Formal Abstract Design Tools

Thoughts on 
"Formal Abstract Design Tools"

Gaming fuses a many forms of media such as art ,audio ,level design ,code etc. Most of these areas are evolving. Design however is not evolving anywhere near as fast as other forms of media.

Doug Church suggests that a lack of technical vocabulary plays a significant part in this. This is because designers have trouble discussing design on a complex level. The vocabulary must be able to describe common concepts in very different games. Formal abstract design tools are an attempt to create a framework for such vocabulary.

'design tools' is straight forward. The Formal abstract rules out terms that are too nebulous such as this game has good gameplay because without further information on what type of genre the game is good gameplay is irrelevant when used as a comparison to other games.

These tools are not like building blocks. You cannot add a bunch of these tools to a game to make it good. you must make sure it goes well with the experiences the game is trying to create and whether it clashes with any of the other mechanics a good example of this is Mario 64. It gives players a lot of choice of what to do whilst stopping the player from either becoming stuck or losing interest in the game. It does this by giving players multiple goals in each world. Often the earliest one has the player travel through most of the world showing them points that will be important in later levels as well as allowing players to learn the way around.

With Mario players are made to feel control and encouraged to set goals for themselves. This is as a formal abstract design tool(FADT) is known as intention. Another example of a FADT is perceivable consequence this is When the player performs the action and fails it is very clear why the action failed.

RPGs often use perceivable consequence by stating why a story event has occurred. However RPGs also make actions that are direct results of a players actions seem random. often RPGs have choices in which the consequences are perceivable but the player has no way of knowing which choice will have the negative effect.

Perceivable consequence is often sacrificed for story by giving the designer a greater control over the narrative. Story doesn't quite mean the same thing in video games as it does in books. In games the term means the narrative thread of the game. While some games have a predetermined story much in the same way as a book. Yet in sports games the narrative of the game is how the match went.