Week 6 has easily been one of the most important weeks for this project no doubt. Senior Game Designer at Sumo Digital and alumni Venezia came in to give us a talk about game design pillars, game loops and systems. The concepts spoken about this week are what are going to solidify the game and give it real foundation and structure.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Design Pillars are the foundational concepts a game wants to explore.<\/strong> We can think of the essential experience as the pitch and the pillars are what you want the game to explore. To summarise: they are the guiding light and the overarching game vision<\/strong>. For every feature, there should be questions asking how it contributes to at least one pillar. Designers typically choose the top 3-6, although we were advised that for us it’s most likely going to be 3-4 or lower depending on the game.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Good pillars are concise and specific<\/strong> – a title and 1-2 supporting sentences. Every phrase must enhance understanding<\/strong> and it’s important to remember that pillars are foundational, meaning they are very unlikely to change unless its a conscious decision to do so. An example of a pillar would be:<\/p>\n\n\n\n <- No fluff Loops are defined as the chain of repeatable actions<\/strong> that form the users play. These are moment-to-moment, highly repeatable<\/strong> player actions. The core mechanics, decisions and possibly space, that are always happening.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n They handle the repeatable actions outside of the core gameplay<\/strong>. Anything not directly related to movement (upgrades, trades, skill trees etc.) applies to these kind of loops<\/p>\n\n\n\n Meta loops are bigger, they typically represent long-term goals<\/strong> and depict the larger progression<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n Importance (what they provide):<\/strong> All of the above points enable *player motivation<\/strong>*, that’s the idea of meta game systems.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Write a brief 2-4 sentence summary of the feature. In addition to a well constructed story, outline the most crucial goal for the system. Example: “I want the player to feel a sense of combat mastery from my parry system.”.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n The meat. Outline in detail exactly how the system works. What are the edge cases (what could happen outside of what is intended to). Include any and all diagram necessary.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n “As …” <- who is the feature aimed at? All in all, the guest talk was extremely useful and easy to follow. It broke down everything very effectively and I feel like I have a much stronger direction. Venezia gave me good individual advice about loops and was excited when I told her I was going down the roguelite path, saying that the genre really lends itself to creating great loops – we spoke about Hades<\/em> and she suggested I do a breakdown of the game to help with my confidence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It also made me realise how much my game was lacking in structure and what was missing, which was primarily player<\/strong> motivation<\/strong>. I had no high risk factor and no meta game system to push the player to continue playing. I’m excited to do more work into this, breaking down games was super interesting and came to me a lot faster than I thought it would.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Week 6 has easily been one of the most important weeks for this project no doubt. Senior Game Designer at Sumo Digital and alumni Venezia came in to give us a talk about game design pillars, game loops and systems. The concepts spoken about this week are what are going to solidify the game and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":600,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-491","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-weekly-updates"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.wsagames.com\/ab15g23\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/491","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.wsagames.com\/ab15g23\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.wsagames.com\/ab15g23\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.wsagames.com\/ab15g23\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.wsagames.com\/ab15g23\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=491"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/sites.wsagames.com\/ab15g23\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/491\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1845,"href":"https:\/\/sites.wsagames.com\/ab15g23\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/491\/revisions\/1845"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.wsagames.com\/ab15g23\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/600"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.wsagames.com\/ab15g23\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=491"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.wsagames.com\/ab15g23\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=491"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.wsagames.com\/ab15g23\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=491"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Rich and Reactive Open-World<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
\n
What makes it good?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
<- Short and simple
<- Clear direction
<- Hard to misinterpret<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\nGame Loops<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Venezia outlined that there are two categories of loops – core game loops and meta game loops.<\/p>\n\n\n\nCore Game Loops<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Meta Game Loops<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Loops can also be split by time<\/strong>:<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n\n
Meta Game Systems<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
<\/span>– Long term goals
– Player progression
– Game depth<\/strong> – add a layer of depth to core<\/p>\n\n\n\nDocumenting Systems
<\/h2>\n\n\n\nBrief Overview<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Keep these concise and meaningful – how does the system support the pillars?<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\nUser Story & Goals<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
How it works<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Further on writing user stories<\/strong>: we were given a formula that would come to be very important when considering UX and it goes as followed:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“I want …”
“So that …”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
<- what do they want from the feature?
<- why would they want this feature?<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
\n\n\n\n