Guiding the Player

An important aspect to designing a game is deciding how the player should be guided through the game. This guidance usually falls under direct guidance or indirect guidance. When using direct guidance game designers need o be cautious of how much information they give the player and when they give the information. "The message must be given to the player when it is immediately relevant. Some games try to tell the player all the possible controls... but it is ridiculous to think that a player will be able to remember all of those controls" (Benson 198). To avoid this problem I give reminders to the player what some of the controls are when they are needed. For example when a player receives an ability I remind them what button is used to activate it as well as when it can be activated.

A brief explanation on how the game is played

For indirect guidance game designers lead players without them knowing they are being leaded. Constraints are needed to be placed to avoid the risk of choice paralysis, which occurs when players are given too many choices and cannot evaluate the consequences of them all (Gibson 100). While it is exciting to be given multiple choices to choose from, however too many choices can create a negative effect rather than a positive one. I avoided choice paralysis by providing a limited amount of meaningful choices that each provide its own distinct advantage.

What was the hardest choice you ever made in a game?

Gibson, Jeremy. Introduction to Game Design, Prototyping, and Development: From
     Concept to Playable Game-with Unity® and C#. Upper Saddle River:
     Addison-Wesley, 2015. Print.

How Games are Tested

Once enough of a game has been developed playtesters are needed to help refine the game. Two important factors for playtesting is who you ask and when you ask them. The reason why it is important to consider when you ask someone to playtest your game is because a game is best tested by people who have no prior knowledge to the game, "Once anyone has played your game even a single time, they know something about it, and that knowledge biases subsequent playtest sessions" (Gibson 145). Evaluating a person's insight on the game will aid you in deciding when in development they will be most useful because they will only be a new player once.
The most beneficial way to playtest is through informal individual testing. Deciding how a game will be tested will help with getting the necessary feedback for adjusting the game. The factors to keep in mind when letting someone playtest is not telling them too much, not leading them, not making arguments or excuses, and taking good notes (Gibson 146). This kind of feedback will provide the game designer with how players will interact with the game on their own without help and letting the game designer keep an open mind on the feedback. This mindset allowed for me to test if new players are able to understand the game. Also, i received feedback on how new players first interact with the game to adjust the appearance and balance of the game.

What are the things you notice when playing a new game?

Gibson, Jeremy. Introduction to Game Design, Prototyping, and Development: From
     Concept to Playable Game-with Unity® and C#. Upper Saddle River:
     Addison-Wesley, 2015. Print. 

How to Make a Paper Prototype

When designing a new game, it is important to make a simple prototype of it to get an idea of what is going to be in the game. The easiest way of doing this is by making a prototype of it onto a piece of paper. The benefits of creating a paper prototype for a game are initial development speed, iteration speed, low technical barrier, collaborative prototyping, and focused prototyping and testing (Gibson 126). Paper prototyping constructs an idea faster than programming it from scratch in a program. This allows for the concept of the game to change and become focused on specific ideas before programming starts.

The paper prototype to my game

In this prototype I draw each section of the game and what they are used for. I list ideas to improve the game next to each drawing to help focus on specific aspects of what the game will do. Also, this helps with deciding what resources are needed for the game to function and what can be added later. While paper prototyping has its benefits, there are some things that need to be avoided, "Several things in the prototype could have been handled better by a computer. These include visibility calculations, tracking health... For the paper prototype, you want to focus on the simple systems in your game" (Gibson 139). I tried avoiding these disadvantages by limiting my time spent editing the paper prototype and focus primarily on the functions that the game has to have to be playable.

Have you ever thought of playing a video game on pieces of paper?

Gibson, Jeremy. Introduction to Game Design, Prototyping, and Development: From
     Concept to Playable Game-with Unity® and C#. Upper Saddle River:
     Addison-Wesley, 2015. Print. 

What is a Game?

One of the many important aspects of game design is analyzing the definition of what a game is. Over the past 30 years people created various definitions that are all true in their own way. The most intriguing definition was created by Tracy Fullerton, author of the book Game Design Workshop, "'a closed, formal system that engages players in a structured conflict and resolves its uncertainty in an unequal outcome' is not a good definition of game but also a list of elements that designers can modify" (Gibson 10). What makes this definition interesting is the focus on game designers rather than focusing on the players. This gives game designers a better understanding of how to create or modify games by listing the elements of a game. It is important to learn the different definitions to the word game because it gives game designers the tools to refine their game to fit specific needs. Creating a definition for the word game that is all-encompassing is very difficult due to different people having different meaning to the word game (Gibson 16). Multiple specific definitions to the word game exist because of the difficulties of creating a broad definition. These definitions also are used to help game designers understand what people will expect from their games.

Evaluating my game using Fullerton's definition of a game

I used Fullerton's definition of a game to help improve the game a game I made by applying the different elements of the definition to the game. Is there a specific definition you use to define games?

Gibson, Jeremy. Introduction to Game Design, Prototyping, and Development: From
     Concept to Playable Game-with Unity® and C#. Upper Saddle River:
     Addison-Wesley, 2015. Print.