Level 3 Introduction & Readings

LEVEL 3: FORMAL ELEMENTS OF GAMES

Level 3 is the last lesson in building a critical vocabulary from which to discuss games. Then, we will dive right in to the game design process. That said, we need a way to dissect and analyze a game by discussing its component parts and how they all fit together. This can be useful when discussing other people’s games (it would be nice if, for example, more professional game reviews could do this properly), but it is also useful in designing our own games. After all, how can you design a game if you don’t know how all the different parts fit together?

Readings

• Challenges for Game Designers, Chapter 2 (Atoms).
  This will act as a bridge between last Monday when we talked about a critical vocabulary, and next Monday when we will start breaking down the concept of a “game” into its component parts.
  
  
• Formal Abstract Design Tools, by Doug Church.
  This article builds on Costikyan’s I Have No Words, offering some additional tools by which we can analyze and design games. While he does use many examples from video games, think about how the core concepts in the article can apply to other kinds of games as well.

   

Additional Resources

For additional readings on these topics, click HERE. It is a list of resources that is student generated and regularly updated.