Exercise 2.7: Premise

Risk: The premise of the game is to achieve world domination, the conquering of all nations. To do this you must defeat rivaling players in other territories

Clue: The premise of this bloody mystery game is to find out who the murderer of Mr. Boddy, this killer will be one of the players. Players will explore rooms on the board game map to collect clues and, in the end, accuse the right person.

Pit: The premise of this game is a fast-pace game of frenzied trading of "commodities" between multiple players up to four out of a maximum of seven players. When a player "monopolizes" one of the categorized markets, this would be nine cards of that commodity, they will win the game.

Guitar Hero: The premise of this rhythm game is to complete a song by pressing the keys located on the string length of the guitar. The players would hold the controller, that being shaped as a guitar, as one would normally hold a guitar, and match the keys coming up to a border parallel to the bottom section screen. Players will percisely press the color-coded keys according to the colors on the guitar controller as they enter the borderline.

Exercise 2.8: Story

"A premise need not go anywhere from where it begins, while stories unfold with the game (pg 44)."

The choice-based narrative game series by Tell Tale Games called The Walking Dead, was emotionally gripping from all the intense choices you'd have to make on the spot that were all timed. What they did was play with the player's mind by having them calculate the weight of their decisions and the consequences or advantages that might come along with it within a matter of seconds. Also there's always something heartwarming of an older figure taking care of a child in an apocalyptic world. It makes you wish the best for both of them, which is why (spoilers HOLD UP) it broke my heart when the older figure for Clementine was turning into a zombie after getting bitten and told her to shoot him. Also with this same dynamic The Walking Dead had with their two main characters, The Last of Us also did a great job with pulling the player into their almost father and daughter relationship, which the older male also died in. There seems to be a pattern here huh? 

Exercise 4.1: Making Checkers Dramatic 

"For this exercise, devise a set of dramatic elements for checkers that make the game more emotionally engaging."

What if we turned Checkers into some Full on LARP-ing experience, with the same mechanics of each piece having their own abilities, so would each player. Each "Checkers" game would be represented as a war or battle between two or more factions and because these large scale fights would take too long is it was turn based perhaps there wouldn't be any turns but players would act out their single ability against a chosen target while that target would choose to counteract or retreat, or another checkers piece could also step in. To make the game move faster, just like in checkers, every player would die after one hit or taken as a prisoner of war. I'm not sure why I immediately just jumped on LARPing, but I remember watching a video on someones experience with it and saw a scene of a battle. I think that stood out to me the most because I wondered how the skirmishes were calculated especially when I saw people running at each other and taking blows, so athleticism was an element that was part of LARPing is what I had concluded. So based on people real-life abilities, their complexities would turn into stats, so there could be interesting mixtures of rook pieces with a lot of health or with high agility, but of course their movements would still be one space at the time. These stats are for the experiences of the LARPers.

Chapter 4: Working with Dramatic Elements 

"When players talk of challenge in games, they’re speaking of tasks that are satisfying to complete, that require just the right amount of work

to create a sense of accomplishment and enjoyment (page 98)."

Which is why there is a sort of skill gap for each individual players and those who are able to take it to the next level, utilizing every mechanic in a game to do "speedruns". Challenge is something individualistic, as every player has a different relationship with a game.

It is also something "dynamic" as the usual pattern in games is that as you progress further in it, the level of difficulty steeps upwards. If this is not the case, then the player may lose interest in the game's "challenge".

Pyschologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi identified the elements of enjoyment by the following:

- confronting tasks we have a chance of completing

- our concentration on that task, this is based on:

- the clear goals and adequetely recieved feedback of the task

- the deep and effortless involvment of a task that rids thoughts of reality's troubles and frustrations

- enjoyable experience = sense of control over actions

- concern for sense of self disappears but emerges stronger when the task is completed

- sense of time is altered 

Based on Csikszentmihalyi's findings, he created a theory called "flow", a graph between the levels of frustration and boredom (the frustration correlating to the challenge of a task, if it's too high, then its not fun; if it's too low, then its boring). In that case, these levels have to be balanced.

Challenges: "According to Csikszentmihalyi, flow occurs most often within activities that are “goal-directed and bounded by rules … that could not be done without the proper skills (page 99).”

The sense of having a chance at a task and knowing the clear goals to it helps produce the challenge to it. If the task is too easy or the goal is unclear, then the challenge is meaningless.

When all the relevant skills of a player are invested into a game, they start to lose awareness of the outside world, becoming immersed in the challenge they are trying to accomplish. When this happens, their actions being to be spontaneous, repeated motions as they surmount every second of their past self to complete the challenge.

The clear goals of a game is what helps us get immersed into a challenge. We begin to forget about life's contradicting rules and goals, when inside a game/task, what needs to be done is clear to you. This framework and structure of this system becomes your world as you submerge into it and indulge your skills to play every action. The feedback of a game/task should indicate the correct path the player should be going on (postive feedback indicating the right direction while negative feedback indicates the player to take another action to that situation).

"The Paradox of Control" is when player is dictated by their actions to accomplish a goal is not assured, this is how a player can feel their actions have meaning, when in reality, this framework is something that is created. In other words, the players actions are controlled, and not really their own.

When a player's flow experience is so engrossing, they become unaware of their self in reality. While in other activities, people become empowered by what they are doing, paradoxically, through the flow experience of a challenge, "... the self expands through acts of self-forgetfulness (page 101)."

