Learning About Game Elements

So we have established that there is many different disciplines involved with making a game (design, art, audio, code, objectives, narrative, etc). Game content creation is evolving all the time in order to keep up with technology speeds and so on.

The design is such a crucial aspect of the entire game, because without it, the game would simply be data on a disk with no user experience. It is also important that when it comes to game design, we understand and are able to communicate effectively to others, aspects of gameplay or design that we like or don't like. Once we reach this understanding, evolution across all game genres will accelerate and we effectively have our own shared language. In order to understand and appreciate how elements of a game fit together, we should be dissecting it into all its components - Design evolution often only occurs through refinements.

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_Mario_64#/media/File:Super_Mario_64_box_cover.jpg

So what tools would be useful for us in order to dissect and analyse game elements and components? We should take a look at the overall game aspects and look for things that we could abstract or form and apply to other genres and titles. Take Mario 64 for example, the idea behind it was to have multiple objectives in many of the 'worlds'. This allowed players to have some sort of idea about what their goals were and how to achieve them in later gameplay, because they had already visited the world earlier on and knew what to do in order to achieve new goals. This allows players to engage in a pretty sophisticated planning process. They have been presented with knowledge of how the world works, how they can move and interact with it, and what obstacles they must overcome.

So looking back on the Mario 64 example, we can now understand what can be derived from one or two specific observations. We see there are many ways in which players are encouraged to form their own goals and act on them. The key is that players know what to expect from the world and thus are made to feel in control of the situation. Another tool observation is known as PERCEIVABLE CONSEQUENCE: A clear reaction from the game world to the action of the player. This tool is often used in RPG games with some sort of character or plot development.