1. Eriq Muhammad Adams J. eriq.adams@ub.ac.ideriq.adams@ub.ac.id | http://eriq.lecture.ub.ac.idhttp://eriq.lecture.ub.ac.id Informatics University of Brawijaya

2. Making games fun Adams & Rollings  50% Avoiding errors--bad programming, bad music and sound, bad art, bad user-interfaces, bad game design. "Basic competence will get you up to average."  35% Tuning and polishing--attention to detail  10% Imaginative variations--level design  4% True design innovation--the game's original idea and subsequent creative decisions  1% An unpredictable, unananalyzable, unnamable quality-- "luck, magic, or stardust"

3. Making games fun Adams & Rollings  50% Avoiding errors  35% Tuning and polishing  10% Imaginative variations  4% True design innovation  1% Luck, magic, or stardust Implications: 95%  A well-tuned game with no major problems and interesting levels but no new ideas could be 95% fun. 4%  A novel game idea that is (very) poorly executed could be only 4% fun.

4. Finding the fun factor Adams & Rollings  Gameplay comes first--give people fun things to do  Get a feature right or leave it out  Design around the player  Know your target audience  Abstract or automate parts that aren't fun  Be true to your vision  Strive for harmony, elegance, and beauty

5. The hierarchy of challenges Adams & Rollings  Complete the game  Finish a mission  Finish a sub-mission  Finish an atomic challenge  Player will usually be thinking about current atomic challenge.  Awareness of higher-level challenges creates anticipation.

6. Challenges  Victory conditions and atomic challenges are usually explicit.  Intermediate challenges are usually implicit.  Players get tired of just following instructions.  "The most interesting games offer multiple ways to win" - - Adams & Rollings, p. 284  More than one way to accomplish intermediate challenges  Capture the flag (p. 284): defensive approach, aggressive approach, stealth approach

7. Reality Check  Almost no one makes a living designing games  Most who do work for a game company, not freelance  You could spend the same time as profitably by picking up bottles and cans for deposits and recycling!  Most publishers don’t make a lot, either—and it’s risky  Many publishers exist largely to self-publish their own games

8. Reality Check 2  So if you design games, do it because you like to, or because you must, not because you want to make money  Alan R. Moon, two German “Games of the Year”, would have had to get part-time job if not for Ticket to Ride winning  Recognize that your “great idea” is probably not that great, not that original, and not that interesting to other people  Finally, it’s extra-hard to get into video game design

9. OK, How much do you make?  In my experience, royalties are a percentage of the publisher’s actual revenue  5% is most common  Publisher sells to distributor at 40% of list price or less; distributor sells to retailer for 10% more  Internet sales are becoming significant—then publisher makes 100%  Shipping costs may be subtracted from revenue

10. Royalty example  $40 list game, 5% of $16 = 80 cents  Per 1,000 copies, $800  $20 game, $400 per thousand  Wargame typical printrun is a few thousand  “Euro” games might go up to 10,000  Most games sell poorly after first six months, most are not reprinted  German “Game of the Year” might sell 250,000 or more, after award

11. What about the biggies?  In general, the really big companies have staff to design their games  Many will not even accept outside submissions  Virtually all will require you sign a statement relieving them of all liabilities  At least one only works through agents  In USA, Hasbro owns all the traditional boardgame publishers such as Parker Brothers, Avalon Hill

12. Do I need an agent?  Whatever for?  Yet, I did for my first game back in the 70s, in England  Unfamiliarity  I could meet and talk with him locally (London)  Shady “agents” and “evaluators” abound  Don’t ever get an agent who wants a fee “up front”

13. Practice and get others to evaluate  Diplomacy variants and D&D material in my case  Post such things on your or other Web sites  Analogy:  Jerry Pournelle (SF writer) says be willing to throw away your first million words on the road to becoming successful SF writer  Similarly, be willing to make lots of games/mods that don’t make any money on the way to making (some) money as a game designer

14. Intellectual Property Rights  Ideas are not important, and not valued!  Ideas are a dime a dozen: execution is what counts  Copyright now inherent  Forget that “mail to myself” idea  Registered copyright makes suits much easier to pursue and more remunerative  Ideas cannot be protected, only expression of an idea

15. The idea is not the game  Novices tend to think the idea is the important thing  Ideas are “a dime a dozen”. It’s the execution, the creation of a playable game, that’s important  The “pyramid” of game design:  Lots of people get ideas  Fewer try to go from general idea to a specific game idea  Fewer yet try to produce a prototype  Fewer yet produce a decently playable prototype  Very few produce a complete game  And very, very few produce a good complete game

16. Licensed Properties  Tie-ins with movies, comics, books, etc.?  Much too expensive  Not even worth the IP owner’s time to do the processing for a boardgame—there’s not enough money in it

17. Submitting Games  Read the publisher’s requirements  Some require you to sign a form and seal it in an envelope  Some won’t accept unsolicited proposals at all—this is common  Expect it to take a long time  Expect to get rejected  May have nothing to do with how good your game is  Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings rejected many times

18. October 12, 2015 Two forms of game design  Video games and non-video games  Scale is different  “big time” video games are produced by dozens of people, cost millions of dollars  “big time” non-video games produced by a few people with budgets in the thousands  Yet a few sell more than a million copies

19. Prototypes—”testing is sovereign”  To best improve a game, you must have a playable prototype  Firaxis’ Sid Meier-Civilization series, Pirates  The sooner Firaxis got a playable version of Civ 4, the more they could learn  A playable prototype includes “artwork” or physical components, and rules or programming  The rules for a non-video game are the equivalent of the programming of a video game  Programming must be precise and is very time consuming (game engines may help in the future)  A playable set of rules can be much less precise, relying on the mind(s) of the designer(s), and notes  It’s also much easier to change the non-video prototype to test different approaches  It’s much easier to produce the physical prototype, than to create the artwork for a video game

