Casual Game Design Designing Play for the Gamer in All of Us - Sorting

Sorting

(Gregory Trefry, 101- 127)

We’re such experts at parsing information it’s no wonder we enjoy games that explicitly involve sorting. They enable us to practice a natural skill; they challenge our ability; they even help make us better at reading the world. 

Solitaire & Patience - sorting abstract symbols relevent only to the game

Drop 7 (Iphone)  - tiles numbers 1-7, goals is to organize them into order

Scrable, Bookworm & Wurdle - build words out of letters but sorting them

Sorting makes for natural casual gameplay as the player already possesses the necessary mental skill, Read - Parse & act upon information.

 Sorting extends the pleasure of matching. It takes the pleasure of pure matching and adds the idea of distinguishing and sequencing.

Managing Notes

Casual Game Design:Designing Play For The Gamer In All Of Us.

Gregory Trefry (p 139 - 154)

Fine line between work and play. Some games feature tasks we naturally enjoy but many games ask us to perform tasks that at first glance seem to be like playing with a excel spreadsheet.

Non digital games can only have a certain amount of things to manage at any given point as the players have a limit on how many they can manage. To many and the players will be become overwhelmed.

Video games have computers do a lot of the calculations for the player which opens up the opertunity for more variations of gameplay. RTS games ask the player to manage multiple variables at a time but are limited by how many the player can handle, where as turn based games can have many more as there is no thinking time.

Diner Dash - Timer management for each custormer, simple clicking input in the correct order to complete tasks.

Cake Mania - Timer based customers (same as Diner Dash) but adds in matching as you need to cook the correct food type for each customer then take it to them.

Managing Attention

Turn based and real time strategy games ask you to manage your own attention. They throw as many elements as they can at you and see at what point you simply cant keep up.

Insaniquarium - Players overwhelm themselves by the more fish they have, they are forced to manage each mechanic that the fish brings with it which means the player has control of how hard the game is to manage depending on how many fish they buy.

Seeking Notes

Come Out Come Out, Where Ever You Are

Craig Brannon - Casual Connect Fall 2009 (p 36-38)

A clear and crisp art style can help aid users in their recognition of items. Hiding objects in area's that are too dark is a mistake that will aggravate players. Items should be cleverly hidden but no unfairly so.

Placing items with items of similar shape or colour can camouflage the item without hiding to much of the time and still making it see able and recognizable.

Possible hint feature for games that have a limited amount of time or tries to find a object.

Timer modes possible with hidden object games but there should be a choice weither the user wants a timer based game or a relaxed non timer game.

Cut scene's can be used and usually are used in modern games to prgress the sotry forward but must be long enough to tell alittle story but not to long as to bore the player or make them antsy. Adding skip option for cut scene's is a good way to keep players happy.

Casual Game Design: Designing Play for the Gamer in All of Us - Seeking

Gregory Trefry (p 129 - 137)

As games, they generally lack strategic depth. Instead of developing strategy, you find yourself reduced to squinting and cursing as you scan through a morass of illogical objects strewn about the game area.

The rules for a seek-and-find game are even simpler. You can boil them down to one rule: Find all of the listed objects before time runs out.

There can be real joy in this discovery, especially if the object is hard to find. You get the same feeling when you find your misplaced car keys or discover your sunglasses on top of your head after 10 minutes scouring your apartment. But you can’t deny that a lot of people enjoy the feeling. 

eventually, the games will evolve to a place where the players can take multiple logical paths to the same conclusion. They will be able to find a flashlight or a book of matches to find the light switch. This introduction of more varied choice will strengthen the gameplay hooks.

This dual processing will offer a more engaging experience. It will also allow the players to feel clever, creating what they believe are their own solutions

 

Designing Play For The Gamer In All Of Us - Matching

Chapter 4

~Matching 79-100  ~

Games are essentially complex systems of patterns, our brains crave pattern matching. Pieces that behave in unique but prescribed manners as they move within the rules of the game. Fun is formed as you figure out the patterns and master them.

Matching and sorting games are a simple form of pattern matching which makes them accessible and well suited to casual games. Players engage with the game but reading the game area and discerning how to chunk the noise into more organized patterns.

