Game Definitions

• "A game is an activity among two or more independent decision-makers seeking to achieve their objectives in some limiting context." Clark C. Abt, 1970
• "A formal game has a twofold structure based on ends and means." David Parlett, 1999
• "Playing a game is the voluntary effort to overcome unnecessary obstacles." Bernard Suits, 1990
• "A game is a form of art in which participants, termed players, make decisions in order to manage resources through game tokens in the pursuit of a goal." Greg Costikyan, 1994

Johann Huizinga, 1938 - Homo Lundes

• "Play is a free activity standing quite consciously outside 'ordinary’¡Æ life as being 'not serious', but at the same time absorbing the player intensely and utterly. "
• "It is an activity connected with no material interest and no profit can be gained by it."
• "It proceeds within its own boundaries of time and space according to fixed rules and in an orderly manner."
• "It promotes the formation of social groupings, which tend to surround themselves with secrecy and to stress their differences from the common world by disguise or other means."

Roger Caillois, 1960 - Les Jeux et les Hommes

• Free - playing is not an obligation
• Separate - circumscribed within limits of space and time, defined and fixed in advance
• Uncertain - the course cannot be determined beforehand
• Unproductive - creating neither goods, nor wealth, nor new elements of any kind.
• Governed by rules - under conventions that suspend ordinary laws and establish new legislation which alone counts
• Make-believe - accompanied by a special awareness of a second reality.

Chris Crawford - The Art of Computer Game Design

• Representation - A game is a closed formal system that subjectively represents a subset of reality.
• Interaction - Games provide an interactive element, and it is a crucial factor to their appeal.
• Conflict - The player is actively pursuing some goal. Obstacles prevent him from easily achieving this goal.
• Safety - A game is a safe way to experience reality. The results of a game are always less harsh than the situations the game models.

Rules of play - Salen and Zimmerman, 2003

• "A game is a system in which players engage in an artificial conflict, defined by rules, that results in a quantifiable outcome."
• System - a game is a system
• Players - one or more participants
• Artificial - games maintain a boundary from the "real life"
• Conflict - a contest of powers
• Rules - structure out of which play emerges
• Quantifiable outcome - goal, numerical score.

Special Cases

• Puzzle: a game with one correct answer.
• Role playing games (RPG): the player controls and evolves a character over time in a narrative setting. What is the quantifiable outcome?
• Sim City: no explicit goals, more of a toy than a game
• Eliza (chatterbot): also a toy

Digital Games

• Immediate but narrow interactivity - mouse/ keyboard input, screen / speakers output, real-time response
• Information manipulation - data storage and use, embed the rules, display of information for the user, choice in what to reveal
• Automated complex systems - automating complicated procedures and facilitate some games, sometimes they hide the internal functioning of the game, why things happen a certain way
• Networked communication - changes the interaction in the game, adding specific action in the game related to communication, and not play.

Toy Versus Game

• Informal, casual interaction: no rules.
• Boundary between playing with and not playing with not as clear. A game is either played or not.
• Lack of defined goal.

Signs and Symbols

• Semiotics - the science of signs and symbols.
• A sign represents something other than itself.
• A symbol is an arbitrary sign (written or printed) that has acquired a conventional significance.
• A sign must be interpreted, which is based on a social convention.
• The interpretation depends on the context.
• Context: a structure, set of regulation explaining how the signs can be combined.
• For language - that is the grammar.
• For games - the game rules.

Symbols in a Game

• Game tokens - symbols (or signs) that stand for real objects.
• Game actions - symbolic actions that have a meaning that can be related to real actions on objects represented by the game tokens but that only happen in the context of the game.
• Game rules - defining the possibility of action.

Games as Systems

• System - a group of interacting, interrelated or interdependent elements forming a complex whole.
• A system is composed of:

  objects - pieces, players

  attributes - initial position and direction of move

  relationships - the way the objects affect each other.

  environment - the game being played, the social context of the game.

• A system can be open/closed, static/dynamic.

State Systems

• Best description for a game would be as a dynamic system.
• Many games are closed systems - totally described by the game objects and rules, and by the player's actions. (counterexample - Poker)
• A game can also be seen as a system with states, in many cases a finite number.
• An action from the player moves the game from a state to another state.

Playing a Game

• Making choices and taking actions - moves.
• Any move has consequences in the game.
• The game is meaningful when the actions taken by the player have outcomes that are

  discernable in the game: the result of the action must be communicated to the player (feedback),

  integrated in the larger context of the game: the action may affect the play experience at a later point in the game.

• To enter the game play, the user must agree to a "suspension of disbelief".
• The players accepts the limitations of the rules because of the pleasure the game can afford.

Choice in a Game

1. What happened before the player was given the choice?
2. How is the possibility of choice conveyed to the player?
3. How did the player make the choice?
4. What is the result of the choice?
5. How is the result of the choice conveyed to the player?

Events in a Game

• Internal events - related to the systemic processing of the choice, or of any change of state in the game.
• External events - related to the representation of the choice to the player (representing the change of state to the player)

Action-Outcome Failings

• Feeling that decisions are arbitrary (stage 4)
• Not knowing what to do next (stage 2)
• Losing a game without knowing why (stage 5)
• Not knowing if an action had an outcome (stage 3 or 4)

Interactivity

• Playing a game - making choices within a game system designed to support actions and outcomes in a meaningful way.
• Interaction:
• formal - with the game objects
• social - of the players within the game
• The explicit player interaction makes the game advance. It defines the game experience.

Interaction

• A mutual or reciprocal action or influence.
• Allowing a 2-way flow of information between 2 objects that can result in some change.
• A game is an interactive system in which the player becomes an agent (generates action) within its representational space.
• When do we call something interactive? (interactive book)

Types of Interactivity

• Cognitive, interpretive - psychological, emotional, intellectual perception of the game.
• Functional, utilitarian - with the components of the system.
• Explicit - the actual participation, player choices and procedures (playing)
• Cultural - participation in the culture around the game itself.

Game Interaction Loop

• Playing the game means
• Loop

  assessing the game status (or state)

  making a plan/ an action decision

  taking the action and observing the consequences

Game Goal

• A particular state in the game or a particular property of the game state that we want to achieve.
• Simple - Tic-Tac-Toe, Maze.
• Hierarchical - sub-goals or intermediate steps.
• The goal can eventually be just playing the game (the longest) and getting high scores.
• Strategy - devising a plan, a sequence or system of sub-goals to aim for that increase the chances of winning the game.

Game Levels

• Self contained sub-environments with a defined goal.
• The purpose of the game is to move up in the level hierarchy.
• They represent an ascending sequence in game difficulty.
• They demonstrate the player's proficiency with the game.

Game Design

• Design: the process by which a designer creates a context to be encountered by a participant, from which emerges meaning. (Rules of Play)
• Designing the structure and context in which the game takes place.
• Creating a game means creating a structure that will play out in complex and unpredictable ways, a space of possible action that players explore as they take part in the game.
• Must craft a system in which the actions have meaning in support of the play of the game and do not distract or interrupt its play.

Space of Possibility

• Space of future action, all possible actions and possible meaning emerging from it.
• designed
• generates meaning
• it is a system
• it is interactive

Games Framework

• Rules - formal schema, mathematical
• Play - experiential schema, interaction of the player with the game and others
• Culture - contextual schema.