Once a player is immersed in that world, they lose their sense of time within flow experiences.

Exotelic: experiences not for enjoyment, but to achieve some sort of goal

 Chapter 8: Digital Prototyping (pages 235—269) 

When digital prototyping your core system, it's important to keep these elements in mind: game logic, special physics, environments, levels, and more.  The other two core tasks when creating your prototype are your game's control systems (for example, what kind of input is it coming from? a keyboard ? a mouse? gamepad?) and a intuitive and responsive interface. Another important thing to keep in mind is what aspect of the game you are prototyping digitally and the vision you are manifesting into it.

Four Areas of Investigation for Digital Prototyping:

Digital prototyping is good for fast, throwaway projects - rapid prototyping: posing a question of 

- Game Mechanics: "... make it simple and focused on a particular question—do not try to integrate all of your questions about the game into a single prototype, at least not at first (page 236)."  These are things you can do further in the development of your game, but when you first start prototyping, you should focus on a core mechanic and playtest it. This process can be enlightening and a great creative brainstorming process for you as a game developer as you experience different mechainics that may not fit for your current game, but could work for another project.

- Kinesthetics, the "feel of the game's controls and responsiveness":  This is something that needs to be tested digitally. " ... the feel of a digital game has a great deal to do with the type controls you have available to use (page 239)." When designing your core mechanics, it's important to conceive the amount of controls that will be used in the final platform. The controls and core mechanics of a game can even greatly influence and transform the original game's concept as well

- Technology: " ... models of all of the software that it will take to make the game work technically (page 241)." Overall, prototyping technology is about testing and debugging the tools and workflow for getting content into a game. However, one shouldn't think this type of prototyping is solely on software engineering, but rather "dirty" code that can be revised quickly. The goal is not to take this code to the final product however, "... The takeaways from a prototype should be abstract ideas, like algorithms or gameplay concepts (page 241)." A way to prototype code can be in a prototype in a different language.

- Aesthetics, "look, sound": Adding sound and other visual effects can help articulate your game's mechanics, in other words, the game feel you wish for. However, the it's key to know when you should stop during a prototyping phase. There are aesthetic issues that do more good for the game if tested early on though, like character animations and interfaces that may work in the spatial environment of the game. In this case, storyboards, concept art, an "animatic" (an animated mock-up of the game in action), an interface prototype (this can be static, an animatic or even a paper prototype before it's done digitally) and audio sketches (early drafts of music and sound effects). Flowcharts can be helpful for designing a menu interface, going through an intuitive design process of how a player might use the menu themself.

Designing Control Schemes

In a technical sense, digital games are about three things: input (controls), output and AI.

As a designer you must understand the capabilities of the controller you are desigining your game for, this is probably something that is thought of first after conceptualizing the your game. This process involves protoptying the kinesthetics and technicalities aspects of your controls until they are integrated into the game. During this phase, you should also be playtesting whether or not these mechanics you've created are fun or perhaps they provide another experience for the player, still this process is good you as a developer since you are also learning these different experiences that can be created.

After you've designed and planned out your input device, get to planning how you game can utilize it and your game's interface design along with it. For example, you created an great amount of abilities that cannot be access through a single button and so the need of an interface within the game to access those other abilities need to created. To organize your plan, you should create a procedure of the set of digital controls in your game and then think about the interface that might go along with it. Then create a table, sort of like a flow chart, grouping tp dictate where these controls might go on the interface, while keeping a similar interface for certains states to avoid confusion. An interface needs to be tested repeatedly in an iterative process since it involves user interaction. Your guesses on its logic may not be true.

Viewpoints

- Overhead View: Looking down at the player's character looks unnatural, but gives the player a clear view of the terrain (ex: Pac-Man)

- Side View: Side scrollers like Donkey Kong and Tetris has a side view perspective, this constricted view of two planes allows room for puzzle solving and room for other forms of play that involves the player to confront what they see and move accordingly.

- Isometric View: This viewpoint is a 3D space with no linear perspective, this allows the players to interact closer with the space they are in. The selling point for this perspective is based on giving a easy flow of information towards the player.

- First-Person View: You are the player, with this view you share a greater empathy with the game's character, with the additional effect of a restricted field of view and overall knowledge that creates moments of tension

- Third-Person View:  Like the side view, this viewpoint closely follows the character, but not directly towards the player's view. Many action-oriented games and games that require detailed control of the player's character use this viewpoint (ex: Ratchet & Clank).

Celeste

Celeste is a 2D pixel platformer game with the premise of climbing a mountain . Of course, it isn't just ordinary mountain climbing, but the character also has abilities to dash up in different directions and as levels progress and the difficulty slope increases , there are elements in the game that give the player greater mobility across the stage. Although the character design is a bit lacking in detail the game's subtle details and incredible input responses make Celeste an incredible game. And this comes down to the little clouds that appear when falling back onto the ground to the variety of moves you can execute in the controller - most of these moves being "tricks" to help you navigate easier and quicker through the space, so you can guess that speedrunners apply them a lot to their gameplay alot. For these types of games that require precise execution and fairness for the player, the creators have implemented coyote time for their platforms and have almost no exit and entry time for reaching maximum speed. This allows the player to more accurately move around the platforms to avoid spikes.