Games Do Not Model/Simulate, but are a Business

This is how the world appears to game design: There are dependent and independent variables. Designers, through trial and error, will work out which are which. They will choose cultural, business and technical options that maximize long term advantages. If it doesn’t work out, they will do it over. Time is essentially of a piece. It is homogenous, but it can be divided into equivalent units, just like space. Civilization III models not so much ‘civilization’, as the game design business...

 Being "Good" At a Game Means Internalizing It's Algorithms

The gamer is not really interested in faith, although a heightened rhetoric of faith may fill the void carved out of the soul by the insinuations of gamespace. The gamer’s God is a game designer. He implants in everything a hidden algorithm. Faith is a matter of the intelligence to intuit the parameters of this geek design and score accordingly. All that is righteous wins; all that wins is righteous. To be a loser or a lamer is the mark of damnation. When you are a gamer, you are left with ...

 Break the Rules of a Game to Improve it

In The Well-Played Game, Bernard DeKoven advocates a fundamental adjustment in players' attitudes towards the rules of a game: You're not changing the game for the sake of changing it. You're changing it for the sake of finding a game that works. Once this freedom is established, once we have established why we want to change a game and how we go about it, a remarkable thing happens to us: We become the authorities. No matter what game we create, no matter how well we are able to play it,...

 Agency in Game Creation VS Game Play

Game design has been referred to as an art, and it is for the designers, calling upon all their powers of imaginative and creative production. For the child user, however, game play is not an art, but more of a sport. What we're talking about here is the difference between the free-form activity of pretend play and soccer on the playground or in organized leagues. In the first, child-determined goals and constraints respond or in organized leagues. In the first, child-determined goals and con...

 Four Game Mechanics

Agon: This ancient Greek word—meaning “struggle” or “contest”— defines those games in which some aspect of a player’s or team’s skill is measured against another player or team. Any game that is based on skill and eliminates luck is a game of agon. The best examples of this type of game are athletic games such as wrestling and baseball. The games of chess and checkers are also classic examples of agon. Contemporary abstract strategy games, such as those in the Project GIPF ser...