Atomic Elements similarly to Game design is hard to define and no definitions are perfect but if you look at all of them it's helpful when trying to see what we need to create when designing our own games for our projects. There are loads of examples in this reading for example Players is one of the atomic elements that reappear in all games so if you are creating a game you have to look at how many players are in your game, if there are more than one what is the relationship between your different players? A common player structure is having teams in a game with multiple players on each team. Some more atomic elements are: Objectives, Rules, Game strategy, Information, theme and sequencing and each one has questions to ask yourself when trying to create a game and things to talk about when talking about other games.
Lastly, In this reading I learnt about critical Analysis and how useful is it when discussing and comparing games. A critical analysis "is a thorough and unbiased look at the game".
I also learnt about the three steps to help give a game a critical analysis:
- Describe the game’s formal elements. Do not interpret at this point, simply state what is there.
- Describe the results of the formal elements when put in motion. How do the different elements interact? What is the play of the game like? Is it effective?
- Try to understand why the designer chose those elements and not others. Why this particular player structure, and why that set of resources? What would have happened if the designer had chosen differently?
I found this reading really helpful in understanding how I will be able to talk and analyse other games and I will definitely use the information to help me with my own game!
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| Breakdown of a critical analysis |
The second article I read was Formal Abstract Design Tools by Doug Church. In this article Church covers a lot starting with how we talk about games, and as game designers we should be able to go deeper then saying fun or not fun when discussing games. It is a game designers job to try and understand why a game is fun or why a certain part of the game is annoying or why something doesn't work. If we can understand why something works or doesn't work we can apply it to our own game and avoid mistakes. He makes the point that the way we understand each other as game designers is to dissect the games into components and understand why these components work or don't work together similarly to the first reading and talks about the benefits of Formal Abstract Design Tools.
Doug Church then goes on to talking about 'Mario 64' and how to start "abstracting out some tools and defining them well enough to apply them to other games" He gives examples and discusses the intention in Mario 64, why is works in Mario 64, what intention is in general in relation to games (goals and controls) and then how we should think about intention when it comes to applying them to our own game.
Overall I found both of these articles extremely useful and feel a lot more confident in how I can discuss and create my own game both articles point out why it's so important dissect the games into components and to constantly ask questions, why doesn't this work? Why does this work? How can I avoid similar mistakes or use similar aspects? I feel like I will be much more able to try and understand the different components and atomic elements when looking at different games after reading these.
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