Games and Video Games - Fundamentals of Game Design - page 12

ACTIONS
The rules specify what actions the players may take to overcome the challenges and
achieve the goal of the game. The rules define not only what actions are allowed
but also which ones are prohibited and which ones are required and under what
circumstances. Games also permit optional actions that are not required to sur-
mount a challenge but add to the player's enjoyment in other ways. For example,
in the Grand Theft Auto games, you can listen to the radio in the car.
Many conventional games allow any action that is not prohibited by the rules. For
example, in paintball, you may run, jump, crouch, crawl, climb, or make any other
movement that you can think of to take enemy ground. Because video games are
implemented by computer software, however, they can allow only actions that are
built into the game. A video game offers a player a fixed suite of actions to choose
from, which limits the number of ways in which a player can attack a challenge.
THE DEFINITION OF GAMEPLAY
Combining the concepts of challenges and actions produces the following definition:
GAMEPLAY Gameplay consists of:
■ The challenges that a player must face to arrive at the object of the game.
■ The actions that the player is permitted to take to address those challenges.
This definition lies at the heart of game design. Gameplay consists of challenges
and actions, and you will see this idea continually throughout the rest of the topic.
As a designer, you must create them both together. It's not enough to invent inter-
esting challenges without the actions that will surmount them, nor is it enough to
think of exciting actions without the challenges that they are intended to address.
Games do sometimes permit additional actions that are not intended to solve a
challenge, but the essence of gameplay is the challenge/action relationship.
Fantasy and imagination play an important role in entertaining the player, and
some designers consider them to be elements of gameplay; in other words, the act
of pretending that you are a pilot or a princess is an explicit part of the gameplay.
However, these elements unnecessarily complicate the definition of gameplay. A
challenge might imply a fantasy role (if you're trying to fly a plane, you must be a
pilot), but you should define the player's fantasy independently of the gameplay for
reasons that the next chapter explains.
Fairness
Generally speaking, players expect that the rules will guarantee that the game is
fair . Different societies, and indeed individual players, have varying notions of
what is and is not fair. Fairness is not an essential element of a game but a cultur-
ally constructed notion that lies outside the magic circle. It is, in fact, a social