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.

Games Britannia part 2 + 3

"TheGame of life", this game was the first game to let you have a choice where to move after your roll. This is a brand new idea as all previous game's we're a set linear path, where as this game you had multiple options. This game became the first mass market board game.

Games in the start of the 20th centry made lots of connections to diplomatic issues that we're arising at the time, making a link between the two helped players make choices within the game and made them more appealing as there was already a connection before even playing.

The first version of Monopoly was a evolved version of "brear fox" but was based on Atlanta USA not London. The game of monopoly was originally called "The Land Lords Game" which was designed by Elizabeth Maggy Phillips to show how having a monopoly on all the property will bankrupt other people and is not socially or economically viable. The end result of the game was in fact the opposite of what it was originally design to show and instead encouraged to bankrupt other players to win.

Monopoly tapped into the emotion of greed and selfishness. The worship of money and the need for power by all people due to the survival instinct.

A good mix of luck or chance and skill seems to be the running theme for all of the successful board game covers in the series. If some strategy is involved aswell it just adds to the involvement of the players.

Pervasive Games

Pervasive games, as the name would suggest, is a game involving many people and/or in a wide predetermined area or zone. Games such as treasure hunt or assassinations games played by multiple people given tasks to undertake against or with other people.

Jaakko Stenros & Markus Montola define pervasive games as both a "sub-category of games" and "an expansion of what games are"

There are 4 main established genres of pervasive games

• Treasure Hunts
• Assassination Games
• Pervasive LARPs
• ARGs

 Treasure hunting is fairly self explanatory but it can become more complete when you do it on a wider scale such as Geocashing. This site hide treasures all over the world which its paying subscribers have to go find using a GPS device. Think of it like a Easter egg hunt but the backyard is the world. another variation of this is the scavenger hunt where there will be teams and the team with the most X or Y will win.

Assassination games originated from films such as "La decima Vittima". The objective is that a group of people will try to assassinate each other (not really kill eachother, just pretend) by finding and using a imaginary weapon to kill them. There are usually rules such as safe ground area's and not actually physical hard can be done.

There is a small video HERE demonstrating what a game might be like. Funny fact about this is that I used to work with the narrator/director Lucy when I was younger prior to her going to leeds and studying film, I didn't recognizance the voice till I saw her name in the credits and went back to check. Very strange but funny.

LARP's require the players to perform or act when they do something. Such as a killer in a assassination game provided their is only 1 killed and everyone knew who they were but not when he would strick. Unlike the above assassination game where thier are multiple people trying to kill eachother at the same time.

ARG's are Alternative Reality Games. They are usually collaborative games, using groups or even whole community's to solve puzzles or unravel mysteries. These games have been used in mass media markets to help advertise products in the passed.


My Notes

When we played the QR code game at the university I found the whole process very interesting because it was a interesting and refreshing change for a game type. When we say "game" we usually automatically think of the 3 most command types :- cards, board and digital. Even thought I cannot see myself running from city to city looking for treasures or looking to stab someone in the back to with a wooden spoon I could definitely see myself organizing something involving it and watching the drama/game unfold in front of my eyes.

Bring back community games like these is a great way to reconnect people again as we have become distant from one enough as entertainment is so easy to get from your desk or sofa. Where as before all of that, our only really source of entertainment was stories around the campfire, hide and seek and other communal gathering events.