You are a Game Designer (Part II)

In Part I, game designer Bud Leiser unveils the mystery behind what a game designer does on a project.  In Part II, he lists the skills needed to be a successful game designer.

What do game designers need, in order to be game designers?

Math! (and Excel)

Games are mostly interactions of math. Speed, height, distance, currency, levels, experience, weapons, timing, arcs. It’s all math really. Let’s assume we agree Richard Garfield is a good game designer…He has a PhD in Mathematics. Magic the Gathering was a thesis project to show that people could be addicted to performing simple math equations! I’m not suggesting game companies should run out and hire a bunch of mathematicians to become their game designers. Remember that “artsy feely thing” from before? Good luck finding that in a mathematician!

Instead I’m suggesting that if you want to be a game designer you should study Excel. Learn how to create tables, and formulas. Ask yourself “Ok, instead of pricing each one of those individually, how do I make a formula to price it for me?” At the very least, go learn about the Fibonacci series and learn how to use it in a spreadsheet.

(Greg Damiano said it really well “At the heart of most games are 2 underlying formulas. Those 2 formulas have to pair perfectly together. Then pretty much everything else in the game is built on top of those 2. I’d never said or heard it that way, but he’s spot on.)

Technical Skills
 
It’s hard to work with other super talented and technical people if you can’t “speak their language.” It’s not just about understanding their linguistics, it’s about gaining their trust. It sucks, it’s a pain but eventually you need to invest some serious time into learning a programming language and a development tool (such as Unity or UDK) Even though: You will never be as good of a programmer as the real programmers on your team. Suck it up and do it. Besides once you learn those things then if you ever really have to: You can make your own games!

Communication Skills

You have to write documents. Lots and lots of documents. Somehow they need to have a magical mix of all of these qualities:

• Detailed
• Concise
• Clear
• Descriptive

You will also need to include lots of examples. This means charts and tables from Excel. Also diagrams, sketches, mockups and wireframes from Photoshop. Here’s the great news (sarcasm): after you write that document, you have to write it again, in even more detail multiple times! One for each and every department! Yes it sucks. Being a game designer is not about playing games, it’s real work making games. Get used to it!

Management Skills

How can you be a designer…if no one is following you (and your designs)? This is another one of those “sucks but you gotta learn it” things. Some of us would love to just play around in Excel, create lots of mathematical formulas, think up cool characters, stories and features and for all those ideas and objects to just magically make their way into the game on their own. Let me know if that job ever exists. At some point somewhere in the project timeline you will have to “help people” understand and implement all of the elements you spent so much time thinking up.

Other helpful things:

• Storytelling
• Character Development
• Imagination
• User Interface Design
• User Experience Design
• An understanding of color (how they create mood, what they mean in different cultures)
• Interesting life experiences to draw upon
• Play lots of video games
• Keep up with industry standards
• Ability to handle feedback
• Ability to correctly give feedback

If your dealing with social games (or games that have in-app purchases), you would also find great benefit from the following because these things need to be “baked” into the game design itself:

• Sales experience 
• Marketing
• PR 
• Customer Support

And that my friends is everything, that I think, folds into the giant cluster we call “Game Designer.” It’s a very complex role. But at the heart of it, it comes down to 2 formulas right? Create good games and help others along the process of making it. Everything else is built on top of those 2 things.

[This article originally appeared on Bud Leiser's personal blog.]  

Bud Leiser beat Nintendo’s original Zelda when he was just 3 years old. Then went on to win money and prizes playing: D&D Miniatures, Dreamblade, Magic the Gathering and The Spoils. He’s just returned from Vietnam where he helped manage Wulven Studios as their Lead Game Designer. He was responsible for creating internal projects, game design documents and communicating with clients to help them succeed in the post-freemium app market.

You are a Game Designer (Part I)

In Part I of this article, game designer Bud Leiser unveils the mystery behind what a game designer does on a project.

Is being a Game Designer the most mysterious job in the universe?  

I have the wonderful pleasure of introducing myself as a Game Designer. But then comes the follow up question. “What does a game designer do”? Surprisingly that’s a very hard questions to answer. And if I can’t answer it, if it confuses me sometimes, how can I expect anyone else to get it?

Well, at least that is not as bad as these responses:

• Oh so you are an artist? (Not really…) 
• So you are a programmer? (Not really…) 
• What programs do you use to do game design? (Because they look positively shocked when I answer “Mostly Excel”) 
• Can you fix my computer? (Sadly yes… I probably can. But I don’t want to.)

