Reddit Reddit reviews Game Mechanics: Advanced Game Design (Voices That Matter)

We found 17 Reddit comments about Game Mechanics: Advanced Game Design (Voices That Matter). Here are the top ones, ranked by their Reddit score.

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Game Mechanics: Advanced Game Design (Voices That Matter)
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17 Reddit comments about Game Mechanics: Advanced Game Design (Voices That Matter):

u/DarQraven · 15 pointsr/gamedesign

One thing you can do to keep these things under control is to purposely limit yourself in your design. Almost any CCG in existence has some sort of underlying design principles that guide what a card can and cannot be, or what a certain faction in the game can and cannot do or be good/bad at. How strong the average creature is, versus how strong the average weapon will be. How many turns you want the game to last, what expected deck size would be and how many cards you want to draw on average per turn.

The magic color pie is an example of one such limitation. Certain colors are good at certain things and not so good at other things. In addition there are the general playstyles that Magic's core design enables such as control, aggro, etc.
There is also some base level balancing for monster cards: a monster of a given strength will typically cost X mana, whereas a monster with a lot of utility will not typically also have high attack.

When you have these core rules in place, it becomes a lot easier to design new cards and get their initial stats right. When a new monster's attack is 3 higher than the average, you already know that it's gonna have to be expensive or have some other significant drawback. You'll already know not to give abilities that are typical of green cards to a new red card unless you have a good reason to do so.

For any given game, what these limitations and guidelines are is going to be radically different, so I can't help you much there. Generally though, you want a decent level of theoretical balancing on these core systems before you even begin to think about designing any detailed cards. Getting into the details before you know how and if your core systems work is a great way to waste a ton of time. Most of all, you need to have a goal for the card you are designing. What is is intended to achieve in the game? What strategies do you want it to enable or counter? From there, and with good core systems, the card will partly design and balance itself.

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As for "pre-balancing", there are a couple tools available.

  • Mathematics and modeling. For a given game system, it is usually possible to model it in some way that can predict how it will work. Often these models relate only to an isolated part of the game. For instance, it is possible to model how the amount of lands available to a player in Magic will increase over a game. It is possible to model how economies in a game like Starcraft will generally work. It is possible to model how deck-cycling cards will affect the player's economy. Etc. If you are interested in this kind of model, this is a great starting point.
  • Try to design your game based on the choices you want your players to make. The general flow of the game and the phases you want it to go through. The kind of experiences you want to offer. Create your core mechanics from there. Don't get into "cool ideas" for specific cards, units or maps before you have this absolutely nailed.
  • Lots and lots and lots of playtesting. For every card that you design, someone will find a use that you didn't intend or think of. Sometimes it doesn't lead anywhere, other times it breaks the game. Make sure you have some idea of where dangerous areas in your design space are. Varying between 3cost/2attack monsters and 4cost/3attack monsters isn't gonna break the game. Adding an ability that allows you to re-play another very powerful event might. Be careful with the second and take steps to focus your playtesting effort on the second kind of problem.
  • Analytics, if you have the option. Gather tons of data on what people are playing, how they're playing it and how it's working out for them. If possible, start doing this long before you ever release anything. Something might feel broken or imbalanced to you but be perfectly fine on average. Or vice versa. Only data can really show what's going on on a larger scale.
u/dancthesexyduck · 5 pointsr/gamedesign

Another book worth adding
Game Mechanics: Advanced Game Design by Joris Dormans and Ernest Adams
http://www.amazon.com/Game-Mechanics-Advanced-Design-Voices/dp/0321820274/ref=asap_bc?ie=UTF8

u/adrixshadow · 3 pointsr/gamedesign
u/alttoafault · 3 pointsr/interactivefiction

I think what your talking about is a systems focus. I just read a book on this topic, I think it summarizes quite well what your thinking about. It's called Game Mechanics: Advanced Game Design. I definitely recommend checking it out, I found it very inspirational as a designer.

u/iugameprof · 3 pointsr/ludology

We're slowly building a more rigorous understanding of games and game design. "Characteristics of Games" is part of that, as is my book, "Advanced Game Design: A Systems Approach." My basic thesis is that games are systems, and we can understand them (and design them) better by better understanding systems as a whole.

