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Design Proposal: Five Aspects of SciTech
Posted on | January 26, 2009 | 1 Comment
Learning about game design has been fun. (I’m still learning – don’t think I’m getting cocky.) While my visible progress has been slow, everything is constantly being juggled around in my mind several times a day – game design articles, research on previous successful games, ideas for how I can apply those lessons to GeekStack. I’ve been trying to solve all of the problems at once and come up with several complete solutions that I can compare, but that approach hasn’t gotten me very far. Instead, I’m going to try discussing and outlining the design space for one part of the game. When I have enough of them, I’ll try combining them in different ways to produce prototype games.
I think the two most important foundations for a successful trading card game are:
- a flexible and balanced framework that can accomodate a wide range of creative game mechanics
- a strong theme that can seamlessly wrap around the game
I don’t know which of these scares me more – I have a strong vision of how the theme should interact with the mechanics and how it should look, but designing the framework is an analytical process that plays to my strengths. Today I’m going to discuss one part of the framework – the major grouping for cards.
Part of the fun and tension in deck building in TCGs is figuring out which cards work well with others and which don’t. Magic does this with its color wheel: five colors, each with two allies and two enemies, all of which have their own strengths, weaknesses, and personalities. World of Warcraft (which I’m less familiar with so I might get the terms wrong) has two factions and 8 (?) classes within those factions, and all cards in a deck must match either faction or class or both.
This grouping gives cues to designers about which cards should be in which group, and to players about which cards work well together. One design issue I’ll discuss another day is what the goal of the game is, but that is affected by what the groups are. All of this has just been a long-winded lead in to one possibility for grouping cards.
The vision of GeekStack is to use the rich history of science and technology as the theme and educational payload for a game. But sci/tech doesn’t exist in a vacuum, and if I want to accurately portray it, I need to include the environment and context in which it develops. So groups of cards might be:
- Theoretical science
- Applied science
- Economy
- Political/Regulatory
- Media/Inspiration
Some examples from Computer Science could be:
- Theoretical science – Alan Turing, Don Knuth
- Applied science – Woz, Peter Norvig
- Economy – Computer and Internet entrepreneurs, VC, ARPA
- Political/Regulatory – government contracting, acquisition paperwork, DMCA
- Media/Inspiration – Engelbart’s demo, joelonsoftware, Dr. Dobbs
What these categories mean for gameplay depends on the goal – if you’re advancing science or building a tech company, you’d probably need to include some of all these groups. If you’re competing against another person, you might be able to counteract or poach your opponent’s resources. It might turn out that the WoW style two-layers-of affiliation will work better and not require a player to play so many roles. Maybe GeekStack is destined to be an Axis and Allies style multi-player game.
My hope in posting these online is that I can get a reaction one way or another, whether from someone with experience to help guide my decisions or from someone who just plain likes (or dislikes) an idea I’ve had. Be my sounding board. Be heard. Thanks!
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January 27th, 2009 @ 8:27 am
[...] thinking about the five group Magic-style division of cards I proposed yesterday, I didn’t really like them. They were a sensible way to divide the [...]