Game Design Basics: Social Contract
Games involve social contracts between the designer and the player(s).
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Games involve social contracts between the designer and the player(s).
more...It probably won’t surprise you to hear that I often think about why people play games. For a while I’ve been batting around a metaphor that I find useful: Junk food vs. Nutrition.
Some games are simply fun. They provide some sort of pleasure from manipulating the components or developing skill. One of my favorite games [...]
I’ve noticed that I haven’t really been enjoying “twitch” games, that is, games that have action and focus on manual dexterity and/or timing. I’ve especially been frustrated by those that are difficult. Today I started thinking about why that might be the case. (Brought on by playing Mega Man 9.)
The thing about action games is [...]
So, if you’re not familiar with MyMiniCity, you might want to check it out. I think it’s a rather clever idea.
The basic “play” of MyMiniCity goes as follows.
Create a city. This gives you a subdomain, like http://cobweb.myminicity.com (Full disclosure: It’s a city I started). Each city page has a neat little Flash map of the [...]
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