Game Design

Gameplay Design Workshop

Petri Lankoskiaalto.fi

Getting Credits

• Return documentation of each game (a PDF document)– Names of group members– Complete set of rules– All what is needed to play (e.g., cards, board)– Postmortem

• 3 to 5 things that went right• 3 to 5 things that went wrong

• Attending lectures– 6 lectures on Wed 13 to 15 starting on 15.9.– Lecture diary containing reflections from 4 lectures

• Deadline for the both: Fri 12.11.

Grading

• Game design are graded– Completeness and quality of rules– Board design and card design– Not graphical quality

• Lecture diary influence grades (-1,, 0, +1)• Missed deadline reduces the grade (-1 per week)

– Unless new deadline is agreed beforehand

Learning Diary

• Short essay style reflections of the contents of a lecture– Can be critical or complementary– You can use references to other sources to expand or criticize

the lecture– Explain why you selected the topics of the lecture

• Should include a page that – Evaluate the lectures as whole– Evaluate ones own learning

• Learning diary is not a summary of lecture

Further Reading

• Brathwaite, B. & Schrieber, I. (2008). Challenges for Game Designers. Course Technology. Available at Ebrary (http://site.ebrary.com/lib/aalto/)

Sep 8 Agenda

• Presentation of yesterday's assignments• Chance and Skill• Design Exercise, Chance and Skill• Presenting the exercise• Design Exercise, Chance and Skill

Chance and Skill

• Skill-based games– Chess,

• Chance-based games– Roulette

• Chance- and skill-based games– Blackjack, Bridge, Settlers of Catan, Risk

• Chance increase variation

Using Change

• Dice– 4, 6, 8, 10, 12, 20, 30, 100 sides– With a single die, each side have equal probability– 2d6 creates bell-curve (skew toward 7)– Each die roll is independent from previous dice rolls

• Further reading: Torben Mogensen: Dice-Rolling Mechanisms in RPGs, http://www.darkshire.net/jhkim/rpg/systemdesign/torben_rpg_dice.pdf

6 Sided Dice Behavior

Figure: Weisstein, http://mathworld.wolfram.com/Dice.html

Using Chance

• Cards– Imperfect information– Different dynamics depending on how many cards are dealt and when

the deck is reshuffled • Blackjack – Bridge – Magic the Gathering – Carcassonne

– Each card drawn influence to the probabilities of remaining cards• Reshuffling the deck after each draw makes deck behaving like die

Using Chance…

• Pseudo-random numbers– Computers can simulate dice and card shuffling– Typically sufficiently random, but NOT always– You can test the generator by producing, e.g., 1000 events

• Is the distribution of the events sufficiently correct?

• Hidden information– Choices based on hidden information are pseudo-random

Design Exercise: Tic-Tac-Toe with Luck

• Modify Tic-Tac-Toe to add randomness to the game

Design Exercise: The Alien in the Desert

• The game must use– Tiles similar to Carcassonne or Catan– Fog of War– Match with the name