First, attendance code on Inkfish.
Game Design #
Game - A voluntary, structured play activity that players do for fun.
Design - Intentionally made decisions about how something should be.
Design #
We need to intentionally make decisions. What decisions?
Kind of game?
- Standard deck card game?
- Is it poker?
- Board game
- Custom deck card game?
- Fixed decks?
- Physical game?
- Games vs sports?
Each decision is also a classification. And either way to look at it will be fuzzy around the edges, but still useful.
In Class Questions #
Categorizing Games #
- Chess — Abstract strategy, turn-based, 2-player, perfect information, zero-sum, traditional board game.
- Quake — First-person shooter, twitch reflexes/spatial awareness, real-time, digital multiplayer.
- Bocce — Physical lawn game / precision sport, spatial estimation, turn-based, low-cardio dexterity.
- Super Meat Boy — Digital precision platformer, single-player, rapid trial-and-error, muscle memory.
- Pokémon GO — Augmented reality (AR), location-based mobile, collection/RPG, blended physical/digital.
- Magic: The Gathering (or Pokémon TCG) — Collectible card game (CCG), hidden information, metagame deck construction, asynchronous design vs. synchronous play.
- Tag — Folk game, zero equipment, continuous real-time, high-cardio physical agility, playground rule negotiation.
- Dungeons & Dragons — Tabletop role-playing game (TTRPG), cooperative storytelling, asymmetric authority (Dungeon Master vs. players), open-ended win conditions.
- Among Us — Digital social deduction, asymmetric roles, imperfect information, heavy emphasis on out-of-game conversation.
- Tetris — Digital abstract falling-block puzzle, spatial logic under time pressure, survival/high-score (no traditional “win” state).
- Minecraft (Creative / Survival) — Digital sandbox, emergent gameplay; frequently straddles the line between “game” and “toy/canvas.”
- Texas Hold’em Poker — Standard 52-card deck, incomplete information, wagering/resource management, psychological bluffing.
- Twister — Physical dexterity/flexibility game, player bodies as the game pieces, spatial entanglement.
- The Stanley Parable — “Walking simulator” / interactive narrative, meta-commentary, virtually no mechanical challenge or traditional failure state.
- Jenga — Physical balance and fine motor dexterity, literal physics-based mechanics, sudden-death elimination.
- Escape Room (Live-Action) — Physical environment as interface, cooperative puzzle-solving, strict time limit, non-replayable.
- Cookie Clicker — Incremental / idle game, minimal mechanical input, math optimization; tests the boundary of player agency.
- Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes — Asymmetric cooperative puzzle, cross-medium (one player on digital screen, other reading a physical paper manual), pure communication bottleneck.
- Roulette — Pure chance/gambling, zero strategic agency after the wager, tests the line between “game” and “gambling mechanic.”
- Soccer (Association Football) — Institutionalized team sport, strict physical rules, official governing body, high physical conditioning.
- Each game: Digital or Physical
- Which games are sports?
- Is Cookie Clicker a game if it plays itself?
- Is The Stanley Parable a game if you cannot “lose”?
- Is Minecraft (Creative Mode) a game or a digital Lego set?
- Alternative Taxonomies: Ask them to ignore platform/genre and categorize by:
- Core skill required (Dexterity, Logic/Calculation, Social/Deception, Spatial, Chance).
- Player alignment (Competitive 1v1, Team vs. Team, Pure Co-op, 1-vs-Many asymmetric, Solo).
- Information state (Perfect/Open information vs. Imperfect/Hidden information).
What other games can we come up with that are very different from these examples?
Game For Today #
See assignment
