Gameplay Workshop

Today’s discussion to get you to start thinking about your gameplay specification, which is due after you come back from break. This document is meant to finalize(ish) your mechanics in time for your first software prototype.

Note that this document is not due this weekend. This is actually the major push for next week. But it is a good idea to get started on this document early, with the lessons from your nondigital prototype fresh in your heads.

Discussion Activities

Even if you have not yet finished your nondigital prototype, it is helpful to use what you have to guide your work during this session. In particuar, the prototype is extremely helpful is in setting priorities. In this document we ask you to assign each mechanic a priority, indicating how important it is to make it into the final game. If a mechanic is not working in the nondigital prototype, maybe it is not so important. But if it is key to making the nondigital prototype fun, you should give it a high priority.

While there are many aspects of the gameplay specification, we recommend that you spend most of the time on your actions, interactions, and challenges. The concept statement and design goals can be addressed outside of class (particularly because they are similar to what you did in the concept document.

Actions

Actions are the verbs that we talked about in the design elements. Identify the most important verbs in your game. These verbs should be those that either bring the player closer to achieving the objective, or overcome the challenge. For each action, you should answer the following four questions:

• What is the input to activate this action?
• What are the limitations (if any) for the action?
• What is the immediate outcome for this action?
• How important is this verb to your game?

Interactions

Interactions are not controlled (directly) by player input. Instead, interactions are a response to a triggering event, such as a collision, a line-of-sight detection, or a resource being acquired. For each interaction, answer the following question:

• What is the trigger event for this interaction?
• What is the immediate outcome for this interaction?
• What actions allow the player to control this interaction?
• How important is this interaction to the game?

Challenges

It is still a bit early to know all of your challenges. However, if you have some challenges already, this is going to make your gameplay prototype much, much easier. We want you to have several sample challenges in your game. For each challenge, mention the following:

• What objectives does the challenge block?
• How does the challenge block the player from the objective?
• How can the player use the verbs or interactions to overcome the challenge?
• How does the challenge involve skill, uncertainty, or risk?