Game Design: Alchemy to Chemistry

Gamasutra has a wicked look at gaming with the perspective that all games can be broken down into a series of systems, which, if examined and codified, could be used to create effective techniques for game design. It’s quite the substantial read, but the progression from the current “alchemy” based methods, where the basic chemistry of game design is poorly understood, but highly sought, through game design modelling to the discussion of the “skill chain” concept advanced in the extremely insightful piece, it’s well worth the read.

For those of you who don’t fall asleep at the mere mention of game theory that is..

An excerpt on skill chains:

A skill chain provides some rather useful information about the state of the player as they engage the game. Imagine that the skill chain is the instrumented dashboard that lights up with the player’s progress. At any point in time you can tell the following information

• Mastered skills: Skills that have been recently mastered.
• Partially mastered skills: Skills that the player is toying with, but has not yet mastered.
• Unexercised skills: Skills the player has yet to attempt.
• Active skills: Skills that the player is actively using. (aka the Grind)
• Burned out skills: Skill atoms that the player has lost interest in exercising.