Game Development Reference
In-Depth Information
As a starting point for his full set of formal abstract design tools, Church describes
three of them in his article:
n
Intention.
Players should be able to make an implementable plan of their own
creation in response to the current situation in the game world and their under-
standing of the gameplay options.
n
Perceivable Consequence.
Game worlds need to react clearly to player actions;
the consequences of a player's action should be clear.
n
Story.
Games might have a narrative thread, whether designer-driven or player-
driven, that binds events together and drives the player toward completion of
the game.
Between 1999 and 2002 the
Gamasutra
website hosted a forum where people could
discuss and expand the framework. The term
design tool
was quickly replaced by
design lexicon
indicating that the formal abstract design tools seem to be more suc-
cessful as an analytical tool than a design tool. Bernd Kreimeier reported that “at
least 25 terms were submitted by almost as many contributors” (2003). As a project
the formal abstract design tools have been abandoned; however, Church's article is
often credited as one of the earliest attempts to deal with the lack of a vocabulary
for game design, even though his framework never caught on.
desiGn Vocabularies online
You can find a few design vocabularies online. although some of these seem to be aban-
doned, they are still a useful resource for game designers:
• The 400 Project. Initiated by designers Hal Barwood and Noah Falstein, the 400
Project sets out to find and describe 400 rules of game design that should lead to better
games. The project website lists 112 rules so far, but the last one was added in 2006. see
• The Game Ontology Project. This project attempts to order snippets of game design
wisdom into one large ontology. it is primarily an analytical tool; it aims at understand-
ing games rather than building them. nevertheless, it contains valuable design lore. see
• The Game Innovation Database. This project focuses on tracking innovations in
game design to their original sources. it is slightly different from typical design vocabu-
laries as it creates a historical perspective on common game design structures. see
