This is the concept of a media's information or content being subjected to change due to current trends or technology. As I've put it in my notes:
"The change of a media's conventions based on the established conventions of a different medium."
A good example of this would be the changes required to turn a book's narrative into a film's narrative. I've often noticed myself that a sentence or paragraph which reads well in a book (as spoken by a character) would be overly wordy and long-winded if translated directly to screen. Other times there will be a line of dialogue or an action which, for the purposes of cinematic pacing, are best delivered by a different character on screen compared to the book version.
For example; in Lord of the Rings - The Fellowship of the Ring we see Merry & Pippin steal and set off a firework which turns into a dragon. This scares the hobbit villagers and ends up getting Merry & Pippin into trouble. In the book it is Gandalf himself who sets off the firework, to similar results on the villagers. The reason for the film to have Merry & Pippin do this is to establish them early on as playful comic-relief characters in Fellowship, this helps to highlight their character arc throughout the 3 films where they grow to become more mature and responsible.
Friday, 28 March 2014
Notes on Games Britannia: Joystick Generation
The final episode of Games Britannia was actually quite lacklustre, although I can't put my finger on exactly why. I do find Rockstar's history to be interesting and important as well as the development of Elite to be fundamental to some of the best genre games we have today.
The episode begins with more talk on the influence Dungeons & Dragons has had on the gaming world in general. This can be very clearly seen in a huge number of computer games, ranging from the direct D&D rules games such as Baldur's Gate and Knights of the Old Republic to the 'inspired by D&D campaigns' games such as Everquest and the Elder Scrolls series (although Elder Scrolls may have been a different ruleset, it was definitely a tabletop RPG campaign to begin with). The presenter, Benjamin Woolley, takes part in a very typical D&D game complete with wargaming miniatures and a battlemap, although this isn't discussed in any great detail.
The episode continues on with highly influential British games such as Elite, which has since paved the way for many more open-world games, ranging from the directly influenced such as X3 and the less obviously (but still inspired by) games such as Pirates of the Caribbean (SeaDogs 2).
Black & White (and it's predecessor Populous) is also mentioned as being one of the first of the 'God games' in which you must micromanage people as if you were a god of either benevolence or malevolence (entirely your choice, although Peter Molyneux's grand claims of morality based games usually end up having fairly simplistic mechanics after a large amount of hype and speculation).
Wipeout, Tomb Raider and Grand Theft Auto get a lot of good mention for their various influences into the console gaming world, with Wipeout being revolutionary in terms of soundtrack, visuals and smooth controls. Tomb Raider was one of the first console games to feature a player character with some amount of personality so this gets a mention, too. Finally Grand Theft Auto sent sandbox gaming in a far less serious direction than Elite originally had it. Consequences in Grand Theft Auto are negligible and therefore promotes a reckless style of gameplay, where if you find yourself bored in the middle of playing you can happily go on a rampage and mess around with the mechanics to your heart's desire. This freeform and carefree gameplay has engaged people to such an extent that it got the general media's attention and various anti-game lobbyists decided it was the cause of reprehensible behaviour of youths the world over. The games also featured well-written stories which made fun of America in not so subtle ways while simultaneously celebrating American culture. This presumably translated well in America as it has quickly become one of the biggest selling games of our generation.
Ultimately this episode was interesting, but as I had already discovered much of the information from my own interest in game history I found the episode a little stale and uninteresting. I still found the series to be very informative however, and there was a lot to take away from it.
The episode begins with more talk on the influence Dungeons & Dragons has had on the gaming world in general. This can be very clearly seen in a huge number of computer games, ranging from the direct D&D rules games such as Baldur's Gate and Knights of the Old Republic to the 'inspired by D&D campaigns' games such as Everquest and the Elder Scrolls series (although Elder Scrolls may have been a different ruleset, it was definitely a tabletop RPG campaign to begin with). The presenter, Benjamin Woolley, takes part in a very typical D&D game complete with wargaming miniatures and a battlemap, although this isn't discussed in any great detail.