So what do I do? 

In a short sentence: “I create systems.” That doesn’t really tell the listener (Or HR Manager) anything he can use or wrap his head around though. So I usually have to go deeper and give some examples. You have played (Insert game) right?

 Ok so someone had to come up with all the different weapons in there...

• And who do you think came up with all those prices for them? 
• Did you notice there is a formula for those prices? 
• Did you notice that each sword is slightly better and even feels different than the last sword you were using? 
• How about those EXP points, notice how it always takes more and more to level up over time?   

How about the physics for your world...

• How fast can you attack?
• How long can you sprint before you need to rest?
• Did you notice you deal damage at a certain point during the attack animation?  

Somewhere, at some time, someone had to make all of those individual decisions. Hundreds and hundreds of small details and decisions that somehow all lead to a unique experience.  Everyone on a team to contributes, but it’s the designer's role to lead the way.

A game designer:  Designs, tests and tweaks systems. He has to make systems work and *feel* right. Not just by themselves but also with other systems!

That “feels right” part is really really important. I’m not knocking programmers; they are super smart and talented. But they are also the first person to say “I don’t need a designer, I can do all of that myself!” 6 months later when their game has no direction, no end in sight, and they can’t “find the fun” they figure out that maybe working alone sucks, and everyone benefits by working together.

It’s that artsy fartsy “feeling” part that makes a designer special, stuck somewhere between technical and artistic (or autistic - am I right, high five!)  Sadly it’s also that part that lures would-be designers in. Making them think they are special without getting the technical or managerial balance to go along with that artsy feely stuff they love so much.

[This article originally appeared on Bud Leiser's personal blog.]  

Bud Leiser beat Nintendo’s original Zelda when he was just 3 years old. Then went on to win money and prizes playing: D&D Miniatures, Dreamblade, Magic the Gathering and The Spoils. He’s just returned from Vietnam where he helped manage Wulven Studios as their Lead Game Designer. He was responsible for creating internal projects, game design documents and communicating with clients to help them succeed in the post-freemium app market.

January 2014: Forces of Nature

January 2014's topic, Forces of Nature, was submitted by game researcher Nick LaLone.  As the first snowstorm of the season sweeps through the East Coast, this topic seems particularly fitting.

He writes:

One of the first games I played with "Wind" was Ninja Gaiden 2 for the NES.  In of the levels, you're running along some mountain tops.  Coming down in the form of white dots is wind.  These white dots would change direction and in doing so, I could not jump as far.  Video games, through technology, are an attempt at creating, virtually, that which we experience in nature.  As unreal as a video game could be, the way we understand nature cannot be radically changed insomuch that any alternative to nature is not able to really be understood.  So, if a game uses some force of nature (for instance, Mega Man, Ecco the Dolphin, Monster Hunter, etc.), how do designers that create that forces of nature, the very thing modernity wants to control, into something fun?

Do you have any experiences with games that feature a force of nature as a main component of the game?  Was it done well and believable?

What are the challenges with depicting a force of nature as an antagonist or an opposing force?

As always, submission guidelines along with submission procedure can be found on the right hand side of the blog.  Topic suggestions and articles are welcome!

Nick LaLone is a graduate student working on an MA at Texas State University-San Marcos. When the video games are turned off, Nick can be found writing about modernization theory, gender, and social media. His work on these subjects with regard to video (and board) games can be found at www.beforegamedesign.com.

Bonus Dice: Designing Tabletop Games for Better Game Culture (Part II)

In Part I, game researcher Mark Chen takes a look at what might create better game culture, i.e. a community of consumers and creators who think critically and reflectively about games. In Part II, he argues that tabletop gaming should receive the same level of academic interest as digital gaming.

The High Fashion Phenomenon

And yet BGG is only a small part of tabletop gaming. It may seem that the tabletop community is pretty monolithic given how much a one-stop site BGG is, but, outside of the net, tabletop gaming is surprisingly scattered. I’m reminded of this every week as I attend meetings of a local board game Meetup group. The regular attendees come from all walks of life. Among others, there’s techie people (which could just be because we’re in Seattle, though there is an interesting intermingling between tech and board games), a lawyer, and a bunch of service industry folks. Very few are academics, and most of them don’t really know BGG exists.

