The readings discuss the following:-
- Trefry No.1: Level design and Iterative design
- Trefry No.2: What is 'Play'
- Trefry No.3: Matching Games
- Zimmermann: Iterative Design
- Rose: Simple Mechanics
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Reading No.1 - Level and Iterative Design
Basically, to start this off bluntly, I didn't get much from the Zimmermann article... okay that sounds bad, what I mean is I got nothing much new that I didn't already know. Zimmermann talked about iterative design, how it worked and how it is useful which good for a recap but ultimately I know about iterative design from last year - the process of adding and changing your rules and games in small doses through iterations; if the new rule doesn't work then you can take it out before trialing a new rule and then add more and so on. That's all I have to say on Zimmermann, much of the same, good for a recap and good for relating it to examples that he personally has experienced.
Trefry's section on iteration was ultimately the same as well to be honest, just nailing down what iteration is and how it helps. The level design half was more interesting and was more new to me than the iteration stuff, but in some ways when I was reading it to me it felt like he was stating the obvious... I don't know how to describe it... I guess it's just when I was reading it I was going 'Well I know that, that's obvious', so I guess it didn't teach me anything new but at least brought the ideas of level design to the front of my mind which is never a bad thing. The main ideas he talked about in level design we ideas that you need to make sure your level is easy enough to play yet challenging too, easing players into the game, not chucking them in the deep end and giving them space to learn and feel the game. This then led to playtesting and ultimately iteration.
So overall, in my opinion, nothing much learned from this reading but at least good for making you think of these things and making them more prominent in your head.
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Reading No.2 - Mechanics
I thought I'd do this first to get the non-Trefry articles out of the way. The mechanics article comes from Gamasutra and is titled 'Fewer Mechanics, Better Game' and, as stated above was written by John Rose. As the titles suggests the articles talked about the idea of having less mechanics and/or simpler mechanics in games to ultimately make them better.
The article talked about how games are systems waiting to be understood by the player with the fun being the mastery of these systems and mechanics are ultimately what guide a system and allow a player to do so - as a result of this, it comes to reason that the more mechanics there are the harder a game system is to master and the harder it is to get fun out of the game. The article went on to explain about not including what doesn't belong, using examples prominently, and basically saying if something isn't needed, doesn't feel right, doesn't fit, etc, then it isn't needed and shouldn't be included - boiling the game down to it's core mechanics or 'trimming the fat' as the article put it.
To be fair, a lot of the article was just a long argument leading to the ultimate conclusion that games work better when they use only what is needed and making THESE aspects better improves the game rather than adding stuff for the sake of it. I agree with this for the most part, sometimes having more than the core mechanic isn't needed but can add another side to a game - but this is just personal opinion.
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Reading No.3 - Play
So... the 3rd reading was the entirety of Chapter 3 of Trefry's book. To me this chapter was another recap one, it talked about the underlying philosophy of what makes a game a game and what aspects of them lead to fun. This chapter also linked to mechanics somewhat but not fully which is why I kept this reading separate - as it was finding the core aspect of play this linked to the core mechanics of games and keeping them simplistic for the sake of more fun, etc.
Basically, the chapter started by identifying that there are many playful activities that we do in everyday life that we do for fun but don't consider them play or games because, well, they aren't... but it boils down to play sparks fun and games designers take this and structure the play into a game. The rest of the chapter then goes on to talk about the many forms of play that there are and the unlimited number of game possibilities there are from taking these everyday, playful activities and turning them into games simply by structuring them with goals and purpose.
It is for this reason that the chapter felt more like a recap than anything new, as we had looked several times at defining what games are last year. However, as stated earlier, this is not a bad thing as its always good to make yourself think about these things and bring them to the front of your mind.
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Reading No. 4 - Matching
Finally, the next reading was the entirety of Chapter 4 of Trefry's book about matching games. All of this was new to me as this year we are looking at individual, specific mechanics (for the most part) than games in general. However, I found this reading informative but not in such a way that I could take notes on or put down in words... the reason for this is that it is too example based; it looks closely at matching in existing games and why they work FOR THOSE GAMES and not enough in general. In the chapter he uses the examples of Bejeweled, a LEGO game and Snood.
Trefry talks about these games, what makes them work and appealing to players, linking it to the simplicity of their mechanics and then saying how if you tried adding or changing aspects of the games then they wouldn't work - but again, these were all specific to the games he was taking about, which makes it hard to take away general points that work for the matching mechanic in general; they work for the matching mechanic IN THE GAME. In summary though, you can draw out of this reading that, as a mechanic, Matching offers clear goals and feedback to the player and as a result it is a good base on which to build around.
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So there we have it, the first readings of my 2nd year. I know it sounds like a lot of moaning but it isn't... really, I'm serious, it's always good to recap and some of it was new. The readings we do are always good and worth a look even if it's stuff that you think 'That's obvious' about it - the only readings I don't like are ones where they link what they are talking to into examples but then don't talk about it in general/linger on the example for pages and pages.
I don't learn like that, examples are good for making a point so you can relate what you're talking to with an existing game that the reader can understand and see, but you only need to do it for a paragraph, after that you go too in-depth with it and everything becomes related only to that game, making it hard to extract the general information you can apply to any situation.
So anyways, until next time - that's all folks!
