The word 'Game play' has quite a literal meaning: 'the playing of the game' but also carries the meaning: The plot of a computer game or the way that the game is played, alternatively, meaning: interaction with a game through it's rules, the connection between the player and the game, challenges, and overcoming them, plot and players connection with it and describes the interactive elements of a game.
There are many leading lights in the games industry within games design, a few names include: Christian Allen, design team for 'Ghost Reacon' and lead designer on 'Halo Reach', Cliff Bleszinski, Member of epic games and lead designer of 'Gears Of War' and 'Gears Of War 2'and Ken Levine, the designer on 'Bioshock'.
These are just some of the designers of recent years, but, also designers from the early years of computer games are just as well know and recognized by the games industry, names such as: Ralph Baer, the father of video games, he created 'Chase Game' in 1967 which was the first game ever played in a television set and William Higinbotham, the creator of 'Tennis For Two' in 1958. these great minds are what started the whole world of the video game.
Probably one of the most influential names in the last 20 years is Satoshi Tajiri, his idea exploded into popular culture for children in the 90's as soon as it hit the shelves, Satoshi Tajiri is the founder of 'Game Freak' and the creator of the infamous 'Pokemon' games. He was born on August 28th in 1965. Tajiri's childhood hobby of collecting insects was to be the inspiration for his video game, He wanted children to experience the feeling of catching and collecting creatures like he had as a boy. Satoshi became progressively more fascinated with arcade games in his teens at his local arcade, this interest led to him beginning to attempt to plan his own video game.
At the age of 17 Tajiri started writing and editing a fanzine called 'Game Freak', moving on from this, he conceived the idea of Pokemon in 1990, this was after he first encountered a game boy, which seemed the ideal console for his idea. The game took 6 years in total to complete and when the game was released it received little media coverage as the game boy was thought to be a dead console. The game sold approximately 23.64 million copies and was a huge part of reviving the game boy and Nintendo.
The process of game design takes place after the process of proto-typing, the proto-typing usually takes place in the pre-production of the game, whilst the game design comes in with the production of the game. This process is not just a one man job, it requires all the efforts of game programmers, producers and artists
to gather all their ideas and suggestions for the game design process.
The holy grail of game design is a game with a carefully constructed narrative that players can influence to the same degree as their real lives. The goal is to have stories that are every bit as engaging as traditional narratives but created in such a way as to enable players to have a variety of player experiences. Based on these lines and these principles, i would say that different genres do not need different design principles when faced with the issue of story line structure. But, in terms of game play, each genre requires a certain style of design when dealing with the game play, for example; a horror genre requires a slow paced game play whereas, an action genre would require a faster, paced game play, these choices will demand for a different set of principles depending on what emotions the designers want the player to feel when playing.
When i play a game i feel that the most important things to experience are: a good story line, i like to feel like carrying on playing the game to find out what happens in the story, it has to be griping and involve interesting characters, otherwise i loose interest. The other thing is, a good level design and art direction, the level that the player is immersed in has to convince them they are part of the story, also what the player is looking at has to look good and almost guide the player through the level to give them a real experience. Thats what i look for when i play a game.
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