Incoming tangent.....thought I'd bounce it off you guys though.
So I've just been working on a board game and found I was lucky enough to have a sweet foundation for my game. What happened was I had a very simple set of rules (i prefer to call them physics) that allowed for a crazy amount of different scenarios and choices that were interesting as well as balanced.
What this allowed me to do was branch out from the simple game play effortlessly. I was able to easily keep track of ideas for interesting base game elements to spice things up as well as think of ideas for expansion packs down the road that can come long after the release of said game. In other words the game basically came to life on it's own. It's sort of how you have these relatively simple mechanics to our reality (think newton's 3 laws of motion, law of gravity, conservation of mass energy, etc.) and the infinite amount of 'balanced' outcomes.
Obviously when creating a game you can't really create something to that scope..hehe, but it illustrates the scope of a game that can be created with a simple set of mechanics.
Ultimately you want to create an engaging experience that keeps players coming back for more. You also want to make it as open ended as possible to help extend the value from your product. I feel that with the concept of establishing a basic physics engine whether your making a video game or board game, You can save yourself alot of effort down the road.
It also accommodates the very broad amount of play styles of different gamers as there choices are merely a product of them working off of your open ended environment/alternate reality you create for them. This opposed to simply finding a loop hole in your overlapping features and breaking your game. The point is that your game mechanics should be all twined to a basic set of physics as opposed to ideas that you plaster on top of questionable features to try to cover them up.
(for example: Say you invented the game of basket ball. You wouldn't have to worry about a player who has the ability to jump 30 meters into the sky, levitate or do any other law defying things....Why should you in your game?)
Something I'd personally add to supplement Sid Meier's "A Game Is A Series Of Interesting Decisions" Quote/GDC Talk.
link: http://gdcvault.com/play/1015756/Interesting
I just felt like when I read up on developers talking about adding depth by adding features (i.e feature overload) as opposed to just making a simple but accommodating foundation, that allows players to discover intended/unintended features/strategies/tools/etc. without breaking the game, there wasn't really anything that broke it down to this basic level.
This is probably common knowledge, but after looking it up I've never seen it really intellectualized. In other words I don't believe this to be common knowledge and am posting this thread in response....hehe.
So any thoughts? how to make this wall of text more sensible? any points to add on? etc... am I kookey'd up on crack?
Note: that when I mention game breaking, i'm not talking about bugs based off of code (i.e program glitches) but of game mechanics themselves.
So I've just been working on a board game and found I was lucky enough to have a sweet foundation for my game. What happened was I had a very simple set of rules (i prefer to call them physics) that allowed for a crazy amount of different scenarios and choices that were interesting as well as balanced.
What this allowed me to do was branch out from the simple game play effortlessly. I was able to easily keep track of ideas for interesting base game elements to spice things up as well as think of ideas for expansion packs down the road that can come long after the release of said game. In other words the game basically came to life on it's own. It's sort of how you have these relatively simple mechanics to our reality (think newton's 3 laws of motion, law of gravity, conservation of mass energy, etc.) and the infinite amount of 'balanced' outcomes.
Obviously when creating a game you can't really create something to that scope..hehe, but it illustrates the scope of a game that can be created with a simple set of mechanics.
Ultimately you want to create an engaging experience that keeps players coming back for more. You also want to make it as open ended as possible to help extend the value from your product. I feel that with the concept of establishing a basic physics engine whether your making a video game or board game, You can save yourself alot of effort down the road.
It also accommodates the very broad amount of play styles of different gamers as there choices are merely a product of them working off of your open ended environment/alternate reality you create for them. This opposed to simply finding a loop hole in your overlapping features and breaking your game. The point is that your game mechanics should be all twined to a basic set of physics as opposed to ideas that you plaster on top of questionable features to try to cover them up.
(for example: Say you invented the game of basket ball. You wouldn't have to worry about a player who has the ability to jump 30 meters into the sky, levitate or do any other law defying things....Why should you in your game?)
Something I'd personally add to supplement Sid Meier's "A Game Is A Series Of Interesting Decisions" Quote/GDC Talk.
link: http://gdcvault.com/play/1015756/Interesting
I just felt like when I read up on developers talking about adding depth by adding features (i.e feature overload) as opposed to just making a simple but accommodating foundation, that allows players to discover intended/unintended features/strategies/tools/etc. without breaking the game, there wasn't really anything that broke it down to this basic level.
This is probably common knowledge, but after looking it up I've never seen it really intellectualized. In other words I don't believe this to be common knowledge and am posting this thread in response....hehe.
So any thoughts? how to make this wall of text more sensible? any points to add on? etc... am I kookey'd up on crack?
Note: that when I mention game breaking, i'm not talking about bugs based off of code (i.e program glitches) but of game mechanics themselves.
