5PM and DoC - Formal Models for Game Design

Authors

  • Rodolfo Mora-Zamora Instituto Tecnológico de Costa Rica
  • Esteban Brenes-Villalobos
  • Francisco Durán

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.19153/cleiej.23.2.1

Keywords:

mda, game mechanics, game difficulty, game design

Abstract

A formal language for game design is an endeavor many academics and industry personalities have been tackling since the mid-nineties. One of the most renowned formal models for game design, the MDA Framework, includes steps to delimit and conceptualize the experience with a top-down approach. There is, however, a significant lack of high detail models for mechanic construction as well as difficulty balancing.

In this paper we propose two formal models for novice designers. The 5-Part-Model (5PM) for building and diagnosing game mechanics, and the Dimensions of Challenge (DoC) formal model for balancing and fine-tuning difficulty in games.

References

[1] D. Zwang, “Senet and twenty squares: Two board games played by ancient Egyptians,” p. 19, 07 2017.[Online]. Available: https://www.metmuseum.org/blogs/metkids/2017/ancient-egypt-board-games

[2] G. Costikyan, “I have no words and I must design,”Interactive Dramas, 1 1994. [Online]. Available:https://www.academia.edu/1270811/IhavenowordsandImustdesign11
CLEI ELECTRONIC JOURNAL, VOLUME 19, NUMBER 1, PAPER 0, APRIL 2016

[3] G. Costikyan, “I have no words and I must design: Toward a critical vocabulary for games,”Computer Games and Digital Cultures Conference Proceedings, vol. 1, 6 2002. [Online]. Available:http://www.costik.com/nowords2002.pdf

[4] S. Björk, S. Lundgren, and J. Holopainen, “Game design patterns,”Digital Games Research Conference2003, 1 2003. [Online]. Available: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/221217599GameDesignPatterns

[5] R. Hunicke, M. Leblanc, and R. Zubek, “Mda:A formal approach to game design andgame research,”AAAI Workshop - Technical Report, vol. 1, 1 2004. [Online]. Available:https://www.cs.northwestern.edu/?hunicke/MDA.pdf

[6] J. Chen, “Flow in games (and everything else),”Communications of the ACM, 4 2007. [Online].Available: http://jenovachen.com/flowingames/p31-chen.pdf

[7] T. Fullerton,Game design workshop: a playcentric approach to creating innovative games.CRCPress/Taylor & Francis, 2014.

[8] J. Schell,The Art of Game Design A Book of Lenses. A K Peters Ltd, 2018.

[9] A. Vanden Bossche, “Opinion: Shut up and save the world: The silent protagonist,” 2008. [Online].Available: https://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/newsindex.php?story=17652#.UE-1-LJlQYB

[10] F. Lantz, “Mda,”Game Design Advance, 9 2015. [Online]. Available: http://gamedesignadvance.com/?p=2995

[11] L. Polanski, “On genre and the ludic device,”Sufficiently Human, 8 2015. [Online]. Available:http://sufficientlyhuman.com/archives/1008

[12] W. Walks, “From mda to dde,”Gamasutra, 11 2015. [Online]. Available: https://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/WolfgangWalk/20151111/259078/FromMDAtoDDE.php

[13] S. Bj ?ork, “Gameplay design patterns,” 2018. [Online]. Available: http://virt10.itu.chalmers.se/index.php/MainPage

[14] M. Brown, “How to keep players engaged (without being evil),” 2018. [Online]. Available:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hbzGOQonu012

Downloads

Published

2020-09-22