The episode continues on with highly influential British games such as Elite, which has since paved the way for many more open-world games, ranging from the directly influenced such as X3 and the less obviously (but still inspired by) games such as Pirates of the Caribbean (SeaDogs 2).
Black & White (and it's predecessor Populous) is also mentioned as being one of the first of the 'God games' in which you must micromanage people as if you were a god of either benevolence or malevolence (entirely your choice, although Peter Molyneux's grand claims of morality based games usually end up having fairly simplistic mechanics after a large amount of hype and speculation).
Wipeout, Tomb Raider and Grand Theft Auto get a lot of good mention for their various influences into the console gaming world, with Wipeout being revolutionary in terms of soundtrack, visuals and smooth controls. Tomb Raider was one of the first console games to feature a player character with some amount of personality so this gets a mention, too. Finally Grand Theft Auto sent sandbox gaming in a far less serious direction than Elite originally had it. Consequences in Grand Theft Auto are negligible and therefore promotes a reckless style of gameplay, where if you find yourself bored in the middle of playing you can happily go on a rampage and mess around with the mechanics to your heart's desire. This freeform and carefree gameplay has engaged people to such an extent that it got the general media's attention and various anti-game lobbyists decided it was the cause of reprehensible behaviour of youths the world over. The games also featured well-written stories which made fun of America in not so subtle ways while simultaneously celebrating American culture. This presumably translated well in America as it has quickly become one of the biggest selling games of our generation.
Ultimately this episode was interesting, but as I had already discovered much of the information from my own interest in game history I found the episode a little stale and uninteresting. I still found the series to be very informative however, and there was a lot to take away from it.
Iterating Tablut
One of our assignments was to take one of the ancient games I've previously mentioned (Ur, Senet, etc.) and iterate it in whatever way we think will improve it. I decided on my favourite of the games: Tablut.
The main problem I found with the game was the imbalance as a result of the game being asymmetrical in layout (as opposed to Chess for instance, which has the exact same pieces for each player). I did some research into iterations which other people have decided upon, including some interesting mechanics such as having a 'bid' system to see who plays which side. The idea for the bid is to state in how many turns you can win as the favourable side (white, who must reach the board edge with the king), if the other player accepts then you may play as white, but you MUST finish in that amount of turns otherwise you are considered to have failed. If however the other player decides they can do it in less (bidding higher is not allowed) then they may make that bid instead, this can go on indefinitely until the players finally agree to the other's challenge.
Another less interesting mechanic is to force the players to swap sides and play in two halves, if it's 1-1 then it's not considered a win for either side. This forces players to have the weaker start and does make the game entirely fair, but it a less imaginative approach to the problem, I find.
I decided to go for a little refinement of the mechanics and declared certain spaces as legal to exit upon with the king piece, as well as a few more rule touches here and there to attempt to balance the game without ruining the asymmetrical nature of the game (which I personally find quite appealing).
The main problem I found with the game was the imbalance as a result of the game being asymmetrical in layout (as opposed to Chess for instance, which has the exact same pieces for each player). I did some research into iterations which other people have decided upon, including some interesting mechanics such as having a 'bid' system to see who plays which side. The idea for the bid is to state in how many turns you can win as the favourable side (white, who must reach the board edge with the king), if the other player accepts then you may play as white, but you MUST finish in that amount of turns otherwise you are considered to have failed. If however the other player decides they can do it in less (bidding higher is not allowed) then they may make that bid instead, this can go on indefinitely until the players finally agree to the other's challenge.
Another less interesting mechanic is to force the players to swap sides and play in two halves, if it's 1-1 then it's not considered a win for either side. This forces players to have the weaker start and does make the game entirely fair, but it a less imaginative approach to the problem, I find.
