A brief overview of game design principles with an exercise for rapid prototyping. We used data from infographics found at www.informationisbeautiful.net

1. with Clay Ewing and Lien Tran

2. Designing non-digital games is a great way
to learn about systems
Designing digital games isn’t much
different, there is just a lot more pieces to
worry about

3. Objects
Attributes
Relationships
Environment

4. Objects
Attributes
Relationships
Environment

5. Objects
Attributes
Relationships
Environment

6. Objects
Attributes
Relationships
Environment

7. Objects
Attributes
Relationships
Environment

9. What’s up with golf?

10. We abide by artificial rules
Subject ourselves to constraints
Suspend our disbelief
Usually, because it’s fun

11. Let’s play a game, it’s called “HIGHEST
NUMBER”

12. Choices are ambiguous
Immediate rewards vs. delayed
gratification
Actions have consequences

13. Mechanics
• What you do in the game: shooting, building,
running, jumping, bidding, etc.
Dynamics
• Sets of mechanics that build the core gameplay:
territorial acquisition, survival, collection, trading,
etc.
Agency
• The ability for a player to make a choice

14. Intrinsic Reward
• Intangible. A sense of achievement. For the love
of the game.
Extrinsic Reward
• Tangible. If you play my game I’ll give you candy

15. Positive Feedback Loop
• Hooray! Have a power up!
• Destablizing
Negative Feedback Loop
• Die! Lose a turn!
• Stabilizing

16. Split into groups
Take a dataset/infographic
Figure out a game mechanic that could be
used to explain this data
You have 10 minutes

17. Using your selected mechanic, create a
game
You can use all of our fun prototyping
objects
You have 30 minutes

18. Split your group in half
One half should migrate to another split
group
Playtest your games within these groups