Week 8: Readings

GDW Chapter 5 Sidebar: A Conversation with Will Wright (p150—154)

This Sidebar is an interview with Will Wright, a game designer whose ideas created Simcity, The Sims, and Spore.  Wright mentioned how he likes to make things, which may have influenced the way in which his games function. In addition, he was interested in creative games with many possibilties and solutions that can give the players some uniqueness to how they play their game and in turn makes the game feels more special to them. This point makes me think how the GTA games are so popular, which is becasue the game places minimum limit on the players and give them the freedom to choose what they want to do within the world and even set their own goals.

Moreover, Wright mentioned how he was interested in the idea of simulation, and it seems that Simcity is the prime example of his game that uses simulation as its main mechanic, creating a complex system with a relaxed gameplay experience. When making the game, Wright explained how the players would create a mental model of what they would want to achieve in the game. In response to that, he used metaphors to explain the gameplay and make it easily approachable. Wright's main goal for the game was to create a space in which the players can explore and create unpredictable outcomes that can only be achieve through experimentation.

GDW Chapter 9: Playtesting (p271—272, p283—288, p302—304)

This chapter explains the iterative process of playtesting. It is advised that playtesting should be done early into the progress of creating the game. This is because there are more room to fix mistakes and make big changes when the game is still in its early version. Once the game becomes more polished, it would be harder to make major changes to the game if a big problem is spotted during playtest. Playtesting is different from quality testing since it is not as discipline-based. I usually divide my playtest sessions into two types, one is for testing out the mechanic and any technical questions that I have, and another one is for testing the aesthetic look and the feel of the game. The first type of playtest usually happen first, and the latter later. However, the feedbacks and notes that I take are not limited to one type of playtests. When playtesting an aspect of the mechanic, feedbacks on the aesthetic and the feel of the game, like about how the player charcater would react to that mechanic are extremely useful as well. I tend to playtest to look for answers for more than one question at once, which resulted in overwhelming myself with the many problems I spot during observation, as well as less detailed feedbacks from the playtesters. As a result, I should try to conduct playtests more frequently and only have one main question that I need to find out for each playtests. In addition, playtesting with people both within the game design program and outside allow for interesting feedbacks from varying perspectives.