Game Design as Cultural Practice

The Game Design Process from the outside-inside-sideways

So in this blog post I'm interested in the essay "The Game Design Process" by Katie Salen and Eric Zimmerman. What draws me to this topic has been my interest in the design process of Blizzard's expansion to the World of Warcraft, entitled The Wrath of the Lich King. Ever since the open beta testing began its been quite interesting reading the related forums to see both play-tester feedback and the developer notes. More postings have been possibly the most interesting because both the players and the devs have begun to feel the deadline creep up on them. WoW has a extremely large player base and so this design process will be affecting a lot people when its released.
    The first thing I'd like to point out is a quote from the essay "because iterative design is an open-ended process, a strong vision for the player's experience helps to structure the process. At any moment in the cycle of iteration, a game designer might try out thousands of different rule tweaks and variations- why choose this modification over that one?" I feel that so far in the design process Blizzard's development team has kept this idea in mind. I say that because there has been constant information exchange among play testers and devs. For instance, there is a play-tester by the name of Jayde on the beta forums who is considered to be a spokesman for the deathkinght game class on the forums. He writes well thought posts designed to help the develpors make a better game and devs respond to him and other posters explaining why certain changes are being made. Here is a video Jayde posted about his experiences in the beta dueling characters with his death knight. http://files.filefront.com/Jayde+Duel+Schoolwmv/;11865962;/fileinfo.html A note about this video is that the aforementioned tweaking of the game made the video obsolete less than twenty four hours after Jayde posting it.
    A second thing I want to comment on is how open developers from Blizzard, such as Ghostcrawler, are about this second quote from the essay "Because iterative design is an open-ended process, a strong vision for the player's experience helps to structure the process. At any moment in the cycle of iteration, a game designer might try out thousands of different rule tweaks and variations- why choose this modification over that one?" There are regular discussions on the forums with lines like this from Ghostcrawler "That is a pretty major change so we want to make sure it's needed (for Lich King ship -- we could always add it as a later patch). We would need to reorganize the tree, adjust trainers, perhaps change other talents to affect it, perhaps change glyphs, and all of that assumes we get the numbers close on the first attempt. More than likely it would take a lot of iteration. " So I feel that this has been a great opportunity to follow a major game through iterative software development that has lasted for months and will in the end affect over 10million people.

Jerald Parker

Jayde can be found posting on blogs at http://jadefury.blogspot.com

Ghostcrawler and other members of the Blizzard development team can be found posting about the new Wrath of the Lich King at http://beta.worldofwarcraft.com/forums

A (Bullet) Hell of a Thing to Understand

Gamers and game creators sort - or at least try to sort - games into genres, typically based on particular common threads in their mechanics.  More and more, we see games transcending simple labeling, as mechanics previously unique to one genre are borrowed and inserted in another, but in some cases we see games emerge that are further refinements of their particular type.  Surprisingly, examining the refinements can reveal very different values from the original genre, despite the similarities.

Danmaku games, more commonly called "bullet hell" games, are one such genre refinement.  Their parent genre is one of the foremost embodiments of "twitch" gameplay - something appears, you shoot it if you can, dodge it if you can't, and you do it right damn now.  Danmaku games use a similar operational premise - things show up and shoot at the player, and the player needs to survive - but what it changes is the volume of fire (the exact translation of 'danmaku' is "bullet curtain", like what you might get out of an artillery barrage).  Enemies will fire ten or fifteen bullets instead of one or two; minibosses might shoot volleys of fifty; a boss might all but cover the screen with shots.  To compensate, the hitbox of the character - where they must take a shot to die - is greatly reduced, frequently to nine or fewer pixels.  Frequently, these games place greater emphasis on the boss fights than they do traversing stages and fighting standard enemies.

