Week 6

An introduction to Game Design

As we all know gameplay is one of the main principles to ‘Play’ a game. Without this ‘gameplay’ there wouldn’t be a way to play a game, so in short the gameplay is really how the game is played. Gameplay is a connection between the game and its user where the user takes control over a character and plays the game by its rules; these rules are set by the people that make the game otherwise known as the game director but it’s not all credited by the game director as the whole staff that was involved in the project of making the game would of contributed to it, but the game director will have the most work as he/she would have to get everyone ideas and visualize it in to one. I guess the leading lights in game design would have to be everyone that contributed in making the game a success.

Where does Game Design take place in the modern Developer?

Well hmmm........game design has always been the same, creating characters, environment, story and etc but in the modern day now developers will always have a hard time as technology these days are so more advanced to what they were 5 or 10 years ago. Main problem these days is budget as without money games cannot be made, developers will always have to come out with something new for their audiences and over the course they will have to keep doing this so that the game or their company aren’t stuck in one position.

http://uk.gamespot.com/news/6081684.html - I found this link which I found quite interesting where some game developers from companies like Capcom and Square-Enix talk about how development goes and how it has changed and a few other stuff as well. (read if u like)

Is it a single person’s responsibility?

Well that would be crazy if one person making a game, obviously its not one person’s responsibility of making a game or how it does. When making a game there would normally be a brainstorming where everyone who’s involved would take place, here they would talk to each other, come up with characters, the environment, narrative, music, story and etc. Without everyone’s input into the game, the game cannot be 100% good nor make sense in other case, so is it one person’s responsibility....nope.

Do different genres require different design principles?
Well yeah, of course they will need different design principles. Like a book or film, games have genres as well, for example you wouldn’t see fighting elements within a racing genre. For each genre there would be codes and conventions that would specify a certain genre by having certain elements which other genres wouldn’t have, but like films games would have more than one genre which are normally called hybrids (but as I recall I don’t really think it comes into the whole game area), so as I was saying for example RPG genre could have shooting elements, fighting elements and etc. These days I would say it’s hard to give a genre to game unless it’s that obvious, but yes different genres will always require different design principles.

What's important for you, when you play?

When I play a game first thing of all is the graphics, these days graphic have improved a lot from 2D to 3D, if the graphic’s isn’t good or look realistic it doesn’t particular grabs my attention, don’t get me wrong I can play games that don’t look realistic but its whether the gameplay, music, story to it is all good as well. Without them I can’t really enjoy a game unless there’s something good about it, normally to me it’s the story that matters as without a good story the game can’t be interesting, not only that the environment and music has to be good as it sets the mood for the game. So I guess to me graphics, storyline, environment, music and of course gameplay has to be good. (pretty much everything really lol)