I decided to go for a little refinement of the mechanics and declared certain spaces as legal to exit upon with the king piece, as well as a few more rule touches here and there to attempt to balance the game without ruining the asymmetrical nature of the game (which I personally find quite appealing).
3DS Max
Just a short post to show some of the models I've been working on (and their final renders along with source images) for the first 3D modelling assignment. My texture work is sloppy but I'm pretty sure these are technically game-ready assets. All verts should be welded and engons have been abolished!
Hunicke's MDA
Robin Hunicke (along with Marc LeBlanc & Robert Zubeck) contributes to the vocabulary of games design with 'Mechanics, Dynamics & Aesthetics'. This set of analysis tools is intended to better understand the fundamental between the way a game is created by the designer and interacted with by the player.
Mechanics - (rules, coding, etc.) Data representation & algorithms, this describes all the objects/game components.
Dynamics - (game behaviours as a result of player input) Player interaction and interaction with the player. Play choice.
Aesthetics - Emotional responses of the player.
Hunicke states that there is an order to which the game is produced and to which the game is played:
Designer >>>
Mechanics > Dynamics > Aesthetics
____________________________
Mechanics < Dynamics < Aesthetics
<<< Player
This can be summed up with a sentence (as understood by the definitions above):
Aesthetics are the player's emotional response as a result of Dynamics, which is the feedback received from interacting with the Mechanics.
The important thing to take away from this is the difference in which we interact with the game as designer compared to the player's experience. A player will only play a game due to the aesthetics, if he/she gains no emotional response from it (other than perhaps boredom) then it's unlikely that they will play the game to the point of dynamically playing with the mechanics which you have painstakingly laboured over as a designer.
This is noticeably the same in role-playing games such as D&D when you are the game master (as I usually am with my groups). The players want to play the game to go on adventures, solve puzzles, fight things and so on. The actual rules are not so important, almost to the point of not being important at all, except for to the game master, who uses the rules to help define the story and keep the game from being entirely biased in whichever direction they wish to take it. The rules are only as important as the results they give, which are only as important as the direction they take the story in (which is what the players are there for)!
Mechanics - (rules, coding, etc.) Data representation & algorithms, this describes all the objects/game components.
Dynamics - (game behaviours as a result of player input) Player interaction and interaction with the player. Play choice.
Aesthetics - Emotional responses of the player.
Hunicke states that there is an order to which the game is produced and to which the game is played:
Designer >>>
Mechanics > Dynamics > Aesthetics
____________________________
Mechanics < Dynamics < Aesthetics
<<< Player
This can be summed up with a sentence (as understood by the definitions above):
Aesthetics are the player's emotional response as a result of Dynamics, which is the feedback received from interacting with the Mechanics.
The important thing to take away from this is the difference in which we interact with the game as designer compared to the player's experience. A player will only play a game due to the aesthetics, if he/she gains no emotional response from it (other than perhaps boredom) then it's unlikely that they will play the game to the point of dynamically playing with the mechanics which you have painstakingly laboured over as a designer.
This is noticeably the same in role-playing games such as D&D when you are the game master (as I usually am with my groups). The players want to play the game to go on adventures, solve puzzles, fight things and so on. The actual rules are not so important, almost to the point of not being important at all, except for to the game master, who uses the rules to help define the story and keep the game from being entirely biased in whichever direction they wish to take it. The rules are only as important as the results they give, which are only as important as the direction they take the story in (which is what the players are there for)!
Notes on Games Britannia: Monopolies & Mergers
The second of the three-part Games Britannia series is much more modern in scope and details a number of British and American games of the past century.
This episode went past a lot quicker than the previous one and as a result I only have short notes regarding most of the games presented, rather than the more in-depth look as in my Dicing With Destiny entry.
