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Research Report by Sarah Yim

Page history last edited by Sarah Yim 10 years, 4 months ago

Research Report: Game Design Fundamentals

 

By Sarah Yim, Literary Re-do Team

 

Abstract.

Project Literary Re-do is a project intended to discover elements of games that could be applied to literature. This involves a game book website in which team members (Julian Bustos, Felicia Scott, and Sarah Yim) deconstruct a literary work and translate the narrative into an interactive fiction template. The main point of Project Literary Re-do is to evaluate the way in which games could be considered another genre of literature. Game books are works of interactive fiction that allows the reader to have a sense of agency in their experience with the text. The player’s decision changes the narrative and allows the plot to branch off in numerous outcomes. Topics of meaningful play, timing, memory, and control are explored as Project Literary Redo demonstrates how changing the way a narrative is read will affect the overall experience of the work of literature.

 

Description

“ Game Design and Meaningful Play” by Katie Salen and Eric Zimmerman is a useful asset to Project Literary Re-do because it explains the basic premises to what a game is and how it entails meaning for the person playing it.  This is a significant source of material because it teaches the team to understand the topic of games in an objective perspective—the article contains detailed analyses of games in relation to meaning and play with scholarly sources. First, it critically states the sign for successful game design is the creation of meaningful play. This is difficult to define because play comes in a number of forms: the dueling between two players in a game of chess, the collaborative elements of Basketball, or even the immersive components of internet game play. Despite this, the common factor in all of these examples is that they must be situation within the context of a game. It is the interaction between the game and the player that constitutes meaningful play, and not the object or rule that the game entails. In other words, the choices are what make the play meaningful because it is what changes the situation or context of the game. The article also explores two kinds of meaningful play. “ Meaningful play in a game emerges from the relationship between player action and system outcome; it is the process by which a player takes action within the designed system of a game and the system responds to the action. The meaning of action in a game resides in the relationship between action and outcome.” (61) This stipulates that all games create meaning by just experiencing it, however the second type of meaningful play focuses on how other games create more meaning. “ Meaningful play occurs when the relationship between actions and outcomes in a game are both discernable and integrated into the larger context of the game.” (61). Discernible, in this sense, means that the outcome of the game has impacted the player in memorable way. For example, in Super Smash Bros Brawl a player is more likely to be affected by getting attacked with sound effects and effective visual stimulations than just a simple flick on the screen. Discernibility allows the player to know what happens when they make a choice. Integrated is another concept that defines game play. This means that whatever action a player chooses has significant meaning to the overall game even at a later part in the game. Each choice determines the experience because it is integrated as a part of the overall system.

An important topic is framing systems within a game. A system can affect the player’s choice, as well as be affected by the player’s choice. The frame of the game is responsible for the distinction between reality and the artificial world. For example, in interactive fiction the player is aware that the choices that they make in the book are separate from real life consequences. These boundaries are defined and regulated by rules, but within this framework the player is both limited and limitless. That is, they are able to enter a different kind of space in which they are engaged in only two things: their attention and the game. The article further explores the anatomy of a choice with five questions: what happens before the choice is made, how the player perceives this, how is this choice made, what is the result, and how does the player perceive the result. This breaks down how games can be created because it evaluates what must happen for the player to be significantly affected within the game.

      The basic premise for this article is not to compare games with other disciplinary fields such as computer science or literary criticism, but as it’s own disciplinary space. It bridges theoretical and practical concerns by discovering patterns and challenging these patterns as to what determines an effective system. These practices can be applied to other concepts or models, but the basic principle is that to first play a game, there must be a basic understanding of the game itself.

 

Commentary          

This article gives fundamental background knowledge of the material pertaining to Project Literary Redo. It discusses elements of game design that ultimately facilitate information for the project; rudimentary concepts such as game, design, meaningful play, choice, frame, and systems are explored. This source is significant because it allows the team to gain insight on principles of game play in a scholarly, objective perspective. The article also is helpful in the construction of a successful game because it evaluates the components of game design. This gives the team an outline of what they could focus on when creating the game book. For example, the 5 questions when deciding on the choices in the description above will help the team when developing an approach to meaningful play in the game book. The limitation of the article in relation to the team project is that it does not give us a detailed exploration of game books. The article may touch on different games, such as chess or black jack, but it does not dissect the elements of game books that give it meaningful play. In this sense, the article is highly informative, but the main significance of it is how the team can apply this information into the creation of the website. Despite the limitations, the essay allows the team to take in consideration many elements (such as the space and time of the system) in order to create a game that will entice and impact the player’s overall experience. 

 

Resources for Further Study

"Casual Gameplay Design Competition #10 — "ESCAPE"" Casual Gameplay Design Competition #10 — "ESCAPE" N.p., n.d. Web. 20 Nov. 2013.

Rouse, R. III. Game design: Theory and practice. (2001). Print.

 Salen, Katie, and Eric Zimmerman. "Rules of Play: Game Design Fundamentals." Game Design and Meaningful Play (2004). Print.

 

 

English 149 [Research Report].docx  

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