Game System

Design

Petri Lankoski Södertörn University

 What Games are?
Chess Table-top RPGs
September 12
Eve Online
Poker

War Hammer 40 000 Sims

Graveyard

Doom
World of Warcraft
Sim City
Space Invaders
Flower

Cow Clicker
Heavy Rain
Petri Lankoski Södertörn University
 What Games Are?
 There are prototypical games
 Tetris, Chess, Space Invaders,…
 Understanding what make these things tick help you
to understand game design

 BUT going out from the box might produce

something very interesting
 Sim City, Little people, Sims
 Graveyard, Every day the same dream

 However, if a game is too novel, players do not

get it

Petri Lankoski Södertörn University

 What games are about
 Meaningful decisions In other words

 Twitch skill  That the players’ actions

and choices have an
 Puzzle solving impact

 Challenges  In the game

 To the players’ emotions
 Learning to play

 Mastering the game

Petri Lankoski Södertörn University

 What is game design?
 Creating rules or game systems
 Creating goals and challenges for players

 Creating content
 Not always purely game design
 But content and game design are always linked

Petri Lankoski Södertörn University

 Why Theories?
What are
your building
blocks?

How the
building
blocks relate
to each
other?

What are the

consequences
of your
design?

Petri Lankoski Södertörn University

 Game Autopsy
 Components  This is a combination of
 Game environment  Brathwaite &Schreiber
(2008)
 Actions  Järvinen (2008)
 What a player(s) can do
 Verbs

 Mechanics

 Goals

 Game State

 Game View

Petri Lankoski Södertörn University

 Components
 Components are something that can
manipulate or owned
 Components-of-self
Components-of-other
 Components-of-system
 Components-of-other

 Components in Chess
 Components-of-self
 Pieces that I move
 Components-of-other
 Pieces that another player moves
 Components-of-system
 Does not have
Components-of-self

Petri Lankoski Södertörn University

Chessboard: Klin, ILA-BOY, Beao, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Chess_board_blank.svg
 Game Environment
 Area where the game take place
 Area can be
 Field as in Soccer, Ice Hockey, Basket ball
 Game board as in Chess, Backgammon
 Screen as in Space Invaders,
 Game world as in Elder Scrolls
 Designed or randomly generated,

 But no clearly defined environment

 Shadow Cities
 Geocaching

Petri Lankoski Södertörn University

 Actions
 What players do when they play game

 Actions can be expressed as verbs

 Shoot, hide, sneak, drive

Petri Lankoski Södertörn University

 Game State
 All information that can change during the
gameplay and that is needed to construct a
situation in a specific moment

 Consists of
 All components, their positions, values
 Who's turn it is (in turn-based multiplayer)
 Possible previous game states when the previous
states influence the current state

Petri Lankoski Södertörn University

 Game State examples
 Poker
 Cards in hands
 Discarded cards
 Bot
 Who’s turn it is
 What is the stage in the game

 Tetris
 The position and rotation of falling blog
 Blogs on the ground
 Score
 Level

Petri Lankoski Södertörn University

Poker: image by Todd Klassy, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Holdem.jpg
 Game View
 What kind of view a player
have to the game state

 Perfect Information
 The game state is fully
visible to a player of to all
players
 E.g., Chess

 Imperfect Information
 The game state is partly
hidden
 E.g., Poker

Petri Lankoski Södertörn University

 Settlers of Catan
 Components?

 Game environment?

 Actions?

 Game state?

 Game view?

Petri Lankoski Södertörn University

 Mechanics
 game system, algorithms or rules,

 The core of game

 Mechanics defines how game behaves

Petri Lankoski Södertörn University

 Goals
 What is the goal of playing

 What is needed to win the game

 Victory conditions / conditions for loosing game

 Important for motivating play

Petri Lankoski Södertörn University

 Dynamics
 Patterns that happens when the game system is
motion, in use

 Approximately the same as Gameplay

 Same dynamics in (among other dynamics)

 Bridge
 Trump
 Spades
 Core mechanics is trick-taking

 Same core mechanics -> similar dynamics

 But dynamics depends on implementation and other
mechanics in the game

Petri Lankoski Södertörn University

 Core Mechanics
 Territorial acquisition  Chase or evade

 Prediction  Trading

 Spatial reasoning  Racing

 Survival

 Destruction  Not exhaustive list

 Building / Resource  These are commonly used

management
 Very useful
 Collection

Petri Lankoski Södertörn University

 Core Mechanics
 Tetris
 Spatial reasoning

 Settlers of Catan, Carcassonne

 Building/Resource management + Trading

Petri Lankoski Södertörn University

 Theme
 A game can have a theme

 Visual theme vs narrative theme

 Example
 Ico is a game about a boy who get captured
because he is different to others and he needs to
escape

 Not all games have a theme

 Poker
 Tetris

Petri Lankoski Södertörn University

 Where to Start?
 What this game is about?
 How do I play?
 Verbs

 How do I complete the game/How do I win?