Bejeweled : The Casual Idea

Normal Mode :

• Limited movement - only able to progress if there is a correct move (creating a matching 3 or more)
• Game end - Game ends if there is no moves to match
• Anxiety - Struggle to find the match while dealing with limited movement
• Liberation -  Sometimes hard to see matching but find resolve in the fact the game has not ended (meaning there is at least 1 solution on the game board)
• No Strategy - You match as best you can in that moment (Casual game play)
• Hints cost points, Points lead to the next level (board reset). Possible to plan a few moves ahead to ensure matches can be made - randomness of dropping gems make it hard to plan to far ahead (2-3 moves at most)
• Due to sorting the board into matching colours, some gems will become impossible to match. This builds tension into the game as there are fewer and fewer choices for the user to take the longer the game goes on.

Timed :

• Timer and Points are the same thing. The more matches (points) you make the more time you get, which leads onto the next level. Each level the timer depletes faster and requires more matches (points) to achieve the next level. This adds more challenge to the game and possible win scenario to the game where as normal is just to see how high a score you can achieve.

The game does not allow a wrong move, and there is no punishment if a wrong move is taken. This keeps the game from degrading into an annoying activity while at the same time not turning it into a long-term strategy game.

As the game designer, you are always looking for new, hopefully natural-feeling arbitrary constraints to impose on activities.

Easy mechanic to pick up and master within a few minutes of playing the game, where as hardcore players mostly believe that mastering a mechanic should be hard to attain.

Match making games are flexible and can be integrated into other game mechanics, this is because matching is a very clear goal and gives feedback for each move.

Fewer Mechanics, Better Game

by John Rose

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/3621/fewer_mechanics_better_game.php

 Sandbox games with a lot of mechanics can become more like life than a game. Games are systems to be understood, fun is learning and the payoff is in our influence over it.

The Play Aesthetic 

 A works aesthetic reflects the sensibilities of its creator. When judged by a sensitive audience, the aesthetic must always display a great sense of cohesion. Great artists are careful not to include something that just doesn't belong.

 

Designers must engineer their play aesthetics in the same manner. The overall look and feel should be something palpable. If part of a game feels "tacked on," the designers have violated this rule

 

Players must think that they sufficiently understand the system of the game world. Therefore we must make our systems strong enough to be understandable.

 

Play Your Own Way

Possibly more mechanics than the player will explore in a single play through.

John Rose argues that a few well developed mechanics in a strong play aesthetic will always be more enjoyable. The more mechanics the less structured the game system becomes - turnings into sandbox

To many choices can confuse and irritate the player.

 

Trimming The Fat

it's important to settle on the game's overall feel before deciding on any game mechanics. It's not acceptable to add features and make sure the resulting play aesthetic is okay. Instead, we must engineer the correct mechanics to fit a certain feel.

There's no reason to add mechanics that don't appeal to the game's demographic

 

Feature creep is more evident and dangerous in game mechanics than any other area of a game. Everyone agrees that mechanics require constant perfecting before they feel right.

 

Getting the Most from Mechanics

We like to imagine that our audience will invest countless hours in our games but most players will only experience the game's core concepts, and everything else is effectively useless. We simply can't afford to pander to the few when the mainstream is unsatisfied.

 

It's well known that if players aren't confident with a game mechanic, they simply won't use it. They demand a set of influences that they understand.

Human minds can only manage a small number of choices at any one time (7) and game mechanics are no exception.

 

Players should never be punished for failing a secondary task, and only a few mechanics can represent the primary thrust of any game.

 

For a mechanic to be completely successful, a game should fully exhaust its possibilities for fun. 

 

 

 

Casual Game Design: Designing Play for the Gamer in All of Us - Part 2

Play Is The Thing

51-79

Identifying playful activities, picking the fun ones out and building games around them. Play is an act in which we we learn, understand and interact with other people or things in the world. Play is argued as an elemental form of interaction and a contributor to culture. Play used as experimentation and socialization. There are no explicit rules to play, but most people develop a good sense for when the lines are crossed.

The more formalized that etiquette and those guidelines become, the closer play inches toward structured games. Understanding how to tap into that primal urge to play gives game designers powerful tools with which to engage players

The Liminal Moment

There is a liminal moment in play when a playful activity transforms into a game. The play provides the spark of fun. The game provides the framework for long-term interaction. It’s the game designer’s job to usher the player through these liminal moments, to transform moments of free play into structured game.

