research-article

A requirements analysis for videogame design support tools

Authors:

Mark J. Nelson,

Michael MateasAuthors Info & Claims

FDG '09: Proceedings of the 4th International Conference on Foundations of Digital Games

Pages 137 - 144

https://doi.org/10.1145/1536513.1536543

Published: 26 April 2009 Publication History

Abstract

Designing videogames involves weaving together systems of rules, called game mechanics, which support and structure compelling player experiences. Thus a significant portion of game design involves reasoning about the effects of different potential game mechanics on player experience. Unlike some design fields, such as architecture and mechanical design, that have CAD tools to support designers in reasoning about and visualizing designs, game designers have no tools for reasoning about and visualizing systems of game mechanics. In this paper we perform a requirements analysis for design-support tool for game design. We develop a proposal in two phases. First, we review the design-support-system and game-design literatures to arrive at a plausible system that helps designers reason about game mechanics and gameplay. We then refine these requirements in a study of three teams of game designers, investigating their current design problems and gauging interest in our tool proposals and reactions to prototype tools. Our study finds that a game design assistant that is able to formally reason about abstract game mechanics would provide significant leverage to designers during multiple stages of the design process.

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Cited By

Acharya DMateas MWardrip-Fruin N(2021)Story Improvisation in Tabletop Roleplaying Games: Towards a Computational Assistant for Game Masters2021 IEEE Conference on Games (CoG)10.1109/CoG52621.2021.9619006(01-08)Online publication date: 17-Aug-2021
https://doi.org/10.1109/CoG52621.2021.9619006
Acharya DMateas MWardrip-Fruin N(2021)Interviews Towards Designing Support Tools for TTRPG Game MastersInteractive Storytelling10.1007/978-3-030-92300-6_26(283-287)Online publication date: 4-Dec-2021
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-92300-6_26
Lo PThue DCarstensdottir E(2021)What Is a Game Mechanic?Entertainment Computing – ICEC 202110.1007/978-3-030-89394-1_25(336-347)Online publication date: 22-Oct-2021
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-89394-1_25
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Index Terms

A requirements analysis for videogame design support tools
1. Applied computing
  1. Arts and humanities
    1. Architecture (buildings)
      1. Computer-aided design
  2. Physical sciences and engineering
    1. Engineering
      1. Computer-aided design
2. Human-centered computing

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cover image ACM Other conferences

FDG '09: Proceedings of the 4th International Conference on Foundations of Digital Games

April 2009

386 pages

ISBN:9781605584379

DOI:10.1145/1536513

Conference Chair:
Jim Whitehead
UC Santa Cruz
,
Program Chair:
R. Michael Young
North Carolina State University

Copyright © 2009 ACM.

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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SASDG: The Society for the Advancement of the Science of Digital Games

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Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

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Published: 26 April 2009

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FDG '09

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FDG '09: International Conference on the Foundations of Digital Games

April 26 - 30, 2009

Florida, Orlando

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Overall Acceptance Rate 152 of 415 submissions, 37%

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Cited By

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https://doi.org/10.1109/CoG52621.2021.9619006
Acharya DMateas MWardrip-Fruin N(2021)Interviews Towards Designing Support Tools for TTRPG Game MastersInteractive Storytelling10.1007/978-3-030-92300-6_26(283-287)Online publication date: 4-Dec-2021
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-92300-6_26
Lo PThue DCarstensdottir E(2021)What Is a Game Mechanic?Entertainment Computing – ICEC 202110.1007/978-3-030-89394-1_25(336-347)Online publication date: 22-Oct-2021
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-89394-1_25
Esparza-Cervantes NGuerrero-Triana MJiménez-De la Cruz AMayor-Molinares SHoyos-De Los Rios ORestrepo D(2020)La interdisciplinariedad en la construcción de Eru, un videojuego educativoArte, Individuo y Sociedad10.5209/aris.6702833:1(71-85)Online publication date: 20-Oct-2020
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Bangay SMakin OMueller FJohnson DSchouten BToups Dugas PWyeth P(2018)Meaningful Choice in Strategic Unit SelectionProceedings of the 2018 Annual Symposium on Computer-Human Interaction in Play10.1145/3242671.3242690(33-44)Online publication date: 23-Oct-2018
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Machado TGopstein DNealen ANov OTogelius J(2018)AI-Assisted Game Debugging with Cicero2018 IEEE Congress on Evolutionary Computation (CEC)10.1109/CEC.2018.8477829(1-8)Online publication date: 8-Jul-2018
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Cheng JAnderson DPutnam CGuo JSchouten BMarkopoulos PToups Dugas PCairns PBekker T(2017)Leveraging Design Patterns to Support Designer-Therapist Collaboration When Ideating Brain Injury Therapy GamesProceedings of the Annual Symposium on Computer-Human Interaction in Play10.1145/3116595.3116600(291-303)Online publication date: 15-Oct-2017
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Osborn JSummerville AMateas M(2017)Automated game design learning2017 IEEE Conference on Computational Intelligence and Games (CIG)10.1109/CIG.2017.8080442(240-247)Online publication date: Aug-2017
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