Back for more, huh?
Alright, now we'll become game doctors and put down a game, cut it open, and learn what's inside that!
Anatomy of a game 101 lecture commencing!
If you've been reading books on Games , game design etcetera, you probably have seen many many "game anatomy" sections, and more likely, different from each other. So, supporting the fact that i said before, that games are not science, they are rather "art", it's pretty logical seeing so many interpretations of what are the base components of a game. You may as well create your own "report" of what a game is like and what are its' components.
That said, now we can move on to mine interpretation / "medical report" / body analysis of what are the core components of a game. Let's see...
I will at first list them out here:
Alright, now we'll become game doctors and put down a game, cut it open, and learn what's inside that!
Anatomy of a game 101 lecture commencing!
If you've been reading books on Games , game design etcetera, you probably have seen many many "game anatomy" sections, and more likely, different from each other. So, supporting the fact that i said before, that games are not science, they are rather "art", it's pretty logical seeing so many interpretations of what are the base components of a game. You may as well create your own "report" of what a game is like and what are its' components.
That said, now we can move on to mine interpretation / "medical report" / body analysis of what are the core components of a game. Let's see...
I will at first list them out here:
- Emotional value
- Technology
- Educational value
- Aesthetics
- Challenge
Aaaaaaaaand that's about it! Really, not a great list nor a teeny tiny one. It can get the message straight though, once we get into depth with each one.
**** Emotional Value ****
The first core component we are discussing here, is all about emotions. In order to understand this one we are going to ask the following questions to us when we design the game:
" Is the user feeling surprised after that plot twist? " , or
" is the player terrified ? If so, is he going to keep playing or stop the game? ".
As you can see the emotional value in a game is just how good the game itself is at triggering these emotions in the player while he is playing! If he is playing a horror-survival game without screaming or without having his face covered in sweat and his heart keeps pumping faster, that means that the game has Excellent Emotional Value. We can say the exact same thing for an RPG game when the player is on the verge of defeat while suddenly he gains a superpower out of nowhere and his avatar becomes cooler and cooler and the player is having goosebumps and when his avatar is performing some super-crazy move that instantly defeats his opponents, the player pukes rainbows! Perfect Emotional value. Other examples of feelings would be A) Crying out of sorrow / Happiness , B) Laughter , C) Terror , D) Surprise , so on and so forth.
A game that is supposed to do such things and leaves the player out in the cold emotionless has no emotional value. To achieve that, concepts such as the game story, the character's background, the plot, or the whole feel of the game itself can aid you for that purpose.
**** Technology ****
The rest can not co-exist without the help of this little core component of a game. It's basically all the building blocks that bind them together. Programmers are feeling like home when talking about technology and basically on which platforms is the game built, or which tools they used to do so. Example questions:
" Which Game Engine was used to build this game? Was it a 2D/3D, pseudo3D (isometric)? Are we using Unity3D , Unreal Engine, Gamebryo, Cryengine, or are we going for a custom built one?" ,
"Which programming language are we going to build this game with? Is it going to be cross-platform or platform-specific? ",
" Will the game have multiplayer? If so, which socket implementation would suffice? What are the server requirements? ",
" Is my game an online game? So, do we need to build an online platform for registration? ",
many questions arrise, when it comes to technology. If you can overcome these, your only limitation would be your imagination.
**** Educational Value ****
That's my personal favorite on games. As said before, every game can subsequently train you. Other games enhance your memory. Others your imagination or your creativity. Others test your intellect. Others want to put your problem-solving skills on a rampage. Others just want to increase your reflexes. Others teach you English, basic calculus, physics, biology, chemistry, and history! So, games are not just here to substitute the Teaching and Learning experience. They ARE a learning experience of beyond-your-imagination educational value. Some examples that would fit here:
"Pokemon games : The ability to recall 350 names and images along with 1500 special abilites at the same time!"
"Dungeons and Dragons games : Insane mathematical skills, theory of probability, statistics and imagination!"
"Call of Duty games : Extraordinary enhancement in reflexes , and visual skills!"
"Role Playing Games with a deep story : These are THE English teachers, rich vocabulary through dialogs, feelings and build up your imagination!"
"Total War Games : Better, spherical perspective of historical events through playing. Are these games strategical or just another VLE and we just don't know that yet?"
"Spore : The core of biology and human evolution (Darwin Theory) and management."
