Systems of Play: Game Design Fundamentals Recap

Systems of Play, a free video game design workshop series sponsored by local developer Arkadium, jumped off at the School of Visual Arts in Manhattan last Wednesday. The event, titled Game Design Fundamentals, drew a crowd of around 40 people and was an entertaining and informative evening.

Arkadium representatives state that over 100 people attempted to register for the event, however, due to space limitation and workshop style, only 50 made the cut. Lead by Naomi Clark and Eric Zimmerman, the two-hour lecture began with a round of massively multiplayer rock-paper-scissors to break the ice followed by a short lecture about the importance of rules in all games.

"Rules become experience of play," Zimmerman said. "Rules are all we have to work with as designers."

To emphasize the importance of rules, Clark and Zimmerman showed a short video of Pacman gameplay before breaking up the crowd for some group work. Teams of five worked to create a "play book" for the game. The groups used a variety of ways to convey the information including icons, bulleted lists and visuals.

"I enjoyed the process of breaking down the game," Terrence Peng, designer at Arkadium, said. "And I liked learning about the tricks of Pacman. That was pretty cool."

According to Naomi Clark, the designers behind the arcade classic added a level of strategy to the game most players are not aware of. She said the each ghost chases Pacman in a specific way.

Blinky likes to chase right after Pacman, and increases his speed during the level to what they used to call ‘Cruise Elroy' mode," Clark said. "The meaning of that has been lost to time."

Other exercises found attendees altering the rules of a simple square-based game to elicit pre-determined emotions. Some groups changed the system of play to create joy, while others made the game result in irritation.

"The idea of redesigning a game that has problems is very common," Zimmerman said. "Sometimes I have people redesign a game like rock-paper-scissors, but in this case we wanted to give everyone a new game to learn on."

Long-time NYC resident Eric Zimmerman is a huge supporter of the local community of game professionals. He said that although New York is not a traditional center for games, there are endless amounts of jobs and resources available for the hardened NYC designer.

"There are a lot of interesting things going on here that are unique," Zimmerman said. "There are a lot of small studios, online games, Facebook games, independent games, social- network games, the Come Out and Play festival, all the scholarship that goes on... I love supporting games in New York City."

The next workshop in Systems of Play series is on February 9th. Register here to save your seat.