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Game Design Tools: Can They Improve Game Design Practice?

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Game Design Tools: Can They Improve Game Design Practice? Game design tools: can they improve game design practice? by Katharine Neil Thesis Submitted to Flinders University for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Department of Screen and Media Faculty of Education, Humanities and Law September 2017 Cotutelle institution: Ecole Doctorale Informatique, Télécommunications et Electronique Groupe ILJ - Equipe MIM - Laboratoire CEDRIC Conservatoire National des Arts et Métiers ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS First, I would like to thank my supervisors Professor Stephane Natkin, Dr Melanie Swalwell and Dr Denise De Vries for their guidance and support, as well as their patience in the face of the linguistic, geographical and administrative challenges posed by my cotutelle candidature. In addition, I am grateful for the comraderie of the students and staff of the ILJ team at the Cnam, who have been very welcoming to me and always forthcoming with stimulating discussions and advice. I am grateful to my friends Marion Tillous and Xavier Brisbois for correcting my terrible French, and to Christian McCrea for taking the time to read and give me feedback on my work. Finally, I would like to thank the creators of game design tools (particularly those of you who patiently responded to my questions, including Joris Dormans, Mark Nelson, Adam Smith and Antonios Liapis). I will not have understood your tools as well as you do yourselves, and despite my best efforts I can't guarantee that I've done your work justice. But please know that I believe in you and what you’re doing. You are the bold ones, taking on one of the most difficult and important, yet little known and frequently misunderstood, challenges in games research. Game designers need you, whether they know it yet or not. i TABLE OF CONTENTS Acknowledgements ............................................................................................................................... i Table of contents ................................................................................................................................. ii List of figures ....................................................................................................................................... iii List of tables ........................................................................................................................................ vi Abstract ............................................................................................................................................. viii 1. Introduction .................................................................................................................................. 1 2. The process and activities of game design ................................................................................... 5 3. Game design as a design practice ............................................................................................... 26 4. Game design tools ...................................................................................................................... 51 5. Research questions and method ................................................................................................ 83 6. Overview of case studies .......................................................................................................... 103 7. Observation & analysis part 1: The form of representation .................................................... 120 8. Observation & analysis part 2: The act of representing ........................................................... 144 9. Observation and analysis part 3: Integrating game design tools into practice ........................ 180 10. Progressimo: A progression design tool ............................................................................... 204 11. Conclusion ............................................................................................................................. 219 Bibliography ..................................................................................................................................... 224 Ludography ...................................................................................................................................... 238 Appendix .......................................................................................................................................... 239 ii LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1: Newkirk's design process model showing a gradual shift from analysis to synthesis (Dubberly 2004) ................................................................................................................................. 31 Figure 2: Design morphology showing alternating periods of convergence and divergence, within a broader trend towards convergence (Dubberly 2004) ...................................................................... 31 Figure 3: Flow diagram showing relationships between analysis, synthesis, and divergence and convergence (Dubberly 2004) ............................................................................................................ 34 Figure 4: An example diagram built by Koster using his own notation ............................................. 61 Figure 5: A sub-system of a game modelled in Petri nets by Araújo and Roque (2009) ................... 63 Figure 6: Bura’s diagram of the card game Blackjack using his own diagramming method (Bura 2006) .................................................................................................................................................. 63 Figure 7: BIPED tool (A.M. Smith, M.J. Nelson, & M. Mateas, 2010) ................................................ 65 Figure 8: A Machinations diagram showing the trade and travel system from the game Elite. ....... 66 Figure 9: Tanagra a “reactive level editor”. ....................................................................................... 67 Figure 10: The Sentient Sketchbook ................................................................................................... 68 Figure 11: A Ludoscope mission diagram ........................................................................................... 69 Figure 12: Annotated screenshot of Articy:Draft .............................................................................. 71 Figure 13: The progression plan component of Refraction's tool’s progression planning interface 73 Figure 14: A screenshot from The Casimir Effect ............................................................................ 106 Figure 15: A screenshot from South Sea Trouble ............................................................................ 111 Figure 16: Screenshot from Loot the Room using placeholder art.................................................. 114 Figure 17: Screenshot of Ultraworm ................................................................................................ 116 Figure 18: Fragment from the narrative plan for The Particle Who Knew Too Much, using Articy:Draft ....................................................................................................................................... 122 Figure 19: Machinations diagram modelling relatively high level, abstract elements as resources .......................................................................................................................................................... 124 Figure 20: A Machinations diagram containing so much detail that readability becomes an issue .......................................................................................................................................................... 130 Figure 21: Model of Ultraworm made in Machinations for the purpose of game balancing ......... 131 Figure 22: A Machinations model of Ultraworm at a higher abstraction level than in Figure 21. .. 132 Figure 23: Refraction’s tool's components enable design moves at a range abstraction levels ..... 133 iii Figure 24: Loot the Room design workflow ..................................................................................... 134 Figure 25: Nesting in Articy:Draft .................................................................................................... 137 Figure 26: A Machinations diagram of a game mode for South Sea Trouble .................................. 143 Figure 27: Rapid sketch of the same game mode on screen showing a sequence of game actions .......................................................................................................................................................... 143 Figure 28: Machinations diagram showing the system model above and the dynamics of the simulation in a chart below .............................................................................................................. 151 Figure 29: A screenwriter viewing his notes laid out on a table (Kadoudi 2014) ............................ 158 Figure 30: Loosely associated quest ideas in progress .................................................................... 159 Figure 31: Excerpt from a diagram of the narrative structure of The Casimir Effect made in Microsoft Visio ................................................................................................................................. 163 Figure 32: Excerpt from a work-in-progress narrative diagram made in Microsoft Excel ............... 165 Figure 33: The Casimir Effect design workflow ................................................................................ 183 Figure 34:
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