Intro
Last week I read the Doug Church, Formal Abstract Design Tools article, and Venturelli's Space of Possibility and Pacing in Casual Game Design - A PopCap Case Study article.
In this blog post I will discuss the design tools highlighted by both articles.
FADT
Doug Church uses the game design vocabulary, FADT, to look at existing games and extract tools from them. FADT stands for; formal, abstract, design, tools.
Formal - Precise definition, explainable to someone else.
Abstract - Underlying ideas not specific game elements, such as a +2 magic sword. The FADT in this case would be a player power up curve.
Design - The process of design, because we're designers.
Tools - Tools are what we use to put the building blocks of game design together.
Tools
Doug Church focuses his article on talking about Mario 64, and partially about the Final Fantasy series.
Intention: The Player makes an implementable plan of their own created in response to the current situation in the game world. The player can create plans on both large and small term scales. A small scale plan in Mario 64, for example, would be to navigate across a series of tricky moving platforms to reach the other side. A long term plan in Mario 64 could be to collect every star in world's 1-3.
Perceivable Consequence: The game world reacts to the player and gives them immediate feedback. If for example in Mario 64, the player tries to jump a bottomless pit and misses the other side, they will immediately fall to their doom, and realise that next time they need to try a different kind of jump to get more distance.
Story: The narrative thread of a game. This can be both designer-driven and player-driven. An example of a designer-driven story is the Final Fantasy series. In Final Fantasy 8 (FF8) the player always starts off the game at a set location, the Ballamb Gardens, and will finish the game after defeating the main villain, Ultimecia. Every time the player plays the game fundamental aspects of the story remain unchanged, they will always occur.
An example of a game that can use player-driven narrative is Worms Reloaded. The worms games have traditionally always lacked complex stories. A reason why the worms wish to wage war and destroy each other is never made clear. Instead the games story is told by the players, typically across the single player and multiplayer modes. The worms series always provides a great deal of customisation to the player, and Worms Reloaded is no different. In Worms Reloaded you can change the standard options of, team names, worm names, worm voices, victory anthem, flag, with new additions such as the ability to give your team hats. The game contains a massive variety of hats ranging from; cowboy hats, space helmets, knight helmets, a crown and even a Boba fett-esque hat.
In Worms each player takes timed turns, with the goal of navigating the landscape to attack and eventually kill enemy worms. The story of Worms is whatever a player does on their turn. If for example player A lobs a grenade across the map, and it bounces off a mountain and lands next to one of the worms belonging to Player B, this becomes part of the story. Player B's injured worm could retaliate by using the jetpack utility, flying over the map to Player A's worm and using the baseball bat to knock it into the water, equalling an instant kill. This action also continues the story. In this type of game, the story is determined by the players actions. Worms being what it is, the story can also be effected by semi-random factors such a the fuse-time of mines, the contents of crates, but it is still ultimately the players choice whether to risk moving past the mine, or which crate to collect.
Longer term stories are also possible in the game, to explain this I'll use an example taken directly from a succession of Worms Reloaded matches I recently played. When people play games they develop their own style of play, unique to the person. Sometimes in tabletop games such as Warhammer 40K a player may grow attached to certain units in their army and not want them to fall to the enemy in battle, sometimes due to their usefulness. My friend uses similar logic when playing Worms Reloaded. He has one Worm, Sir Battenberg (nicknamed the Berg), who he tries to keep alive at all costs. If the Berg dies he loses all his morale and willpower to play strategically, and thus is much easier to defeat. (He also does his best to get swift, brutal revenge on the Worm responsible for the Bergs demise).
It has gotten to the point where I 'honour' the berg' by killing him only with an interesting weapon, or combination thereof, so at least if he dies, he dies in an interesting fashion, this appeases my friend somewhat. I suppose I should point out he doesn't really mind when the Berg is killed, he only pretends to, since it adds an interesting new mechanic to the gameplay, and keeps it interesting. This situation is similar to an on-going 'story' in the game. It's a game within a game if you will.
That's enough about story, now onto the Venturelli article.
Venturelli PopCap Tools
Venturelli has detected different tools than Church, I believe this is because he chose very different games to examine, mainly Plants for Zombies and Bejelwed.
Tools
Pacing: This is the time between every major decision the player makes. Tension, Threat and Movement Impetus are all used to control the pacing of the game.
