passion4games

Puzzle Design

Was reading a very interesting section of Jesse Schell's Art of Game Design, concerned with the design of puzzles within video games.

After a certain amount of analysis, the book cleverly defined puzzles to be 'games with a dominant strategy'. Stop and think about this for a moment. It is actually very true. Try to find an alternative definition for puzzles, and you will no doubt run into problems along the way...

The chapter moves on to detail ten principles for designers to consider when designing puzzles. While the majority of these are beyond the scope of a single, informal blog post, the final two caveats were particularly interesting.

 

A) Give the answer! 

This concept is counter-intuitive. Contrary to the belief of many, the pleasure of solving a puzzle lies in the seeing of the solution, rather than in the personal completion process of the puzzle. The book does not deny the fact that the player will enjoy actually solving the puzzle him/herself, but it certainly promotes the idea of including the solution to the puzzle within the game in some way, shape or form. The brain is primed for that rush of pleasure at even a subtle first hint of the answer, so it follows that presenting the solution would be beneficial.

B) Perceptual Shifts are a Double-Edged Sword

Jesse Schell illustrates this concept with a simple example. Consider the following puzzle: "Can you arrange six matchsticks so they form four equilateral triangles?"

Attempt this puzzle and you will either see the answer and feel satisfied at your accomplishment, or you will continuously churn over the problem in your head, and make little progress. You may be reminded of Primary (elementary) school problem solving/IQ tests (Recall the episode of The Simpsons 'Bart the Genius'), whereby you were presented with an inordinately complex and detailed scenario, and were asked some obscure, and often unrealistic question at the end. By the time you had gotten to the end of the scenario, you had forgotten the beginning! The truth is you probably had no idea where to even begin. You felt lost and ultimately got very frustrated. Strangely, computer programming is built upon perceptual shift problems, and the natural ability to retain a large amount of information in any one given scenario.

I have actually been trying to pin down the reason for the lack of learning within the computer programming discipline, and I feel perceptual shift problem solving is where the real problem lies...

Computer Games are not all the same, believe it or not!

Here's a link to a post on my mother's blog:

Rant In Defence of Video Games

Charlie C

 

 

Types Of Creativity

The idea for this post came about after a chance remark from my mother during an over dinner chat one weekend. The discussion revolved around our childhood hobbies and pastimes; at a certain point in the conversation, she stated "You liked things that you could use as a spring-board to your own imagination"

This sentence had a great impact on me, to say the least. I feel it is a word perfect description of the majority of activities I enjoyed as a child. I would play with a set of toy dinosaurs, inventing stories and role plays; apparently I invented a RPG-style ranking system without really realising it at the time! I could spend an afternoon pretending that a cardboard box was a battleship. Among other things, I would create my own puzzle books and stories. For some reason it is almost cringeworthy even writing these words, and it certainly shouldn't be. What I have described above is a key form of creativity that tends to be ignored as we move into adulthood.

As a child I wrote and drew pictures constantly. However, I don't think I ever considered myself to be a true artist in the making, because the pictures were always secondary to the story or game which I was inventing. They were in a way illustrations of what was going on in my own imagination, and just a stage in the procedure rather than an end in themselves. In fact, they were more like diagrams than artworks. My family always joked that I liked to draw disaster scenes. Looking back on this, I think I was drawing plans for games before I really realised my love for them.

All of which leads me to speculate about different types of creativity. It is important to recognise that what I have described above may be different to the creativity shown in many other artforms. I did not enjoy Lego as a child, as this involves physically building an object, or creating an artwork. I found this frustrating as the reality of the final creation was never consistent with my original vision. Either that or the object would fall apart before it was even remotely finished!

While video game design is difficult to define, you will no doubt hear many games industry professionals describing the role as 'creating fun'. This is exactly what I used to do when playing as a child; I would create entertainment. It is also interesting to point out that using the creations of another individuals to ultimately make a game, or create fun, could also be a good definition of game design.

Coursework

I feel like I haven't blogged in ages so a lazy Sunday would seem like the perfect time to get back to Passion4Games.

We are now approaching the end of the first semester and so far things have gone extremely well. Our game is nearing completion, my Unreal level is effectively done, as is the essay to go along with that particular module. Over the last few days I have managed to mould my Innovation paper into shape, and during the week ahead I'm going to be focussing on some modelling.

Christmas is going to be busy this year...

From Dust

Thought I'd take a short break from essay writing to post briefly about From Dust. It is effectively a game where the player will manipulate nature - a take on the God game genre. It is designed to remind the player of the childlike emotions experienced when playing and building sand castles on the beach. (As stated in the developer video diary).

The game will not be box released; a download only title. Just goes to show how far games have come, and indeed that the future, or a large part of the future of video games, will be with digital distribution. Apparently, the designers of From Dust stated that Ubisoft would not have allowed the game to be developed for box release.

Passion4Games for the coming year

Life has been moving at 100 miles per hour now that I have started on my Professional Masters course at Abertay University, in Dundee - one of the most prestigious universities for games courses in the world, I'm delighted to report! Three weeks in, and although I'm enjoying the course enormously, I am already running short of hours in the day. Posts on Passion4Games may become a little more sporadic and general, although I will certainly complete my EIF 2010 reports!

A New Chapter Begins...

It has been a VERY long week. I am due to begin my Masters course on Monday of next week, and am currently attempting to navigate my way around the Abertay campus, taking care of the myriad of small tasks in preparation for the course commencing.

Scott Shelby (Sam Douglas) in Derailed ***Spoiler***

Watched Derailed on BBC iPlayer a few days ago, and noticed a very brief appearance of Scott Shelby at the end of the film. So he clearly got away with the murders in Heavy Rain and is now with the Chicago Police...

Isner vs Mahut

I had intended to have a reasonably productive day yesterday, but after coming in on a tennis match deep into the fifth set (must have been about 17-16 or there abouts). I imagined the match wouldn't go on too much longer. What can I say? It was incredible! It broke records left, right and centre. Nothing like this has ever happened before and will likely never happen again.

Thinking about the argument of introducing a tiebreak in the final set, I'm still not convinced that this would be a good decision... As Roger said, normally there are breaks. This type of thing does not happen all the time. Having said that, it doesn't change the fact that playing tennis for that long is 'bad' for you.

Well, almost time for the resumption!

Game In Scotland - 22nd May 2010

On Saturday 22nd May I attended the annual Game In Scotland event in Dundee. Despite being the smallest conference I've attended so far, it was actually most interesting and productive!

The event ran from midday to evening and was structured around two rooms: one for the main fair, giving attendees the opportunity to meet company representatives, the other for company presentations. The presentations themselves were interspersed throughout the day, while the fair ran continuously. This structure was particularly effective, and a little different from my expectations. It resulted in 'quiet time' during the fair giving the perfect opportunity for networking, and also allowed people to see the presentations which interested them.

I spoke to many interesting people, and some familiar faces. It is great to see better courses (and post-graduate courses) cropping up at the university, not to mention companies beginning to tie themselves into these courses more. Maybe the old catch 22 of being denied experience for lack of experience is on the way out!

The future of games in Scotland is very bright indeed.