For game designers looking to build casual game experiences, the closer they can keep their game to that liminal moment, the better.

The Rush To Complexity

The adding of new or existing mechanics into a already existing genre to create a new and interesting experience to the user but still holds the fundamental core mechanics from its predecessors. The starting point for the mechanic or how the game reacts to the user would similar to something you may of learnt or seen as a child (FPS - Water gun fights)

The Push Toward Simplicity

Older games can become casual compared to the new ones that add more complexity to keep the players interested.

Casual games are stripped down to the core mechanic and the fun aspect of it instead of piling on added complexity. Eventually it may demand to evolve in complexity to match grown skill and understand of the game.

Patterns Of Play

Attunement play: This very simple interaction produces measurable brain activity and powerful emotional connections. A mother makes eye contact with her child, and the child smiles. The mother smiles back, reinforcing the baby’s smile and bringing the two into attunement. 

Body play and movement: We understand much of the world through our own bodies. From babies flailing their arms as they learn motor control, to kids tossing snowballs at each other, to adults learning the foxtrot, we explore our world and simultaneously entertain ourselves and explore our limits through movement. 

Object play: Much of our play is inspired by objects. We pick them up, shake them, turn them over, spin them, throw them. Through these interactions, we explore the limits of the object. How much stress can it take before it breaks? How far will it fly with a good heave? Babies do it. Grown-ups do it. Object play can also lead to problem solving as you learn to take apart an object and put it back together. 

Social play: Social play runs the gamut from rough-housing to more complex rituals like the Dozens, in which participants trade ribald insults. Animals also engage in social play. This play serves important socialization and cultural functions. 

Imaginative and pretend play: Playing house and other games of pretend may seem like child’s play, but it does wonders for our creativity, at a young age and even later in life. It also helps kids build their own mental models of the world. 

Storytelling-narrative play: Stories are one of the atomic units through which we organize our understanding of the world around us. We group our lives and our days into stories about the characters and events of our lives. Shaping them into stories helps give them meaning and lets us make sense of the random events of life. We largely learn to create those stories through play. We take on roles, we make up tall tales and we share them with each other.

Transformative-integrative and creative play: We use our fantasy play to spark creativity and imagine new possibilities for our play. We imagine all of the different things we might do with a ball and test them out. Sometimes we use these ideas in our lives outside of play as well. Group brainstorming often takes on elements of creative play.

 Tapping Play for Games

Useful ways to think about game design:

• Physical play - Jumping, kicking, hitting, touching etc, can be restructures in new ways to get the player a new context to master.

• Playing with others - Lying, accusing, betting, bluffing, bidding, joking, gossiping, comparing, copying, repeating, guessing, swarming.

• Playing with things - finding fun in the simplest thing helps reveal in our discoveries about how it behaves.

• Playacting -  playing as someone else, provides immersion into the game and promotes exploration into the story or theme. Extends outside of game, into such things as acting.

• Daredevilry or pushing your luck - Pushing the limits, testing your abilities and appetite for risk. Joy of preforming a simple action - these activity's offer the trill of seeing just what you can get away with.

Defining Games

Caillois's definition of play:-

Free: in which playing is not obligatory; if it were, it would at once lose its attractive and joyous quality as diversion;

Separate: circumscribed within limits of space and time, defined and fixed in advance;

Uncertain: the course of which cannot be determined, nor the result attained beforehand, and some latitude for innovations being left to the player’s initiative; 

Unproductive: creating neither goods, nor wealth, nor new elements of any kind and, except for the exchange of property among the players, ending in a situation identical to that prevailing at the beginning of the game;  

Governed by rules: under conventions that suspend ordinary laws, and for the moment establish new legislation, which alone counts; Make-believe: accompanied by a special awareness of a second reality or of a free unreality, as against real-life

Casual Game Design:Designing Play For The Gamer In All Of Us

Designing the Levels 

pages 41-50

Will most likely have to make level design's with minimal tools while waiting for the game to be fleshed out. Often they will have to be thrown away as new features get introduced. doing this can help you understand tthe potential and limitations of the game system.

