Expanded Conversation Guide for Game Creators Seeking Diverse TopicsDiscussion Topics for Game Designers Wishing to Broaden Their Discourse
In the realm of game design, understanding the intricacies of coherence, interactivity, cadence, and other nuanced concepts is essential. To aid game designers in their quest for precise language and insightful expressions, several resources stand out.
One such resource is "Struction: An Introduction to Structure" by The Angry GM. This guide offers valuable terminology and conceptual frameworks for gameplay design, contrasting top-down design (big-picture goals guiding the overall structure) with bottom-up and and-then design approaches. These terms help articulate ideas about gameplay flow and coherence, emphasizing how designers can structure player experiences in dynamic, emergent ways rather than piecing elements without a holistic plan.
Another valuable resource is video game glossaries, such as the Wikipedia Glossary of Video Game Terms. These glossaries provide a comprehensive vocabulary, including technical terms, gameplay modes, and design concepts. While they focus more on specific gameplay genres and game mechanics, they often include language relevant to discussing interactivity and gameplay experience, helping to build a shared language for designers and critics alike.
Prompt engineering and AI content creation techniques can also be leveraged by game designers to explore ideas and language combinations that describe game design elements like pacing (cadence), player choice (interactivity), and narrative coherence. Experimenting with prompts and AI can surface fresh expressions and terminology tailored to a game’s unique design needs.
Academic and research seminars in computing science and game interaction often tackle advanced topics like human expression in virtual environments, generative modeling for animation, or interaction design. These discussions can contribute vocabulary and conceptual tools for explaining how interactivity and timing (cadence) affect player immersion and experience coherence.
The list, organized by a writer who has had long-running conversations with industry friends about game design, also includes articles on various aspects of game design. For instance, one article compares the visual experiences of games with those of photography, beautifully and delicately trying to draw out the complex web of impressions that happen when we have a moving experience with a game. Another discusses the concept of "completing" or "finishing" a game, while yet another delves into the definition and limitations of genres in game design.
The series also addresses hot-button issues, such as the role of guns in games, the gender-coding of characters and narrative spaces, and the assumption that videogames are impoverished versions of "true" VR worlds. It also explores the history of games marketing catering to boys and young men, the technical failures to image non-white skin tones in games, and the lack of energy in some city designs in games.
The articles and videos in the list are short, practical, and loosely arranged by theme, offering a wealth of insights for game designers, critics, and enthusiasts alike. Whether you're interested in learning about the psychology and physiology of memorable moments in esports, the role of agency in gameplay, or the holodeck metaphor as a cornerstone for understanding stories in videogames, there's something for everyone in this thought-provoking reading list.
- Game designers might find it beneficial to venture into the world of politics and general news, as understanding the dynamics of human interaction and decision-making, similar to gameplay, can provide valuable insights.
- When seeking terms to articulate the pacing (cadence) and player choice (interactivity) of their games, game designers could delve into discourses within political science, where concepts like rhythm and autonomy are frequently discussed.
