Games and Video Games - Fundamentals of Game Design - page 28

own controller, but they all look at the same screen. In some games the screen is
split, and each player looks at her own part of it; in others, the players all see the
same game world together.
Networked play , also called multiplayer distributed gaming, refers to people
playing against other people over a network at distributed locations. This is the way
people play games over the Internet. To communicate with each other, they have to
have a voice connection or type messages as they play.
LAN parties are events in which a group of people all get together in one room,
but each has his own computer hooked to the others by a local area network (LAN).
This way they can talk to each other, but they can't see each other's screens.
Group play occurs when a group of people get together in one room to play a
single- player game. The player using the controller at any given time is said to be in
the “hot seat,” and the other players watch and offer advice. Players usually hand
off the controller from one to the next as the gameplay changes, so as to have the
person most skilled at the current challenges play during that part of the game.
This style of play is particularly popular with children.
When designing a multiplayer game, it's important to think about the social aspect
of entertaining people. By offering them chat mechanisms, bulletin boards, and
other community-building facilities, you can extend the game's entertainment far
beyond the gameplay alone. For more information about designing online games,
see Chapter 21, “Online Games.”
Summary
In this chapter, you have learned that play, pretending, a goal, and rules are the
essential elements of a game, and you've learned how they work together to create
the experience of playing one. You have been taught to think of gameplay in terms
of challenges and actions, and you have looked at such important issues as winning
and losing, fairness, competition, and cooperation. You should now be aware of
some of the special benefits that computers bring to playing games and the mani-
fold ways that video games entertain people. With this as a foundation, you're
ready to proceed to the next chapter. There, you'll learn how games are structured,
an approach to designing them, and what it takes to be a game designer.