Toshiyuki Hashitani’s wooden board by Wolfgangs SpeileParadies for Settlers of Catan

Still, I suspect the movements and fervor found on BGG trickles down. It’s like high fashion setting certain trends that eventually trickle down to Walmart shoppers. The games that become popular were popular on BGG first. Maybe another analogy is with digital gamers who buy AAA games and new hardware every season: They push (perhaps too uncritically) the industry in certain directions and generally make it grow, which then allows for a whole slew of other players to follow in their wake (who may not even know there’s a wake they’re following).

A Disconnect?

Most of these players also don’t know about the recent rise of games journalism, criticism, and activism (love Ligman's TWIVGB). For all the work we’ve seen in the last couple of years pushing for inclusivity in gaming and examining games deeply, none of it is hitting on-the-ground gamers… Wait. Is that true? Admittedly, most of the work being done is on the digital gaming front, so looking at local tabletop meetup groups and saying something about the work with digital games’ reach is probably not fair. Okay, so I’ll just say this: Tabletop criticism and journalism is massively threadbare, and I hope places like Shut Up & Sit Down herald a new trend in rectifying this. Hopefully, more academic research will also look to tabletop gaming.

Serious Leisure and DIY Gamers

Jared’s Magic Realm build using carthaginian’s redesign

One of the most fascinating pockets of community on BGG are the hobbyists (a huge “serious leisure” literature repository that everyone should learn about) who make their own versions of out-of-print games. Take a look at all the cool remakes of Magic Realm (MR), for example. It’s a game with a cult following for its intricate simulation of a fantasy setting and its detailed and nuanced combat system. What’s really cool about MR is that a BGG user, Karim “carthaginian” Chakroun, wanted to try the game but discovered that he’d have to make the game first. It turns out, he’s a graphic designer and he decided to produce a set of PDFs with new artwork that anyone can download to make their own copy of MR! (Game rules can’t be copyrighted, but artwork is protected, so, to recreate a game, players have to change up the art.) As it happens, carthaginian has made lots of custom artwork for out-of-print games *and* he’s moved onto professional graphic design for games, such as Alien Frontiers!

Alien Frontiers

Carthaginian and other BGG users who engage in this DIY practice represent an interesting intersection between tabletop gaming and crafting/making. They share tips and tricks and how-to guides, much like what you’d find on Instructables. There’s also a number of BGG users who are amateur designers, releasing their own “print and play” games through BGG as PDFs.

Use Tabletop Game Design to Understand Games Better  

This, then, represents a different way games scholars and critics can get into making games. Tabletop design can be a more approachable pathway for non-techie people. It’s easy to grab a deck of cards and think through new game mechanics or to grab a used game from a thrift store and mod the rules or write new rules using the same components. It becomes more important to think about the manual for a designed game (something which is often absent for digital games), and this forces a different kind of dialog between the designer and players. I believe this difference pushes the designer to think about the boundaries of the game and cohesiveness of theme to rules in a different way than what’s afforded by digital game design.

So, yeah, (if you’ll allow me to switch to 2nd person…) make your own games! Make both digital and tabletop games! And, yes, the first game will likely suck. Learning is most effective through failure. This is as true in designing games as in playing games.

[This article originally appeared on Critical Gaming Project’s new blog series, Better Game Culture]  

Mark Chen is an independent researcher of gaming culture and spare-time game designer. He also holds appointments at Pepperdine, UW Bothell, and UOIT, teaching a variety of online and offline courses on game studies and games for learning. He recently wrote a book, Leet Noobs: The Life and Death of an Expert Player Group in World of Warcraft. Currently, Mark is making games to promote critical thinking and cooperation and researching the communication practices of BoardGameGeek.com users. 

Bonus Dice: Designing Tabletop Games for Better Game Culture (Part I)

In Part I of this article, game researcher Mark Chen takes a look at what might create better game culture, i.e. a community of consumers and creators who think critically and reflectively about games.

image from barefootliam at deviant art!

I’m going to make two statements (interleaved with ideas) that converge later.

What is Better Game Culture?

One is that, as we argue for better game culture, I think we’re basically arguing for more critical and reflective consumers, creators, and scholars of games and gaming practice. “More” in the sense that we just need proportionally more people who do think critically and reflectively about games and gaming. But also “more” in the sense that who we do have are continually learning and making connections and generally becoming better at what they do.

Use Game Design to Understand Games Better

And one of the best ways to learn how to think about games, their structures, and experiences is to make them. By making games and thinking through player experiences as they navigate rules and systems, a designer really starts to pay attention to cohesiveness and the internal logics of a game’s space. Equipped with this experience, the designer starts to also see other games differently, understanding that sometimes intent just doesn’t match up with underlying mechanics whether that’s due to technical limitations or something inherently flawed with the design structure. When the narrative or theme is supported by the game’s rules (sometimes in place as a holdover from whatever genre tradition the game is following), it can be an extremely beautiful experience, such as with the case for some players of Depression Quest or Lim.

