Katie Salen: Gamestar Mechanic Project FAQ Part 2
Filed at 6:35 pm on July 12, 2007 in Games • Leave a comment
We began testing Gamestar Mechanic with kids using an extremely rough interaction prototype. This prototype modeled the basic game making activity we were after, but lacked most of the features envisioned for the final application. In order to build a prototype our team had to reach some consensus about the values, knowledge, and practices the game would model. The following post discusses some of the concepts we ended up including.
Gamestar Mechanic FAQ Part 2
What is game design?
Game design is a complex, multilayered design activity, whereby systems of meaning (games) are created through the design of rule sets resulting in play. As products of human culture, games fulfill a range of needs, desires, pleasures, and uses. As products of design culture, games reflect a host of technological, social, material, formal, and economic concerns. Because rules, when enacted by players, are embodied as the experience of play, game design can be considered a second-order design problem. A game designer only indirectly designs the player’s experience by directly designing the rules of play.
The real domain of game design is the aesthetics of dynamic systems. As dynamic systems, games produce contexts for interaction with strategic and quantifiable outcomes. This interaction is often digitally mediated (videogames are played on computers, consoles, or other digital platforms) but not always, as much of the knowledge basic to the practice of game design applies to the design of non-digital games as well. Long before computers existed, designing games meant creating dynamic systems for players to inhabit. All games, from Chess or Go to The Sims and beyond, are spaces of possibility for players to explore. Designing this space is the focus of game design. Game designers construct gameplay, conceiving and designing systems of rules that result in meaningful experiences for players.
What precedents informed the project, beyond game making software?
Other precedents for the project include games based on level editing like Line Rider(2006), Bridge Builder (1998), Junkbot (2002), Block Action (2006); games where design is the basis of play: Okami (2006), Magic Pengel: The Quest for Color (2003); software experiences based on user-customizable parameters: Polly’s World (2000), Sodaplay (2001); and games about game design: the Game Game (2005).
Why are you emphasizing the integration of a community or social technology component?
By embedding game making activities within a robust social community Gamestar Mechanic hopes to leverage the expertise not only of the game designers who have imprinted their knowledge on the design of the experience itself, but that of other players. Much of the play of the game takes place in the exchange and critique of games by the community of players. Players advance toward membership in the Council of Master Mechanics by earning better than average ratings on the games they make. Games are reviewed both by other players and by members of the Council itself. The narrative conceit of the Council allows teachers who may be working with the players to act as mentors within the learning space, reviewing games and giving feedback through a fictional avatar integrated into the overall narrative of the world. Professional game designers can also be invited in to take on a role as a master mechanic, for a short or extended period of time. In this way, Gamestar Mechanic allows players to assume different roles within a community of learners and invites in expertise across a range of channels.
How does the game embed knowledge in practice?
Gamestar Mechanic embodies a particular set of ideas, roles, and practices associated with game production, the ideas of members of the game’s development team, specifically. This is a way that as designers we embed knowledge in practice, capitalizing on the kinds of reflection-in-action that will undoubtedly take place. Gamestar Mechanic aims to teach basic game design fundamentals, as well as model basic practices of a game designer. Because designing games is a complex, multilayered design activity, the process of design is scaffolded through game design challenges, with game modification being the primary way players are introduced to both the elements of a game, and game design core principles.
In determining the knowledge base that forms the basis of the experience, we considered not only the core design principles to be taught, but also the range of activities players would need to experience if we were correctly modeling the practice of a game designer. In addition, we thought about the kinds of game design roles a player would need to take on during the experience, in order to fully embody the multiple roles a game designer assumes in their field. Taken together, this list of fundamental principles, best practices, and roles provide a blueprint for the Gamestar Mechanic experience, giving specific guidance to the testing and assessment components. Since we know the nature of the specific practices and concepts that define the kind of thinking we want to reproduce, we can work to embody these as best we can within the structure of the game itself. We can also test directly for evidence that players are taking on these roles: are they learning to speak, act, and think like game designers? Reproduction of these principles by players will help us to measure to what degree our design is working to teach.
Next: Betty Hayes: Assessment and Curricular Models in GameStar Mechanic > >
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