Empowering Tools

Today I shall  talk (though probably rant) to you about Formal Abstract Design Tools (FADT's), courtesy of Doug Church.

'What are computer games made of?' well; Frogs and snails and puppy-dogs' tails - That's what computer games are made of. No?

Doug, believes games are comprised of a technical base, fused with vision for player experience - Which sounds quite like a Marks & Spencer's advert, doesn't it? I believe what Doug means by all of this is simply that  computer games are simply a collection of rules, coding and god knows what else the player can't see... with a pretty game covering comprising of graphics, animation levels and audio to create the experience that the complete game gives. Basically, all of the components of the game work together to create what you end up with. If you think about it - If you had one without the other, you would either get a film or picture type thing going on, or you would get a lot of meaningless code or rules flying by the screen as if you were trying to hack into the matrix (without the cool bits)

Doug believes our vocabulary for games is not good enough - It ranges from 'fun' to 'not-fun' - We need to be able to pick and choose aspects of a game and their effects.


I agree with Doug here - It would be handy to be able to get a game, play it for a few seconds and then stream out what is good and bad about it, why, and how to fix it. I however disagree with the vocabulary aspect - I for one have used at least 'awesome' or 'drooled a little' to describe a good game...
It is becoming increasingly popular to build and design games using players - The ordinary people in the street who pick the game up, buy it with their hard-earned spare cash, take it home and play it and then tell the internet all about it. The truth is, very few of those people will have been lucky enough to have studied game design in any detail; they will be able to tell you what they personally like ('The new items are spectacular and the addition of the super-duper-combo-move and the introduction of achievements was great') and perhaps what they don't like ('The story was boring and several of the missions were pointless'), but the reasons why those things had those effects is going to be unknown to them. I can't see any big company making games spending time (and subsequently money) analysing these comments - the game is plastic; there are hundreds of elements to go through. All they will need to do is have a meeting something like this; 'So, researchers - What good points about the game were praised by lots and lots of people? Okay, Let's add and develop that... and what about he bad bits? Okay, we'll have to remove them then.'
Oh, Then of course you will get; 'Why hasn't our sequel been popular - We did everything they said! - Okay, we're pulling the plug on this.' Still not realising they accidentally took out all of the necessary original gaming elements from the game. My point is, I guess - You can't change how things are done worldwide... At least not that drastically. Games are developed more and more and more around the consumer pull rather than technology push; this would be fine with any other industry but games are incredibly versatile and simply going at the pace of the consumers can be extremely detrimental.

 

Where was I?

Ahh, yes: FADT - Faddy Adolescents Driving in Treacle... wait... no.. That's not it.
Anyway, games don't need all of these tools, just simply to use some of them.

The first is Intention.
Intention is a bit like plans - You basically (and somewhat unconsciously) plan your actions throughout a game due to the situations and obstacles you meet and overcome along the way. after a while you will plan ahead with your actions because you will have a greater idea of what to expect due to the knowledge you have already collected.

This leads on nicely to the next FADT; Perceivable consequence.
Perceivable consequence is basically feedback from a game. a simple example is if you die, you get a game over message or something like that. If you press the up button, the character jumps and so on.

Story
Story is another FADT - The story is the 'narrative thread' which is a posh way of saying 'It moves things along'. The story in games, unlike other forms of media, can be driven by the design or by the players themselves - For instance, often if the player wants to roam a bit before they move on, some games will let them.

Of course these are not the only tools but merely a few Doug has decided to share. These tools, though he has used specific games as examples, can be used in all games if they work.

I'll be perfectly honest, I didn't enjoy this read so much... I spent most of the time reading his lengthy descriptions on Mario and other such games xD

I tried to keep this one short - Long ones take aaages!