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In the making of games, many design issues need to be thought out and considered throughout the games entire production to ensure that the end result is a game that appeals to the right audience. This is true and even more so in the development of educational games, such as the Key Stage 1 game that I am developing as a part of my group project along with others, where the games have to captivate the audience for a purpose other than enjoyment and truly benefit them. This essay will discuss the major design issues that were faced in the making of our game, Circuitry Absurdity, which helps Key Stage 1 children learn about electrical circuits and components within them.
The most important issue that I believe was faced is one that is encountered at the very beginning of the design process which is the game concept itself. When thinking of a game that needs to be educational and fun at the same time you need to make sure that the idea that you come up with is one that can do this, thus the concept becomes a key design issue. Our game of Circuitry Absurdity is a puzzle game that gets children to make circuits as quick as possible by connecting batteries to various components by placing wire pieces around obstacles. This concept is one that allows the game to be educational as it teaches them how circuits work with batteries supplying power to components and can only work when the circuit is complete and it also allows it to be fun by adding elements of puzzle-solving and competitiveness with time-based awards.
The issue of Concept in our game as a design issue was thought out carefully governing all other aspects of our game, it determined the story behind our game that would make it appeal to the audience and the gameplay that would follow. Concept is what makes a game from the ground up with other elements being incorporated based around it. If we hadn’t made our game how we did, it could have resulted in a game that appealed to the wrong audience, no-one at all, or not have any educational merit behind it.
To understand concept is similar to understanding what makes up a game. In the article ‘I have no words I must design: towards a critical vocabulary for games’ by Greg Costikyan (1994) Costikyan establishes the key aspects that make a game summarising it as “An interactive structure of endogenous meaning that requires players to struggle toward a goal.” The concepts for games are based around this premise and try to match up to and/or meet this definition if what a game is. Our concept is one that should do this and also have the added benefit of being educational.
The next major design issue that was faced follows on from the concept of the game which is the aesthetics of the game. How the game looks is a very vital part of making the game appeal and it is something that came up greatly in the making of our Key Stage 1 game. If a game is supposed to be aimed at older audiences a more mature, realistic, gritty art style is more appropriate whereas if the game is aimed at children the art style needs to be cartoony, bright and colourful. In our game we decided to use the cartoon style of Jimmy Neutron as an influence and this decision helped us establish the artistic direction of our game, thereby helped overcome a key design issue.
Once we had an idea of how we wanted our game to look, we had to develop our own style based on this and as one of the artists in the game this design issue was placed heavily in my care. As our game is based on the fixing of toy circuits and showing how electrical power flows from batteries into components, these also influenced the look of the game as circuits and electricity feature heavily. It can therefore be said that the art style of our game is an issue that was overcome due to the drive of our audience and the concept of our game but was also thought out carefully to help as make a good, captivating game.
Our choice to use an already existing artistic style can also be attributed to remediation, something we were taught about as a part of our course. While this knowledge was taught to us after we made the decision, it is a good example of it nonetheless and an example of how it can be very effective. The term of remediation comes from the works of Jay Bolter and Richard Grusin and their article ‘Remediation: Understanding New Media’ (2000). Its uses are many and beneficial as with our game where it helped us realise our art style. Once the art style of our game was established we had to make sure that the look and feel of the game was one that appeals to boys and girls.
The next design issue that came up in the process of making our Key Stage 1 games is the issue of Gender, this links with the art issue as colour and style of the visuals differ between boys and girls. Gender is an important part of designing games as generally speaking boys and girls have different likes and interests and therefore the game needs to be designed in such a way that both of these types of like can be addressed. The main demographic of gaming in general is mostly male but at Key Stage 1 this isn’t the case as much, therefore when designing our game it must clearly suit both genders sufficiently rather than making a game that clearly appeals to males or females.
In our game, to make it appeal to both genders we initially decided to have a male and female option for player characters; however, as we decided to make our game have the child as in the in-game character rather than having an in-game representation we had to think way to make the game appeal to both genders. In the end we decided that the best way to avoid this issue was to make the toys that the child was fixing be a mixture of toys that either boys would like, girls would like or appeal to both. This decision was a quick and easy solution that can easily fix most games and in the case of our game it worked perfectly and saved us lots of work in the long run.
