Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
Workflow Patterns as a Means to Model Task
Succession in Games: A Preliminary Case Study
Simone Kriglstein
1
,RossBrown
2
,andGunter Wallner
3
1
Vienna University of Technology, Vienna, Austria
kriglstein@cvast.tuwien.ac.at
2
Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, Australia
r.brown@qut.edu.au
3
University of Applied Arts Vienna, Vienna, Austria
guenter.wallner@uni-ak.ac.at
Abstract.
Over the last decade, people involved in game development
have noted the need for more formal models and tools to support the
design phase of games. In this paper we present an initial investigation
into whether workflow patterns - which have already proven to be effec-
tive for modeling business processes - are a suitable way to model task
succession in games. Our preliminary results suggest that workflow pat-
terns show promise in this regard, but some limitations, especially with
regard to time constraints, currently restrict their potential.
Keywords:
Game Design, Design Tools, Workflow Patterns.
1
Introduction
Over the last decade, people involved in game development have repeatedly
voiced the need for more formal models and tools for designing games. The tra-
ditional, and still used, game design document, a detailed and mostly textual
description of all aspects of a game design (cf. [1]) has been criticized for sev-
eral drawbacks. The design document is time-consuming to create, while at the
same time being rarely read by members of the development team (see, e.g., [2])
and needs constant maintenance to keep the information up-to-date with highly
iterative game development processes (cf. [2, 3]). Kreimeier [4], in a survey of
game design methods, noted that the informal discussion of game design makes it
dicult to put
individual insight into a context of established knowledge
.There-
fore, formal visual languages have been proposed to more effectively express,
abstract and communicate gameplay concepts or relationships between them
(e.g., [2, 5-7]).
In a related context, Nelson and Mateas [8] point out that game development
lacks tools to visualize and reason about systems of game mechanics on an
abstract level. However, game designers agree that prototyping is essential for
verifying design ideas (cf. [1, 9]). Yet, prototyping can be a time-consuming and
costly process. On that account, researches have therefore proposed prototyping