Balancing learning curves to certain target audience can be hard and you may have to cater for many different types of players.

General guidelines for designing levels:

• Be Empathetic 

level design should not be a struggle between designer and player. No, the game designer should offer a helping hand to guide the players through the level, leading them toward enjoyment.

 

You need be able to put yourself in the position of the players and see the game through their eyes. They don’t know all of the tricks and secrets hidden in the level.  

 

What would the players like to do?

They want to win. Your challenge is letting players do that without  letting them see that you 

let them win. 

 

• If You Can’t Beat Your level, Then It’s Waaaaaaaay Too Hard 

As a general rule of thumb for casual games, I feel a designer should be able to beat early 

levels in a game with one arm tied behind his or her back.

You have to be able to play through your level from beginning to end and prove it’s winnable.

 

Don’t tune the level for your own enjoyment. Tune it for the player’s enjoyment.  

 

• Design For The General Audience, Not The Hardcore  

Design your levels to please and thrill the general audience with intermediate skill levels. This is the audience that will make your game a success. You want them to be happy.

The hardcore players always have the loudest voices: they are a minority. 

 

• Ease Players Into The Game 

Ease players into the game. Introduce one element at a time. If your game has a lot of 

power-ups, dole them out one at a time.

 

Enable players to master the different components. 

 

Since players must spend so much energy learning the game in the first few levels, don’t 

overwhelm them by making them learn tricky levels too. 

 

• Don’t Forget To Challenge Players 

Without a bit of challenge, the game will lose all sense of vitality, devolving to no more than an exercise with some very idiosyncratic constraints

Dynamic difficulty adjustments

• Build Levels Around A Central Concept 

A level is like a great pop song. It has a central melody that you can build variations around but underlying the whole level is one catchy hook or idea

Focusing on one idea will help you find the core element of fun in the level and let you polish that to a shine

• Teach Players To Play The Level 

If your level is all about a particular type of move, give your players space to try out the move and learn to master it before placing them squarely into danger. Otherwise they will repeatedly die and get frustrated.
  
Setup general patterns and rules that players can learn to“read.”If your game requires a particular type of wall jump, set up similar structures for the wall jumps in the easy and hard parts. 

• Give Players Room To Explore 

Completing the level should require the player to interact with the new feature in some basic and straightforward way.

Forcing them to use it will help push them to use the feature and break them out of their established playing pattern
  
In the next level, use the feature again, but open the play up to let the players explore other aspects of the feature. If it’s a power-up, give them the chance to explore the different facets and ways they could use the power-up.

• Occasionally Break Your Own Rules (Carefully) 

Once you have set up patterns in your game, you can break your own rules. Do this with care. 

 

You don’t want to call into doubt the entire system of meaning you have created for players

 

• Create A Plan 

Lay out where you think you will introduce different concepts, power-ups, enemies and content to the game. Make sure this level plan fits with the over-all narrative and goals of the game.

• Vary Your Levels 

Where possible, get multiple designers to contribute levels to the game. Different designers inject fresh perspectives into the game, with each designer finding new ways to use the level variable tools to create a slightly different experience.

One lead designer should set some basic parameters and target goals for the all levels that the individual level designers follow.
 

• Refine, Play and Refine 

This is the most important part of level design. Sometimes this will require you take a break from the level for a day or so then come back to it and try it again. A little distance can you give you some much needed perspective on your work.

• Playtest 

Get outsiders to look at it and carefully note how they play it, where they have fun and where they don’t. Then modify the level to draw out the fun parts and reduce the not-so-fun parts.

More Notes :

Practice is the most important part. If you want to be a game designer, you have to start making games however you can. 

The more obvious and intuitive your rules, the better casual games they will make. Plus, some of these activities may even make good video games.

 

Finished, but not happy!

So I've decided to drop the project a day early because I want to get things sorted before next week. There's a few details missing that are in the concept but overall its not a bad looking representation in my opinion.

Here's mine vs the concept :-

 So i kept the shape of the room and scale of the objects within it pretty much spot on to the concept, the perspective is obviously different and theres 4 main pieces missing from mine (pack of smokes on bar, light beam front right, rope across stair entrance and napkins on back table).

