Isolating Game Elements - Environment and Players

Isolating Game Elements - Environment and Players

How to analyze a game? It is hard to figure out because there are so many games out there that it’s difficult to find similar traits between them. Firstly, let´s start with a good game definition:"A game is a system in which players engage in an artificial conflict, defined by rules, that result in a quantifiable outcome." (Katie Salen and Eric Zimmerman). A game must provide rules to be followed and, necessarily, some form of challenge or competition in order to achieve any goal. By pursuing this goal, the player must win, draw or defeat according to the game´s rules. As simple as it is.

The aim of this article is to help isolate elements which are common in games and use it to develop and refine concepts to apply on upcoming game design

projects. As first step, we must analyze and classify all possible common information in large groups. It helps us to know more about games and to think sharply when it comes to game design concepts. Only after that we can start narrowing things down.

A game must have an environment where all its rules can be applied. Either electronic or physical game must provide it in order to get things started. By environment we mean everything that helps player to immerse on the game experience (even forget real world in some cases). Regularly environment must be convincing and clear to the player. All interactivity objects and rules must also be available through this environment. 

Figure 1.0 - Necessarily all games should have similar

structure. It seems to have no exception to this rule. 

One player is a must if we are talking about considering an idea or concept a game. There isn´t much insight among the number of players involved in a game match. There will be surely zero, one or multiple opponents and they must be humans or computer guided ones. The number of players involved however makes difference on game concept and design process. Solitaire is a good example of One Player game: there is no need of other players to interact and all the player must do is to finish the deck of cards following the rules. 

A good example of a game to play on your
own. There is no need for an opponent
to play solitaire even in an electronic version.

Two Exclusive Players means any game that need necessarily another player to interact and cannot be played by a higher number of players than two. Chess or Checkers is a good example of Two Exclusive Players: it is required two players for the game to happen. 

A Chess match can be played only by two
opponents. Electronic version allows you to play
against a digital opponent.

Multiplayer obviously requires a larger number of players and is comprised of a wide range of games from traditional Bingo matches to Counter Strike or League of Legends online games.

Bingo is a game that
allows multiplayer matches.

Any game must have an Exit Condition. According to the game there might be Draw and Defeat situations. However, all games must have a Victory situation that leads the game to an end. Nowadays we can find lots of games with educational purposes that simply don´t have any situation to lead the player to lose or even draw a match. Some commercial games, in order to ease the winning process, introduced the Continue option in order to keep the player trying on and on until Victory situation is reached. It was very common on arcade machines in the 80´s and 90´s.

One Player	Two Exclusive Players	Multiplayer
Tetris	Chess	Bingo
Solitaire	Checkers	Counter Strike
Bejeweled	Street Fighter	League of Legends
Candy Crush	Pac Man

Games classified according to the number of players

Basic elements on a game enviroment were analyzed in this article. Regardless of the game, it might fit in above presented options. Figure 1.0 helps designers to classify a game and think about games on a different approach.

Putting these elements aside, there will surely remain elements like plots, interfaces, soundtrack, animations, game logic and others that will be subject of following articles. The information above is intended to help creating and developing game concepts, not rules to be followed unconditionally.

Continuing after losing a game match is a resource to prevent

players to lose interest on a game.