Game Development Reference
In-Depth Information
and are often very game-like. They're a great place to look for inspiration
for a new digital-game mechanism. As I pointed out in Chapter 1 , they're
the bridge between board games and digital games—you should know
about these games for that reason alone.
Check out: Dungeons & Dragons , Pathfinder, , and Paranoia .
Sports
I don't need to explain the social significance of sports in the life of a
modern human being. You can't go anywhere without seeing profession-
al baseball games on television or seeing something about a football vic-
tory in the newspaper. And yet, many of us draw a somewhat arbitrary,
clear line between games and sports. Those of us in the game design
world tend to think sports are not really games—or if we do consider
them games, we don't really think to analyze them. But the fact is, we all
have a lot to learn from sports.
Sports are probably the oldest form of game playing, and depending
on how you define sport (we all agree golf is a sport, right? Then is cro-
quet a sport? How about billiards? Skee ball?), the range of mechanisms
is huge. Moreover, people don't realize that there are officials who ad-
dress balance issues and rule changes for sports every year, particularly
in the case of American football.
A look into the history of how the rules of American football evolved
over the years yields an enormous number of lessons for game designers.
For instance, Rogers Redding, who officiated NCAA football for many
years, has talked about some of the unintended consequences of one
particular rule change in that game: requiring hard shell helmets. He
believes that while this rule was added with the intention of protecting
players, it actually may have had more effects than that. One effect may
have been that players now move faster and more recklessly. The irony
here is that because players feel well protected, they may make worse
decisions at higher speeds, causing more serious injuries. As game de-
signers, we all know too well that adding one new rule can have the same
kind of unforeseen consequences.
Game designers can also learn a lot from the structures and mea-
suring systems used in professional sports, such as the different types
of tournament and league setups, the ranking systems, and the systems
for metrics. Learn to play a few sports—and don't rule out sport-based
video games, one of the last bastions of true gaming in digital games
today!
Check out: football, soccer, tennis, and golf.
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