Churches Article On Game Tools

Last week we had to read Doug Church's article about the tools used in games and how they were used... i had to read his article twice to grasp what the 'tools' were. But in the end it was Brathwaite and Schreibar who made me 'understand' the tools of games. With Church's article the main tools he talks about are:

Intention -  Making an implementable plan of one's own creation in response to the current situation in the game world and one's understanding of the game play options.

 Perceivable Consequence  -  A clear reaction from the game world to the action of

the player. 

    Reading Church's article was a bit of a tedious, but his argument about the vocab in the gaming industry being too broad and unclear made me realise how often i call a game 'fun' or'good'. 

      It's these type of words that makes a game complicated or 'hard' to review . 

Using Formal Abstract Desgin Tools (FADT) does make it clearer and set a better understanding of what someones opinion of a game is. Thou I have to say that the choice of words that Church uses are unnecessary and if anything  making the issue more complicated then it already is.

One of my course mates had the same view as me, thinking that Church is trying to make Computer games designing more academic. I was leaning more towards his opinion the the rest of the class.

Aswell as reading Church's article we had to read chapter 2 of Challenges for Games designers by Brathwaite and Schreiber.

     Putting Church's article aside, Brathwaite and Schreiber used much simpler terms which were more understanding and easier to grasp what they wanted to get across.

Using words like:

Game state- a collection of all relevant information that may change during gameplay 

Avatar-Something that represents the player in the digial world

Game View- A portion of game state which the player can see

Game Space- The entire game area 

Game Bits-  Where a physical objects are needed to play the game (e.g dice, control pads,cards e.t.c.)

Game mechanics- "if  you do X then Y happens. If X is true then you can do Y" pp28

Game Dynamics- (not to be confused with Goals) Once your into the game you have to 'finish' (like a race to the finish line in mario kart)

Theme and Goals are pretty my self explanatory for a games designer

   With the simpler words Brathwaite and Schreiber use's it is easier to understand the tools in a game and even simpler to review it.

   Church describes Mario 64 in a long text about the game play. Yet using the Brathwaite and Schreiber's 'tools' to describe a game.

Mario 64 (original) played on the Nintendo 64 ( Game Bits)

Throughout the game you use the same Avatar (Mario) When you start the game the Game View is at Princess Peach's castle (with 3 floors), yet Game space include's multiple areas though the passage on walls and painting. At the start the game state is mario is in Princess Peach's garden. With no special ability until if he jumps though a painting and enters a different world. You can collect all the invisable blue coins and defeat differnt monsters (Game Dynamics). To defect monsters Mario has different abilities, some moves you have to be in a certain area or have a specific surrounding, like the wall jump.

With the tools the using the tools that Brathwaite and Schreiber's have used I havee created a much shorter version of Chruch's explanation of Mario 64 game play.

  I think that Doug Church has a point about the confusion which is caused by mis-understanding people reviews of games, but his solution in using words like  Perceivable Consequence and Intention made me more confused, whereas Brathwaite and Schreiber have done the same as him but binned all the complicated words and dissected the games using their own simpler tools.