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Game Design
Jun. 14th, 2005 09:33 amLost Garden has an article on risk/reward systems in game design theory as applied to the Gameboy DS title "Nintendogs." "If you dig into the game mechanics at an abstract level, it has surprisingly more in common with a RPG than most virtual pet games. Yet hardcore gamers make a snap judgement and instantly assume it must be a Tamagotchi-style game. ... The theoretical designer realizes that a powerup is a powerup whether you call it a 'Quad Damage' or a 'Doggy Brush'."
Similarly, chess can be played with Staunton pieces, or with Civil War soldiers, or cartoon characters; it will still be the exact same game. The Shogi enthusiasts at Marcon strongly disagreed with this when I told them about my Shogi set, but that's because when they say the "game" of Shogi they are referring to a heritage, and a community of people. Strip away whatever differences they would experience between my intuitively-grasped pie-chart graphics and the original Japanese writing and what remains will be the definition of the word "game" used by most of the Chessvariants.com community. There is a difference between the game mechanics and the window-dressing applied to it. A real-time-strategy computer game would be the same "game" even if you take all the soldier illustrations out and replace them with ants, or dinosaurs, or Care Bears, just so long as nothing changes but the graphics.
I've kept that in mind because![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
cosette_vajean has promised to get me the only thing on my birthday wish list this week: Gameboy DS with "Kirby's Canvas Curse," an innovative platform game which is played by drawing attack paths (OK, they are rainbows, but I will call them "attack paths"), sheilds, bridges, etc. on the screen with a stylus.
An action-platformer game.
Which is operated by drawing. *boggles*
It's like the invention of sliced bread, or the internet.
Also I recently finished last year's birthday present, Shigeru Miyamoto's creative tour-de-force "Pikmin 2" for Gamecube. I have a question about both these games. Why is it that the window-dressing of the only games with ingeniously innovative high-concept game mechanics tends to be so saccharine and infantile, as shown in the recent Penny Arcade webcomic? Why are games with an adult artistic style so derivative? As Tycho lamented, "I am a grown man who draws rainbows."
They're attack paths, dammit.
Similarly, chess can be played with Staunton pieces, or with Civil War soldiers, or cartoon characters; it will still be the exact same game. The Shogi enthusiasts at Marcon strongly disagreed with this when I told them about my Shogi set, but that's because when they say the "game" of Shogi they are referring to a heritage, and a community of people. Strip away whatever differences they would experience between my intuitively-grasped pie-chart graphics and the original Japanese writing and what remains will be the definition of the word "game" used by most of the Chessvariants.com community. There is a difference between the game mechanics and the window-dressing applied to it. A real-time-strategy computer game would be the same "game" even if you take all the soldier illustrations out and replace them with ants, or dinosaurs, or Care Bears, just so long as nothing changes but the graphics.
I've kept that in mind because
cosette_vajean has promised to get me the only thing on my birthday wish list this week: Gameboy DS with "Kirby's Canvas Curse," an innovative platform game which is played by drawing attack paths (OK, they are rainbows, but I will call them "attack paths"), sheilds, bridges, etc. on the screen with a stylus.An action-platformer game.
Which is operated by drawing. *boggles*
It's like the invention of sliced bread, or the internet.
Also I recently finished last year's birthday present, Shigeru Miyamoto's creative tour-de-force "Pikmin 2" for Gamecube. I have a question about both these games. Why is it that the window-dressing of the only games with ingeniously innovative high-concept game mechanics tends to be so saccharine and infantile, as shown in the recent Penny Arcade webcomic? Why are games with an adult artistic style so derivative? As Tycho lamented, "I am a grown man who draws rainbows."
They're attack paths, dammit.