Examining one such boss fight - specifically, the true final boss of one of the best-known danmaku games, Mushihime-sama - one can very easily see how the games earned the apellation "bullet hell."  More importantly, one can also begin to see the different values embedded in the mechanics of danmaku games and its parent genre.  A boss in a standard top-down shooter might fire a laser, or a spread of bullets; the player must react to this and get out of the way, and then react to the next attack selected from its set of available options, and so forth.  The danmaku player must similarly react to the attack of the boss, but notably, there is very little variation in the boss' attacks in any given part of the fight with that boss.  One must comprehend their attack pattern and understand how to endure it; the reaction component, while still important, is de-emphasized.  Standard top-down shooters reward flexibility, the ability to deal with things as they come; danmaku games, while still giving flexibility a nod, seem to hold comprehension, the understanding of what is going on, more.  Moreover, as evidenced by the exacting moves required to survive some attacks, these games also value perfection, almost to the degree of enforcing it for the player to survive the more brutal attack patterns in the game (1:44).

One can also see that danmaku games change the way the player must interact with the game space.  Top-down shooters generally require the player to pay attention to their ship and the boss (which will allow them to see where the boss' attacks will be directed) during a fight.  Danmaku games require that as well as reading the bullet patterns themselves; their motion over time may change in unexpected ways, as evidenced by some of the arcs of fire in the early parts of the video, and the player must watch them (or have memorized them) so that they can react appropriately.  This change - the additional variable to keep track of - forces the player to modify their perception of the game, especially if they are more familiar with the more breakneck, less exacting normal shooter.  Oftentimes, the only way to successfully do this is to try - and fail - repeatedly; the system of the game can only really be understood by interacting with it.

Given the shift in values embraced by the mechanics, it seems odd that danmaku games would be a refinement, a "taken to the nth degree" for the top-down shooter genre.  The emphasis of precision and understanding over pure reflexes suggests a more cerebral direction - not exactly what one would consider the root of the ur-shooter.  Perhaps this suggests that genre and value have little actual relation.

--Evan

Fantasy Rockstardom: Total Identity Transformation

From Callois' perspective, Rock Band heavily represents the agon and mimicry categories.  It asks players to master difficult button patterns in time with a background score while granting an on-stage presentation of a rock-star avatar.  It further conforms to this metaphor by assembling plastic instruments on which to play these button sequences, extending the structural metaphor across the realms of person, player, and character.

Much of its attraction as a competitive element are the affordances towards mastery of the equipment.  For the guitar, the strum bar may be played both down and up, a technique not all players choose to employ.  Also, certain notes may be "hammered on" instead of strumming with added rules to further constrain to the guitar string metaphor.  For the vocal track, in portions where singers must match tone, they may sing the notes at any octave.  In addition, there is some phoneme detection at the highest level during tone-matching, but players will typically be rewarded for singing any lyric, which is helpful for those unfamiliar with the song and an is an opportunity to expand upon the borders of the game.  "Talky" portions, where players must match the words spoken without regard for tone, offer much fewer affordances in judging and are for many the least popular portion of the game.  Drum game play expands upon its standard by allowing for improvisation at the start of the song before the drum track begins and when able to activate a power-up.  These affordances all build to encourage mastery of very difficult sequences of buttons while mimicking a musician as a person, player, and character.

The mimicry of Rock Band stems from very effective use of metaphor.  This success begins with the interface; the guitars are liscenced to resemble Fender Stratocasters and the drums make use of actual drum sticks banging on digital pads.  The singer transcends metaphor by using a microphone to interface with the game.  Here players mimic musicians with drummers and singers performing near exact representations of the performances in the song.  The metaphor is further maintained by the game only playing notes of the song that were successfully performed by the player.  In memorable play sessions, one can see guitar and vox players emulating stage moves musicians employ at concerts, a spirit encouraged by the games' commercials.  Although well monitored, a culture has risen to expand upon these affordances through case modifications and controller hacks.  Notable users have inserted button hardware into the necks of guitars, created converters from midi drum signals to controller, and created extensions for more responsive microphones.  Some have used these methods to cheat the game by inserting the exact sequence from the pc, though these people are moderated from the score boards for the sake of others. 

