To start off with I think it would be a good idea to give a general introduction to the Key Stage 1 game we have been creating then I can dissect it to explain some of the major design issues we encountered while creating it. In its very basic form our game is a “Pipe-dream” style game, the player places tile pieces onto a grid which form a circuit for an electrical current to flow, creating a full circuit completes the level whereas breaking the circuit will cause you to lose the level and have to start over. The player is aided by a Mentor who gives advice on placing pieces and generally guides the player through each level if they get stuck. In this form it is a very simple concept, there are obviously other things which you must do to complete the game to make it both challenging and fun, as we we’re making this game for Key Stage 1 students we had to find a balance between difficulty, simplicity and fun, make the game simple and fun wouldn’t make it very involving whereas making it difficult and fun would make it possibly too complicated for a Key Stage 1 student.
This was our first major design issue, this became apparent during the concept stage of development, we played around with a lot of ideas but some were scrapped due to them weighing the game down in one aspect, we felt that changing the simplicity and difficulty the game would be easier at a later stage (as in changing a few lines of code to adjust the difficulty) but what we needed to focus on was to make our game “fun” however we have been taught throughout the course that using the word “fun” when designing a game isn’t a very good idea, it is a bland word, on its own it doesn’t mean anything and can’t be easily described.
Greg Costikyan article – “I have no words, I must design” focuses heavily on the true meaning of a game so I will use this as an example and hopefully I can show how we decided that our game would be fun, he describes a game as “an interactive structure of endogenous meaning that requires players to struggle towards a goal”. (Greg Costikyan, 2004, Page 24) There are a lot of long words in this sentence and unfortunately I can’t explain it without explaining each individual word;
Interaction – how a player interacts with a game, how they learn the game works, the player must understand if they do X then the game will respond with Y, we chose to use a Tutorial to do this
Endogenous Meaning – This means that something that has value in the game world doesn’t necessarily have value in the game world, this is important as it will help draw the player into the game, for example we added Medals for completing levels in certain times, outside of our game they don’t mean anything, however in our game they mean that you can advance to the next level or that you have completed the level in a certain time frame.
Structure – The structure of a game could also be described as the rules or mechanics, so that if player does X then Y happens, again we used the Tutorial and progressive difficulty increase to do this
Struggle – This is almost equal to difficulty, if a player doesn’t have to struggle to complete a game then it isn’t really a game, struggle makes a game interactive and challenging. This was very a difficult subject throughout our games development (possibly even after our final version) by making the game too difficult KS1 children would struggle too much and would not enjoy the game so it would lose its “fun” aspect which is what we want to keep. However by making the game too easy children would lose their interest in the game which would also lose the “fun” aspect. I will talk about this more later
Goals – These define what a player is actually doing in a game they must complete X to achieve Y Goal, this must be made clear to the player as this will influence how they play the game. The goals we’re explained during the Tutorial.
From these points above we could say that yes we had a game, but was it going to be “fun” and interesting for children
Going back to what I had previously said about Struggle, this is a key factor in what I believe makes a game fun, if a game is too difficult it becomes stale and boring, if a game is too easy then it feels more like a boring chore which you just complete to see if it will get any better at a later stage. We decided to implement a timer as the main struggle in the game; this would enable us to tweak the timer to adjust difficulty at a later stage.
We then moved onto how the game would look visually, and after some research we had done into other Key Stage 1 games we noticed that the graphic’s and sounds for Key Stage 1 games played a huge factor into what made a game fun! If the graphics for the games we played had been any different we would have found the games too easy, but we could put up with the low difficulty since the games were visually pleasing and rewarding.
We then started on setting an art style which we would follow throughout the game, with having Tom White in our group who is an incredibly skilled 3d modeller we decided to build our style around his 3d models which we use in a number of places. We also took inspiration from other popular children’s games and cartoons, such as Jimmy Neutron and to a lesser extent Scooby Doo; we liked the colours in Scooby Doo as they were simple yet pleasing.
This can be linked to remediation, which means when something from one form of media is used in another, we hoped to convert the 3d style of Jimmy Neutron which was a popular TV series into our game, we feel that this has been achieved fairly well, there was other notable games which we could of used as a basis for our art style however we really liked the bright colours, bold shapes and overall appeal of Jimmy Neutron so we decided to use this as our base to build on. Our choice of colours could also be linked to remediation.