I did decided to do warmer colours for mine as I felt the concept looks very cold despite having warmish lighting but still didn't feel very bar/tavern like to me.

I wish I could of done more and actually finished it to a good standard but I didn't manage my time very well and I was learning new things (mostly around texturing) every day which slowed things down alot at times.

Oh well...There's always next time.

1 Week Remaining!

So I haven't bothered updating the blog while doing this challenge in the last 2 weeks...sorry about that :P

It's been going really fast lately, Thankfully most of the scene is 2-3 different textures so it was fairly easy to get most of the larger assets done.

I've got a pretty decent workflow going aswell. It could do with the refinement but its working ok for now anyways. I basically have all the models setup in place on my highpoly scene with no textures, most of which have already been broken up into there own sections so I can just grab it and export it.

At that point I fix the pivot to help me place the assets correctly again, continued by unwrapping, baking out an AO map ( pure white ambient colour with 2 skylights) then render out a wireframe UV map and a solid color UV map.

Stick the AO, Lines & solid maps into PS. Lines on Screen overlay with 80 opacity, cut out the solid sections for the solid UV map then stick the AO map on multiply between them. (LINES ->AO->SOLID)

This means I can work below the AO, lines and cut out solid UV ontop. This makes texturing really clean and fast. To get the normal maps I've been using Ndo2 which is basically crazy bump but much easier to use in my opinion. I did use the normal maps to get spec maps for some assets but during recent texturing I've decided to make the spec maps myself instead. This is mainly down to some of the assets having multiple texture types therefor I had to adjust the spec & gloss levels by hand.

Here's a pic of what I have atm. Almost finished with modelling and texturing, lighting still needs alot of work though.

First Week Over!

So today marks the end of the first week, leaving me a mere 3 weeks & 1 day left of the challenge.

Despite getting a decent start with the block out and not having to adjust scales to much, I still feel behind slightly..somehow. Even though lot of other people are still on blokout stage and I'm almost finished with my full high poly models, I know texturing is going to take me at least 2 weeks, possible the full 3. This doesn't leave me much time to get lighting setup and change stuff to get a awesome render for the 30th.

Need to stop slacking off watching youtube videos or playing SC2.

Ah well, high poly assets at around 70% - 80% complete and all the mesh's are clean & ready for unwrapping. Hopefully won't take me to long to finish the last of them sometime today / tonight.

Heres a shot of what I got at the moment :

Progress!

So I've spent abit of time on the new project. Got most of the scene blocked out plus some details and now building up the high poly version using the block out as reference and some bit of it as a base. This way I'm keeping everything to ruffly the right scale and shape just with extra details.

I'm also setting myself some ground rules otherwise I could just go all out crazy with the scene.

No assets larger than 500 polys
No texture larger than 1024x1024
Diffuse, Normals, Specular & Gloss maps allowed.

This is basically the same as the 2nd year module they had last year but they we're only allowed a diffuse for each assets but I wanted to try out Ndo2 and get some more detail while using low ish poly models so I changed the rules alittle.

I'll currently in the process of building up the high poly assets but I was starting to get tired of modelling last night so decided to jump into PS and texture a relitively small asset and trying out Ndo2 for the first time.

This is what I got atm, still needs some touching up but happy so far.

Ignore the poly count (top left), that's the whole scene. This asset is only 350 polys but has a Diffuse, Normals, Specular & Gloss map at 1024x1024

Starting The Poly Count Challenge

So its Sept 1st, exacly 1 month till we're back at uni and also the start of a new Poly Count Noob Challenge. You can find the thread HERE

Unfortunately the concept I thought was going to be picked didn't which means I have that concept full blocked out for no reason but never mind. I guess its better this way because now I can see how fast my workflow is compared to others as we all started today.

The concept chosen was this

I was unable to get started till late in the day due to various reasons but I've managed to get a decent enough start I think. Half of it is currently blocked off at the moment but I may add alittle more before I hit the hay. Piping is going to be a nightmare as I suck at it, not to mention the spiral stairs that seem to be abit wonky from the concept.

My current progress (Day 1)

Plan for the next few days is to get this blocked off completely, export it into UDK so I can check the scaling and what not then maybe start looking at making the assets and learning how to handpaint...sigh

Back & Noob 3D Environment for Polycount

Hey all.