"Strategy games : Teach the basics of time management, organisational skills and economics, spending policies and risk analysis, isn't that insane?"
"Chess : Improves logic and creativity, based on risk analysis and predictions, identification of patterns"
"Adventure Games : Others serious (Heavy Rain) and others funny (Sam & Max) they take your problem-solving skills to the next level... Literally. You either solve this problem in a logical or creative way, or you just rot in the same level forever. Heavy intellectual investment these games, folks."
"World of Warcraft : That's a marvellous learning gem! Communication skills? Check. Teamwork and Collaborative task promotion? Check. Bussiness Thinking? Check. Motivations? Check. Strategic Thinking? Check. Basic Economic and Barter skills? Check. Great promotion of personal effort? Check. Virtual representation of everyday real life? Check. Reflexes? Check. Seriously, this game should be World of Learncraft."
So, any game that would teach stuff to people without them noticing has great educational value.
**** Aesthetics ****
And by that we refer to two things: Design and Experience..!
The binding of assets together would be plain ol' design but if you throw in "interaction" then you have your experience! Aesthetics refer to the feel a player has when he is playing that game and how deeply he is emerged to it. It's a sibling concept of Emotional value, as the more emerged a player is in a game, the more he thinks, speaks and acts as his avatar (could be a character) the more he is certain to have the "experience". Experience refer to that essence that is engulfing the player as he plays. Just stop thinking when you play and enjoy it. Then, try to describe how you felt and what you went through, that's an experience. The overall design of the game improves that, and as such aesthetics are a core concept on their own. For example in a survival game like silent hill, that fog where you can't see much, further, but you CAN hear enemies coming to your way, and the absense of a GUI is really enhancing that experience, making you FEEL the game a bit more, thus emerging you and in the end making you tremble in fear, pausing the game briefly and then after a deep breath, you try to defeat your obscure opponent. Another example would be Little Big Planet, every level is created purely for fun, and for more than one player, surely you will start acting as the sackboy at some time and start yelling like a kid, hopping around your room and even making these weird gestures he can make with his hands. That's experience..! Something strong enough, to be memorized, and recalled thereafter. The essesnce of what you felt.
**** Challenge ****
Allright, so all games can be fun, creative, scary, etc etc, but what's their difficulty? Is it enough for the player? Or maybe is it too much for the player? That's a very tough call, as designers often face this problem:
"Should i make the game easy, the player will fall asleep or even bore to death. Should i make the game tough, his family members, girlfriend, and neighbours are in danger, as well as the game itself. How can i close that gap between easy and difficult, where a player may just call a game "Challenging" , rather than totally unbeatable or a piece of cake?"
The way to overcome the problem is through constant playtesting. Ask around. Think about the opinions of others, they seem pretty important. That's how to describe the concept of challenge in a game though. You don't want it to be either very easy or very hard. The games that can overcome this are games that utilize the DDA technique. (DDA = Dynamic Difficulty Adjustment)
For example:
"Devil May Cry : If you die more than 3 times on the first 3 missions, the player is prompted to reduce the difficulty from NORMAL to EASY."
" Elder Scrolls Games : The enemies' difficulty is scalable along with your character's level. The same difficulty your character will face a rat with his fists when he is lv 1 will be almost the same difficulty when he is lv50 fighting an elder dragon "
Also, Challenge aspect concerns whether a game can give enough challenge to a player or not. For example, when you know that you have to farm X mobs for Y minutes in the Z area, in order to defeat boss W, you can't say that's a challenge. However, when the Z area has X mobs that don't respawn or if they appear at Y time of the day *without the player knowing* , adds some level of challenge. Even worse would be the fact that the boss would scale his damage levels based on your "kills". And also, games that seem to be linear don't encourage challenge, rather they make it even more dull. Having many ways to do somethings, but keeping them hidden from the player can be quite a challenge.
Two examples i can remember :
"In final fantasy X, there is a specific boss that has thousands of hit points, can one-shoot your players, based on chance and your party has got to be very strong in order to defeat him. One more thing. He is a zombie. One way to defeat him would be to either hack his health away slowly and trying to keep your team up, OR you could just use the "Resurrection" ability on him, and he dies instantly, something NOT profound to the player, but if he gets the hint that "Death" spells kill "Living" opponents, hopefully, he can figure out that "Bring-me-to-life" spells can kill "Dead" opponents."
