Why Study Games?

Periodically, starting tomorrow, I'm going to dedicate posts to specific games.  These posts will be my attempt to analyze games critically.  If I think a game's neat, what about it makes it neat?  If I find a game frustrating, what would I change to alleviate that frustration?  I won't be reviewing games.  I don't want to talk about graphics or the length of the game or anything else that might appear on the back of a game box.  These posts will intentionally not be exhaustive.  I want to focus on the single best and worst elements of the games as I see them.  My hope is that some of the observations I make during these critiques will resurface and positively influence my own games during their development.

Why this is beneficial:

One piece of advice Ian Schreiber (of Game Design Concepts and Challenges for Game Designers) gives for generating new game ideas is play more games.

Play lots of games! But… play as a designer and not just a player. Don’t just play for enjoyment. Instead, play critically. Ask yourself what choices were made by the designer of the game, and why you think those choices were made, and whether or not they work.

In his article Formal Abstract Design Tools, Doug Church argues that having a consistent design vocabulary, or way of discussing games, is paramount for game design to truly evolve and progress.

So we need a design vocabulary, a set of tools underlying game design practice. There is no correct or official method to identify them. One easy way to start looking is to take a good game and describe concretely some of the things that work well. Then, from concrete examples of real game elements, we can attempt to abstract and formalize a few key aspects and maybe find ourselves a few tools.

The first game I want to poke, prod, open up, and take a look inside is Dear Esther.  Come back tomorrow to find out what secrets she shared.

Cheers,

Danny