Sorry its been awhile but its been summer and all so not really been thinking about the blog much in all honesty.

I've been doing a fair amount of 3D stuff over the holidays and learnt a ton of stuff I'll be able to take into next year. Notably not a huge sum of knowledge compared to what alot of 3D artists out there know but I like to think I'm on the right track.

At the start of the holidays my main focus was primarily baking normal maps which also lead me to AO maps and then onto a better understanding of specular & gloss maps. Still feel alittle shakey on baking high poly mesh's onto low poly in 3DS Max but I'm capable enough to do simple geometry objects like crates, barrels etc. Have yet to try on a complex model which needs to be exploded but I'm sure I'll get around to that soon.

While practicing my baking skills I've come to understand alot more about unwrapping, being more optimal with the UV space and making sure seams are in the right places E.g not broken into a million pieces, hiding them from view if possible and  splitting smoothing groups for normals. Minimal to no stretching and normalizing sections to match has also helped to make my texturing look much better. I'm fairly happy thus far with what I've learned and looking forward to progressing alot more over the next year or so before I start considering internships.

Couple screenshots of a few things I made for practice.
 

Trying my hand at alittle level design. Simple 3DS Max render with water & lights.

 

Got the idea for this house after playing the new Van Helsing game from Neocore. 1.3k polys (2500ish tris) & 1024 diffuse only. 3DS Max render.

 This was a concept we we're given at the start of last year as a test which I never finished so thought I'd go back and do it. Made for a RTS game (think civilizations or similar).

Challenge ACCEPTED!...maybe

As the title suggested, I'm currently considering the Monthly Noob Challenge on the Poly Count forums as my next project. They say its for noobs but some of this months stuff is totally amazing, alteast compared to what I can do anyways. Never the less, I think this could be a good opportunity to experiment with what I've learned, build on it and learn new things with the feedback I would receive. This is primarily a environment contest but of course assets are apart of the environment so even if I can't rap my head around some crazy lighting effects and it looks horrible, atleast I've been able to practice asset modelling. Here's one of the concepts that alot, if not most people have voted for so far.

I've added some lines & silhouette's to help me understand the shapes and scaling if this concept is the chosen piece for the challenge.

Its pretty ruff ofcourse, just there for alittle guidance...after all, its called concept for a reason right? 

How to Write Rules

-{ Notes on Scott Jon Siegel }-

 The rules of a game are the most important aspect to convey to a player. In non-digital games, if the rules are not understood, the game can not be played.

  A player shouldn’t be questioning what something means, or unsure of how to interpret something (unless, of course this is intended). The writing of the rules is as crucial to the play experience as the design of the game itself.

Helpful tips to writing rules :-

1. If the game has a narrative tying the mechanics together, make that narrative clear immediately.
2. List the materials needed for the game next, followed by any pre-game instructions for setting up.  Add illustrations where needed if complex
3. Give the players the winning conditions first, what their objective is. This is because all other rules revolve around the winning condition
4. Explaining things that will happen most often in a game, and work your way through till the most unlikely thing. (General to specific)
5. Explain the least constricting rules before explaining the most constricting. Rules explained earlier become the primary rules, and the rules following are the instances and exceptions where the primary rules change or don't apply

Other points :-

•  Short sentences with low-level vocabulary
• illustrations where needed
• white space to break the text up (use bullet points & short paragraphs)

Written rules dont have to be written in a serious manner, the idea of your game is to be fun, so the rules can convey this (Ideally only if it fits into the theme of the game)

 -{ Notes on Jacob Davenport }-

 The rules create an early impression for the player, and poorly written rules will sour them on your game, your game lives or dies on the strength of the written rules.

 Explanatory writing :-

• Clarity
• Brevity
• Completeness 

   Humor can be used only if it helps teach the players the game, avoid all extra information that does not direct refer to the set rules in question. Stripping down the rules to the qualities above is difficult as they conflict with one another.

Add a summary prior to the rule listings. When done correctly the rules make cohesive sense, and experienced game players may even be able to predict what the rules will be based on the summary.

Well-written rules will anticipate the players questions and answer them as the player thinks of them. Reading your rules aloud to people helps bring out these common questions and helps you order your rules correctly.

