Note_Pedagogy of Game Design

About Presenter:

Michael John(UCSC), teach game design

Learning Craft: Apprenticeship

• YujiNaka(中 裕司, Hedgehog) -> Mark Cerny(PS4) -> Michael John

About credibility:

1. Train a person to be perceived as credible (by the game development community)

   • roles and teamwork
   • scrum and agile methodologies
   • play testing and user research
   • production pipeline

2. Game credibility

   • sth > intuitive
   • game consultant: play the game for 15min and tell me what's wrong with it and how to fix it.
   • e.g. People keep driving left and off the road when using a PS controller to play a driving game. Problem solve: thumb angle about 45-degree and overcorrect the straight direction by about 30-degree. Simply correct the angle input by script program.
   • Define What Game is:
     • An interactive system comprised of loop of activities, designed to create an experience in the mind and heart of the player.
     • interactive system == loop of {action -> outcome -> state -> action}
     • use player experience to interpret the loop {action -> feedback -> affordance -> action}

Additional Game Theory

• Emergence

  • It's any behavior that is not purely predicted in advance by a system.
  • X: make a complicated system and add more var.
  • O: add more simple loops and link them together.
  • e.g. 1 chess. chess with only two horse is dumb.
  • e.g. 2 sim city. A new feature's worthiness depends on how many other features it touch.

• Experience Design

  • Flow state (out of comfort -> back into comfort -> out of comfort -> back again)
  • Sequencing (randomish, predicatable is boring)

• Meaning thru Mechanics

  • Typical Process: Functions(do what) -> Premise(at where) -> Emotion(feel like)
  • Story Process: Premise(at where) -> Functions(do what) -> Emotion(feel like)
  • Flip Process: Emotion -> Funtion -> Premise
  • Find a emotion annoying -> think about what you like to do to be an expression of those emotions if you could. ->
    • e.g. Hard finding a parking lot? Just bash a car out.
  • Practice: Think about a real situation that trigger emotions like anger, joy, frustration, love, paranoia, jealousy, loss, confusion, surprise, excitement, boredom(How to make a boring game without stupid?), compassion, pride. etc.
  • The trick is meaning generated through player choices.

Reference

Pedagogy of Game Design