Gender in Games

There is a lot of past conceptions that women are not large fans of video games. This conception has also led to a reduced number of female workers in the gaming industry.

Due to games becoming more popular, everyone is presumed to having access to either a pc or console within their household. If we are to follow a graph that was established back in 2009 then it is believed that on average there is an equal number of women to men gamers. This could have potentially increased upon the previous years and may be even more equal than before.

Also, to develop upon the idea of segregation there is clearly a higher percentage of men in the games industry than woman, especially in the programming section. This is believed that it is stereotyped towards the previous connotations that programming and games are 'nerdy' and 'un-cool'.

Below is two charts, the top one detailing the examples of how many men and women play games and the second being used to display the percentage of male to female workers in the games industry.

 

Also, in another note in relation to women in the gaming industry there is a single idea that a woman by the name of Brandii Grace. Grace is hoping to open up a triple A games studio, and by doing so will offer a woman's experience to gaming. Through this she hopes to create more games that will be emotional and offer more to a gamer than violence and excitement through ideas such as being a divorce lawyer and other similar examples.

Narrative in games

Chris Crawford explains multiple features that are crucial when attempting to create a narrative. One of the first topics he addresses is the structure of the media.

The main topics that brings up is how the structure is placed and uses the itsy bitsy spider story to show them off. These topics are:

A protagonist
A conflict
A struggle
A moral
A resolution

These are all necessary components that are required in order to establish a strictly structured narrative.
This teaches the first lesson that is to follow the strict requirements for a story structure.

Games have a tendency to avoid this and as a result do not always have a powerful narrative.

The second lesson is that people are the most interesting thing ever and stories focus upon this. This reference does not have to be absolute, the person could be anything in a metaphorical sense. There are films that apparently 'revolve' around items but instead they are about the story of the person holding the thing, such as Frodo and the ring in Lord of the Rings.

There is always a conflict in a story, whether it is a major conflict such as a war or a minor conflict such as being late for a bus. Games are experienced in the simplest form of conflict which is violence.

Games also involve puzzles, however the third lesson is that puzzles are not necessary to a story.

Choices are an important and often a story is built up around the idea of the protagonist making the single key choice.

Spectacle is another method of telling the narrative, utilising exotic imagery to allow the viewers to enjoy the sight. Lesson number four is learned from here and that is how spectacles do not make a story.

Many forms of media focus on the image, and this is especially so in video games. This idea of visually thinking has conquered the worlds thinking. The lesson involved with this is that visuals do not dominate story telling.

Next up is spatial thinking and the idea of a story being told in the appropriate space. When describing distance it does not matter in relation to the drama, such as travelling for 'days'. In most stories this is not important to the viewer and this leads to the lesson that stories are told on a stage, and not on a map.

Dramatic time will not be the same as reality, often jumping forward or backwards in order to add to the confusion of the drama.

Writing Rules in Games.

Rules are the most important aspect of games design; in a non-digital game if the players are not able to understand the rules then they are also unable to play the game.
The rules need to clarify everything that is found in a game, making sure the players are able to completely understand the game and will not question everything. However, it is also necessary that the rules are as brief as possible, this means that the player will not need to read a tome of writing and get bored before even starting the game.

There are some important things to remember when designing rules :

1. Flavour first. Utilise a narrative if it exists. It will help tie the game rules together.

2.Get the boring stuff out of the way. Always list what the game needs and how it is set up after establishing the narrative, if it is too wordy then utilise an illustration.

3.Begin with the end. Always offer the objective first, as this is the win condition. This will be easy to find so that the players can understand how to win if they forget.

4.Go from general to specific. Similar to an inverted pyramid. Explain the general rules first before narrowing down and going into specifics. A way to think about this is to explain the rules of what is most likely going to happen before explaining what is less likely to happen.

5.Tell the players what they can do before saying what they cannot. The first rules are established as the primary rules this way, allowing the following rules to either change the former or not be in a state where the primary rules are applied.

Finally make the rules less serious and informal, unless the nature of the rules is to be strict and formal.

Utilise short sentences, simply vocabulary and include white space to make the rules easier to read.


Jacob Davenport further develops on the above rules that were written by Scott Jon Siegel.

If we explore Jacob'x writings he agrees with the above to an extent. In his opinion, anything extraneous should not be added to the rules unless necessary. This would contradict with Siegel's writing about being less serious and more fun when writing rules.

Other than the above, Davenport expands upon the rules by writing that your rules should be able to be read out loud to another and then they are able to start playing your game with little confusion. He also brings up that bullet points and white space are important, similar to Siegel.

