skip to main content
10.1145/3616961.3616986acmotherconferencesArticle/Chapter ViewAbstractPublication PagesmindtrekConference Proceedingsconference-collections
research-article

Goal Playable Concepts Coupling Gameplay Design Patterns with Playable Concepts

Published:02 November 2023Publication History

ABSTRACT

In this paper, we present experiences of designing and implementing a series of playable concepts based on gameplay design patterns for goals and goal structures. These playable concepts are coupled with existing gameplay design patterns to enable complementary design knowledge representations, allowing different perspectives for the same phenomenon. Twenty-six playable concepts were created and are available online at itch.io. The paper discusses the details of the design process and reflects on the value of interactive representation of design knowledge and on coupling design knowledge representations. The paper contributes to the ongoing discussions in the game research community concerning documenting and disseminating game design knowledge.

References

  1. Nada Aouadi, Philippe Pernelle, Chokri Ben Amar, and Thibault Carron. 2016. MDA Approach for Reusability in Serious Game and E-learning Design. In Advances in Web-Based Learning – ICWL 2016 (Lecture Notes in Computer Science), Springer International Publishing, Cham, 206–212. DOI:https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-47440-3_23Google ScholarGoogle ScholarCross RefCross Ref
  2. Christopher Barney. 2020. Pattern language for game design. CRC Press.Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  3. Barwood, Hal, and Noah Falstein. The 400 Project. Retrieved June 14, 2023 from https://www.finitearts.com/Pages/400page.htmlGoogle ScholarGoogle Scholar
  4. Staffan Björk, and Jussi Holopainen. 2005. Patterns In Game Design. Charles River Media.Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  5. Rogelio E. Cardona-Rivera, José P. Zagal, and Michael S. Debus. 2020. Gfi: A formal approach to narrative design and game research. In Interactive Storytelling: 13th International Conference on Interactive Digital Storytelling, ICIDS 2020, Bournemouth, UK, November 3–6, 2020, Proceedings 13, Springer, 133–148.Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  6. Rogelio E. Cardona-Rivera, José P. Zagal, and Michael S. Debus. 2020. Narrative goals in games: A novel nexus of story and gameplay. In Proceedings of the 15th International Conference on the Foundations of Digital Games, 1–4.Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  7. John C. Jones. 1970. Design Methods; seeds of human futures. The Pitman Press. London.Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  8. Mia Consalvo. 2017. When paratexts become texts: De-centering the game-as-text. Crit. Stud. Media Commun. 34, 2 (2017), 177–183.Google ScholarGoogle ScholarCross RefCross Ref
  9. Greg Costkyan. 2002. I have no words & I must design: toward a critical vocabulary for games. In Proceedings of the computer games and digital cultures conference, Finland, 9–33.Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  10. Michael S. Debus, José P. Zagal, and Rogelio E. Cardona-Rivera. 2020. A typology of imperative game goals. Unpubl. Manuscr. (2020).Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  11. Joris Dormans. 2012. Engineering emergence: applied theory for game design. (2012).Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  12. George Skaff Elias, Richard Garfield, and K. Robert Gutschera. 2012. Characteristics of games. MIT Press.Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library
  13. Friedemann Friese and Harald Lieske. 504. Retrieved August 31, 2023 from https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/175878/504/NGoogle ScholarGoogle Scholar
  14. Tracy Fullerton. 2014. Game design workshop: a playcentric approach to creating innovative games. CRC press.Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  15. Kathrin M. Gerling, Max Birk, Regan L. Mandryk, and Andre Doucette. 2013. The effects of graphical fidelity on player experience. In Proceedings of international conference on Making Sense of Converging Media, 229–236.Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library
  16. Stefano Gualeni . Doors (the game). Retrieved from https://doors.gua-le-ni.com/Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  17. Xavier Ho and Martin Tomitsch. 2019. Affordances of brainstorming toolkits and their use in game jams. In Proceedings of the 14th international conference on the foundations of digital games, 1–10.Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library
  18. Jussi Holopainen. 2022. Challenge. Encyclopedia of Ludic Terms. https://eolt.org/ (2022).Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  19. Kristina Höök and Jonas Löwgren. 2012. Strong concepts: Intermediate-level knowledge in interaction design research. ACM Trans. Comput.-Hum. Interact. TOCHI 19, 3 (2012), 1–18.Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library
  20. Robin Hunicke, Marc LeBlanc, and Robert Zubek. 2004. MDA: A formal approach to game design and game research. In Proceedings of the AAAI Workshop on Challenges in Game AI, San Jose, CA, 1722.Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  21. Ana Illanas Vila, Francisco J. Gallego-Durán, Rosana Satorre Cuerda, and Faraón Llorens Largo. 2008. Conceptual mini-games for learning. (2008).Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  22. Aki Järvinen. 2005. Theory as Game: Designing the Game Game. In DiGRA Conference.Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  23. Aki Järvinen. 2008. Games without frontiers: Theories and methods for game studies and design. Tampere University Press.Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  24. Jesper Juul. 2021. The Game of Video Game Objects: A Minimal Theory of when we see Pixels as Objects rather than Pictures. In Extended Abstracts of the 2021 Annual Symposium on Computer-Human Interaction in Play, 376–381.Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library
