Clara Fernández-Vara

Rounds, Levels, and Waves The Early Evolution of Gameplay Segmentation

This article explores the early evolution of the structure and management of gameplay in videogames. The authors introduce the notion of gameplay segmentation to capture the role that design elements such as level, boss, and wave play in videogames and identify three modes of segmentation. Temporal segmentation limits, synchronizes, and/or coordinates player activity over time. Spatial segmentation breaks the games virtual space into sublocations. Challenge segmentation presents the player with a sequence of self-contained challenges. The authors describe each mode, and additional submodes, by analyzing vintage arcade games. The analyses illustrate how these games represent a “primordial soup” in which many current game design conventions were first explored. Their simplicity provides the authors with access to the original “building blocks” of videogames, thus allowing them to develop a rich vocabulary for the discussion.

The game studies practicum: applying situated learning to teach professional practices

The inclusion of a practicum is one of the main challenges in the game studies curriculum, especially when it comes to teaching professional practices to students. This paper presents how professional management methodologies (Scrum, in this case) can be related to models of Situated Learning, as we demonstrate through our case study, the Singapore-MIT GAMBIT Game Lab. Being aware of the connections and the pedagogical potential of professional practices can improve both how we teach and how our students learn how game development works. In our case study we also propose ways in which the practicum can be related to research in videogames.

Procedural Generation of Narrative Puzzles in Adventure Games: The Puzzle-Dice System

This project tackles procedural generation of narrative puzzles found in adventure games. The challenge is not only generating the puzzles in games which traditionally only have one walkthrough, but also making the development process accessible to designers. Given that the goal is to make these games playable and easy to develop, the focus of this project is facilitating the immediate development of these games. This paper describes the system of procedural generation of one game, Symon, which was the reference and inspiration for a standalone toolset, the Puzzle Dice System to create other adventure games with procedurally generated puzzles. The toolset has been put to the test with another game, Stranded in Singapore, and it is still being expanded and improved on at the moment of writing.

From "open mailbox" to context mechanics: shifting levels of abstraction in adventure games

Abstracting the fictional world to essential components is one of the first steps to design the system of a game. The amount of detail with which the fictional world is implemented as the system determines the level of abstraction of the simulation of the game [9]. This paper is a historical analysis of the design of a specific genre, adventure games, and how the levels of abstraction have shifted through time. Early adventure games, such as Zork or The Lurking Horror, had a wide range of possible actions and had more detailed simulations of the game world. Through the more than thirty years of history of adventure games, such as Space Quest, Myst, Indigo Prophecy or the recent Machinarium, the nuance of the simulation has diminished, as well as the variety of possible actions. There are two basic reasons for this simplification: first, to make the interface easier to use, and second, in order to facilitate players finding and identifying the elements of the puzzles and advance the story. This historical exploration of adventure games design provides insight on the trade-offs of choosing different levels of abstraction in the design, which may be extensible to other videogame genres.