Game Elements

 What are the qualities of games?

https://tudublin-my.sharepoint.com/:w:/g/personal/shaun_ferns_tudublin_ie/EWlNUos7p8lFgRytGr80kbYBzMrZ6rnlKTegFJnnr_fSLg?e=3kRB39

Anon, (2014). The formal elements of game systems and game design atoms «The Acagamic. [online] Available at: https://acagamic.com/courses/intro-to-game-design/the-formal-systems-of-games-and-game-design-atoms/.

“Then I went on to say that completely defining the word “game” is impossible”. The person writing this definitely contradicted themselves as it is possible but no definition is perfect.

I’m not sure if calling formal elements “atoms” is correct as yes they are technically made up of atoms as we are all but we don’t go and call a desk a bunch of atoms. This is just my personal opinion though.

Players

Objectives (goals)

Rules

Resources and Resource Management

Game State

Information

Sequencing

Player Interaction

Theme (Narrative, Backstory, Setting)

Games as Systems

The Atomic Elements listed above is a good list to remember while developing a game as you can use it as a checklist. I will be doing this for my final project for Multimedia Development in my course.

I disagree with the statement that the critical analysis of a game is not how “fun” it is but how many people consider buying the game or not. Although the consumer statement is true it is also partially on how fun the game is and how fun it looks depending on every target audience.

Here I learned that when you give a critical analysis of a game or ask someone to review your game we need more Ethan “it’s fun”. The analysis has to go more into depth with detail. 

I will be coming back to this article in the future when developing a game. It’s my personal favourite the questions the article gives on critical analysis are really good once again a very useful checklist.