Designing Games Tynan Sylvester A Guide to Engineering Experiences www.it-ebooks.info Designing Games A Guide to Engineering Experiences Tynan Sylvester has been designing games for 12 years. During that time he has worked on everything from independently produced games to the big-studio blockbuster BioShock Infinite. How do you design a video game that people love to play? In this practical guide, game designer Tynan Sylvester shows you how to create emotionally charged experiences through the right combination of game mechanics, fictional wrapping, and story. You’ll learn design principles and practices used by top studios, backed by examples from today’s most popular games. This book also takes you through the day-to-day process necessary to keep your project on track: when to build and when to test, how to work with a team, and how to avoid creative dead ends. Explore topics such as: n Integration: thread fictional elements and games rules together into a single system of meaning n Emergence: generate plot, character, and theme in response to a player’s decisions n Compulsion: understand the difference between motivating players and fulfilling them, and how to do each n Elegance: maximize a game’s emotional power and variety of play experiences while minimizing the burden on players— and your team n Iteration: plan, test, and analyze your design in stages instead of trying to decide everything up front oreilly.com www.it-ebooks.info Designing Games A Guide to Engineering Experiences Tynan Sylvester BEIJING · CAMBRIDGE · FARNHAM · KÖLN · SEBASTOPOL · TOKYO www.it-ebooks.info DESIGNING GAMES by Tynan Sylvester Copyright © 2013 Tynan Sylvester. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. Published by O’Reilly Media, Inc., 1005 Gravenstein Highway North, Sebastopol, CA 95472. O’Reilly books may be purchased for educational, business, or sales promotional use. Online editions are also available for most titles (safari.oreilly.com). For more information, contact our corporate/institutional sales department: (800) 998-9938 or corporate@oreilly .com. Editor: Rachel Roumeliotis Production Editor: Kristen Borg Copyeditor: Audrey Doyle Proofreader: Kristen Borg Cover Designer: Mark Paglietti Interior Designer: Monica Kamsvaag Illustrator: Rebecca Demarest Indexer: Bob Pfahler Printing History: January 2013 First Edition. Revision History: 2012-12-18 First Release. See http://oreilly.com/catalog/errata.csp?isbn=0636920026624 for release details. Nutshell Handbook, the Nutshell Handbook logo, and the O’Reilly logo are registered trademarks of O’Reilly Media, Inc. Designing Games and related trade dress are trade- marks of O’Reilly Media, Inc. Many of the designations used by manufacturers and sellers to distinguish their products are claimed as trademarks. Where those designations appear in this book, and O’Reilly Media, Inc., was aware of a trademark claim, the designations have been printed in caps or initial caps. While every precaution has been taken in the preparation of this book, the publisher and author assume no responsibility for errors or omissions, or for damages resulting from the use of the information contained herein. ISBN: 978-1-449-33793-3 [LSI] www.it-ebooks.info iii Contents Preface | v Part One | Engines of Experience 1 | Engines of Experience 7 Part Two | Game Crafting 2 | Elegance 49 3 | Skill 63 4 | Narrative 81 5 | Decisions 119 6 | Balance 155 7 | Multiplayer 175 8 | Motivation and Fulfillment 203 9 | Interface 219 10 | The Market 247 www.it-ebooks.info iv | CONTENTS Part Three | Process 11 | Planning and Iteration 277 12 | Knowledge Creation 311 13 | Dependencies 323 14 | Authority 337 15 | Motivation 349 16 | Complex Decisions 363 17 | Values 371 Endgame 375 Recommended Books 377 Quiz Answers 379 Sources 381 Index | 387 www.it-ebooks.info v P r e f a c e A Note on the Text Unfortunately, the English language does not provide us with a per- fect gender-neutral solution to the pronoun problem. I’ve chosen to use “he” throughout the book to refer to nonspecific people. This is for reasons of readability and conciseness only; unless otherwise specified, masculine pronouns do not refer exclusively to men. We’d Like to Hear from You I love talking about game design. If you have comments or questions about the book, please email me at tynan.sylvester@gmail.com or contact me through my website at tynansylvester.com. You can also address comments and questions concerning this book to the publisher: O’Reilly Media, Inc. 1005 Gravenstein Highway North Sebastopol, CA 95472 (800) 998-9938 (in the United States or Canada) (707) 829-0515 (international or local) (707) 829-0104 (fax) We have a web page for this book, where we list errata, examples, and any additional information. 