Get the rules reviewed by people who know nothing about your game, and if they are unable to explain them to another without translating certain points then be prepared to re-write the rules to make them easier to understand and interpret.

Include interpretations of rules to prevent the above issue, such as issuing examples in italics to be read and reinforce the rule.If more clarification is needed then include it later on, perhaps as an appendix.

Finally, be prepared to consider how the rules would be used and write them as necessary. Always review and include the feedback and comments when designing or re-designing the rules in order to make them as accessible and understandable as possible.

Games Journalism

There are two types of Games Journalism, the older version from when Gaming journalism began and the more emerging new version.

New Journalism is an example of experimentation with journalism. This form of journalism focuses on putting the writer 'into' the text through the use of his experiences, whilst Old journalism is more centralised around delivering an objective idea of the experience. If we were to explore an example of this type of journalism then Youtube is an ideal media to examine. Due to the large number of independent game 'reviewers' and lets players there is often a large number of personal reviews that utilise New Games Journalism to offer their independant opinion on the game in the hopes that they will be able to reach out to their viewers and convince them to purchase, or simply enjoy watching, that particular game.

New journalism utilises the idea of having fun with facts and explaining a topic in a more humerous and personal manner. By an extension of this, New 'Games' Journalism focuses more on the writer explaining the game through his own experiences with it and what he achieved or 'achieve.
Old Game Journalism does not explore this personal relationship and instead strives to deliver an objective report on the different parts of a game. Typical examples of Old Games Journalism would be found in certain video game magazines, such as PC Gamer. These reviews are designed to focus upon the technical aspect of video games that are reviewed, and sometimes a small amount of personal opinion in order to enhance the overall article.

These two different types of games journalism offer a very different perspective for the consumers when dealing with journalism in relation to a video game. If a player would like to understand more about the game in relation to the technical issues they should explore an article that follows Old Game Journalism, whereas if you would rather explore a personal opinion and play-test of a game then you should follow New Games Journalism.

Bibliography

In order to further develop within essay writing, we are required to utilise the Harvard system to develop references and utilise them in my essays.

Below are two examples of books that I have read over this course:
Bell, R.C. (1979) Board and Table Games from many civilizations. Revised Edition. New York: Dover.

Braithwaite, B. and Schreiber, I. (2008) Challenges for games designers; non-digital exercises for video game designers. Boston: Course Technology.

Below will be examples of contributions to books that have been made in reading over the past year:
Salen, K. (2002) "Telefragging Monster Movies". In King, L., (ed.), Game On: The History and Culture of Video Games. London: Laurence King. 98-111

Bittanti, M (2003) "The Technoludic Film: Images of Videogames in Movies" In Nakatsu and Hoshino., Entertainment Computing: Technologies and Applications. Springer. 307-312

And finally this will be two examples of Journal entries that I have read over the year:
Keighron, P. (1993) "Video Diaries: What’s Up Doc?" Sight and Sound. October. 24-25.

'Gustafson, J. (1990) 'Design a Character', The Reading Teacher 44 (1) 86-87'.

As it is shown above they all follow a very similar format and each are formatted as follows:

A book is:
Author, Initial (Year of Publication). Title of Book. Place of Publication: Publisher.

A contribution within a book is:

Author Surname, Initial. (Year of publication) “The full title of the article in inverted commas”. In Editor
Surname, Initial., The full title of the work containing the chapter. City of publication: Publisher. Page span of the work cited.

And the reference for a journal entry is:
Author, Initial (Year of Publication). “Full title of the article in inverted commas”.The full title of the journal [volume + part if given and/or] Month, or Season, or volume/part number.

There we have the examples of how a reference would be set up using the Harvard system and a few examples of some interesting readings I have done over the course of the year.

Ian Schreiber on Game Balance

Schreiber uses a simple 2 player game in the beginning of his post to describe balancing. His idea is that a 'balanced' game means that one player does not have an unfair advantage over the other player. He also mentions that sometimes a game can be 'balanced' when it is simply against the game itself, with no second player involved and simply being a challenge. Finally he also mentions the idea of a card game being 'balanced' despite everyone having access to the same advantages.

Schreiber separates these into four sections :

1.Single player uses balance to decide what the difficulty is like and how appropriate it is to the audience.
This difficulty can change based on where the player is in regards to the games plot, for example end-game will have difficult enemies compared to the beginning. This is called Pacing and is done because as a player will explore the game and its mechanics they will begin to become more skilled at playing. By improving the difficulty as the game goes on it allows the balance to remain, without the game becoming too hard or easy.
Perfecting this is often done by utilising hundreds of play testers to create an average difficulty.