Examples can help explain rules E.g illustrations & diagrams. You can make the examples of your rules a smaller size or italic so that players who understand the rule just explained can skip them. but anyone that does not can look back at the example.

Get other people to review your rule set as you are to close to your own game and writing to know if you have done a good job. Take notes on any confusion they have and have the courage to rewrite your rules completely when it seem necessary.

New & Old Journalism

New Vs Old

After our discussions in lecture about the pros and cons of both types of journalism we can to the realization that both are infact needed to really convey a game in today's markets, especially speaking for digital games.

New games journalism is best understood as being analogous to travel journalism we're the player/writer will write of their experiences withing the game, a story or event that had occurred giving the reader a sense of how the game plays.

Old game journalism is the specifics and details of the game. Such as the graphics, interface, controls and game play. All used together to analysis the game and usually score it in some way. You will be given solid , straight forward information about the game and possible a summary of the game narrative or background.

I personally found new game journalism very entertaining and a much easier read to follow. Being informative in in-depth game play from the writers point of view conveys what is possible within the game and how the game plays or feels like. This is a big factor for someone that might want to buy the game because we all want to know what we are buying before we do, try before you buy kind of thing.

Old journalism isn't going to give you the feel of the game nor tell you what may or may not happen within it but it does bring up some key points about the game in question that new journalism doesn't. Key specific designs within the game, statistics, overall score, a brief intro summary or log line. All of which is important depending on what you are looking for.

I personally look at both when buying a new game, but 9/10 I'll look for peoples experience with the game through forums or articles in magazines. The trouble with this though is that people are subjective, meaning not everyone will like the same thing and this is a very important factor when reading new journalism. Keeping this in mind when reviewing articles and post is key and also remembering some things may be a slight twist on the truth.

If I'm not totally sold by new journalism posts, I'll quickly look at new journalism stuff to confirm anything I have questions about which is ideal as you know it will be cold hard facts relating to only the game and whats in it.

Game Balance

 Ian Schreiber {Notes}

"Balance" is the term used when someone is talking about how well or bad they are doing within a game. Balance, much like fun, can mean many things within a game environment and is often overused in most cases.

Balance is something best left until you have a good set of core mechanic's, this is because their is no point balancing a game before it is meeting its design goals. E.g you want jumping, running and collecting as your core mechanic's, you cannot balance the levels or mechanics until you have them working according to your design needs.

In a two-player setting, balanced usually means that all players have equal advantages and disadvantages therefor making it fair and balanced.

In a single-player setting. balanced is determine by many factors such as player skill and different difficulty modes. Any unfair advantage the game may have could be considered a challenge and not unbalanced.

4 types of game balance

Balance in Single-Player Games

In single-player games, we use “balance” to describe whether the challenge level is appropriate to the audience.

Simply playing the game and getting experience with it, your audience will eventually become more skilled at the game. For this reason, games usually get harder in latter levels to match the players experience. Another reason is so that game play matches the dramatic tension in the narrative. We call this PACING in single player games.

The best way to understand the appropriate challenge level and pacing for your audience is to playtest.

Using play testers as much as possible will give you oversight on how challenging your game is, overtime you will get a feel for the type of audiences you are aiming for and will require less playtesting to achieve the appropriate pacing. Sometimes using less play testers but knowing their skill level with the game or similar games can give you just as good results.

Even though through play testing you will gain some idea of how to balance your game it is a good idea to aim for mid level skill of your audiences so you can cater for as many people as possible. You can add different difficulty modes, handicaps or alternate rule to support those that don't fall in the middle. 
  
Balance in Asymmetric Games

In multi-player games where there is asymmetry (that is, where players do not start with exactly equal positions and resources), we use “balance” to describe whether one starting position is easier to win with than another.

Balancing an asymmetric game requires much more play testing that most other types. Even though the players start of equal in all aspects (location, resources etc) their may be conflicting elements that can determine a unfair advantage later on or shortly after the game has started. These things can be strategies or if they are different types of units that leads to unit balancing between different classes or races (usually seen in RTS or MMORPG PvP systems)

Sometimes players are so different that direct comparisons are impossible. Sometimes different players can be given resources, positions, tasks or rules. The more different the players are, the harder it will to balance and compensate for any unfair advantage.