It is between these realms of mimicry and agon that player motivation and culture reveal themselves.  Between band mates, one can see attempts at social order maintenance similar to Hughes' observations during four-square.  Interactions typically depend on the specific group, each with it's own set of "unwritten rules."  Dedicated experts may shun less experienced players while social players may be more welcoming and encouraging.  Bartle's categories of gamer personalities appear here, each player with their own mix of achiever, explorer, socializer, and killer traits.  Even on a game requiring cooperation to succeed, one notable killer appears in the band "No One Can Touch This Score" who intentionally scores the lowest on all online competitions, forcing every other band to play against them on their first attempt.  In effort to achieve the best score, players create an economy out of their performance; achievers bid for other players' attention to gain the highest scores possible.  Character appearance also contributes to the Rock Band online economy; many bands grew popular by making avatars resembling the cast of Batman and Star Trek, focusing on mimicry rather than performance.  Future iterations of Rock Band promise the ability to order action figures and photographs of avatars, expanding the potential for a user-generated-content based economy both in game play and profit.  Coincidentally, band mates offering frustration/support to less talented members and the economy of talent and style each represent an analog to real-life band politics, further supporting the game's underlying metaphor of the players as musicians. 

Like Halo and Counter Strike before it, Rock Band has gained tremendous popular success, creating further impact on a person's identity and reputation than other games.  This identity often clashes with musicians and practical thinkers who argue that such devotion could be spent on conventional instruments.  Tournaments and awards legitimize gaming expertise, quite possibly elevating the players to a rock-star status of their own, evidenced by the popularity of spectating expert sessions over youtube.  As a conceptual metaphor, Rock Band's game as performance framework permeates even the person aspect of the gaming identity.

For characters, Rock Band offers fewer customization options than other games, but offers many varying appearance types.  One can choose from 5 body frames, two sexes, 6 skin tones, a dozen or more options in tops, bottoms, and shoes each from 5 different "scenes," and about 20 eccentric hairstyles.  On top of this, tattoo stamps can be placed on the skin and instruments with many different designs licensed from different tattoo shops.  All of the included outfits emphasize the outrageous and flamboyant aspect of rock stars throughout the decades while peacefully excluding references to drugs, sex, and obscene lyrics.  The game packages a pg-rated fantasy rock-star experience featuring all of the fun and glamor of fame without the tragedy that often accompanies it.

The presentation of space is often the least important in rhythm/music games, but Rock Band makes an effort to simulate the on-tour experience.  Cities are presented in a list and are categorized by global region.  Other regions become available once the band becomes renowned enough to purchase a van, tour bus, and airplane.  These elements create an effective analogy between unlocking content and gaining prestige, and provide an interesting outlet for explorers.

Rock Band values performance.  The game offers several outlets for gamers to perform.  Players may seek to gain the best scores and technique, the finest avatar representations, or the most outrageous physical mimicry with their friends.  Between online and local interactions, Rock Band takes the concept of musicianship and applies it to gaming with all the bells and whistles attached.

-Max Groves

expert game play session
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RCnEbZON4l0

star trek avatars
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wbUq8VVpPqI

demo focusing on player interaction
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uYbj5oR4VFA&feature=related

Portal's Eponymous Aperture

My choice of gameplay mechanic is Portal’s portal gun. I purchased The Orange Box for Xbox 360 while living in Japan, which was an adventure in and of itself, and was greatly rewarded by Portal’s fresh, innovative gameplay. The portal gun is a revolution in movement and navigation in a 3D space, and while many have lauded Portal’s eponymous movement solution, I have yet to see an analysis of it using the tools I have been learning in my studies. I will be examining Portal’s portal gun using several of the essays from the Game Design Reader’s Topics Essay section, as well as the Grow-A-Game toolkit.

