Characteristics of Games is a college textbook by Richard Garfield (of Magic: the Gathering and King of Tokyo fame) and others. Their goal is to look critically at and talk intelligently about games, investigating their 'guts' and giving the reader a vocabulary to articulate common characteristics. It is "a framework for game analysis from the point of view of a game designer," looking at both systemic (rules-based) and agential (player-based) concepts. Below is a summary, using their framework.
Summary
Basics include length of playtime, number of players, and units of gameplay length (from smallest unit of play [like a round] to a campaign [multiple games]). Also important are heuristics- "rules of thumb that help [people] play a game," gaining mastery over time. "For players to have fun, they need to have heuristics. Human beings need to know if they are winning or losing, and they need to know what they want to do next." But beware- if a player can determine heuristics perfectly, it means the game will be 'solved' ("always do X when Y occurs," etc.). So maintaining some element of uncertainty in outcome is important (indeed, "uncertainty in outcome is at the heart of games").
Multiplayer Games have unique characteristics that can effectively change the way a game is played, to include:
- player elimination (allow early player exits or give everyone a chance to win until the end?)
- interactivity ("it's good for players to influence each other, because it makes the game more interesting.")
- politics (the ability of one or more players to 'gang up' and target another to affect the outcome; in some cases, you can think of this as a voting game, where players 'elect' the winner through their targeting choices)
- kingmaking (a person who cannot win deciding who will)
- teamwork (unique or balanced roles? Either way, players must contribute)
Infrastructure are those basic systemic elements. They include:
- Rules ("instructions telling players what actions they can take," with associated outcomes)
- Standards ("commonly accepted patterns many players are already familiar with")
- Outcomes (unique winner or ranking systems, etc.- what is the goal?)
- Ending Conditions (either by meeting a victory condition or being ahead when the end condition occurs)
- Positional Asymmetry (one player starting first, or has different courses of action available, etc.)
- Sensory Feedback (like visual, tactile, and audio information)
Games as Systems looks at how games break down into simpler elements. Discussed:
- Abstract Subgames ("Games are often disguised versions of other games, or have other simpler games within them.")
- Snowball and Catch-Up (will a person in the lead tend to increase their lead or be challenged until the end?)
- Complexity Tree Growth and Game Arc (a game is a series of meaningful choices, so how many choices does a player have at the beginning/middle/end of a game?)
- Game Balance and Strategic Collapse (if one option in the complexity tree is better, people will always use it and the game will have no real strategy)
Indeterminacy plays a role in all games, to some degree.
- Randomness is "uncertainty in outcome," which is differently defined than "random elements" like dice rolls. Randomness gets a bad rap by some, but games that lack luck "means that the only way to win is by devoting a great deal of effort to the game" to become an expert. It has to be properly balanced; if it's too extreme, "players feel their choices don't matter" and it's harder to learn a game's heuristics. But it can be good and grant increased competition, variety in gameplay (among other things, "luck causes odd situations to come up during the course of a game"), and psychological interest.
- Luck and Skill ("Luck decreases, not skill, but the returns to skill"). These two are orthogonal, meaning games can have large (or small) amounts of both.
- Hidden Information ("things about the game state not known to all players")
Player Effort is important to consider. Things like:
- Costs (what does it take in money/time/space/effort/etc. to play, and is that worth it to participants)
- Rewards (includes things like joy from winning, satisfaction from playing well, enjoyment of challenge, escapism, social interaction, etc.)
- Downtime (how much do players have, and when, during the game?)
- Busywork ("rote activities that the player must perform, which are not part of what they would consider the fun of the game.")
- Reward/Effort Ratio (get it right or players won't play)
Superstructure includes things "outside" the game, like:
- Metagame (the "game outside the game," like learning to build a good Magic deck or studying what local players typically do)
- Conceit/Motif (the extended metaphor of the game- the theme, in a sense. This includes story and narrative). A game can be purely abstract all the way up to a full simulation. Each point on the range has different pros and cons- full simulations are rarely fast (or easy), but simplified models may dissatisfy some)
- Spectation (how enjoyable a game is to watch)
- Customization (like house rules, handicaps, or building a Magic deck)
- Play lifetime (is the game content exhaustible?)
Review
This is a good book that brings up a lot of points to ponder on games, both for potential designers and serious fans of the hobby. It helped me quantify and articulate why I like certain games (or elements of them)- very valuable as I continue on my quest to design one myself. It's not always written well, and some definitions caught me off-guard (I questioned the authors' use of certain terms), but it's a valuable contribution to the field.
Rating: A
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