Speaking of Lim, Merritt’s previous article speaks to a diversification and inclusion of gaming (which really can’t happen fast enough… and I don’t think is going to happen unless we continually fight for it), and something that should be stressed is how relatively low the barriers to making small digital games are these days (once you get past the initial barriers of social structure and disparate everyday experience, as Merritt aptly points out). Indeed, the hardest part of making interactive fiction games in Twine or Inklewriter, is the writing! Even 2D platformers, top-down JRPGs, and point-n-click adventure games can be made pretty easily these days with GameMaker, Construct, RPGMaker, and Adventure Game Studio.

The Rise of Tabletop Gaming

The second statement is that tabletop gaming (i.e., gaming with and around board and card games) is experiencing a massive growth and golden age right now, and, just as with digital games, a lot of community and culture around tabletop games is supported and afforded by the net. It’d be very easy to get lost in the forums of BoardGameGeek (BGG).

In fact, BoardGameGeek has a crazy extensive database of tabletop games. If a game is played with physical material and had some sort of distribution (as in, it’s not just a game cousin Jane made up and shared with her brother), it’s in BGG’s database. Each game has its own set of forums that cover reviews, strategies, house rules, clarifications, news, issues, etc. Then there are non-game specific forums, such as regional ones to help people meet up with other players, general boardgame news, reviews of iOS and Android ports of favorite games, etc. (A whole bunch could be said here about affinity groups and literature on digital media and learning.)

[This article originally appeared on Critical Gaming Project’s new blog series, Better Game Culture]  

Mark Chen is an independent researcher of gaming culture and spare-time game designer. He also holds appointments at Pepperdine, UW Bothell, and UOIT, teaching a variety of online and offline courses on game studies and games for learning. He recently wrote a book, Leet Noobs: The Life and Death of an Expert Player Group in World of Warcraft. Currently, Mark is making games to promote critical thinking and cooperation and researching the communication practices of BoardGameGeek.com users.

Auctions as a Game Balancing Tool

In this article, game design instructor Sebastian Sohn gives a summary of different auction types used in board games.

Auctions are widely used in board games as an in-game mechanic or as a meta game.

Auctions are how conflicts are resolved in life. Auctions deal with the what economists call "unlimited wants yet limited resources." Auctions are also great for game design for several reasons including:

1. Realism and use in day-to-day life.
2. It’s a balancing tool; allowing the designer the ability to offer asymmetrical starting resources, yet places game balancing in the hands of the players.
3. Finding the right price is an enjoyable game of its own. 

Auction Use in Board Games

Axis & Allies 
English Auction used as meta-game balancing tool.

In this WWII-based board game, the Allies tend to win more often due to historically accurate (Allies won) but poor game balancing. In many tournaments, players bid to play as the Allies. The winning bid is paid to the low-bid player, who then begins the game as the Axis Powers. This allows for a more balanced game, as the Axis player can now use this influx of resources to strengthen his strategy.

No Thanks! 
English Auction used to avoid a penalty.

No Thanks! has an interesting twist to auctions. In normal auctions, players pay to win something, while in No Thanks!, you pay to avoid penalty points. Every round, a card with penalty points ranging in 3-35 points is offered. In turn order player may take the penalty points or bid one chip. If you take the card, you take the penalty points and the chips on top that you can use to avoid other cards.

Vegas Showdown 
Multiple English Auction occurring simultaneously
Play Vegas Showdown AI for free, costs to play with people 

This game’s auction offers a multiple items simultaneously. Players bid in turn order. If one gets outbid, that player is bumped off auction block and can bid on something else next turn. Being bumped usually triggers a chain of bidders being bumped from item to item until everyone's ideal price is reached. This is similar to the rules of a White Elephant Gift Exchange, a holiday party game used to distribute gifts.

Modern Art 
Multiple types of auctions

Modern Art is a pure auction game where you act as buyer and seller of modern art painting. Continuous turn-based English, once around English, sealed, buyout auctions are featured. When you sell a painting, money goes to the selling player, not the bank. This is a great game to play to learn how different auctions work.

