genre bending game design workshop file · web viewthe key mechanics of platforming games...

Genre Bending Game Design Workshop

DICE DECODING SHEET

D6 – GENRE1 Platformer2 Shooter3 Puzzle4 Adventure5 Relationship Simulator6 Multiplayer

D20 – THEME1 Identity2 Surveillance3 Light4 Surplus5 Non-Violence6 Failure7 Transparency8 Routine9 Asymmetry10 Organization11 Fluid12 Ignorance13 Discipline14 Impostor15 Circulation16 Hybridity17 Waste18 Balance19 Sound20 Roller's Choice

GameCamp! By UC Davis ModLab


GENRE 1: PLATFORMERPlatforming games emphasize moving and navigating through 2D and/or 3D space, often broken into discrete units called levels, stages, or worlds. For example, in Super Mario Bros., perhaps the most iconic example of the genre, players play as Mario whose signature move is to jump—to squish enemies, to cross over bottomless pits, and to land on moving platforms as he explores worlds to save a princess.

The key mechanics of platforming games focus on kinds of movement, such as running, jumping, crouching, climbing, flying, swimming, etc… The specific movement mechanics of any particular platformer are often linked to the narrative and thematic content of the game. For example, in Pitfall!, players run through a jungle setting and can swing on vines to cross quicksand and other threats. In FlappyBird, on the other hand, players control a clunky bird that flaps its wings to move higher but is always being pulled down by gravity.

Platforming games often rely on level design as a key obstacle, providing physical hazards such as bottomless pits, lava, spikes, and moving platforms to add challenge to gameplay. There might also be hostile enemies that players must defeat and/or avoid to advance. It is not uncommon for platforming games to also use time limits for added difficulty.

Production of a platforming game centrally relies on developing real-time physics simulations that can model such things as general movement, gravity, friction, air resistance, buoyancy, and other selected physical forces that affect movement. Careful level design is central to the platformer genre.

Super Mario Bros. Pitfall! FlappyBird

Thomas Was Alone FEZ



GENRE 2: SHOOTERShooter games emphasize achieving objectives with projectiles, which include guns, arrows, lasers, magic, camera flashes etc… While the genre is most recognizable today with 3D first-person shooter (FPS) games such as Halo, classic arcade staples such as Space Invaders or Centipede are early examples of the genre in its 2D form.

Shooter games rely on projectiles to satisfy specific goals: eliminate enemies, capture photos, destroy obstacles, or otherwise hit specific targets for a variety of reasons. Typically, shooter game mechanics structure gameplay around aiming, timing, shooting, reloading ammo or other resources, and, often, managing player health. Although shooters are typically associated with violence, there are non-violent shooters, such as Pokemon Snap, which uses the basics of a shooter game but requires players to take pictures using a camera rather than shooting bullets with a gun.

The challenges of shooter gameplay relates to line-of-sight, the capacity of a projectile to be fired from the player and hit a specifically aimed target. Obstacles to line-of-sight include physical obstructions as well as mobile targets. Hostile enemies provide both threats to players as well as such moving targets. Another common challenge in shooters relies on resource management, often in terms of ammunition.

The main technical features of shooter games relies on physics simulations of line-of-sight and projectile path, point-of-view of the camera, as well as location-based damage and scoring—scaling efficacy of projectiles based on where they land on a target (e.g. head vs. body) or in proximity to a target (e.g. full damage on target vs. partial damage adjacent to target).

Space Invaders Halo Duck Hunt

Pokemon Snap Star Fox Contra



GENRE 3: PUZZLEPuzzle games emphasize mental challenges based on logical reasoning, memory, spatial navigation, pattern matching, decoding, etc… Games like Tetris and Bejeweled are classic representations of the genre. Puzzle games are the most likely of game genres to be abstract, that is, lack in-depth narrative content.

Puzzle games vary widely in mechanics, but they typically focus on challenging specific mental faculties. Tetris, for example, relies on pattern recognition and spatial reasoning within a time constraint, as players carefully drop different shaped blocks into an existing block mass. Some games focus on solving logic puzzles while others challenge memory. Puzzles are also commonly found in other genres as a kind of challenge that augments or provides a reprieve from the difficulties of shooting, jumping, or other modes of gameplay. For example, the game Portal is considered a platforming game, a shooter game, and a puzzle game, requiring players to move and aim strategically to advance through levels.

