Adams Family Readings

In the mechanics reading Adams talks about various game mechanics including Space, Objects, Attributes, States, Rules, and Actions.

Space is the “magic circle of gameplay.” It defines the various places rthat can exist in a game and how those places are related to one another. Adams says that game spaces are generally discrete or continuous, have some number of dimensions and have bounded areas, which may or may not be connected. A game with fancy aesthetics can fool you into thinking that its functional space is more complex than it really is, think a monopoly board.

Objects are characters, props, tokens, score, or anything that can be manipulated in your game. Objects are nouns of game mechanics. Objects generally have one or more attributes of which are often the current position in the game space.

Attributes are categories of information about an object. A car has maximum speed and current speed as attributes, and each attribute has a state. A state helps define that attribute. Actions are the verbs of game mechanics.

Rules are what define the space objects actions and consequences and goals. They make possible all the mechanics. Adams defines the most important rule as the object of the game. You must be able to state your games goal and state it clearly.

In the Game Balancing Reading Adams goes in and talks about the difference between fairness and difficulty. As well as what is a balanced game. Adams defines a balanced game as having meaningful choices. The players must perceive that the game as fair. The difficulty must be consistent. Then Adams talks about dominant strategies in video games and the relationships among player options. Transitive describes a relationship among three or more entitles with advantages or disadvantages to a choice. Intransitive relationships works more like rock paper scissors.

Adams talks about PvE (player vs environment) and PvP (player vs player) and making the games fair. Adams says that PvE games should be fair, where a stalemate should not occur. Players should not have to do research outside of the game world to win the games.

A point that Adams talked about was fairness to a game. We can relate to that whenever we play a game I think that is why we have the difficulty settings. It is unfair to start out all games on difficult especially if it is your first time playing.