Games Design Brain Dump

The kind of lecture you give when there’s no exam.

Who am I?•David Farrell•CS @ Strathclyde •Games @ Caledonian•Dare to be Digital•e-Bug

•dfarrell@davidlearnsgames.com

Dare to be Digital

e-Bug: Platform Game

e-Bug Detective Game

Game Interface Design?

Game Interface?

•Menus •Hud•Data (abstracted?)•Interaction

‘main’ menus

in-game menus

HUDHeads Up Display

“any transparent display that presents data without requiring the user to look away from his or her usual viewpoint.”

Wikipedia article on Heads Up Display, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Head-up_display, 2009

data communicationand abstraction

interaction

Design?

“Design is the process by which a designer creates a context to be encountered by a participant, from which meaning emerges.”

Salen and Zimmerman, Rules of Play, page 41, SAGE Publications, 2004

These make sense. The design says “push me”.

This make sense. The handle (and all that text) says “pull me”.

But what the heck do you do here?

For a bonus point:Have you seen this design mistake on

campus?

Is this good design?

Is this good design?

Design is used to communicate with the player.

This game has many many many combos...

...but did anyone learn them?

What is colour for?to label (colour as noun)to measure (colour as quantity)to represent / imitate realityto enliven or decorate (colour as beauty)

Colour in GamesTeam identificationItem highlightingMood, tone & aestheticsConvey information

Team Identification

Item Highlighting

Mood & Tone

Convey Information

Combining Colours

SemioticsA sign is “something that stands for

something to someone in some capacity”

LiteracyLiteracy is normally thought of as the ability to read and write.You can interpret meaning from other stimuli than just text.

art, music, film, fashion, advertisingMany mediums convey more through images than text

Reading & WritingYou don’t just read, you read or write something in some way.

newspaper vs rapessays vs fiction

Each domain has its own rules & requirementsThese can be considered separate literacies

What does this mean?

“The guard dribbled down court, held up two fingers and passed to

the open man.”

Semiotic DomainsWithin each domain, all sorts of things can take on meaning. Someone can be musically literate without knowing how to read notation.

they are part of a different semiotic domain

Games Literacy

Game DomainsGame literacy is really an umbrella term for many sub domain literacies.FPS game domain expectations of a box would differ from a platform game

Short CutBy understanding the meaning of symbols, the designer can avoid

the need to explain or teach the player what something does.

Cultural SemioticsSwastika symbol has many meanings but in western culture the

association with Naziism is overwhelming.Possible to cause offence or create meaning where none intended.

Game TellsThe decisions you make about your game’s art style convey

information to the potential player.This is not ‘art’ this is games design.

Sci Fi CorridorsSci Fi corridors and doors often have angled or curved walls. In the future, we’ll probably have rectangular walls but the art design isn’t trying to be realistic,

it’s trying to communicate.Desaturated, gloomy colours are often used to imply a grim future environment.

AssociationPeople associate and identify themselves with certain things.Blue for boys, pink for girlsBrands like Apple, FCUK have a lot of meaning for people.The visual style of a game is important.

That’s ThatThis lecture touches on some of the topics

covered in 3rd year games design.

Hopefully you’ll all forget before you get to 3rd year so I don’t have to reinvent all my examples.