First, I will analyze The Player Experience (GDR 3). Salen and Zimmerman begin the Player Experience essay by citing two examinations of classic arcade games by two authors – David Sudnow’s love of Breakout, and Richard Rouse III’s analysis of Centipede. The authors describe these games as having “rhythmic flow…[which contributes] to a feeling of drama and tension within a game”, which is “never accidental” (GDR 4).

They cite Marc LeBlanc’s essay “Tools for Creating Dramatic Game Dynamics”, explaining that games have dynamics, play patterns, which result in a game’s aesthetics, or the experience of fun.”

Portal’s dynamics are simple – the player must navigate a series of rooms using a limited range of actions. Chief amongst them is a portal gun, a device that can create linked portals, allowing for nontraditional, nonlinear traversals of space. The environment is antagonistic – the chambers are filled with traps, turrets, and various other things that can (and will) kill the player’s avatar. Player information is severely limited – there is no map, no way to track progress, very little exposition about the game’s history.

The aesthetics that result from Portal’s dynamics are wonderfully suspenseful. Not knowing what is ahead is very unsettling. The complex feels labyrinthine, despite the high linearity of the game. Indeed, the player feels like a rat in a maze, a sensation that has been carefully crafted by the game’s designers. The avatar is a test subject, her responses to the test chamber’s contents (and the events that happen outside of them) are being monitored in-game by the antagonist/narrator, GLaDOS. As the player plays, though, Portal’s linear construction is very reminiscent of lab experiments – they are literally solving puzzles while navigating a maze. Their reward, rather than cheese, is advancement of the narrative.

The next two topic essays, “The Rules of a Game” and “Gaming the Game” are related, in regards to Portal’s gameplay. Though “The Rules of a Game” focuses more on multiplayer games, some of the notions Salen and Zimmerman put forth can be applied to Portal. They cite Greg Costikyan’s essay “I Have No Words & I Must Design”. Rules, they say, cannot be considered apart from the particular moments of play they create (GDR 10). The rules of Portal are inextricably intertwined with it’s gameplay – the player is navigating their avatar through chamber after chamber, utilizing their very limited interactive suite. They can run, jump and crouch, they can pick up and drop things, and they have their portal gun. These options are further modified by the environment – the portal gun can only generate a portal on certain surfaces, limiting the device’s capabilities and thus the player’s options.

In “Gaming the Game”, however, the authors talk about the fact that rules can be broken. Portal breaks some of its own rules at around the halfway mark. The player escapes from the test chambers, entering a part of the complex that GLaDOS cannot observe. They progress through an environment that is very different from the first half of the game, in many aspects. It is visually different – a more warm and earthy color scheme as compared to the sterile blues and whites of the test chambers. The puzzles are different, and GLaDOS’ comments change in tone and meaning, as well. Gone is the almost big-sister ribbing, replaced with growing malice and fury.

Switching gears, a quick examination of the portal gun in relation to the Grow-A-Game toolkit. The portal gun embodies several values, chief amongst them being freedom. The gun breaks down traditional notions of movement, navigation, and puzzle solving present in games that involve 3D movement. The player is given the power to, with few restrictions, destroy the distance separating two points in space. Challenges that would be difficult, if not impossible, are made easy. It embodies ingenuity, as well – innovative or ingenious applications of the portal gun’s abilities allow players to skip or negate puzzles and traps. Speedruns of the game wherein people challenge themselves with swift completion are amazing to watch – the authors of these sessions utilize the portal gun’s powers in ways that, while logical, approach the application of portals in radical or perpendicular ways.

Portal is a fascinating game, one that I could wax poetic on for quite some time. I leave the reader with a video of the last 10 or so minutes of Portal. It demonstrates the flexibility of the portal gun. It is a narrative tool, an artifact bound tight to the game’s narrative and play experience. It breaks down and casts the gamespace in new ways. A tension exists between the portal gun’s native ability, amazing freedom of movement, with the very limited, linear aspect of the game’s structure. Though free to build tunnels between spaces, the game is still, ultimately, a restricted thing. This dichotomy creates a unique flow of experience and play, one that is rewarding no matter how many times one plays the game.

