Game Elements

 

(image of character game pieces, source)

In this blog I'm going to talk about different game elements from the Reading Task this week. 

The two documents we read were:

1. What are qualities of games?
2. Game design Research


Reading over what some of the qualities of games are we read about Formal, also known Atomic elements. Formal elements are things like games have rules, conflicts, decision-making, goals and an uncertain outcome. They are also activities, outside of the ordinary world so mostly virtual, they can be art and are closed systems. This is a lot of what we had read about last week in summary.


Reading deeper into these atomic elements we find that they are things like: Players, Objectives, Rules, Resource and Resource Management, Game State, Information, Sequencing, Player interaction, Theme, Games as Systems. When looking over Players we there are many different playstyles involving the amount of players in a game. Some of them are:

> 1 player vs game system eg. Solitaire
> 1 player vs 1 player eg. Chess
> Multiple players vs game system eg. World of Warcraft
> Free for all when it's 1 player vs 1 player vs 1  player... eg. Monopoly
> Team Competition when it's multiple players vs multiple players eg. League of Legends.

I found this really interesting as while playing games over the years I never realized how the amount of players affects the game but I also subconsciously knew the type of game I'm playing is affected by the amount of players in the game. This was useful in defining that.


When looking at Objectives we see that there are many different objectives that a game could have. Some of these are:

> Capture/Destroy where you have to eliminate your opponents pieces from the game eg. Chess
> Territorial Control where you focus more on controlling more areas of the board eg. RISK
> Collection where to win you have to collect certain items.
> Chase/Race where you are usually running away or towards something eg. Mario Kart

I found this to be of interest as well as it explained the objectives of games quite well and gave me ideas of what objectives I could have for my game. I'm also curios how it would be to mix two objectives together such as Chase and Collection. 


Another link I found interesting was Information. This talks about how much information is given to a player about the game they are playing. Some game offer:

> Full information where players can see all the information on the game at all times eg. Chess
> Some information that is private to each individual player eg. Poker
> One player see more information than others
> Information that is hidden to all players

I like this idea of how much information is available to players as this can have a big impact on the players around. In games that I have played more like League of Legends players have a lot of information available and I have to concentrate on the game more and always pay attention to what information is thrown at me so that I can play the game better and win. I like that playstyle where more information is available. 


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