20. Learning to design  So we can have a playable, testable non-video game much more quickly than a computer game of similar scope or subject  Consequently, it’s much easier to learn game design with physical games than with video games!  Kevin O’Gorman’s concurrence

21. Art vs. Science  As in many other creative endeavors, there are two ways of approach  These are often called Romantic and Classical, or Dionysian and Apollonian  Or: art and science  Some people design games “from the gut”  Others like to use system, organization, and (when possible) calculation  Mine is the “scientific” approach; and that is more likely to help new designers  Game design is 10% art and 90% science

22. Who is the audience?  A game must have an audience  What are the game-playing preferences of that audience  Short or long?  Chance or little chance?  Lots of story or little story?  “Ruthless” or “nice”?  Simple or complex?  There is no “perfect” game

23. Genre  Video games are more limited by genre than non-video games  Most video games and many others fall into a clear genre category  Each genre has characteristics that come to be “expected” by the consumer  Much easier to market a video game with a clear genre

24. How to design games  Limits lead to a conclusion:  Characteristics of the audience (target market)  “People don’t do math any more”  Genre limitations  Production-imposed limitations  “Board cannot be larger than X by Y”  Self-imposed limitations  “I want a one-hour trading game”

25. Publisher-imposed limits  Some are publisher preference, some are market- dictated  For example: many publishers want nothing that requires written records in a game  Another example: consumers strongly prefer strong graphics, whether in a video or a non-video game

26. Self-imposed limits  You have your own preferences  Don’t design a game you don’t like to play yourself  If you don’t like it, why should anyone else?  Limits/constraints improve and focus the creative process  Great art and music is much more commonly produced in eras of constraints, rather than eras without constraints  Example of a limit: I want to produce a two-player game that lasts no more than 30 minutes

27. Do it!  Too many people like to think about designing so much, they never actually do it  Until you have a playable prototype, you have nothing  (Which is what makes video game design so difficult)  It doesn’t have to be beautiful, just usable

28. Design vs. “development”  “Development” has two meanings  In video games, it means writing the program  In non-video, development (often by a person other than the designer) sets the finishing touches on a game, but may include significant changes  Development takes longer than design, in either case

29. The designer’s game vs. the game that’s published  Video games are often overseen by the publisher, who is paying the bills; so it is modified to suit as it is developed  Non-video games are often unseen by the publisher until “done”; some publishers then modify them, often heavily

30. Self Publishing  Do you want to design, or do you want to be a businessperson?  But often it’s the only way your game will be published  Most self-publishers will lose money NOT counting the time they spend  Virtually all lose money if you count the time they put into the business  See http://www.costik.com/selfpub.html

31. Brief “What’s Important” on the business side of game design  Most people in the business are honest and try to do good  It’s too small a business to get tricky, word gets around  It really is a small business, and mistakes are common  Barring long apprenticeship and great good luck, you won’t make a living at it

32. Resources about the business  Game Inventor’s Guidebook by Brian Tinsman  “All about publishing” thread on ConsimWorld  Lots of books about video game publishing  Come to my seminar on Saturday at 2 about process of game design

33. Types of Game Design Docs  Concept Document  Proposal Document  Technical Specification  Game Design Document  Level Designs

34. Concept Document  Used to explore game idea in more detail  Often used as a proposal within an organization  Developed by designer or visionary  A short sales pitch: 1-3 pages  May have no art, or amateur art  Many ideas never get farther than this

35. Concept Document (cont.)  Must include:  Intro  Description  Key features  Genre, spin, flavor  Platform(s) / market data  May also include:  Background / License info  Concept art

36. High Concept  The key sentence that describes your game  MUST get the concept across concisely and quickly  If you can't, it may be too complicated to sell

37. High Concept (cont.)  Not so good:  "MindRover is a game in which players build and program robotic vehicles to compete in a variety of challenges including battles, races, puzzles, and sports."  Better:  "MindRover is like Battlebots... but with brains."

38. Proposal Document  Used to get a deal  Shown to publishers and 3rd parties  Enough detail to show that the proposal is viable: 5-50 pages  Sales oriented  Big picture  Polished!

39. Proposal Document (cont.)  Must include:  Revised concept  Market analysis  Technical analysis  Schedule  Budget  Risks  Cost and revenue projections  Pessimistic, likely, optimistic  Art

40. Technical Specification (cont.)  Must include:  Tooling  Art / Music / Sound / Production pipeline  Technology detail  Platform & portability issues  Networking or special tech  Server details  Software engineering info  Major design elements  Key areas of technical risk  Alternatives to risky or expensive sections

41. Game Design Document  Functional spec: The 'What' of the design  Describes the player’s experience and interactions in detail  Could be quite long, several hundred pages, but "enough" is the goal.  Artistic feel  Owned by the game designer  A living document  "The Bible"

42. Game Design Document (cont.)  Must haves  Game mechanics  User Interface  Visuals  Audio  Story (if any)  Level Specs

43. Interactive fiction A way to try out some principles of game design with relatively little overhead. Text game engines: Informhttp://www.inform-fiction.org TADShttp://www.tads.org Adrifthttp://www.adrift.org.uk

44.  New Riders - Andrew Rollings and Ernest Adams on Game Design  New Riders - Chris Crawford on Game Design  http://jmonkeyengine.org/wiki/doku.php/jme3 http://jmonkeyengine.org/wiki/doku.php/jme3  Worcester Polytechnic Institute – Game Design Documents  Dr. Lewis Pulshiper – Getting Started in Game Design References