2012

Designing Gamesfor

Game Designers

Stone LibrandeCreative Director, EA/Maxis

Note: Turn on “Notes View” to see the outline of the talking points.Several images are temporary. Most of them will be enhanced.

• Class Philosophy

• Fundamental Exercises

• Advanced Exercises

• Designing your own “design games”

Overview

• Cogswell Polytechnical College, Sunnyvale, CA.

• Paper, cards, dice (no computers)

• 2 to 3 hour workshops

• Focus on one specific topic

Class Philosophy

Design Goals:• A chance for the class to get

acquainted

• Focus on physical rather than cerebral

Warm Up

What is a Game?

Design Goals:• Goals come in many forms

• All the rules stay the same, only the goal can change

• How does changing the goal change the game?

Goals

Design Goals:• How do you structure rules?

• What are the key words to prevent ambiguity?

• Players make up games from scratch by adding one new rule each turn

Rules

Design Goals:• It’s not enough to put decisions in your

game, you need “interesting decisions”

• The rules and goals don’t change

• The players are given a character and must create three actions. Only one action can be taken per turn.

Decisions

Design Goals:• Use the items in a room to build an obstacle

course

• Players must try to get a ping-pong ball into a cup

• Start with a par 1 hole, then slowly add obstacles until the hole becomes par 5

Obstacles

Design Goals:• Make an asymmetric game where the two

sides are balanced

• One side is a giant robot that operates autonomously

• The other side is a squad of 4 tanks under the players’ control

Balance

Design Goals:• Learn how to calculate odds while playing a

game

• Start with simple calculations and slowly progress in difficulty

• Show how statistics can give you more information than play tests

Odds

Design Goals:• Show the students how powerful rewards

can be

• Roll dice as fast as possible and try to get a double 6.

• Do this for an hour!

Rewards

Design Goals:• Using the lessons on odds and rewards,

make a casino game

• Balance the player’s payout with the houses ability to consistently make money

• Make the rules simple, but give the player options

Entertainment

Design Goals:• Bring in a board game but ignore the rules

• Combine it with another random board game

Mash Up

Design Goals:• MMO style game where the rules change as

the game is being played

• Each player is either a wizard, thief or warrior and levels up by battling other players

• Guilds tend to form naturally, which opens up new rule requirements

World of Rulecraft

Design Goals:• Take an existing video game and recreate it

using cards and dice

• After removing the graphics, sound and controllers, what will survive?

Paper Simulation

• Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater

• Asteroids

• The base game must be simple

• Let the students/players do the work

• Iterate the lesson constantly

Making games for designers

Thank you!

Detailed rules and materials for many of thes games can be found at:

www.stonetronix.com