Balance between Strategies in a Game

Within a game, if there are multiple strategies or paths to victory that can be followed within the game, we use “balance” to describe whether following one strategy is better or worse than following another.

 If a game that allows multiple strategies, there may be one dominant strategy.  This will usually mean players will opt for this strategy and ignore all other sub optimal strategies in the effort to win therefor making anything that doesn't involve this dominant strategy irreverent and unneeded in the game.

Its wise to make several potential winning strategies in a game, this will make your game much more interesting when these strategies are balances. This requires play testing and taking note of certain strategies that seem to be used more often than others, and which ones seem to win. 

This can take form in items within a game, some items may be bought before others and some not bought or used ever. 

Sometimes players will use certain strategies because its easier or more obvious than others. Some strategies could be to complex or require more experience with the game to master. Play testing will give you a good signal of the balance within the game but due to the users it cannot always be totally accurate.

Balance Between Game Objects 

 Within a system that has several similar game objects (such as cards in a trading-card game, weapons in a role-playing game, and so on), we use “balance” to describe the objects themselves, specifically whether different objects have the same cost/benefit ratio.

 Preventing any game object from being so weak that it is useless in comparison with other objects, this is a false choice for the player because they might be able to gain or purchase a certain object but they will quickly find that it is not worth using. This will mean the object is wortless to the player and a waste of time for both the players & designers time.

Preventing a game object from being too powerful. Any object that is dominant over all others means it will become the only strategy and make all others useless in comparison.

  

Balanced objects have the same cost/benefits ratio. This doesn't necessarily mean every item has to be the same but they have to have the same or similar drawbacks or more usually benefits to one another. E.g sword or spear, depending on your choice they will both give different benefits and drawbacks but by the same amount and as they cost the same they are balanced.

Transitive Relationship (Cost Curve)

• Most Direct way of balancing objects
• Linear proportion of costs to benefits (twice the price, twice the power)
• Progressive increase in cost vs power
• Bulk discount
• More abilities, the higher the cost

Intransitive (Rock-Paper-Scissors)

• Some objects are superiors to others and inferior to others
• They may not have a direct relation with cost and benefit
• These object can counter one another
• Some objects may be againest the stronger counter but have more cost = more benefit
• Transitive and Intransitive can be combined (more cost, more benefi)

Fruity (Apples Vs Oranges)

•  Making the objects unique from eachother, to where direct comparisons are impossible
• Only way to balance is playtest

The Challenge

For transitive relationships, everything relies on the designer finding the correct cost curve. If your math is wrong, it will be wrong for every object in the game. One object that is unbalanced will probably mean having to change everything. Transitive relationships are much easier to develop after play testing since so much relies on getting the numbers right and also tends to take a lot of trial and error.

Intransitive relationship takes a lot of balancing in terms of cost vs benefit for each different object taking into account of counters to each object and when adding more objects to the mix, they to have to be balanced to previous and new objects (upgrades etc)

Fruity relationship have no hard math behind them and have to be balanced using play testing as they have no relation between each other.

More Game Balance Techniques

When you change something in your game, you should return to :-

• What is the core aesthetic, does this change support this?
• Will this change have a effect on existing elements
•  knowing the relationship between the system and objects is key in predicting secondary effects. 
• Make one change at a time
• Learn to love excel
• Organize game objects and thier stats
• Weapons lists
• Items
• Monsters
• Tasks & statues (Play Tested?,  Development?, Implemented?)

• "Rule of 2" if a stat or number is to low, double it. If a stat or number is to high, half it.
• Doing this will give you a better scope on how your objects are related and help you fine tune them to be balanced

• First-turn advantage or disadvantage
• Rotate who the first player is in multiple rounded games
• Give the disadvanaged players some extra resources
• Reduce the effectiveness of early turns, slow build up start into the game. 

•  Write down your own rules as you learn them
• Learning from your mistakes and successes, writing them down to review for later projects to help you find a law of game design or a new game balance technique. 

 Balance is dependant on the game and your design goals. Some games are well balanced, others not and in some cases they are intentionally unbalanced. lets the above techniques be your tools, but not your master...every game is different.