Here is a article on Gamasutra site (written by “Sande Chen” who worked as a game writer and designer on “The Witcher”) I read which I found really interesting as it covers same topic and aspects of game creation I spoke about within my “Do Video games use “Mise-en-scène” like films?” post.
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/3736/towards_more_meaningful_games_a_.php?page=1
It’s quite reassuring that I’m not the only one that thinks “Mise en scene” (my personal term for this overall aspect of game design) is important and thinks about how can be improved within the future of games. Reading this article has made me think about game language and terminology used to reference to game creation aspects. For an example, “Sande Chen” who wrote this article, she refers to the optimization of the game camera as a “director agent” which is game term I’ve never hear of before.
That’s the thing with such a young art form such as games design is that there’s no universal language/terminology for aspects of game creation although this does make “game design” very exciting and interesting as it’s so new and young developing game ideas and approaches that haven’t been done before but at the same time, its difficult to communicate game ideals and aspects of design as the knowledge and techniques aren’t finalized to any specific term or process. “Game design” isn’t exact science or art as every designer has their take/approach to what defines a good game therefore using different techniques/tools as there are no universally accepted truths, but only opinions using their own language and terminology for their game project.
This is the main challenge for me writing this blog, it isn’t expressing my theories/ideals of game design or what makes “fun” but the actual language/ terminology I use isn’t universally known for such a topic making it tricky to communicate my points of view. Sometimes I feel like mad scientist blobbing on about theories which everyone thinks you are crazy but that’s beauty of a young industry is as we “ the game creators” will discover and define these theories/approaches to game design along with universal language/terminology to go to boot.
This post is my general feelings on the overall aspects of the “game design” topic but for my next post I will write something more specific like I normally do on “game design”. Thanks for reading and your support!
Jonesy
