Reading Week 03

Game Design

In this reading week I was looking at loads of different views and perspectives on how games are developed and viewed in the eyes of the public and the eyes of the creators. 

Some Sources from various people believe that a game has "ends and means" an objective and outcome and a set of rules to get there (David Parlett)

In my opinion Games are meant to be enjoyed and not forced, for example there should be no mandatory missions needed to progress through the main story of the game they should be voluntary and give the player and choice, options like that would make it a better experience for everyone.

I believe that most games need an end goal or a conclusion to satisfy the player and leave them with everything closed and all the build up conveyed in one final chapter to the story, some games can get away with not adding a proper ending like sandbox games where the story is yours to choose like Minecraft for example.

Elements that Games should have:

- Games are and activity

- Games have some sort of rules 

- Games have conflict whether its emotional or physical

- Games have goals or some sort of achievement for the player to push towards

- Games should be enjoyed 

- Games are an escape for players

- Games should make the player feel like their achieving in the game for the       missions or quests to make it worthwhile 

- Games are meant to have a storyline that can't be predicted and has to be found out through playing.

I found notes on this topic at:

The Gaming Industry:

The gaming industry is classed as one of he "creative industries" this usually means that it's one of the the new industries. In the last decade the gaming industry has growth massively and it has proven to be one of the most profitable. Especial with the events of quarantine. In the last two years gaming and streaming companies such as twitch have profited a lot from it, more and more people are watching esports gaming now as well. Gaming is only growing and with new titles coming out every year, Gaming is not going anywhere!!

Game Ideation:

Hundreds of thousands of games are being made every year with all the big titles coming up with new ones very year, the competition is getting more and more intense between the big companies trying to fight or your attention with ads gameplay trailers and just ways to sell themselves constantly trying to one up each-other. New fresh ideas are hard to come up with because with the big companies they feel like there at risk that if they put out a bad game that can risk sales and future opportunities, so often you'll find the games that are most random tend to gain a mass amount of support out of nowhere. Call of Duty/Activision are an example of a company playing it safe, they keep going back to the World War 2 idea again and again. Then there's a smaller game organization who made the game split gate, They don't have much experience and had no title to lose so they were able to come up with their own idea without worrying about how it could do they just made a game that they thought was a good idea and it was. 

Generating ideas for Games:

There are many ways to go about coming up with ideas for games the main techniques people use are 

- Concentration

- Brainstorming

- Scamper

Concentration:

Concentration is hugely important when trying to think about creating ideas and solutions, We are all perfectly capable of finding concentration some harder than others but its the ability to thing until coming up with an idea.

Brainstorming:

Brainstorming is a lot like concentration in that you're focused on a task but there's some stages to take into account. There is usually three stages with brainstorming, looking at the task at hand, coming up with ideas and finally selecting the best idea and working on it.

Scamper:

Scamper is an abbreviation for Substitute, Combine, Adapt, Modify, Put, Eliminate, Reverse.

There is also another method that is used in the creation of games, this method is called the Ramsey Method. More about this topic here Four Basic Methods for Generating Ideas - Game Design and Theory - Tutorials - GameDev.net