Tension: This is the possibility that the player might become the weaker side of a conflict; might become weaker than the opponents that they are required to overcome. If the tension keeps increasing it is possible players will reach a state of 'perceived defeat', that is to say; thinking they have no chance to complete the objective or level, and thus giving up before they are physically defeated.
Threat: This is the power of the directly opposing force, in the conflict which is taking place within the game. In an RTS game such as Command and Conquer Zero Hour for instance, this is the base, army and competing player controlling them. In an FPS such as UT2004, the threat is other human players, or AI (artificial intelligence) depending on the game mode being played. In a platform game such as Rayman the threat would be the different types of enemies and bosses Rayman has to overcome to complete the game. These examples show that the form the threat takes will vary depending on the type or genre of game.
Movement Impetus: This is the players desire to beat each level or world within the game, and ultimately to continue playing. If movement impetus is low it is possible that the player will lose the will to continue playing the game, and so may quit the game out of boredom, before being defeated.
Tempo: This is the intensity or speed of play; it is the time between each significant decision made by the player. A lower tempo, for example, represents quicker decision making by the player, since the 'time' between each decision is small. A higher tempo by contrast is slower, since the 'time' between each decision will be longer.
Space of Possibility: This is the space of possible action that players will explore as they play the game. By space of possible action, I mean any and every action the player can carry out throughout the game. In a game with a defined rule-set like Football, the space of possibility covers the movements of every player and every possible position of the ball. It also includes the different types of fouls, goals etc. Basically it is every action that can be carried out in the game.
As the above example shows, the game of football has quite a wide space of possibility. Lets look at another game, Tic Tac Toe. Tic Tac Toe is a very simple game, the player can draw a circle or cross depending on which team they decide to play. Either way the player can only draw their shape on a very limited number of squares. This causes the game to get boring quickly, and have little replayability.
Restricting the Space of Possibility: Venturelli also talks about the importance of restricting the space of possibility, the importance of artificially limiting a players options to stop them feeling overwhelmed. Going back to the above example, Tic Tac Toe is extremely simple and can be learnt in minutes by small children, whereas Chess is complicated and takes a lifetime to master. This is worth keeping in mind, particularly if the developer is making so called 'casual' games; since this type of game is typically quite easy to pick up and play, the rules of the game are simple and obvious to the player.
These two examples show that there should be a balance between difficulty and complexity. This balance can be achieved by restricting the space of possibility, by limiting the number of moves the player can make, you automatically make the game more simplistic and thus easy to understand and play.
This got me thinking about games I've played recently and how big the space of possibility is in those games.
As a general rule I don't play so called 'casual games' very often. (I own a Nintendo Wii, but mainly for the 1st party Nintendo titles, the Mario's, the Zelda's the Metroid's etc. This deep, immersive style of game is what I enjoy playing the most).
That said, a few years ago, I thoroughly enjoyed playing Pop Caps, Heavy Weapon, a 2D side-scroller game. The premise of the game is relatively simple, the player controls a customisable tank and must move from left to right through each level blasting all the enemies, usually, planes, helicopters, blimps, tanks etc, to reach the exit.
Heavy Weapon didn't strike me as a 'casual game' when I played it, it was challenging, fast, and gave me, as the player some freedom, allowing me to choose which weapons I wanted to use and upgrade for each level of the game. I found that this customisation was the most appealing aspect of the game, since every level played differently with a different set of armaments.
The space of possibility in Heavy Weapon is small, often when the player is playing the game, the enemy planes are dropping so many bombs, and firing so many missiles, it's usually a case of moving to a specific 'safe' spot on the screen to dodge them. Alternatively the player can shoot down enemy bombs and missiles, before they reach the tank. I've found that a combination of constantly moving while shooting will ensure the player stays alive, at least until the end of the stage where the player must fight a massive boss to advance to the next level.
This concludes my discussion of FADT and the different design tools which you used in PopCap games'. Thanks for reading.
BibliographyChurch, Doug, "Formal Abstract Design Tools", 1999.
Venturelli Marcos, "Space of Possibility and Pacing in Casual Game Design - A PopCap Case Study", 2009.
Games ReferencedMario 64 (Nintendo 64) Nintendo EAD
Final Fantasy 8 (Playstation) Square Enix
Unreal Tournament 2004 (PC) Epic
Command and Conquer Generals: Zero Hour (PC) EA Games
Rayman Gold (PC, Playstation) Ubisoft
Worms Reloaded (PC, Steam) Team 17
Heavy Weapon (Xbox Live, Steam) PopCap
