A lecture on game system design. Introduction to concepts for describing and discussing designs with examples. Some notes about evaluating game system behavior.

1. Game System
Design
Petri Lankoski
Södertörn University

2. What Games are?
Table-top RPGs
Chess
Eve Online
September 12
Poker
War Hammer 40 000
Doom
Space Invaders
Sims
Graveyard
World of Warcraft
Sim City
Flower
Cow Clicker
Heavy Rain
Petri Lankoski
Södertörn University

3. 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

4. What games are about
 Meaningful decisions
In other words
 Twitch skill
 That the players’ actions
and choices have an
impact
 Puzzle solving
 Challenges
 Learning to play
 Mastering the game
Petri Lankoski
Södertörn University
 In the game
 To the players’ emotions

5. 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

6. 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

7. Game Autopsy
 Components
 Game environment
 Actions
 What a player(s) can do
 Verbs
 Mechanics
 Goals
 Game State
 Game View
Petri Lankoski
Södertörn University
 This is a combination of
 Brathwaite &Schreiber
(2008)
 Järvinen (2008)

8. Components
 Components are something that can
manipulate or owned
 Components-of-self
 Components-of-system
 Components-of-other
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
Petri Lankoski
Södertörn University
Components-of-self
Chessboard: Klin, ILA-BOY, Beao, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Chess_board_blank.svg

9. 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

10. Actions
 What players do when they play game
 Actions can be expressed as verbs
 Shoot, hide, sneak, drive
Petri Lankoski
Södertörn University

11. 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

12. 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

13. 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

14. Settlers of Catan
 Components?
 Game environment?
 Actions?
 Game state?
 Game view?
Petri Lankoski
Södertörn University

15. Mechanics
 game system, algorithms or rules,
 The core of game
 Mechanics defines how game behaves
Petri Lankoski
Södertörn University

16. 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

17. 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

18. Core Mechanics
 Territorial acquisition
 Chase or evade
 Prediction
 Trading
 Spatial reasoning
 Racing
 Survival
 Destruction
 Not exhaustive list
 Building / Resource
management
 These are commonly used
 Collection
Petri Lankoski
Södertörn University
 Very useful

19. Core Mechanics
 Tetris
 Spatial reasoning
 Settlers of Catan, Carcassonne
 Building/Resource management + Trading
Petri Lankoski
Södertörn University

20. 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

21. 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

22. 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

23. 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

24. 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

25. 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

26. 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

27. 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

28. 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

29. Catan: Resource gain
Petri Lankoski
Södertörn University

30. Catan: Robber Effect
Petri Lankoski
Södertörn University

31. 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

32. 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

33. 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

34. Questions
comments, confused, disoriented?
Petri Lankoski
Södertörn University