2. Multiplayer games with Asymmetry use balancing to decide whether one position is greater than the other.
If a game is symmetric then it does not require much balancing because players will start with equal resources and then the players advantages will come from their skill as a player instead of a game mechanic. An asymmetric game will require lots of playtesting in order to successfully balance each players starting positions.

3. If there are multiple strategies available in game then they must be balanced to prevent one from being more powerful than the others.
If a game has a single powerful strategy that beats all others then this becomes problematic for a game because it causes all other strategies that are worse than the optimal to become simple background noise. This makes it important to develop multiple, balanced, strategies that can effectively win a game in order to allow the players more choice and replayability.

4.Finally in card games each individual card is 'balanced', with its cost/benefit being take into consideration.
'Objects' can relate to different things such as units in an RTS, equipment in an RPG and cards in a CCG. We look at the idea of a 'deck' built with a set number of cards within the idea of CCG. Due to their being a large pool to choose from this requires a large amount of balancing to be done correctly. A correct method for this is to utilise a counter system, making certain cards more effective at others while being weaker against most. The method of balancing an object in a game is to look at its cost to benefit ratio. If two objects share this then they are, in theory, balanced.

To further expand upon the idea of balancing objects there are three different methods:

Transitive Or the Cost Curve
This is the direct method of balancing objects. The basic idea is that an object will have increasingly more beneficial effects the more it costs, or will have less detrimental effects the more it costs. A problem with balancing this is that if the designers math for the curve is incorrect, then it is wrong for every object in the game.

Intransitive or the Rock-Paper-Scissors 
This method follows the game of Rock-Paper-Scissors, in the sense that a unit will be able to beat one other unit, draw against a similar unit and lose to another unit. This method can combine with the cost curve, allowing a certain type of unit to be better than all the others because it costs more, but is still matched by a unit of the same level.  These methods require extensive use of math in order to discover the balance issues and resolve them without the game seeming too much like R-P-S.

Fruity 
This is the most random of the methods given by Schreiber, which involves giving unique objects to every player. The only way to balance this is with extensive play testing.

There are generic methods to assist in balancing games and they are as follows:

Math
Using math allows for transitive and intransitive methods to be implemented into your game, but it is difficult to do math and can be completely wrong which in turn will destroy the balance found in your game. Some abilities and unique units may not work with Math, and require different balancing methods.

Instinct
Utilising your insinct allows you to determine when the game feels right to you. This method is very open to human error and can be argued with other designers because they will have different opinions and instincts.

Play Testing
One of the most reliable methods of balancing your game, this enables you to discover a variety of information in regards to your game. This method relies on acquiring quality play testers however, because the feedback is only as good as the individual doing the play testing.

There are more methods that can be used for balancing your game:

Be aware of the different objects and systems found in your game
For example remember the core aesthetic and remember the interconnections found within the game and be prepared to change more than one thing if you need to make a change.

Make 1 change at a time
By only changing one thing at a time it allows you to time to view what it affects and you will know what it breaks.

Excel
Excel allows you to create charts and graphs which can detail all of the information about your objects whether it involves the cost and stats of units in an RTS, the costs and effects of your cards,  your weapons and gear in an RPG and more. Excel spreadsheets are versatile and useful in game design.
Excel is good at running equations as well, allowing the math side of balancing to be made simpler and is good for showing cause and effect.

Rule of 2 
This rule decides that if a game has a variable that is too high you will half it, and if the variable number is too low then you double it.

Balance the first turn
This involves balancing out the first few turns of the game in order to see how players will go, and to remove any overpowered strategies that will beat all others.

Write down rules as you make them
This gives you a reference point for your rules, so that you are able to call upon them for changes when necessary.

Balance
After reading the article, and calling upon my experiences of playing card games and RTS games I am able to understand more in relation to the effort that is required to balance these games and prevent one player having a huge advantage.

Jesse Schell and Dave Pery on Puzzle games

Jesse Schell uses this chapter of her book to discuss how puzzle mechanics can affect games and how the relationship between the pair is often tricky to explain.