 Goals

 What challenges I face?

 Obstacles, enemies

 What are the things I need to do to reach the

goals?
 Why I do want to play?

Petri Lankoski Södertörn University

 Work with the Limitations
 Game design is about working with limitations
 Limitations are not negative thing
 Limitations force you to be creative!

 Set limitations for the design

 Our game should contain
 A core mechanics, a design pattern, etc.
 E.g., territorial acquisition, ROLE-REVERSAL, one-button
control
 Our game should not contain
 Limit away the most obvious direction
 E.g., No shooting
 The style of the game is
 E.g., Dali-like, cute animals, pop art, wild west + magic

Petri Lankoski Södertörn University

 Some Tricks to Overcome
Designers Block
 Kill a rule, remove a feature

 Limit or unlimit a resource

 Take one random design patterns from Björk &

Holopainen and add that to the game

 Change a value in the game system or in rules

 Multiply or dive by two

 Change the visual theme or narrative theme

 Try something very different to the current one

Test or simulate the design after a change to get a fresh

perspective

Petri Lankoski Södertörn University

 Evaluating system behavior
 Play-testesting

 Simulations
 Simulations can help to understand how a part of
the system behaves
 One does not need ready game for simulation
 Does not replace playtesting
 But simulation can show the features work in the
long run
 Balancing weapons & troops
 non-symmetrical things are hard to balance

Petri Lankoski Södertörn University

 Simulating a game system
 Model
 sum of two six sided dice -> sum of two random
numbers between 1 to 6
 Weapon: change to hit, damage dealt & fire rate

 Simulating system
 Run model many times to learn how the system
behaves
 Run 50000 times and calculate distribution or
averages, average damage per minute, etc.

Petri Lankoski Södertörn University

 Settlers of Catan Simulation
 How the players gain resources

 Simplified
 Robber vs no robber discard
 Only resource amount simulated, not types

 Assumptions
 Four player game
 0-3 resources at hand when ones turn ends
 Model for using resources
 One specific board set-up
 The results does not vary much board to board
 The results can vary with not optimal settlement placements

 50 000 iterations used

Petri Lankoski Södertörn University

 Settlers of Catan…
• 4 victory point set-up
• Settlements -> cities
• 6 victory point sim
• 1&2) 8 victory point sim

• Note the optimal

settlement placement
in initial placement

Petri Lankoski Södertörn University

 Settlers of Catan: Model
#!/usr/bin/python
import random
from collections import Counter
# board model (2 victory points)
field1 = {
2: {'white': 0, 'blue':0, 'red': 0, 'orange': 0},
3: {'white': 0, 'blue':0, 'red': 1, 'orange': 1},
4: {'white': 1, 'blue':1, 'red': 0, 'orange': 0},
5: {'white': 0, 'blue':2, 'red': 1, 'orange': 0},
6: {'white': 1, 'blue':1, 'red': 1, 'orange': 1},
8: {'white': 1, 'blue':1, 'red': 1, 'orange': 1},
9: {'white': 1, 'blue':0, 'red': 0, 'orange': 1},
10: {'white': 1, 'blue':0, 'red': 1, 'orange': 1},
11: {'white': 0, 'blue':0, 'red': 1, 'orange': 1},
12: {'white': 0, 'blue':0, 'red': 0, 'orange': 0}
}

 The above model does not contain handling for robber

 Full code:
http://www.mediafire.com/view/bqag3hbz262gpac/catan.p
y

Petri Lankoski Södertörn University

 Catan: Resource gain

Petri Lankoski Södertörn University

 Catan: Robber Effect

Petri Lankoski Södertörn University

 Catan: Balance of set-up
1 2 3 4
White 2.0553 2.6120 3.1700 3.7267
Blue 2.0761 2.6593 3.2396 3.8224
Red 2.0808 2.6661 3.2496 3.8348
Orange 2.0892 2.6745 3.2605 3.8454

• Resource gain for each color is very similar

• White might have small disadvantage

Petri Lankoski Södertörn University

 Catan: What can one
learn?

 Easy to run what if scenarios

 Robber -> discard all
 Discard if more than four resources

 Estimating the costs for building

 Balance of the the initial set-up

Petri Lankoski Södertörn University

 References
 Brathwaite & Schreiber, 2008, Challenges for
game designers. Charles River Media, chapters
1-2

 Järvinen, 2008, Games without frontiers, Tampere

University Press, chapter 4.

Petri Lankoski Södertörn University

 Questions
comments, confused, disoriented?

Petri Lankoski Södertörn University