The first game talked of was called Mansion of Bliss and was produced with the intention of teaching good moral values to children as well as tempt them into going to school as the government had only recently written the law that children should attend school at a young age. The game features a simple race mechanic (similar to Snakes & Ladders) and progress is issued by a spinning top called a 'teetotum'. Upon landing on each space a short sentence is read out from a book accompanying the game, and it describes moral etiquette regarding either a vice or a virtue, as decreed by the picture which you landed on. Landing on a virtuous space would reward the player and landing on a vice space would result in a forfeit.
This game was popular and prompted many similar games in the same period, such as Mansion of Happiness. This was another moral instruction game but this one became incredibly popular in America and resulted in the games market in America. A game was produced as a result of Mansion of Happiness's popularity, this one called "The Checkered Game of Life".
The Checkered Game of Life was very different to its inspirations however, as it had an element of choice in which space to move to and also it had goals less in tune with moral instruction and more in line with American ideals: ambition and opportunism. This game was made by Milton Bradley who went on to found MB Games.
Not so long after were politically inspired games such as Pank a Squith, a game about the women's suffrage movement, and Brer Fox an' Brer Rabbit which was a liberal game intended to promote discussions of land tax & the liberal agenda.
Monopoly was based heavily on "The Landlord's Game" by Elizabeth McGee Phillips. The Landlord's Game was intended to teach about an equal society but it's successor Monopoly instead was highly competitive and had the goal of bankrupting the other players.
Finally we had the British inventions of:
Cluedo
Scrabble
Trivial Pursuit
and
Kensington
With the possible exception of Kensington (I hadn't heard of it until watching Games Britannia) these games appear to be eternally successful, although variations and iterations are constantly released (the American version of Cluedo features a 'Mr. Green' rather than 'Reverend. Green' out of some distaste for the notion of a murderous priest for example).
Our final act of global boardgaming importance it seems was the creation of Games Workshop by Steve Jackson and Ian Livingstone. The company was originally founded to produce and distribute boards for classic games such as chess and backgammon, but later important the ever-popular Dungeons & Dragons role-playing game. Sometime after this (and the launch of their gaming magazine; White Dwarf) they ended up producing their own role-playing, board and wargames. This includes Warhammer & Warhammer 40,000 (originally called Rogue Trader), which are today the most popular and well known miniature wargames available.
The episode ended with the introduction of one of our modern board game companies: TerrorBull Games. Known as something of an indie games developer, they made the "War on Terror" board game, a heavily satirical game about the recent wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Woolley, the presenter, suggests that this is perhaps where British games belong: somewhat provocative, niche and ultimately unique.
This episode went past a lot quicker than the previous one and as a result I only have short notes regarding most of the games presented, rather than the more in-depth look as in my Dicing With Destiny entry.
The first game talked of was called Mansion of Bliss and was produced with the intention of teaching good moral values to children as well as tempt them into going to school as the government had only recently written the law that children should attend school at a young age. The game features a simple race mechanic (similar to Snakes & Ladders) and progress is issued by a spinning top called a 'teetotum'. Upon landing on each space a short sentence is read out from a book accompanying the game, and it describes moral etiquette regarding either a vice or a virtue, as decreed by the picture which you landed on. Landing on a virtuous space would reward the player and landing on a vice space would result in a forfeit.
This game was popular and prompted many similar games in the same period, such as Mansion of Happiness. This was another moral instruction game but this one became incredibly popular in America and resulted in the games market in America. A game was produced as a result of Mansion of Happiness's popularity, this one called "The Checkered Game of Life".
The Checkered Game of Life was very different to its inspirations however, as it had an element of choice in which space to move to and also it had goals less in tune with moral instruction and more in line with American ideals: ambition and opportunism. This game was made by Milton Bradley who went on to found MB Games.
Not so long after were politically inspired games such as Pank a Squith, a game about the women's suffrage movement, and Brer Fox an' Brer Rabbit which was a liberal game intended to promote discussions of land tax & the liberal agenda.