There is an argument that asks the question 'are puzzles really games?' The paragraph uses a rubik cube and crossword puzzles as examples for puzzles that are not games, but explains that they do involve conflict like other games, simply between the player and the system like Solitaire for example.
Schell mentions Chris Crawford and he says that puzzles are not games because they do not respond to players, but Schell argues against this. She also mentions that other people say that games with an ending and a pre-determined outcome that does not change are considered a puzzle, but this would mean that the Legend of Zelda games would be a puzzle and this is not true.
She then relates puzzles to penguins, mentioning how explorers wanted to classify penguins as birds but were unable to because they could not fly.

Scott Kim says 'A puzzle is fun and has a right answer' The issue that is raised is that when the puzzle has been solved it is no longer fun, and relates this to another chapter which mentions the 'dominant strategy' and how this ruins puzzles.

Puzzles are dead?
Schell mentions how students believe puzzles to be 'old-fashioned'. This continues to explain how puzzles are now more woven into the gameplay, instead of being stand-alone sections of games and often take part in the environment of the game. The example given in the book relates to The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker, and how it utilises the dungeon environment to inspire the puzzles.

There are TEN principles to remember when designing a puzzle game:

Make sure the goal easy to understand
The idea is to make the player understand what they are supposed to be doing, otherwise they will lose interest quickly and not want to play the game.

Make the puzzle easy to get started
Simply make a puzzle in which it is simple for the player to discover what they are supposed to do in order to begin solving the puzzle.

Give a sense of progress
The player needs to see that they are making progress in the puzzle or they will get bored and quit.

Give a sense of solvability
The player must see that the puzzle can be solved or they will give up in frustration.

Gradually increase the difficulty
Make the puzzle more difficult for the player as it plays. An example to make the puzzle more difficult is to give the player control as to the order they do the tasks in, such as a crossword.

Parallelism is a good thing
By giving players multiple different puzzles that are related. It allows players to continue onto a different puzzle if they are unable to complete one.

Pyramid structure extends interest
By giving the player lots of smaller puzzles it can lead to solving a larger puzzle, this makes it more interesting for the player.

Hints extend interest
By giving a player a hint at a desperate time it allows them to kindle their curiosity and continue playing the puzzle.

Give the answer
The player takes pleasure in discovering the answer to a puzzle, not necessarily from solving it.

Perpetual shifts are a double-edged swords.
The perpetual shift is the idea of 'getting it or not getting it'. If a player 'gets it' they will enjoy the pleasure or understanding the puzzle but if they 'don't get it' they will be frustrated and walk away disappointed.

Below allows me to explain what Pery wrote about and show his understanding of puzzle games. He begins in a similar fashion to Schell by posing the question "What is a puzzle game?" and offers a similar answer to Schell. A puzzle involves a problem and a solution.

Below it lists all of the potential 'Dilemmas' that Pery mentions within his writings, showing off the 'problem and solution' of the puzzles.

Putting pieces together
-Finding the pieces and putting them together
Missing Persons, creatures or things
-Find a person, creature or thing that has been taken or lost.
Hard Choices
-Making an important decision in which the outcome is unknown.
Kill Tasks
-Kill important targets or creatures.
Getting it right
-Making the correct choice of something to say/give/do to an NPC
Unusual Object to carry/move
-An object you can carry around or move in certain ways.
Ordering things
-Putting things in order.
Buttons and Switches
-Utilising buttons or switches to solve the puzzles.
Keys
-Using the keys to open locks that are blocking your way.
Configurations
-Moving things into specific positions.
Sequence of tasks
-A sequence of tasks.
Follow the leader
-Following some form of leader, such as events or NPC
Timing challenges
-Adding time pressure
Obscure Object of desire
-An object you are unable to attend
You cant do that...yet
-Delaying the character to prevent them doing tasks for now.
Barrier
-Similar to You cant do that...yet
Thinking outside the box
-Thinking in an unconventional method
Managing Chaos(too much, too fast)
-Things happen quickly and the player must deal with this
Dilemmas
-Different solutions can deal with different moral issues.
Riddles
-Clues and such.
Signs and Wonders
-Signs and landmarks in the environment
Devices
-Objects to use.
Sudden Responsibilities
-Being told you must do something you dont feel good for something
Sudden Loss of Power
-Having all/some of the abilities of a character taken away
Whodunit
-Discovering who commited the crime.
Mental Puzzles
-Mental effort will be required.



In relation to dealing with puzzle games I understand that as gaming has evolved puzzles need to evolve alongside it. Having played the Legend of Zelda games I understand the integration of puzzles into the game environment.
The chapter helped clarify some aspects of puzzle games, allowing me to understand more about their creation and hopefully make some myself.