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For more information about Safari Books Online, please visit us online. www.it-ebooks.info PART ONE | Engines of Experience www.it-ebooks.info www.it-ebooks.info [...]... of Experience Mechanics and Events Games are composed of MECHANICS, which define how the game works A mechanic is a rule about how a game works The A button makes Mario jump is a mechanic So are the rules characters walk at one meter per second, pawns capture diagonally, and players alternate taking turns In board games, mechanics are written in the rulebook In video games, they’re implemented in computer... focus on it because of where games came from For most of history, there were no game designers, and games were pieces of folk culture passed down through generations and enjoyed mostly by children When adults played, it was typically as a short reprieve from their harsh, bland lives In such a primitive environment, nobody needed a better term than fun to describe good games Today, we have more technology,... very minor in themselves can be emotional if they have important implications Consider the act of scouting in strategy games Scouting is no more than seeing an object It creates nothing, destroys nothing, and moves nothing By itself it is almost a www.it-ebooks.info | 14      Designing Games nonevent But scouting a strategically important building can reverse a losing game because that one key piece of... indiscriminate The skills that we’re instinctively driven to master are the ones that helped our ancestors reproduce Think of the games kids play They run and jump to master kinesthetic skills They play house to learn social roles They engage in mock www.it-ebooks.info | 20      Designing Games combat with sticks or pillows to learn fighting skills They pretend to live adults’ lives as soldiers, socialites,... a story for our game and set it up to play out the same way each time This is a well-understood and traditional method of provoking emotion, and it can work well www.it-ebooks.info | 22      Designing Games But games have another way of creating character arcs: we can have the game generate them on the fly For example, in a game of Left 4 Dead, three survivors of a zombie apocalypse watch an ally slowly... save, rewatch, and share their greatest victories Skate has a system for sharing gameplay videos so that a community of players can rate them Social network games like Farmville allow players to send one www.it-ebooks.info | 24      Designing Games another gifts or resources that help them achieve objectives The Sims allowed players to share photo-album-like stories about their virtual people Super... it takes, acquiring wealth is a bit of a rush Gambling games trigger this response with real wealth But even games involving no real money can trigger this emotion by creating artificial systems of wealth and acquisition and then giving players wealth within that system The fake reward still triggers the feeling of acquisition Action role-playing games such as Diablo III are a good example of this The... www.it-ebooks.info | 26      Designing Games Emotion Through Beauty A sunset over the ocean A healthy, giggling baby A masterpiece painting On the surface, these things have nothing in common But all of them are beautiful Because beauty isn’t in any particular feature of a thing—it is in how something affects us Something is beautiful when just perceiving it is pleasurable Games are full of opportunities... in the mid-1990s it became possible to encode fullmotion video on a CD-ROM and play it back on a PC This technological leap led to some of the worst games in history These games managed to utterly fail at being movies while simultaneously failing at being games Although this disaster was driven by many other factors besides tech fetishism (such as the blind theft of creative ideas from film), it was... touched lava His backside burst into flames and he shot straight up like a bottle rocket, screaming in cartoon pain As he flew through the air, I maneuvered him to a safe 7 www.it-ebooks.info | 8      Designing Games ground landing The events were Mario jumping, missing, hitting the lava, bursting into flames, flying into the air, screaming, and maneuvering back to safety The mechanics behind these events . Designing Games Tynan Sylvester A Guide to Engineering Experiences www.it-ebooks.info Designing Games A Guide to Engineering. Experiences Tynan Sylvester has been designing games for 12 years. During that time he has worked on everything from independently produced games to the big-studio