Puzzle games are challenging due to incomplete information and/or resources. Often, players must identify and assess multiple possible moves or actions to take in both short-term gameplay and long-term gameplay. Timers, limited quantities of actions, and other constraints provide additional difficulty to puzzles.

Technical features of games in this genre vary widely based on the nature of the kinds of puzzles implemented.

Tetris Candy Crush Saga

Portal

Professor Layton and the Curious Village



GENRE 4: ADVENTUREAdventure games emphasize goal-oriented exploration, often of a substantial world. Adventure games are typically structured around quest narratives. While there may be a single overarching quest, players must complete smaller quests as a means toward achieving the main quest of the game. The Legend of Zelda, for example, requires players to play as Link who must rescue Princess Zelda; however, players must first collect eight fragments of an artifact known as the Triforce before doing so.

In Adventure games, players must find, collect, and manage important items required to solve puzzles, bypass obstacles, and/or defeat hostile enemies. Spaces in adventure games tend to be continuous and require recursive exploration, since the gameworld changes as players advance through the game.

Adventure games have a wide range of obstacles including puzzles of various kinds, locked doors and chests, as well as hostile enemies. Exploration of the entire world is done incrementally. As players solve certain puzzles, defeat specific enemies, acquire particular items, and advance through the game's narrative, they unlock more and more areas of the world to explore.

This incremental exploration is tied to careful game sequencing—how the game structures and directs players to advance through the game in specific ways given an affordance of open and multiple options available. In addition to this, inventory management is key as is the players' abilities to develop a mental model of the expansive space of the game world.

The Legend of Zelda Metroid Myst

The Secret of Monkey Island Metal Gear Solid



GENRE 5: RELATIONSHIP SIMULATORRelationship simulator games emphasize conversation and other exchanges with individuals, focusing on matching and grouping individuals and meeting their respective needs. This involves modeling and simulating individuals of different kinds. A virtual pet, like a Tamagotchi, is an example of a relationship simulator game where the Tamagotchi device models its behavior after a pet to which players must provide care and must satisfy its needs, through feeding, playing with, and cleaning up after the pet. In Animal Crossing, players must manage several friendships with their neighbors.

Central mechanics of relationship simulator gameplay are producing and interpreting feelings, needs, and wants, as well as careful decision-making to satisfy those concerns. In the game Harvest Moon, for example, players play as a farmer who, while managing his farm, must also court a spouse through such means as offering specific gifts under specific game conditions. Individuals within the genre do not necessarily have to be autonomous bodies. They can also be aggregations like a city population, such as in Sim City, or theme park attendees, such as in RollerCoaster Tycoon.

Major obstacles in playing relationship simulator games involve miscommunication and misinterpretation of signals and cues from the various individuals in the game. Specific timing conditions also provide a common puzzle players must solve to succeed.

Technical features of relationship simulator games focus centrally on the simulation of the social relationships among relevant individuals in the game and with players. This involves attention to modeling and simulating characters as well as creating branching narrative and conversation trees. Inventory and resource management is also common in these games.

Tamagotchi Animal Crossing Harvest Moon: Magical Melody

RollerCoaster Tycoon 4 Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney



GENRE 6: MULTIPLAYERMultiplayer games emphasize interactions with other human players, either competitively or cooperatively. While not a genre in exactly the same capacities as the others, focusing on multiplayer mechanics as a defining feature for sets of games provides a different way to group games. Multiplayer games allow players to work as a team in a platforming game, like in Bubble Bobble, or to battle head-to-head in a shooter, like in Goldeneye.

A key feature of multiplayer games is the mechanism for structuring how players can and cannot interact with each other within the game. In multiplayer Tetris Attack, for example, the game rewards players for doing well by punishing their opponents. Related to this are the comparative metrics that evaluate and compare players against each other, in competitive settings, as well as the players together as a unit, in cooperative settings. Street Fighter II, for example, keeps track of individual player's health bars, ending a match when one player is knocked out in combat.

Because of the openness of multiplayer as a defining feature, obstacles for multiplayer games will vary based on the nature of the game, particularly in relation to its other genres. A cooperative platformer brings in all the challenges that are associated with the platformer genre and provides an opportunity for players to play together. A competitive platformer, however, adds the other player as an obstacle to this mix.

The defining technical features of a multiplayer game involve multi-user distinguishable inputs and outputs.

Bubble Bobble Tetris Attack

Goldeneye Street Fighter II


genre bending game design workshop file · web viewthe key mechanics of platforming games...

Documents