The colours we used were picked purely because they were neutral, we wanted our game to apply to both a male and female audience and having a simple neutral palette was one of the ways we did this, we had also considered things such as player name input and picking between a male and female character however we felt that if we left this out then there would be no gender specifics for the game and that it would appeal to anyone. We also took special care in the toys we picked as “levels” so that they could apply to both genders.
When designing our game we had talked about adding a story to keep the players involved, however in the end we didn’t have a set themed story and have left it to be player driven. We got this idea from a Doug Church article where he says "The narrative thread, whether design-driven or player-driven, that binds events together and drives the player forward towards completion of the game"(Doug Church, 1999, Page 5) What we took from this is that you don’t have to have characters with complex dialogue or an involving story if the game doesn’t require it, we felt our game didn’t require a story so we left it to be player driven, these is a slight design driven story in that the layout of the house has certain toys in it and there is our character Mr Spark who helps guide the player but it isn’t a set in stone dialogue after dialogue story.
I’d now like to talk about where our game would fit in a genre.
It became apparent in the concept (and design) phase that our game was a bit difficult to place in its play style, we looked back to the readings we had done on Paidea and Ludus styles of play, Paidea in its most simple terms means play for pleasure, you can play the game any way you wish, Ludus means you are more constrained with your choices and are given a clear path which will lead you to a firm ending (Winning or Losing)
It didn’t take us long to realise that our game sat nicely in the middle, in that what you have to do in the game is a clear example of Ludus where the player is made to understand what they must do to win, however the player can decide how they go about doing this, there are very few boundaries limiting how the player interacts with the game, this gives each level a mixture of both Ludus and Paidea play styles, this will hopefully help to add replay value (a player could attempt to complete a level in a different way)
The next thing I would like to talk about which was possibly a design flaw but somehow slipped past into the later stages of the game is our choice of toys/appliances for the children to fix, we originally had the idea of fixing household appliances but didn’t think this was very appropriate to tell Key Stage 1 children to fix things such as TV’s, lights and kettles.
We fixed on the “rooms” in which each different “level” would be placed, we decided on; a child’s playroom, garden and kitchen, we felt this would give us a wide variety to different toys/appliances. The main problem we noticed with this was that we were asking children to fix kitchen appliances, this of course is very dangerous as (going back to Endogenous Meaning here) in the game world this is fine but most Key Stage 1 children wouldn’t be able to easily distinguish between a fake toy in the game and a real life object in their parent’s kitchen. Using 3d models to represent these toys also didn’t aid in this as they looked fairly realistic, however we overcame this by have all the toys put onto a very toy like kids kitchen play set, the play set along with the bright colours on the toys made it very clear that these were toys the children would be fixing and not in fact real objects.
To finish up with I would like to explore Marc LeBlanc’s Taxonomy (Greg Costikyan, 2004, Page 26) which we first read about in a Costikyan article, LeBlanc states that a game is made up of 8 elements which can lead to a positive experience or “fun”. These are;
• Sensation: game as sense-pleasure
• Fantasy: game as make-believe
• Narrative: game as unfolding story
• Challenge: game as obstacle course
• Fellowship: game as social framework
• Discovery: Game as uncharted territory
• Expression: Game as soap box
• Masochism: Game as mindless pastime
Well with our game I believe we had added a good amount of Sensation in that there is positive and negative feedback along with pleasing visual design and assets, Fantasy we have also covered with making our own small game world with different levels and objectives, our game has a strong player driven Narrative. There is just about the right amount of Challenge for Key Stage 1 Students. The game was created with timers to add both challenge but it also adds to Fellowship as players can try to beat their peers. Our game has a progressive unlock level system; this covers Discovery as the game world is slowly unlocked. Expression I believe is how the player perceives themselves in the game world, in our game we hope they perceive themselves as the assistant to Mr Spark as he fixes the toys. Submission is when the player lets themselves slip into the game world, which if everything has gone to plan should happen.
If all the facts above are true and people agree with them then I guess we can say we successfully made a “fun” Key Stage 1 game.
Author: Doug Church
Article Name: Formal Abstract Design Tools
Year of Publication: 1999
Author: Greg Costikyan
Article Name: I have no words, I must design
Year of Publication: 2004
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