Others such as Koster, Dormans, Bura, Cook, etc., are all approaching the same territory in different, mostly complementary ways.

u/blindluke · 2 pointsr/gamedev

Game Mechanics is definitely helpful with understanding what the moving parts are, and it introduces a visual notation that I find useful in the planning stages.

By far the best tools to balance game mechanics is a spreadsheet and a working knowledge of math. Book on both might be helpful too.

u/VBlinds · 2 pointsr/gamedesign

https://www.amazon.com/Game-Mechanics-Advanced-Design-Voices/dp/0321820274

This is the book that describes these concepts. I literally ordered this book a few days ago.

u/KenFlorentino · 2 pointsr/gamedesign

Ah yes... the positive feedback loop. There are many ways to address this. First a book recommendation: https://www.amazon.com/Game-Mechanics-Advanced-Design-Voices/dp/0321820274/

The section on feedback loops (both positive and negative) is worth it by itself.

So for our game, we have a similar challenge. It is a mini-RTS where you get resources and those resources allow you to use mechanics that can give you an advantage which can aid you in getting more resources and so forth. Additionally, we have fighters that are produced. Resources can help make more fighters, or by taking additional planets (the sources of both fighters and resources) you can create more. Hopefully this make sense.

To ensure the game doesn't have win-switch runaway leader situation, we've added a number of negative feedback loops. For example, after a battle on a planet, the player who loses the planet (and who will also end up losing the fighter/resource production) gets a "rebate" in the form of some "fighter that escaped" and "resources they took with them".

This slows down the runaway leader situation and widens what we call "the valley of struggle".

Another way we manage this is having powerful mechanics that can, if timed well, disrupt the runaway leader. One mechanic we have is "doomsday". If the aggressor sends many fighters to a planet, the defender can activate a "doomsday" on the planet which will eat lots and lots of fighters, closing the gap between the loser and the winner. By using price and cooldowns, we limit this from being abused by the leader while still allowing well timed usage by the loser to reduce the gap. We have several mechanics like this.

The final mechanism that has had the most effect is cooldowns for mechanics. This ensures that even if the leader gets a fighter/resource advantage, they can't abuse any of the mechanics to widen their gap too fast. In fact, because the cooldown can be long, it requires being very picky about when to use some of the mechanics otherwise you could leave yourself defenseless.

There are other tricks we've used such as diminishing returns on production (thanks /u/waterlimon!) so that as the leader accumulates more planets, he gets diminishing returns on the fighters/resources produced on each planet.

Finally, lots and lots of playtesting between me and the artist testing game length, tipping points. We have a replay mechanism that allows us to view all the stats of the game and the "balance of power" as we call it, an algorithm that lets us determine who is winning at any given point. We watch that balance to see if we are seeing the type of game we want... with lots of tension, some back and forth, and hopefully around the 5-10 minute mark, the tipping point is reached by one side or the other.

Hope that helps!

u/MrsWarboys · 2 pointsr/gamedesign

I don't see Game Mechanics: Advanced Game Design get enough credit around anywhere;

http://www.amazon.com/Game-Mechanics-Advanced-Design-Voices/dp/0321820274

If you've ever played with Machinations, you'll know how cool it can be. This book goes into really deep mechanics that you can actually play with.

It's a bit dry, but it's the most comprehensive mapping of actual game systems I've come across

u/partybusiness · 1 pointr/gamedesign

Like, if you read this book, Game Mechanics:

http://www.amazon.ca/Game-Mechanics-Advanced-Design/dp/0321820274

It does primarily look at games through that lens of resources. I think there's a limit to that lens, and it works better for some genres than others. But it does come up a lot.