Two Thrones - Two Sets of Rules

The third game in the Prince of Persia Trilogy brings a unique feature that neither of the other game had had while still being true to some of the mechanics of those first two. What “The Sands of Time” and “Warrior Within” both used as restrictions was the surrounding environment that the main character moves through. It is in this way that the environment dictates the rules, and therefore is an extension of them, according to Salen and Zimmerman’s essay on rules in games. In their essay, they talk about how the materials used to play the game are an extension of the rules, since they allow the game to be played in one manner or another. Just as a tennis racquet enables a player to play tennis, so too does the environment in the Prince of Persia games allow the Prince to move forward through both the game and narrative.

 

The novelty of the modern PoP games involves the acrobatic maneuvers of the Prince performs, both in combat and all over the levels. In consideration of these abilities, the game was designed to make the acrobatics necessary to advance through the narrative to the end. There are a plethora of obstacles in all three games to traverse, but the third game does something new. It changes an ability of the Prince to provide a new set of obstacles to be traversed when the Prince is transformed into the Dark Prince. The narrative provides the Dark Prince with a chain attached to his arm that can extend out to swing the Dark Prince from lamps in strategic places throughout the game. What fits perfectly within the descriptions in Salen and Zimmerman is that the transformations from Prince to Dark Prince are not arbitrary. There are certain sections of the game that can only be traversed as the Dark Prince, therefore the Prince is transformed beforehand in a cutscene. The environment itself also triggers the return to the normal Prince by hiding pools of water that start the transformation.

 

The most obvious rules in all of the PoP games are about where the player is able to go. There is only one path through the games, though one could argue that the second allows you to return to almost any room at a certain point in the game. Nevertheless, there is still only one way to any of those rooms. You still have to run along the wall to cross the gap, or swing off the bar. Those are the rules for playing Prince of Persia, and the gameplay changes when the rules change. Add in a chain you can swing from, and you essentially have a whole new game.

 

It should be noted at this point that they also added “wall-stabs” for the normal Prince, where he can stab certain squares on the wall and hang from them indefinitely, as well as spring-loaded boards embedded in the walls that the Prince can jump great distances off of.

 

Each of these abilities and constraints affords a certain type of gameplay to keep in mind when designing, much like the values @ play cards for game designing. They both give focus and direction for designing an inefficient means of achieving a task. 

Gabriel Halley

halley@gatech.edu

Analyzing how value is embedded in Wii

I am going to talk about Wii and its underlining values. One year ago, I happened to videotape some female clerks playing wii during the break from work, just thinking that it was fun to watch them playing at that time.

As discussed in the topic of "Speaking of Games" (page 45-50), two inverse approaches are brought forward by Sutton-Smith and Gee. Gee's cultural model represent broad sets of cultural values that end up affecting how games are made, played and interpreted. In contrast, Sutton-Smith looks first at instances of play and extrapolates outward in order to understand how particular conceptions of play reside within culture at large. As my interpretation of the usage of two approaches, the former approach is focusing on how and why the game is designed to be the way it is by the influence of cultural values; and the latter focus on the play experience and how it is reflected, portrayed and communicated. To analyze the value embedded in Wii, I took both methods. From the perspective of how the values are influencing the design and play of the game, I believe that part of the motivation comes from the value of social experience and universal play. It is an reflection of the intention from the game design community that it's the time to explore more types of play market beyond the stereotypical under-30, white, male player. Why Wii become "a big success, with innovative and crowd-pleasing controller" (PC world review about wii), considering that it was launched at similar time with XBox360 and PlayStation 3? Instead of making the 3D graphics of the game world more "realistic", Wii takes a different strategy: it introduced the latest technology from ubiquitous computing domain, including accelerometer sensors, infrared camera, wireless connection etc.. I am not sure whether technology comes first or value comes first, but the choice of technology (ubicomp vs. computer graphics) and choice of the value (universal play vs. hard-core play) matches well together.