"Again, in the same game, this one time you fight a huge robot. You could surely hack his health away, but if you happen to have electricity spells on you, you can finish him off WAY quicker. It's something that you have to find out on your own, that mechanic units just take more damage from electricity than any other kind of damage. There is also a third way to take care of that enemy by doing something that's really hard to notice, but once you do, it becomes pretty obvious : Hit the enviromental obstacles, forcing an explosion, destroying the very bridge he is standing, knocking him out of the battle. "
The aspect of challenge troubles most designers and is really something to be examined much more thoroughly in the games, as most companies often invest in aesthetics, story, experience and such, rather than difficulty or challenge.
That pretty much covers the anatomy of a game. Not all games have all these 5 aspects enhanced or taken care of at a perfect grade, but the better your game fulfils their requirements, the better your game will be.
The first core component we are discussing here, is all about emotions. In order to understand this one we are going to ask the following questions to us when we design the game:
" Is the user feeling surprised after that plot twist? " , or
" is the player terrified ? If so, is he going to keep playing or stop the game? ".
As you can see the emotional value in a game is just how good the game itself is at triggering these emotions in the player while he is playing! If he is playing a horror-survival game without screaming or without having his face covered in sweat and his heart keeps pumping faster, that means that the game has Excellent Emotional Value. We can say the exact same thing for an RPG game when the player is on the verge of defeat while suddenly he gains a superpower out of nowhere and his avatar becomes cooler and cooler and the player is having goosebumps and when his avatar is performing some super-crazy move that instantly defeats his opponents, the player pukes rainbows! Perfect Emotional value. Other examples of feelings would be A) Crying out of sorrow / Happiness , B) Laughter , C) Terror , D) Surprise , so on and so forth.
A game that is supposed to do such things and leaves the player out in the cold emotionless has no emotional value. To achieve that, concepts such as the game story, the character's background, the plot, or the whole feel of the game itself can aid you for that purpose.
**** Technology ****
The rest can not co-exist without the help of this little core component of a game. It's basically all the building blocks that bind them together. Programmers are feeling like home when talking about technology and basically on which platforms is the game built, or which tools they used to do so. Example questions:
" Which Game Engine was used to build this game? Was it a 2D/3D, pseudo3D (isometric)? Are we using Unity3D , Unreal Engine, Gamebryo, Cryengine, or are we going for a custom built one?" ,
"Which programming language are we going to build this game with? Is it going to be cross-platform or platform-specific? ",
" Will the game have multiplayer? If so, which socket implementation would suffice? What are the server requirements? ",
" Is my game an online game? So, do we need to build an online platform for registration? ",
many questions arrise, when it comes to technology. If you can overcome these, your only limitation would be your imagination.
**** Educational Value ****
That's my personal favorite on games. As said before, every game can subsequently train you. Other games enhance your memory. Others your imagination or your creativity. Others test your intellect. Others want to put your problem-solving skills on a rampage. Others just want to increase your reflexes. Others teach you English, basic calculus, physics, biology, chemistry, and history! So, games are not just here to substitute the Teaching and Learning experience. They ARE a learning experience of beyond-your-imagination educational value. Some examples that would fit here:
"Pokemon games : The ability to recall 350 names and images along with 1500 special abilites at the same time!"
"Dungeons and Dragons games : Insane mathematical skills, theory of probability, statistics and imagination!"
"Call of Duty games : Extraordinary enhancement in reflexes , and visual skills!"
"Role Playing Games with a deep story : These are THE English teachers, rich vocabulary through dialogs, feelings and build up your imagination!"
"Total War Games : Better, spherical perspective of historical events through playing. Are these games strategical or just another VLE and we just don't know that yet?"
"Spore : The core of biology and human evolution (Darwin Theory) and management."
"Strategy games : Teach the basics of time management, organisational skills and economics, spending policies and risk analysis, isn't that insane?"
"Chess : Improves logic and creativity, based on risk analysis and predictions, identification of patterns"
"Adventure Games : Others serious (Heavy Rain) and others funny (Sam & Max) they take your problem-solving skills to the next level... Literally. You either solve this problem in a logical or creative way, or you just rot in the same level forever. Heavy intellectual investment these games, folks."
"World of Warcraft : That's a marvellous learning gem! Communication skills? Check. Teamwork and Collaborative task promotion? Check. Bussiness Thinking? Check. Motivations? Check. Strategic Thinking? Check. Basic Economic and Barter skills? Check. Great promotion of personal effort? Check. Virtual representation of everyday real life? Check. Reflexes? Check. Seriously, this game should be World of Learncraft."
