Game Elements

 Game Elements

Game Elements

After reading some of the readings and watching the video along with it I've come to learn that there's a lot more to a game than just a player and an objective. It was good to read in "What are the qualities of Games? " article, about all the certain things like sequencing, player interaction and theme. I find these articles useful in a way where in order to make a game, you need to know the fundamentals and back-ends to everything that a game inherits or implies. In this article it also dives into critical analysis and how useful it can be for us as we play or create a game. This can help keep the momentum of that fun feeling that a game can give and help us remove any hiccups along the story or mechanics that the game has to run through.

Critical analysis can also help with making sure the game is fair and any and all players get the opportunity to fulfill the roles they take within the game. Critical analysis can help with creating new and interesting ideas to add to the game that might have been overlooked during the brainstorm or development processes. Things like allowing the player to use various ways to complete one objective as to not hold their hand so much and letting them experience the mechanics left to them by us the developer. Also allowing replay-ability in your game helps with broadening the play space and environment so that the player can choose multiple different options during playing and also if they choose to come back to it.

The next reading was Game Design Research ,an academic paper by Annakaisa Kultima. It was a heavy read with a lot of words that were difficult to discern at first but once I had context it wasn't so bad. The paper goes into game design research and how there are many people, or theorists, who learn a lot about the inner workings of game design and try to break it down to then apply that theory into practical games and their parts.

The paper goes through cultural and sociological studies that can be interpreted in a way that applies to game design.  The many different studies undertaken by game design researchers can be seen as a narrowing field, or many differentiating into multiple sub-communities, just like any other maturing interdiscipline.