ITProfEl4 Final Exam Reviewer

• A game developer is anyone who has any involvement with the creation of the game at all.
• Anyone who makes decisions about how the game should be is a game designer.
• A game is something you play.
• Fun is pleasure with surprises.
• Play is the aimless expenditure of exuberant energy.
• Play refers to those activities which are accompanied by a state of comparative pleasure, exhilaration, power, and the feeling of self-initiative.
• Games are an exercise of voluntary control systems, in which there is a contest between powers, confined by rules in order to produce a disequilibrial outcome.
• A game is an interactive structure of endogenous meaning that requires players to struggle toward a goal.
• A game is a closed, formal system, that engages players in structured conflict, and resolves in an unequal outcome.
• A game is a problem-solving activity, approached with a playful attitude.
• Play is manipulation that satisfies curiosity.
• A good toy is an object that is fun to play with.
• The Four Basic Elements

  • Mechanics
  • Story
  • Aesthetics
  • Technology
• These are the procedures and rules of your game. It describe the goal of your game, how players can and cannot try to achieve it, and what happens when they try.

  Mechanics
• This is the sequence of events that unfolds in your game. It may be linear and pre-scripted, or it may be branching and emergent.

  Story
• This is how your game looks, sounds, smells, tastes, and feels.

  Aesthetics
• It is essentially the medium in which the aesthetics take place, in which the mechanics will occur, and through which the story will be told.

  Technology
• skin of a game (the player’s experience)
• the skeleton (the elements that make up the game)
• The skill you need to develop is the ability to observe your own experience while thinking about the underlying causes of that experience.

  holographic design
• The theme is what your game is about. It is the idea that ties your entire game together — the idea that all the elements must support.
• Two simple steps to using a theme:

  1. Figure out what your theme is.
  2. Use every means possible to reinforce that theme.
• A unifying theme is good — it focuses your design toward a single goal.
• experience-based theme = all about delivering a certain essential

  experience
• truth-based theme = they are hidden
• you have to feel the resonance, deep inside yourself.
• Resonant themes elevate your work from craft to art.
• Good problem statements tell both your goal and your constraints.
• Three advantages of clearly stating your problem:

  1. Broader creative space.
  2. Clear measurement.
  3. Better communication.
• To create a great experience, you must know what your audience will and will not like, and you must know it even better than they do.
• power of empathy =to put yourself into their place.
• For game designers, the most significant demographic variables are age and gender.
• A more direct approach is to focus less on how players appear on the outside and more on how they think on the inside.

  Psychohgraphics
• Demographics generally refer to external factors (age, gender, income, ethnicity, etc.)
• Everything we experience and think about is a model.
• The state of sustained focus, pleasure, and enjoyment is referred to as “flow".
• Flow is sometimes defined as a feeling of complete and energized focus in an activity, with a high level of enjoyment and fulfillment.
• key components to create an activity that puts a player into a flow state

  • Clear goals
  • No distractions
  • Direct feedback
  • Continuously challenging
• Imagination puts the player into the game by putting the game into the player.
• Self-listening can be the key to listening to your audience.