Festival2012/Submit/Game design is system hacking
Contents
Game Design = System Hacking
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- Title of session: Game Design = System Hacking
- Your name and affiliation: Greg Trefry, Gigantic Mechanic
- Session format: Design Challenge
What will your session or activity allow people to make, learn or do?
Design games is an act of system hacking. You can approach the design of games from many directions. You can start with a mechanic you think holds the possibility to engage players. You can begin with the intention of invoking a feeling in players. You can start with a game you want to mod and change. You build up a system, tear it apart and build it back up. The game designer's must identify the weaknesses and strengths in the system and exploit them to new and novel ends.
In this session, we'll take apart the rule systems behind several popular physical games, like "Ninja" and hack those games into new experiences. What we'll find is that anyone can modify a game. The tricky part is modifying rules to produce specific aesthetic goals. But with analysis of existing game systems and design through a process of iteration, you can being to bend game systems and other user experience systems to your aims.
Participants will learn:
- About how to analyze rules and systems underlying games.
- How to approach the reconfiguration of existing systems and the creation of new systems.
- How to develop a practice of quick iterative design.
Participants will make:
- A modification of an existing game.
- A paper or physical prototype of their modded game.
How do you see that working?
- We will start off by playing a physical game.
- We will discuss a framework to analyze the game.
- We will break into small groups to propose aesthetic goals and modifications to a game.
- We will reconvene and play the new games and discuss.
How will you deal with 5, 15, 50 participants?
This session is flexible. Most of the work will be done in smaller groups. At the end, the groups will playtest each others games provide feedback. This can be done with a variable number of people by modifying the group sizes.
How long within your session before someone else can teach this?
About 15 minutes. Once the group establishes a framework for discussion and practice for iteration, they can support each other.
What do you see as outcomes after the festival?
Participants will develop a practice they can apply to game design and user experience design in general. They will also leave with the seeds of game prototype and some playtest results.