I want to focus on the change of game space with Wii. As discussed between page 65 and 69, the narrative, interactive, informational, strategic, imaginative, and experiential qualities are very related with gaming experience. The space I mention here includes the digital game space, physical space and social space. The introduce of full body interaction enables the one-to-one mapping between the avatar's and the player's move, making the competition to have a more realistic feeling. It also allows a more interesting spectator experience, fostering a social space where the game is played. Instead of making a game world as "realistic" as possible, Wii creates a new game space that combines the physical, digital and social space, pulling focus of attention from inside the screen to the real world. By real world, I mean leisure room at work (as far as I know, Microsoft research, IBM research and Nokia research all have Wii for employees and interns to play with), at home (families can play together, regardless age), and in the Senior Centers (where Nitendo gained a lot of sales volume, http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles/2008/04/13/wii_gets_seniors_back_in_the_games/). And the pervasive play of Wii proved that these values mentioned above are not just what the designers agreed on, but also one thing that people have been waiting for a long time yet ignored by previous computer game community.

In Value@Play, Flanagan and Nissenbaum [1] discussed that technologies are not only effective, efficient, safe, attractive, easy to use, and so forth, but that promote the values to which the surrounding societies and cultures subscribe. This relationship between technology and value is reflected as the choice of technology (and choice of value), anticipating how and where the technology is used (and game is played), and also reflecting the needs from the audience that was missing out. All these above was achieved by Wii, that's why I pick it as a great example to show how value is embedded in the game. 

Yan Xu

yxu7@gatech.edu

Magic Pen

The Game:
http://magic.pen.fizzlebot.com/

Magic Pen is a flash game that is unique to many other games. In magic pen the player can do only four things: create a pin, create a hinge, erase, or (most importantly) draw a shape. The player must use these shapes, pens, and hinges in order to collect all the flags with a little red ball, and therefore complete the level. Magic pen is, essentially, a puzzle game. However, it is unique to other games for two reasons. First, rather than directly controlling the object that must collect the flags, the player is manipulating it by creating and destroying objects around it. And second, you are creating these objects by drawing them with a 'magic pen.' Essentially, with this pen you can create objects of any shape and size in the world of the game. These objects have weight and are affected by gravity and friction. For example, if you draw a circle above a triangle on the ground it will fall onto it and roll off the side. This is unique because the player is not a character that (s)he can relate to, but rather a manipulator of the world itself.

This unique mechanic makes this game interesting for a few reasons. First, it is a game of creation. It is the realization of imagination. I can draw a ball and it will roll around. I can draw a triangle on its tip and it will topple over. Second, because the player is creating and destroying things in this world, (s)he becomes more involved in the game. For instance, when my brother and I were playing this game we were often comparing the ways in which we solved puzzles. We were proud of our unique creations and wished to share them with one another. This was possible because we could create any sort of shapes and systems we wanted in order to solve the puzzle. In this way Magic Pen is a very open-ended game. Finally, Magic pen is a challenge. The puzzles get harder and harder and, towards the end of the game, often seem impossible.

The challenge and open-endednesss of this game has caused it to develop a bit of a following. Many people that have played this game like to share their unique solutions with others. As you can see in this video, one of the common goals of Magic Pen players is to complete levels while creating as few objects as possible:

Eternal Darkness and Why I'm Afraid of the Dark

Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem is a survival horror game (and the first Mature-rated game created by Nintendo) that was released for the Gamecube system in late 2002. The storyline follows Alex, the granddaughter of the recently deceased/murdered Edward Roivas, as she finds a demonic book hidden in Edward's mansion and reads through it. As she does so the player is brought into the stories, controlling the character of the tale and “living” the diary entries as they are slowly pieced together into a hideous insight to the unseen wars raging between gods. As each entry is completed, the knowledge, power, and upgrades that each character earns is passed on to Alex, thus not only evolving Alex into a stronger, more complex character, but also changing the mansion from a genuinely creepy home to a hive of sinister monsters and gods.

