[FEBRUARY] Clockwork Game Design by Keith Burgun

[Liz England]

The reading for February will be Clockwork Game Design by Keith Burgun.

Only by finding and focusing on a core mechanism can you further your pursuit of elegance in strategy game design. 

 

Clockwork Game Design is the most functional and directly applicable theory for game design. It details the clockwork game design pattern, which focuses on building around fundamental functionality. You can then use this understanding to prescribe a system for building and refining your rulesets. A game can achieve clarity of purpose by starting with a strong core, then removing elements that conflict with that core while adding elements that support it.

-From the publisher, https://www.crcpress.com/Clockwork-Game-Design/Burgun/p/book/9781138798731

Reasons for picking this one: this is a book written by a game designer and based on the author I'm expecting it to take a very systems-centric approach to game design. Based on reviews, it sounds like it might be a bit controversial in its claims, which might be interesting to discuss/reflect on. I have no clue where it falls in the beginner-expert spectrum.

(Posting this early so you have time to pick up the book. There is an ebook version but availability by country seems pretty spotty, sorry.)

-Liz

[Alex Freeman-Smith]

Bring it on! This author wrote a really good couple of articles on violence and the implications of having it in game design. I definitely look forward to reading this one. 

[Christoffer Lundberg]

I found this 3 min video on how he explains the basic concept of the book Minute Game Design: Episode 5 - Clockwork Game Design. He also have a series of short videos which look interesting.

I tried to find some pictures of the book, because the local price was surprisingly high (~45 dollar) considering its its length (145p). I ended up ordering it anyway, tbh if the book is concise I prefer it more then a higher page count :) (I also have Critical play, but are just in the end of game design workshop...)

[Liz England]

I'm not quite finished with the book yet but wanted to post my initial thoughts before I run off to GDC. Also apologies - I didn't realize how expensive it was when I assigned it! It took almost 3 weeks for it to arrive, too.

My general thoughts are... the book is pretty good. It doesn't get bogged down by to many concepts or attempt to summarize "The State of Game Design Theory" (I think that was my biggest complaint about Challenges for Game Designers). It's the first book so far in the book club that doesn't comment on either flow or reference Huizinga (I've been counting!). So it's a bit refreshing to just read a game design book that doesn't constantly repeat what others have said.

That said... the concepts in here aren't that new to me. There's different terminology, and some new ways of describing familiar concepts. I don't quite get how the clockwork design method is different from, say, designing gameplay loops with a single design pillar in mind (as opposed to a set of design pillars, which he argues against). I expect to learn a bit more when he goes into "patchwork design" later in the book.

While I'm pretty tired in general of people trying to define "game" I did like this breakdown:

• game = contest - decisions = puzzle - measurement = toy - solution
  

It's simple and effective as a shorthand when thinking about different forms of gameplay.

His definition of "game" really only encompasses a small number of the things we generally call "games". He admits that Super Mario Bros is not a game by his definition, so it's not like the author doesn't realize he's being very deliberate and specific with his terms. But I believe we will always fail to try to force words to change their meaning, rather than make new words for specific meanings - it's not how language words. So throughout the book I mentally replaced "game" with "game of strategy" (vs. game of luck, game of skill, game of labor) to save me some headache there. I feel like his narrow definition of game more likely creates conflict with readers and overshadows the good ideas in the book.

Another thing I just wanted to call out - an example of what I liked about the book - was his decision axis, where on one end is "Solution" and the other end is "Guess". It's just a really simple diagram that brought something to my attention I hadn't really considered before. This is what I meant by familiar concepts just described in a slightly different way.

Overall it comes across as a beginner's guide to game design, with a focus on abstract strategy design. It reminded me a bit of A Game Design Vocabulary, both as stand-alone books on game design that work well on their own, no prior reading necessary, that could help aspiring designers jumpstart their projects.

I still have a couple more chapters to read and expect to finish it on the plane to GDC. I hope to post more thoughts then!

On Monday, January 23, 2017 at 12:10:35 PM UTC-5, Liz England wrote:

[Christoffer Lundberg]

Yes, I agree about exchanging the word ”game” to another word like ”strategy game” or even ”clockwork game”, as the title. I also think that this is one of the reasons that he got a lot of ”discussion” one hes video series.

The book is very compact which I appreciate, the book structure kind of follows the same philosophy as the game design in the book: remove everything that doesn't support the core. So the main concept is pretty compact. But theres also a lot of discussion parts, and I think these suffer from the short formate, and just come off as provoking. My biggest issue with the book is that it is presented as a text book (”this is how you build a proper game”) but it is also littered with radical (or at least alternative) assumptions which is very distracting.

I agree that as a game designer its worth to question basic assumption in games, also (or maybe especially) in successful games. I'm also skeptic about the combat system in jrpgs, and some games work/ labor/ grinding, or the execution barrier in fighting or rts games. I like to think up alternative versions of the games, what they would have instead, but I would not go so far as to say that it should be avoided as much as possible, objectively[1]. I would say that theres pros and cons for all the design aspects the author mentions, but he only mentions the cons which is provoking. But the list is interesting (p.107-124) (work, execution, memorization, output randomness, unlockable content, visual content, mass content as complexity, novelty, genre, toy, story/ moral choice. How all of these design aspects are kind of pseudo challenging, they look challenging but are suppose to not be when you look closer) although the conclusions are of limited value.

I actually like the end section a lot. He list some of the game projects where he tried to make some design decisions, and discuss why it didn't work out based on the design aspects previously listed. I would have like if that part was extended, a lot, and presented before the general solutions.

The ”clockwork game design” is mostly standard stuff, only that it might be a little more extreme in that there should be as little as possible other then the core mechanic. I think one of the most useful part of the framework is the mechanism hierarchy chart on p.92. What it basically says it that in the middle you put the core mechanics and make connections to the other mechanics which are drawn around. If theres a lot of connections its probably a elegant systems. If theres a lot of mechanisms that don't connects with each other, they might be redundant and could be removed.

I'm not sure if the extra focus on core mechanics are useful, because I don't see how other more complex games fit in. One example are feedback loops. Or are complex games just made with ”brute force” (p.47)?

Over all I like that the books is trying to make design heuristics for a subset of games; strategy games, instead of the standard: it works for all kind of games. I just don't agree with all of them. I think one interesting approach could be to not take the list as a “should be avoided”, but instead as a challenge “Can you make a game without relying on these mechanics to generate interest?” and if that game would work decent you would probably be onto something interesting.

[1] on page 17 theres some arguments about ”objective true” and it doesn't work out. The example goes that if you would change the win condition of chess to be “Capturing any of the opponents pieces results in a win.” the game would lose something, and that most people would agree on that, almost like a broken clock, objectively. The author uses a argument from one meta ethic perspective: value is what a lot of people think is valuable, to justify a different perspective: there exists objective value independent of individual taste.