So, any game that would teach stuff to people without them noticing has great educational value.
**** Aesthetics ****
And by that we refer to two things: Design and Experience..!
The binding of assets together would be plain ol' design but if you throw in "interaction" then you have your experience! Aesthetics refer to the feel a player has when he is playing that game and how deeply he is emerged to it. It's a sibling concept of Emotional value, as the more emerged a player is in a game, the more he thinks, speaks and acts as his avatar (could be a character) the more he is certain to have the "experience". Experience refer to that essence that is engulfing the player as he plays. Just stop thinking when you play and enjoy it. Then, try to describe how you felt and what you went through, that's an experience. The overall design of the game improves that, and as such aesthetics are a core concept on their own. For example in a survival game like silent hill, that fog where you can't see much, further, but you CAN hear enemies coming to your way, and the absense of a GUI is really enhancing that experience, making you FEEL the game a bit more, thus emerging you and in the end making you tremble in fear, pausing the game briefly and then after a deep breath, you try to defeat your obscure opponent. Another example would be Little Big Planet, every level is created purely for fun, and for more than one player, surely you will start acting as the sackboy at some time and start yelling like a kid, hopping around your room and even making these weird gestures he can make with his hands. That's experience..! Something strong enough, to be memorized, and recalled thereafter. The essesnce of what you felt.
**** Challenge ****
Allright, so all games can be fun, creative, scary, etc etc, but what's their difficulty? Is it enough for the player? Or maybe is it too much for the player? That's a very tough call, as designers often face this problem:
"Should i make the game easy, the player will fall asleep or even bore to death. Should i make the game tough, his family members, girlfriend, and neighbours are in danger, as well as the game itself. How can i close that gap between easy and difficult, where a player may just call a game "Challenging" , rather than totally unbeatable or a piece of cake?"
The way to overcome the problem is through constant playtesting. Ask around. Think about the opinions of others, they seem pretty important. That's how to describe the concept of challenge in a game though. You don't want it to be either very easy or very hard. The games that can overcome this are games that utilize the DDA technique. (DDA = Dynamic Difficulty Adjustment)
For example:
"Devil May Cry : If you die more than 3 times on the first 3 missions, the player is prompted to reduce the difficulty from NORMAL to EASY."
" Elder Scrolls Games : The enemies' difficulty is scalable along with your character's level. The same difficulty your character will face a rat with his fists when he is lv 1 will be almost the same difficulty when he is lv50 fighting an elder dragon "
Also, Challenge aspect concerns whether a game can give enough challenge to a player or not. For example, when you know that you have to farm X mobs for Y minutes in the Z area, in order to defeat boss W, you can't say that's a challenge. However, when the Z area has X mobs that don't respawn or if they appear at Y time of the day *without the player knowing* , adds some level of challenge. Even worse would be the fact that the boss would scale his damage levels based on your "kills". And also, games that seem to be linear don't encourage challenge, rather they make it even more dull. Having many ways to do somethings, but keeping them hidden from the player can be quite a challenge.
Two examples i can remember :
"In final fantasy X, there is a specific boss that has thousands of hit points, can one-shoot your players, based on chance and your party has got to be very strong in order to defeat him. One more thing. He is a zombie. One way to defeat him would be to either hack his health away slowly and trying to keep your team up, OR you could just use the "Resurrection" ability on him, and he dies instantly, something NOT profound to the player, but if he gets the hint that "Death" spells kill "Living" opponents, hopefully, he can figure out that "Bring-me-to-life" spells can kill "Dead" opponents."
"Again, in the same game, this one time you fight a huge robot. You could surely hack his health away, but if you happen to have electricity spells on you, you can finish him off WAY quicker. It's something that you have to find out on your own, that mechanic units just take more damage from electricity than any other kind of damage. There is also a third way to take care of that enemy by doing something that's really hard to notice, but once you do, it becomes pretty obvious : Hit the enviromental obstacles, forcing an explosion, destroying the very bridge he is standing, knocking him out of the battle. "
The aspect of challenge troubles most designers and is really something to be examined much more thoroughly in the games, as most companies often invest in aesthetics, story, experience and such, rather than difficulty or challenge.
That pretty much covers the anatomy of a game. Not all games have all these 5 aspects enhanced or taken care of at a perfect grade, but the better your game fulfils their requirements, the better your game will be.
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