Eternal Darkness was a successful game that had a very strong, unforgettable mechanic: the “sanity meter.” The sanity bar is part of the game's UI and is displayed along with the health and magick (a category of magic) bar. Throughout the game the characters have to deal with a variety of enemies, usually the creations of whichever god they chose to have as an adversary in the first diary entry. As the player comes into contact or view of these creatures their sanity meter lowers. This can be reversed by killing and finishing off the creature, but doing so is not always a possible or wise option. As the sanity meter is drained strange effects begin to appear in the game, become more common and potent as the bar empties. Most of the sanity effects take place in the realm of the character's environment. The first effect players usually encounter is blood dripping from the walls and ceilings. Later their character may begin to shrink after entering a room, have body parts start to slide off (arms, head, torso), suddenly see a huge amount of enemies, explode while trying to cast a magickal spell, or even commit suicide after reloading their weapon. Some of the most clever sanity effects that were implemented into the game break the “fourth wall” with the player. The game will have the character attacked and claim that the controller to the Gamecube has been disconnected, leaving the player to frantically try to reconnect it as their character is ripped to shreds. Other examples include the game muting itself (complete with the word “MUTE” popping up in the lower right-hand corner, mimicking the television), getting the “Blue Screen of Death,” pretending the save file was corrupted or erased, showing insects crawling on the screen (not to limit the player's vision but to fool them into thinking there were actual bugs on the television), and even showing a “Congratulations, you beat the game! Please buy the sequel” screen when the player beats a level (oftentimes early in the game). For the vast majority of sanity effects, their occurrence is followed by a flash of white, the character (whoever is being played at that point of time) screaming in disbelief (something along the lines of “this can't be happening,” which became a popular video game culture reference), and a return to what was happening before the sanity effect took place.

This mechanic added a new level of fear to the game by toying with the strategy of forgiving randomness. Random effects have been used by horror games in the past; for example, the original Clock Tower game inserted random decisions into the main enemy's AI, such as whether he would check certain areas to see if the player's character is hiding (which could mean the difference between the character's life or death). However, the effects in Eternal Darkness are not meant to disrupt the character, but to unsettle the player. To use terms that could come from from the Grow-A-Game cards, the game trying to “subvert” the player's sanity or lack of fear (an Action) by putting them through the Challenge of surviving these effects with the Goal of keeping their sanity meter filled and completing the chapters of the story and bringing “peace.” The effectiveness of this mechanic is tied in with how the player so easily can assume the identity of the character thanks to how video games “give [players] permission to play with identity because they give [them] characters to play” (Salen and Zimmerman, 27). Since the player can not only control the character and have their character effected in turn but also be effected directly, the mechanic of Eternal Darkness's sanity effect becomes a powerful tool in drawing the player into the game and story.

Examples of sanity effects:

Example of Eternal Darkness gameplay (warning: may include spoilers):

Emily Cribb
ecribb3

Braid: A Tale Torn from Time

Braid, a platforming puzzle game recently released for the X-Box Live Arcade, is an extremely stylized and innovative game designed and developed entirely by Jonathan Blow. The game places you, as the character “Tim”, in an unexplained world where you cross a bridge and find your way into what can only be assumed is your house. Each room of your house represents some different level with a door and a blank canvas. The only room with the light still on is the first room with the text Level 2. You go through the door and you are placed amongst the clouds with a few books on pedestals from which you receive the first tidbits of the story. From this room you make your way into the first stage of the first Level. This is where you are introduced to your remarkable mechanic of this game. Tim has the power to reverse the flow of time, that is to say he can rewind and fast-forward the progression of the game. The player uses this to surmount a series of jumping and timing puzzles that without this ability would be impossible. As you progress through the levels, this mechanic is expanded upon with certain twists such as objects that do not are not affected by the flow of time, worlds where rewinding creates an alternate version of reality and a ring that slows time the closer you get to it. These twists keep the underlying mechanic fresh and keep the player looking for new ways to solve the puzzles. One of the most interesting things they did with this is that death does not function as a reset. When Tim dies he just falls to the ground and the player is prompted to rewind so failing in this game is only possible through the puzzles, where trying them again is as simple as rewinding time back to before you made the mistake.

