Video Game Design: Chapters: Getting Started: Print Version: An Open Learning Guide

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Video games have many different forms, from old arcade games to small hand held devices, simple flash games you play online to the newest hit for one of the big names in the industry that can cost more than a movie to make.

Like any other type of game, a video game can be simple or complex, quick or slow, and even require a great deal of practice or patience to get the hang of. A lot of people, however, do not really know what goes on behind the screen. You can see the moving symbols and colors, the sounds, and know that they react when you press buttons, but what actually is happening back there?

Before designing a game for implementation, it is necessary to understand the industry you are getting into. Video Games have been around since 1931, today it is one of the fastest industries. Most new ideas in software developments are really new variations on old ideas. Some research will always provide new insights or ease the implementation of new approaches.

Today there are a myriad of different programming languages available to the amateur game designer, many of them freely available. There are also tools that allow you to create your own games without programming. If you ever want to be a paid game designer, you will have to know a programming language or two. If, however you just want to make games for your own amusement, this is not required.

It's a good question, and a common question, one that you can spend a great deal of time arguing over. The definition, conscious or not, will influence how one decides to design a game. So it makes sense to begin there.

There are multiple ways we could define a game, with varying ranges of inclusiveness. The essential problem with most definitions, however, is that they only work when one looks at certain types of games or players.

Some games are generally considered more entertaining than others, and some players prefer certain games to others.

The Competition definition holds that games are entirely about players competing against each other, to be the first or the best at something, or in the case of a solitaire game, to overcome the challenge presented to him through the gameplay. This is a reasonable definition for many games, and can be stretched even to very simple games such as Catch, where the only gameplay involved is tossing a ball or other object to the other players. The competition in Catch would be the players versus the ball and the environment; the player holding the ball must try to successfully throw it to the other player, and the other player must try to catch the ball without missing or dropping it. There is a deliberate attempt to make the game challenging; the players could hand the ball off to one another but they never choose to do so.

But what about something even simpler and less rule-based than Catch? Could we call building blocks a game to play? We do say that one "plays" with them. For the Competition definition, we would have to come up with some sort of competition that the player has between himself and the blocks, or his mind.

Source and licence

Text adapted from Video Game Design/Chapters/Getting Started/Print Version by Wikibooks contributors under CC BY-SA 4.0. Paragraphs have been selected and abridged, and formatting adjusted. This adapted text is shared under the same licence. Contributor history.