Ames' syllabi

• What is the difference between a game designer and a game developer?

A game designer creates the basics of how a game looks and feels in a player’s hands or on a table, but a game developer is the one who gets through the nitty gritty parts of rules, mechanics, and functionality.

• What commonly occurs during the game development process?

Deciding rules, mechanics, and the modifications needed for those parts to work as desired. There is also often a lot of trial and error and prototyping.

• What are the challenges of balancing a game?

You must be able to scale how much freedom and power players have in games, how much can they really bend the limits of the rules, and the challenge behind maintaining the balance is to maintain the integrity of the goal and process of the game getting there.

• What should every player of your game believe? Why?

For me, I often struggle with getting through certain tasks for games. I can get easily frustrated. For my playtesting, I feel that being able to hold players accountable for their choices and give them the motivation to keep going regardless of whether it looks like they will win or not is a big thing I want players to believe.  

• How can you avoid stealing players’ fun?

Don’t make games so easy to win right away for one player

• What 10 maxims should you follow when writing rules?
• A clear objective · 2. Constraints · 3. Interactivity · 4. Runaway leader killer · 5. Inertia · 6. Surprise · 7. Strategy · 8. Fun. 9. Flavor 10. A Hook

• Question Set 2
• How has play testing changed your game?

It has allowed me to see new ways mechanics can be used as well as rules

• who from class would you like to playtest your next game or version 2 of your first game?

Amber, I haven’t played her first game, and she hasn’t played mine either. I have only seen the gameplay a little and I’m super interested in it

• Who is the audience for your game?

For the first game, with AI called Academic Integrity, really all ages, younger people will have an easier time though, but for the second game “A Box for my Trinkets” is young adults, as there are too many small pieces.

• Who should playtest your game outside of class?

I want to see some of the media arts faculty play Academic Integrity, I think it would be so fun and silly

Question Set 1

• what is the difference between a game designer and a game developer? A game design is typically the one who comes up with the idea and the design (characters, story, gameplay). Where a game developer takes those game ideas and developes them into a working game by writing code and handling the technical developement.
• what commonly occurs during the game development process? Planning, Pre-production, Production, Testing, Pre-Launch, Launch and Post-production
• what are the challenges of balancing a game? crafting difficult obstacles that resonate with everyone.
• what should every player of your game believe? why? The should be believe that your game is both fun and enjoyable because if they don;t then they won’t want to play your game again or tell others about it.
• how can you avoid stealing players fun? When the instructions are too long or unclear so players argue about what is right.
• what 10 maxims should you follow when writing rules? Avoid jargon; stick to plain language. Keep it simple and straightforward. Add a bit of personality, but don’t overdo it. Make sure the text is easy to understand, don’t use complicated terms. Break up any confusing rules; keep it flexible. Make it visually appealing without too much bolding or capitalization. Test your final draft, and address any mistakes in the FAQ after it’s published.

Question Set 2

• how has play testing changed your game? Helped me to be able to further develope my game and make it suitable for not just those in the basketball community. The game no allows for someone whon may know nothing about baskteball to win.
• who from class would you like to play test your next game or version 2 of your first game? I don’t really have a particular person in mind, nobody in class has actually got to play it yet so anybody would be fine.
• who is the audience for your game? Anyone 12+ just because some of the Trivia Questions are hard.
• who should play test your game outside of class? I think people at my work since everyone is pretty much involved in sports.

• Question Set 1
  • what is the difference between a game designer and a game developer? A game developer does not design the game, but “they make a lot of the games you buy better” (pg. 74). The game developer helps perfect the game by suggesting often minor changes to the rules, mechanics, etc. The designer comes up with the idea and inspiration for the game, but the developer turns this into a finished product. 
  • what commonly occurs during the game development process? Initial playtesting, reviewing and editing the rules, blind playtesting, and settling on titles and theming. 
  • what are the challenges of balancing a game? Players should be able to feel like they all have a chance to win and that makes balancing a game difficult, especially when there are cards or mechanics that have drastically different rarities or power levels.  Additionally, the interactions between the components need to be balanced, not just the components themselves. You also need to consider a card or components value. You also need to consider the different strategies that players may use in the game and if there are special techniques that will dominate over others and win every time. 
  • what should every player of your game believe? Why? Every player needs to believe that they have a chance to win up until the end of the game. Games become uninteresting if you know that you are not going to win; it just feels like the game is dragging out and you want to get it over with. Players also want to feel like they have some sort of control over the outcome of the game. 
  • how can you avoid stealing players fun?Based on Dave Howell’s guidelines, “don’t kick a player out out before the game is over”, avoid kingmaking (including kingchoosing, kingmaking, and kingbreaking), “don’t reward the leader”, “include inherent declaration”, “a player’s ability to influence other players should fall between none and lots”, and “don’t force a reverse”. 
  • what 10 maxims should you follow when writing rules? Use no intermediary terminology, use real words, make no more work than necessary, add flavor (but not too much), make your text no smarter than your reader, discard rules that can’t be written, take a breath (aka break up your rules), go easy on the eyes (not too much bolding and capitalization), get your final version playtested, fix any errors that pop up after publication in the faq 
• Question Set 2
  • how has play testing changed your game? Playtesting has made me realize quite a few critical flaws in my game rules and design that I wouldn’t have considered. For Garden Sabotage, I didn’t anticipate players planting plants that they didn’t want in their garden and I had no way for players to remove them. For The Lamp, a lot of the fun cards of the game went unused because I didn’t realize I had put too few spaces in the game. 
  • who from class would you like to play test your next game or version 2 of your first game? For Garden Sabotage test two, I would like to have some of the people in the class that are interested in garden games or sabotage games test them, because I think they are similar to what my target audience would be. 
  • who is the audience for your game? I haven’t taken much time to consider the audience for my games. But for Garden Sabotage, I think it could include people who are interested in plants and flowers and also people who want to be able to sabotage other players. For The Lamp, I’m honestly not sure what the audience would be. I think I need to take further time to establish an audience for both games. 
  • who should play test your game outside of class? Ideally, my target audience would be the playtesters of these games. Because quite a few of my friends and family are interested in plants, I think they would be good for a primary test of Garden Sabotage.