This game takes the template of a Mario game, with references to the game in the form of attempting to rescue a princess and direct quotes such as “I’m sorry, but your princess is in another castle.” This instantly gives players some depth of immersion into the game, because most players who are going to play Braid already have some sort of history playing a Mario game and therefore can instantly relate to the situation that the player is in. The character development in this game works somewhat differently in this game than most, but as Salen and Zimmerman talk about in their chapter on Player and Character and how the two interact, you quite literally are discovering pieces of Tim’s past and why he is even navigating through this world. This game deeply immerses you into this character as you discover more and more books and when you discover the final level(Level 1) you discover that you were the villain all the time while explaining in metaphor some greater evil that you have perpetrated and breaks off from the Mario theme as you discover that you were the “Bowser” all along trying to capture the princess from the great and noble hero.

Blogpost 4: Game Mechanics Analysis

    When considering individual player’s experience within a game, the mechanics of the game largely shape the player’s experience.  Salen and Zimmerman present us with a series of interesting questions: “How do game mechanics influence player behavior? What constitutes an aesthetic of player pleasure? Of conflict? Or drama?”  Mass Effect, developed by Bioware, is interesting when focusing on the game’s mechanics because the primary mechanics strive to demonstrate an answer to those questions. By presenting conflict and tension, drama is created, which the player’s behavior is shaped in responding to the drama.  As an end result, the gameplay is pleasing to the player.
    One mechanic in particular, the dynamic conversation mechanic, allows the player to have conversations with the NPCs.  In the video found here, starting at 2:00 and ending at 3:00, you can see how the player is able to choose different, emotionally fueled responses while talking to NPCs.  In this example, the player chose two renegade, or angry responses to what Joker was saying, which added 2 renegade points to the player’s stats at the end of the conversation.  These choices also resulted in Joker being yelled at by Captain Anderson.  This is not a new feature in video games, and has been used in many games before; but, Mass Effect stands apart from past games because modern technology allows facial expressions and professional voice acting to present the player with interesting conflicts between the player and NPCs.  This, in turn builds dramatic tension into the gameplay experience like never before.  Also, the choices the player makes in the conversations affect the character’s stats and reputation among the NPCs.  This reputation may affect how future conversations play out later in the game.  To me, this makes Mass Effect different from past RPGs in a sense that the focus of the game is on action in the form of “action conversing,” which uses the player’s behavior to present conflicts, create drama, and finally a pleasing experience, rather than action in the form of physical violence.
    Another argument made by Salen and Zimmerman is that the relationship between the player and character can be thought of as three “layers:” the physical person playing the game, the player as a participant of the game, and the character in the game.  Through the ability to create your own character and interacting with NPCs through conversations, Bioware sought to blur the lines between player and character, by having the player forget about themselves as they exist in the real world.  Once the player has transcended beyond the physical person, as a player participating in the game, he or she will then project themselves into the game and onto their character.  This complete emersion serves to heighten the player’s suspension of disbelief and immerse themselves fully into the experience.
    After playing with the Growing-A-Game kit, I learned the importance of challenging yourself as a game designer when creating new mechanics, or adapting old mechanics.  In the case of Mass Effect, it is clear that Bioware set out to redefine the classic RPG conversational mechanic to a point that one could consider it the core mechanic of the game.  I am particularly impressed because the conversations and interactions with NPCs are more interesting to me as a gamer, than the cliched action, 3rd person squad shooting sections of the game.

Mike Roth