  25. Andy Keenan and Matt Bouchard. 2015. Root of Play-Game Design for Digital Humanists. Syllabus 4, 1 (2015).Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  26. Hartmut Koenitz and Mirjam Palosaari Eladhari. 2021. The paradigm of game system building. Trans. Digit. Games Res. Assoc. 5, 3 (2021).Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  27. Bernd Kreimeier. 2002. The Case For Game Design Patterns. Retrieved from https://www.gamedeveloper.com/design/the-case-for-game-design-patternsGoogle ScholarGoogle Scholar
  28. Annakaisa Kultima and Kati Alha. 2011. Using the VNA Ideation Game at Global Game Jam. In DiGRA Conference, Citeseer.Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  29. Annakaisa Kultima, Christina Lassheikki, Solip Park, and Tomi Kauppinen. 2020. Designing games as playable concepts: five design values for tiny embedded educational games. In Proceedings of the 2020 DiGRA International Conference: Play Everywhere, Tampere, Finland.Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  30. Annakaisa Kultima, Johannes Niemelä, Janne Paavilainen, and Hannamari Saarenpää. 2008. Designing game idea generation games. In Proceedings of the 2008 conference on future play: Research, play, share, 137–144.Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library
  31. Petri Lankoski. 2012. Computer games and emotions. Philos. Comput. Games (2012), 39–55.Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  32. Bryan Lawson. 2006. How designers think. Routledge.Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  33. Andy Nealen, Adam Saltsman, and Eddy Boxerman. 2011. Towards minimalist game design. In Proceedings of the 6th international conference on foundations of digital games, 38–45.Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library
  34. José P. Zagal, Michael Mateas, Clara Fernández-Vara, Brian Hochhalter, and Nolan Lichti. 2005. Towards an Ontological Language for Game Analysis. (2005). Retrieved from http://www.digra.org/wp-content/uploads/digital-library/06276.09313.pdfGoogle ScholarGoogle Scholar
  35. John Rheinfrank and Shelley Evenson. 1996. Design languages. In Bringing design to software. 63–85.Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  36. Doris C. Rusch. 2020. Existential, transformative game design. JGSS 2, (2020), 1–39.Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  37. Michael Sellers. 2017. Advanced game design: a systems approach. Addison-Wesley Professional.Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  38. Miguel Sicart. 2008. Defining game mechanics. Game Stud. 8, 2 (2008), 1–14.Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  39. Jaakko Stenros. 2017. The game definition game: A review. Games Cult. 12, 6 (2017), 499–520.Google ScholarGoogle ScholarCross RefCross Ref
  40. Bernard Suits. 2014. The grasshopper-: games, life and utopia. Broadview Press.Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  41. Steve Swink. 2008. Game feel: a game designer's guide to virtual sensation. CRC press.Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  42. Katie Salen Tekinbas and Eric Zimmerman. 2003. Rules of play: Game design fundamentals. MIT press.Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library
  43. Emma Westecott. 2020. Game sketching: Exploring approaches to research-creation for games. Virtual Creat. 10, 1 (2020), 11–26.Google ScholarGoogle ScholarCross RefCross Ref
  44. José P. Zagal, Michael S. Debus, and Rogelio E. Cardona-Rivera. 2019. On the ultimate goals of games: Winning, finishing, and prolonging. In Proceedings of the 13th International Philosophy of Computer Games Conference, 1–11.Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  45. Robert Zubek. 2020. Elements of game design. MIT Press.Google ScholarGoogle Scholar

Index Terms

  1. Goal Playable Concepts Coupling Gameplay Design Patterns with Playable Concepts

      Recommendations

      Comments

      Login options

      Check if you have access through your login credentials or your institution to get full access on this article.

      Sign in
      • Published in

        cover image ACM Other conferences
        Mindtrek '23: Proceedings of the 26th International Academic Mindtrek Conference
        October 2023
        381 pages
        ISBN:9798400708749
        DOI:10.1145/3616961

        Copyright © 2023 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 the author(s) 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].

        Publisher

        Association for Computing Machinery

        New York, NY, United States

        Publication History

        • Published: 2 November 2023

        Permissions

        Request permissions about this article.

        Request Permissions

        Check for updates

        Qualifiers

        • research-article
        • Research
        • Refereed limited

        Acceptance Rates

        Overall Acceptance Rate110of207submissions,53%
      • Article Metrics

        • Downloads (Last 12 months)39
        • Downloads (Last 6 weeks)11

        Other Metrics

      PDF Format

      View or Download as a PDF file.

      PDF

      eReader

      View online with eReader.

      eReader

      HTML Format

      View this article in HTML Format .

      View HTML Format