Monopoly was based heavily on "The Landlord's Game" by Elizabeth McGee Phillips. The Landlord's Game was intended to teach about an equal society but it's successor Monopoly instead was highly competitive and had the goal of bankrupting the other players.
Finally we had the British inventions of:
Cluedo
Scrabble
Trivial Pursuit
and
Kensington
With the possible exception of Kensington (I hadn't heard of it until watching Games Britannia) these games appear to be eternally successful, although variations and iterations are constantly released (the American version of Cluedo features a 'Mr. Green' rather than 'Reverend. Green' out of some distaste for the notion of a murderous priest for example).
Our final act of global boardgaming importance it seems was the creation of Games Workshop by Steve Jackson and Ian Livingstone. The company was originally founded to produce and distribute boards for classic games such as chess and backgammon, but later important the ever-popular Dungeons & Dragons role-playing game. Sometime after this (and the launch of their gaming magazine; White Dwarf) they ended up producing their own role-playing, board and wargames. This includes Warhammer & Warhammer 40,000 (originally called Rogue Trader), which are today the most popular and well known miniature wargames available.
The episode ended with the introduction of one of our modern board game companies: TerrorBull Games. Known as something of an indie games developer, they made the "War on Terror" board game, a heavily satirical game about the recent wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Woolley, the presenter, suggests that this is perhaps where British games belong: somewhat provocative, niche and ultimately unique.
Formal Abstract Design Tools
Another article relating to the vocabulary of games design is "Formal Abstract Design Tools" (Church, D. 1999). He defines them as a set of tools and general design concepts and therefore a basis to build your game on rather than elements of a game in themselves.
He very aptly sums up Costikyan's point of language being important to learning with this sentence, which I found to be pretty effective:
"Vocabulary is the key to understanding." - as I've mentioned in earlier blogs, brevity is a thing to be admired, and this sentence explains why the article (and by extension the tools) are useful.
Church believes that a key component of a successful game is that when a player is attempting to reach some goal and fails, he/she understands why they failed. Whether this is attempting to jump a pit and falling short ("I jumped too soon damnit!") or in attempting to open a door and finding it locked ("Ah, there'll probably be a key for it somewhere."), the important thing is for the player to feel like they understand the rules and that they have control over what happens in the game.
As a result of this, Church identifies three components which are part of his (and indeed the collective 'Game Designers Vocabulary') Design Tools:
Intention: Making an implemented plan of one's own creation in response to the current situation in the game world and one's understanding of the game play options.
Perceivable Consequence: A clear reaction from the game world to the action of the player.
Story: The narrative thread, whether designer-driven or player-driven, which binds events together and drives the player forward toward completion of the game.
He ends his article with only these three 'tools', but suggests that FADT is a concept which will forever be added to as our games-related dictionary expands and improves.
He very aptly sums up Costikyan's point of language being important to learning with this sentence, which I found to be pretty effective:
"Vocabulary is the key to understanding." - as I've mentioned in earlier blogs, brevity is a thing to be admired, and this sentence explains why the article (and by extension the tools) are useful.
Church believes that a key component of a successful game is that when a player is attempting to reach some goal and fails, he/she understands why they failed. Whether this is attempting to jump a pit and falling short ("I jumped too soon damnit!") or in attempting to open a door and finding it locked ("Ah, there'll probably be a key for it somewhere."), the important thing is for the player to feel like they understand the rules and that they have control over what happens in the game.
As a result of this, Church identifies three components which are part of his (and indeed the collective 'Game Designers Vocabulary') Design Tools:
Intention: Making an implemented plan of one's own creation in response to the current situation in the game world and one's understanding of the game play options.
Perceivable Consequence: A clear reaction from the game world to the action of the player.
Story: The narrative thread, whether designer-driven or player-driven, which binds events together and drives the player forward toward completion of the game.
He ends his article with only these three 'tools', but suggests that FADT is a concept which will forever be added to as our games-related dictionary expands and improves.
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