A. Roles of Game Design vs. Development and the Process of Creating A game:
A1. Difference Between A Designer & Developer in A Game:
A game designer is mainly responsible for creating a game that involves establishing structures based on organized ideas or graphics notes in mechanics. In contrast, a game developer is mostly focused on the ruleset and the game’s finalization, ensuring whether the structures are feasible for players to interact with.
A2. Development Stage of the Game:
The developing game requires to undergo rule-setting, logical structures, mockup play models — prototypes and finally experimenting with gameplay– playtesting with additional revising (rethinking, restructuring, resetting) and finalizations (sculpting quality materials for the game) to be successfully published.
B. Obstacles of Establishing Game?
When I come up with the framing for the narrative game ideas which could be useful for narrative storyboarding oftentimes, however mechanics behind the game structures sometimes could become barriers to rule-setting; I have to consider how the rule of play can make sense for potential gamers instead of just showing complex scripts of the interpretation.
B1. Beliefs of My Game:
Entertaining narrative graphic content with strategies.
B2. Avoidance of stealing players’ Fun:
Ensuring the rules of the game match the gameplayer’s initial expectations (impressions of the game by own judgments) as closely as possible to prevent unexpected errors of game strategies that weren’t intended to be formed by the game creator like accidental wins and losses.
C. 10 Mandatory Guidelines for Gameplay Structures:
- Use no intermediary terminology — Avoid inserting some jargon terms that need to be lengthy explanations by definitions because players are newcomers and don’t usually recognize such a random vocabulary in such complex gameplay circumstances. Game words should be part of their daily life instead of knowledge mastery.
- Use real words — Don’t assume that players will take a lengthy brain to guess the interpretation of the texts; speak to them briefly and directly about what will occur during the game rounds.
- Make no more work than necessary — Even though some gamers love some sorts of challenges once they encountered uncontrollable barriers, sometimes players feel too surprised to come up with solutions and strategies once they discovered there are tons of restrictions to proceed like trade-offs– these may be just too logical to continue playing for them. Simplifying the game obstacles for players to feel engaging challenges without destroying their initial expectations.
- Add flavor (but not too much flavor) — The elements on the playing piece which impress players with visual rules can represent a greater clue about what is the background behind the game and promote better memories of the game journey; Noticing that too much info printed on the pieces could also prevent each player to achieve the shortcut of the game which will eventually become an incomplete game.
- Make your text no smarter than your reader — Game Creators should step into the target audience’s perspectives of playing their game. Don’t be complex in forming the game directions since players aren’t really part of the game industry employees (unless they are, you still need to use design thinking; the game tester always owns the client’s brain predictions to provide better advising approaches for the game).
- Discard rules that can’t be written — Feasible Rules that are easier for players to abide by are the keystone for completing game finalizations.
- Take a breath — Gamers mostly dislike scanning whole instructions of the gameplay. Brief Rule Directions could mean more than a complex paragraph of game explanations.
- Go easy on the eyes — Ensuring the directions of gameplay are not eye-hurting, Be aware of word structures, arrangements, and hierarchy. Structuring the game manuals with sensible alignments with weights and highlighting the instructional sentences that players should care about.
- Get your final version playtested — Experiment with your game model (prototype and full product) in the mockup target clients to observe how they feel when first they try to play the game.
- Fix it in the FAQ — How the game can be improved to enhance the better satisfaction of buyers? Collecting the questions players asked and problematic issues to revise the game structures (including setups and rules).
D. Playtesting Experience:
From the perspective of being a dual-role in-game playtester and game creator, I feel like sometimes the game idea is fun to be designed as an interface prototype, however since the game involves some criteria of rules and user experience– how the players accomplish the game without misunderstandings that may lead breaking the rules and feel the game is sustainable for them to play it regularly.
D1. Who Will be Playtested for My Game (In Class)?
I think it is randomly assigned. I don’t have such picky behaviors since everyone loves various genres of games.
D2. My Major Game Target?
The audience enjoys immersing themselves in real-life situations and dream adventures.
E. Outside Playtesting of Own Game?
Since I know that media club (RUM Sentry Media) members love to play some random challenges– they will be my desired target gamers; I think my game could be a great setting for a TV channel program or sections of the show if my club team loves that.