple level to demonstrate how they all work together. Here is what he said on each point directly from the article:

Above is the image showing how the seesaw element of the game would work. This in real life would break the seesaw but this is where the elements of gaming comes in to play as in game we can obviously do and get away with things that wouldn't happen in real life, this is called "Game Logic".

Useful terms that can be applied to this game:

Intrinsic knowledge:"Knowledge gained about the game from within the game itself" - Andrew Rollings and Ernest Adams on Game Design

Extrinsic knowledge: "Knowledge applied in the game but gained from another source, usually real life"

People use their extrinsic and intrinsic knowledge to accomplish challenges within the game, the knowledge of how a seesaw works gives the player the knowledge on how to achieve this goal of the game.

From this the game can also be more challenging by adding height factors as an example. See below.

The game is now set and ready to be played with no hints just the players intrinsic and extrinsic knowledge to guide him/her through.

I apologise for the amount of copy and pasting but i believed it the best way to show you what was said without copying out the whole chapter as the majority of the article was about the creation of the game Clownhunt, following the basic level design building blocks that Byrne established at the start of the chapter.

Overall i thought to be a good and enlightening read.