2023-03-20 17:00
Affected by the epidemic in the past few years, the world's economy has been in a downturn, but there are just a few games that make players all over the world crazy about them, earning a lot of money, and the overall game market share is also showing a trend of rapid growth.
In 2020, the total share of the global game market will be US$159.3 billion, with an annual growth rate of 9.3%
Because the more difficult the moment is, the more people want to be able to get a moment of escape in the game. As players spend more and more time in games and feel the heart-pounding experience in the virtual world that is difficult to obtain in real life, people begin to think about where to find fun games that allow them to focus on it.
And if you want to make a fun game, you have to grasp the core of the game and master the killer move of the game language.
|Sharing tutors in this issue|
Cong
Teaching Director of Hanyi International Shanghai Campus
- educate -
Full Sail University Computer Animation BSc
Seattle Central College Art
- work experience-
Disney Anniversary Product Rendering Designer
Independent Designer of China Eastern Airlines Creative Rendering Project
Full Sail University animation studio teaching assistant
-honor-
Awarded Woman Scholarship
Received STEM Scholarship
Awarded Merit Scholarship
#1
First answer "Where is the game fun?"
First of all, the principle of game playability is divided into micro and macro. The macro playability defines the "skeleton" of the game, while the micro playability corresponds to the surface "skin" of the game. Macro-playability is the concept of game structure and overall organization, while micro-playability defines the moments that are partially magnified in game creation and defines the levels of each action.
The core of the game we mentioned at the beginning is the central mechanism of micro-playability, and all playability elements will be built around it. To put it simply, the core mechanism is what players do most often in the entire game. Taking the core mechanism alone can almost show the entire game.
For example, let's think about where is the most fun racing game?
Racing games are mainly carried out in the arena environment. Players take pleasure in experiencing the excitement of the game, and "fastest" is the only purpose of the players. In this type of game, what players do most often is to control the car, so controlling the car is the core mechanism of the game.
The pleasure experienced by the player when controlling the car directly determines whether the game is fun, so the operation design of this type of game is very simple, without much technicality, so that the player can enjoy the fun of operating and driving.
operational design
Let's look at platform games, such as "Super Mario" and "Sonic". Almost everyone has played this kind of game that manipulates characters to run, jump, and avoid obstacles.
The core of the platform game is very clear, as you can see: running and jumping. If the character's movement is inaccurate, or the movement is slow, then the game experience must be greatly reduced.
Similarly, if the jumping distance is too long or too short, then the player will not be able to properly control the character to break through the level, so the NPCs and scene layouts that the player encounters during the running process are designed based on the benchmark distance that the protagonist has run.
To achieve an excellent game core, the game design must implement interesting basic movement, so that the character moves smoothly, and the player will have a fun game experience; on the contrary, if the character does not move smoothly, the game will inevitably look bad.
The process of improving the fun of the game
In addition to the above single-core or dual-core game designs, there are also multi-core games, such as party games. While the playability of multi-core games increases, the size of the game will also increase. Taking Grand Theft Auto GTA5 as an example, every time a character in the game adds a new skill, the game adds a new game core.
GTA ONLINE - The Diamond Casino HEIST
Specifically, the core of the game at the beginning was racing, shooting, and "robbing", but as the game unfolded, numerous other cores were added. In the free mode, players can try to drive various vehicles such as airplanes, buy houses and cars, pinch faces, dress up and so on.
Each brand-new vehicle defines a new gameplay and a new core of the game. For example, the way to operate an airplane, a submarine, is completely different from that of a car or a tank. The free choice of vehicle design not only enriches the game scene, increases the playability of the game, but also increases the total time required to complete the game.
For example, student Y set clues of magic books and magic cards in the game, providing players with more diverse game paths, allowing players to have a more novel game experience.
Chinese Arts student Y won the RCA UCL Goldsmiths game design MA offer
It should be noted that multi-core games are huge in size and have high design requirements, and designers need to invest a lot of budget and time costs.
Therefore, when you design a game project, you need to control the number of game cores, the characteristics of each core, the intensity of entertainment, and the game time. Because it is not that the more cores, the more interesting, sometimes too many cores will lead to a lack of understandability of the game.
#2
People are born to play games
The above analysis of the core of the game, as long as you have played the game, you can actually understand it just by listening. This is because people are born to play games, and everyone has an innate ability to play games before they come into contact with cultural concepts.
While game design is an emerging art, games themselves are not. Games are the first step primates learn to survive. It is a social behavior that follows the rules of a specific time and space and pursues the satisfaction of the spiritual world.
The task of game design is to create goals that motivate the player to progress through a level, and to give the player rules by which to make meaningful decisions in pursuit of those goals.
However, video games are not just about creating a game mechanism. Only by combining with other art modes on the basis can the work become fuller. On the spiritual level, it can convey a certain design intention to game players and bring strong sensory stimulation and emotional experience.
In order to create such a game experience, game production needs to combine game mechanics, expression techniques and presentation methods, which forms the language specification in the field of video games, just like the formation process of film language a century ago.
#3
Game Language Specification Design
In the language specification of game design, the MDA framework (Mechanism Dynamic Aesthetics Framework) is a frequently used theoretical framework. According to the MDA framework, a game—whether it is a board game, a card game, or a video game—consists of three parts, namely Mechanics, Dynamics, and Aesthetics.
These three parts are constantly interacting: Mechanics plus player actions create dynamics, and dynamics determine aesthetics (the player's emotional experience).
Interaction process indication
"The rules of the game - the system of the game - the core mechanism of the game - behavioral feedback - emotional experience"
This logical chain clearly shows that the primary goal of game design is clear rules of gameplay. Because game design itself is a process of designing game content and rules, as an interdisciplinary profession, designers need to create goals that can arouse players' enthusiasm for clearing levels, as well as the rules that players need to follow when pursuing goals.
Designers interact with players through design language
We cannot create a game without rules. Game rules are an indispensable link linking the entire game. Only by clarifying the interaction mechanism of each part in the game rules and digging out the clear core of the game can everyone make a fun game.
If you want to learn game design well, you must first be able to play games and know where the games are fun. At the same time, making the game fun is not as difficult as we imagined. The most important thing for everyone to do is to consider the player's feeling of playing the game, grasp the core of the game and design the game level, so that players can Deep in it, I think the game is fun.
Teach you how to do the rules of the game
make the game fun
Reprinted in: Game design is to make the game "fun"? _core_player_action