If a game has a shop and loot from monsters, someone had to decide what the prices in the shop are, someone had to decide how much loot you get from what monster. And less obvious, but how much damage should a certain sword do, how much health should a monster have, etc.

u/zzzzz_ · 1 pointr/footballmanagergames

I've always been interested in economic theory... some of my thoughts in the game design document were around having two types of economy: a global economy and a local one. I wanted this to have an effect on the player in terms of the strength of the league (i.e. how much money was coming out of TV rights, attendances, demand for the product etc). A weaker league gives team less chance of buying top quality players resulting in lesser ability to compete globally without huge investment from the player etc.

I'm not sure how to tie this into the game without making it too complicated but I did buy a book on game mechanics (http://www.amazon.com/Game-Mechanics-Advanced-Design-Voices/dp/0321820274) so I've been studying the mechanics behind some popular MMO / tycoon type games.

There's a really cool tool by the authors of the book I just linked:
http://www.jorisdormans.nl/machinations/

I've used that in the GDD to simulate a few of the sources / drains / converters in the game... balancing the game and making it enjoyable is going to be a real challenge. I'm concentrating on getting the basics of match simulation and a stable server for hundreds of connections before I start with the actual game mechanics itself but something I'm really looking forward to!

u/againey · 1 pointr/gamedev

I think that's a hard enough question even when targeting the general population within that age group. So it can be difficult to find well researched and experientially backed up information even without the more specific target of children with autism. Though I'll also note (as someone with a degree of autism himself), depending on the individual's particular autistic attributes, the condition can actually be a strength for studying something such as game design. The focus on designing rules and working out all the implications for their effects on the gameplay experience can often be a natural fit for someone with autism. At least in my case, the key for effective learning was to grant me the time, space, and tools to explore a subject in my own idiosyncratic way, at which point I could soak up all sorts of knowledge and concepts.

As for concrete recommendations, the one that comes to my mind is to look outside of computers for at least part of your teaching material and activities. I wasn't expecting it initially, but while reading a variety of game design books to improve my own knowledge for making video games, I repeatedly encountered the recommendation to do as much of your early prototyping away from the computer as possible. That is, design board games, card games, sports-like games, party games, and so on. In many cases, you can pull ideas from a variety of game types to build hybrids that do a decent job of replicating the essence of certain video game mechanics, giving you a chance to evaluate how fun the concept is, and if it merits spending time to make a more in depth digital version.

Best of all, it can be free or very cheap, it requires no knowledge of coding, you can do it anywhere (though preferably with a good work table and some craft supplies and standard physical gaming equipment), and you can get results in just a few hours, or maybe even a few minutes depending on the concept. Anything using a standard deck of 52 cards is particularly simple to test, for example.

Two of the books I've already read that had sections helping me think in these terms were:

u/Mercy404 · 1 pointr/hobbygamedev

That's exactly it, I want to experiment with different ideas for the meta game, all of them very different from the source material, and pretty diverse among themselves as well.

I think you might be on to something about a mechanic similar to the Linear RPG; it would certainly be simple to prototype and test out.

One of the goals I had in mind was to focus less on fast, frantic action and more on slower, strategic play. Whether the strategy is in setting up big chains, or choosing when to use certain tiles or which to match when, I'm not yet sure.

I actually just discovered Machinations when I read your other post, and have been playing with it a bit to experiment with some potential systems for the meta game. It seems unfortunately poorly documented, I'm assuming there would be a lot of content about it in their expensive book though.

u/pjsdev · 1 pointr/gamedesign

Okay, here are 4 suggestions about theory. There are plenty more, but these are a few of my favourites.

Rules of Play: Game Design Fundamentals

  • Chunky theory book and one of my favourites. Also has a companion book of essays

    Characteristics of Games

  • Really nice combination of chapters from various designers (including Richard Garfield of MtG) looking into different aspects of design.

    Game Mechanics: Advanced Game Design

  • All about systems and how resources move through them in games and the affect that has.

    Theory of Fun for Game Design

  • Easy to read, nicely illustrated and conveys a powerful fundamental idea for game design.

    Good luck and happy reading.