Auction Basics

Most auctions end when the highest bidder pays for and receives an item. Auctions have two prices--the bid price and ask price--as well as two parties: the buyer (bidder) and the seller (asker). When the bid and ask price are equal, a sale is made. Where the payment ends up is important in a game's economic system. Some examples where the proceeds end up:

Monopoly: when a property is auctioned off, all proceeds go to the bank. And yes, Monopoly has auctions if you play by the official rules.

Modern Art: the seller receives all proceeds for paintings sold unless she buys her own offer. If one buy their own offered painting, then the seller pays the bank.

Hollywood Blockbuster: the proceeds of the auction are distributed equally to all other players.

Common Auctions

English auction
Any bidder may offer a bid at any time until the auction’s close. Each bidder can bid or rebid at any moment. This is the most common auction in life and can be emotional, causing people to become irrational and overbid.  

Turn-Based English Auction
Since English auctions can be hectic, loud and highly emotional, many games use a turn-based approach: each Player raises the bid in turn order or passes. To shorten the auctions, most games will not allow a bidder to reenter the auction once the bidder passes. English auction may be continuous, each bidder keeps bidding higher multiple times in turn order or may be once around, declare one and only one bid in turn order.

Sealed (first-price) Auction
Bids are submitted secretly to the seller; participants do not know each other's bids. This style is commonly used in real estate sale and by the US government to procure contractors.

Vickrey Auction (sealed-bid second-price auction)
A sealed auction, the highest bidder wins but pays the second highest bid. Used as quick auction that has similar results to a English auction. Proxy bid by Ebay and US Treasury securities sales use an auctions similar to Vickrey. War of Attrition, uses an auction similar to Vickrey to simulate and analyze human behavior. War of Attrition is used in branch of mathematics called game theory as a scientific model.

Exotic Auctions

All-Pay Auction
Auction that has the highest bidder winning, but all bidders end up paying. This is used as model for political campaigns or lobbying. It’s good for auctioning abstract resources like turn order (initiative). In Age of Steam game, turn order is auctioned in this manner, but only the top two bidders pay.  

Top-Up Auction
This is a variation of the all-pay auction. Winner pays as usual but the losers pay out the difference in between their bid and the next lower bid. Top-Up Auctions are commonly used by charities as fund raisers.  

Dutch Auctions
A high asking price if offered and is steadily dropped until a buyer accepts. The dutch tulip market and the US Treasury both use this style of auction. Ebay used to offer this type of auction as a way to sell multiple, identical items to multiple buyers. It has a similar effect to sealed auctions, as only the winner’s bid is known. Buyout Auction The seller offers with a fixed price. Ebay uses Buy-It-Now on top of their standard auction as way to purchase immediately at a preset price, rather than wait for the end of an auction.  

Reverse Auction
The roles of buyers (bidders) and sellers (askers) are reversed. Asks are lowered until a bidder accepts. In traditional auctions, multiple bidders usually compete for one good or service offered by one seller, while in a reverse auction, multiple sellers compete to provide goods or services to one buyer. Priceline.com and Lending Tree use this model by acting as brokers in pooling large number of sellers to few buyers.

Walrasian Auction
In a Walrasian Auction, both bid and ask prices are adjusted for in batches, until an equilibrium priced is reached. This is similar to how the stock market works. A similar auction style can be found in the video game, M.U.L.E.

[This article originally appeared on Sebastian Sohn’s personal blog.] 

Sebastian Sohn is a "well played" game player, critic, and game design instructor. He is especially fascinated by the use of games as an experiential teaching aid and constantly on the lookout for tabletop games, videogames, and roleplaying games that teach life skills.

December 2013: Board Games

Hello and welcome to December 2013's topic:  Board Games!  This topic is just a reminder that while the IGDA Game Design SIG and this blog does favor digital games, we also are interested in board games and other types of games. 

After all, many computer game designers, as Erin Robinson described in her article, Building Treehouse, first conceptualize their design prototypes as board games.  While pitching my design for a game to help young adults realize the importance of saving for the future, called Rainy Day Castle, I set up a table with a crudely drawn tower and various stand-in pieces for gold and monsters.  Not only did this help by-standers understand how to play the game, but this set-up also provided me with future insights about how to improve my game design.  Game design instructors often ask their students to design board games, as was mentioned in this recent article on GDAM. 

Renowned game designers are interested in ALL games, not just video games.  Brenda Romero, game designer in residence at the University of California, Santa Cruz’s Center for Games and Playable Media, designed several board games, including Train, for a series called The Mechanic is the Message.

So let me know about your board game experiences!  And remember to follow the submission guidelines.