Looking forward to the next design issue that we came across which is mechanics, in regards to gender we came across the issue on which boys and girl learn to play games. In her book, ‘Gender Inclusive Games Design’ (2003) Sheri Graner-Ray states that boys learn to play games with a hands-on approach, jumping straight into the game and playing it whereas girls learn to by playing tutorials or reading through manuals. Therefore, we had to think of a way of teaching children to play our game in an optional manner – so that the boys could skip and just play if they so wished. To do this we included an optional tutorial that would take them through the game, this is how we overcame this design issue and also shows how gender links into the mechanics of gameplay.
As stated, the next design issue that occurs in our game is related to the mechanics of the game and certain gameplay features. In games for younger audiences you must make sure that the game is not too complicated for them compared to an 18+ game where it is safe to assume that all the players of game should be able to get their head around all aspects of the game, albeit with maybe a couple of tutorials outlining the basics. Mechanics is a very large part of making many games and as such I will break it down into 2 sections; menus and interactivity and the core gameplay.
Our game is driven by many different menus and contains text-based narratives detailing wrong moves and how to play the game. As our game is for Key Stage 1 children however, we had to bear in mind that the child may not be able to understand certain words or blocks of text – ultimately the simpler the text, the easier it will be. This issue arose at one key point in the making of our game, particularly the tutorial. Initially we made the tutorial very text based which was easy to follow for us and other people of our age but it turned out in practice that Key Stage 1 children found it difficult to read and it was too long-winded. Thus we had to change our tutorial to one which had more pictures detailing various gameplay aspects and ultimately also included an interactive tutorial where they were taken through the processes of the game. This proved to be more successful and we were able to use this as a building point for the rest of our game, making the game more picture-based than text and as a result making it easier for children to play.
The core gameplay mechanics were easier to work out as we knew the children would have to build a circuit with different tile pieces, however, we needed to make sure that they were able to this and had to be careful with the complexities of the circuits. We also needed to make sure that the time limits on the circuits were suitable, for example, people of our age were able to complete the first level’s circuit in less than 20 seconds but this doesn’t mean Key Stage 1 children will be able to. This proved to be the case as upon doing a play test the times taken were greater, not too long that it seemed they were severely struggling but enough that we knew it needed to be changed.
Mechanics of a game as a whole ultimately lead to fun that is achieved in the end. By this I mean that it is the mechanics of a game that drives the player forward, they see the game through its aesthetics and ultimately they should get fun out of it. This idea of understanding how a consumer gets the most out of games is discussed in the article ‘MDA: A formal approach to games design and games research’ by Robin Hunicke, Marc LeBlanc and Robert Zubek (2004) where it is established that Mechanics lead to the Dynamics of gameplay that is then seen through the visual Aesthetics. In our game we can see that we tried to cover this by setting up a visually appealing game but focused on the mechanics of the game to make sure that the game was fun and enjoyable.
In conclusion, as with any game, we came across numerous design issues and had to overcome them to make our game work. An interesting point to note with these issues is that the aesthetical issues were thought out with reference to other children’s interests and the mechanical issues were overcome by getting the game play tested by the audience. These two ways of getting past design issues are slightly different, but, ultimately both look at what appeals to and works with the audience outside of video games and then applying that knowledge to the development of games.
Design issues cannot simply be overcome with a simple fix and must be thought out carefully with each aspect of the game getting looked at and improved as a separate entity which, together, comes to make a game as good as it can be. These design issues are ones that aren’t specific to our Key Stage 1 game and can be applied to any game and even other mediums, so exploring the design issues faced in this essay can ultimately be greatly beneficial in the future.
Word Count: 1998
References
- Bolter, J., Grusin, R., (2000), Remediation: Understanding New Media MIT Press.
- Costikyan, G., (1994), I Have No Words & I Must Design: Toward a Critical Vocabulary for Games, Interactive Fantasy, Issue 2, pp 25.
- Graner-Ray, S., (2003), Gender Inclusive Games Design, Charles River Media.
- Hunicke, R., LeBlanc, M., Zubek, R., (2004), MDA: A formal approach to games design and games research, Discovery, Vol. 83, Issue 3.
'Til next time - that's all folks!
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