Task: Take one game that you’ve played that was D.O.A. By D.O.A., I mean “dead on arrival” (i.e., a game that’s no fun to play). Write down what you don’t like about it. What did the designers miss? How could the game be improved?
Reading:
Fullerton, T. (2014). Game Design Workshop: A Playcentric Approach to Creating Innovation Games, NY: Taylor & Francis (CRS Press)/ Chapters 1-3 on Design
Having read chapters 1-3 and do at least 5 of the exercises Fullerton suggests. They are mostly quick, some go deeper, but you can pick and choose. The idea is to work with the ideas she is presenting ways to think deeply and productively about your own game design.
1. Take one game that you’ve played that was D.O.A. By D.O.A., I mean “dead on arrival” (i.e., a game that’s no fun to play). Write down what you don’t like about it. What did the designers miss? How could the game be improved?
Halo 5 guardians. It was hyped to be a continuation of the Master Chief's story but was bait and switched by the marketing team, so instead of playing the Master Chief who went rogue and learning about his decisions, you play with a random new character to hunt him down. You never get the lightbulb moment to explain why he went rogue in the first place, which was a huge plot device. The way they divided the levels, you only played 3 levels as the Master Chief and eleven as the new character, Spartan Locke. Instead of getting to play a familiar character who was part of the lore, you spent most of the time playing an unfamiliar character who was also much less powerful than the Master Chief.
The game play was shitty in many ways. They introduced an enemy called the Prometheans who are ancient humans whose souls have been ripped from their bodies and digitized, then reincarnated as machines. There were only three types of these enemies instead of the usual seven, they didn’t have dialogue, the story doesn’t explore any lore or how it must feel to be digitized souls forced to fight their own species. Instead they’re just grey, lifeless robots.
For single player they introduced a squad of super soldiers who had terrible AI, for supposed super soldiers (the best of humanity) they couldn’t hit anything, couldn’t shoot straight and would run into danger and have to be rescued. Dialogue between characters and squad mates was wooden and sparse, instead of fleshed out and familiar. Instead of enjoyable, the dialogue was boring, and rare.
They added unique/legendary versions of weapons and vehicles which you could pick up during the campaign and worked well there, but moving to online multiplayer, teams were often steamrolled by those weapons because they added a game mode called “warzone” where you can generate points which buy power ups, vehicles and weapons. The team that generated points faster, had an exponential advantage. Often this could be attributed to poor level design of the few maps that were available upon release, and over the lifespan of the game, they failed to address the flaws in a meaningful way. They did add more balanced maps, but did not take the badly balanced ones out of rotation.
The sprint mechanic was particularly frustrating because to make the maps flow and deal with the increased speed players had they made the maps larger, wider and more open... but did not increase the range of the base weapons, which were all short range. That caused a disparity between characters that were freshly spawned and characters that had leveled up and purchased vehicles or new power weapons. On top of that if you died with these power weapons you could not respawn quick enough and get back to them since they disappeared after 5 seconds. You might spend a games’ worth of points to buy a sniper rifle, step outside your base and get hit, then respawn in the same place only to have lost your weapon, giving the opposing team a massive, often game ending advantage.
The loot box mechanic was introduced to Halo 5 as a way to get cosmetic upgrades as well as meaningful advantages like better weapons and vehicles. You could unlock one on these loot boxes in two ways. First, with the points from one game (each games runs about 30 minutes). Boxes contained three items and had a low chance of getting anything particularly good. Second, you could buy them for 3$ each, but they gave discounts for buying in bulk, for example a five pack, ten pack, 50 pack, etc. The purchased packs contained more items and also had better chances of getting rare items. They pushed these loot boxes extremely hard. Players who spent real money on loot boxes had way better items to then go into Warzone and absolutely crush non-paying opponents.
This game went off the tracks in a few ways, but the biggest was the marketers promising things for over a year that did not end up in the final game at all. Levels, characters, themes, etc. that had been plastered all over the marketing were nowhere to be found in the real game, even later when more content was added. The marketing was all about the campaign, but you could tell they had to cut a huge portion of it and stitch the rest into a game that had no resemblance to what was promised. Before release they even had a two season audio drama of twelve episodes each, each show was 45 minutes, dedicated to why the Master Chief went rogue and the mystery of it, which hyped up the story that was supposed to be in this game. It was a massive let down to players who have been following this story for years. There was even a Super Bowl ad featuring a level that didn’t make the final game!
It also fell down in multiplayer when the priority was releasing new weapons, power vehicles and armour skins before maps or game modes.
2. List ten games you played as a child, for exam- ple, hide and seek, four square, and tag. Briefly describe what was compelling about each of those games.
Playmobil - World building. Having the pieces of the world at your fingertips and then creating it in many different forms according to your whims. Arranging each piece just so, creating sprawling worlds across the entire living room floor and adding to them each day until you couldn’t even walk through the room. Then wiping it all clear only to start anew.
Mermaids - Character building. Creating a character based on your favourite things, like colour, personality, special powers, etc. Having familiar traits you’d come back to over and over, then mixing in new ones.
ZingTong - Suspension of Disbelief. Getting to be a little bit scared of older campers in scary face paint, running and hiding as they passed by, your heart pounding. Screaming and laughing as you ran away hand in hand with your friends. Then later, getting to be the “zing tongs” and pretend that you’re the scary characters.
Dragon Age - My first open world game and experience with deep lore and expansive character building and storylines.
Pokemon - Pure magic. The idea of going on an adventure and growing your characters was so compelling. Exploring the unknown as each piece of the map was revealed and new pokemon appeared. The gradual reveal of the mysterious bad guys.
Waterworks - on rainy days we would dig a pit with a series of dams and canals in the sand pit at recess. Then it would rain, and at lunch they would be filled with water. Seeing where the water was flowing, diverting it around things, damming it, was so much fun.
Bikes - similar to mermaids, we would create characters for our bikes and pretend they were horses and we were their riders. Each “horse” had a name, a personality, powers, etc. and we would create elaborate stories around them.
Stick Person Army - Draw an army of awesome stick people with our desk mate, then argue whose army was better. The more ridiculous, creative and funny the better.
No rules Football - Nobody knew the actual rules, other than throw the football to each other. We made them up on the fly until they became our own special school rules.
House - There were large trees in the forested area at school, and my friends and I would create little houses around the stumps, painstakingly “sweeping” the ground to create little house areas, crafting house items like spoons and bowls and gathering “food”. Total immersive play, to me these were incredibly real.
3. List five games, and in one sentence per game, describe the objective in each game.
Legend of Zelda: to defeat Calamity Ganon and free Princess Zelda
Pokemon: To train your pokemon to defeat the elite four and collect one of each pokemon to fill your pokedex.
Stardew Valley: to build up your farm, gather, fish and battle for items, get to know the villagers.
Smash Bros: to beat opponent
Grounders: Not get tagged by the person on the ground
4. Can you think of a game that has no rules? If so, describe it. How about one rule? Why is this exercise difficult?
I asked my 8 year old nephew and he said “everybody is it tag”… but there is technically a rule which is that if you get tagged you sit down.
It’s hard because without rules, it’s not really a game!
5. What are the resources in the games Scrabble and Call of Duty? How are they useful to players? How are they made scarce by the game system?
Scrabble: wooden tiles, specifically the vowels. They are made scarce because you need a vowel in almost every word, and there are far more consonants in english than there are vowels.
Call of Duty: money, ammunition and armour plates. There are a finite number in each game and all the players are competing for the same resources.
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