Thomas' Assorted Video Game Insights and Musings

The definition of what a game is, is not clearly defined. A loose definition might require a game to have rules, obstacles and a goal, while being interactive. Some may simply say that all that is required is voluntarily overcoming unnecessary obstacles (Bernard Suite, The Grasshopper).  Play is more simply defined as unstructured (yet still voluntary) fun. While all gaming involves play (interaction), not all play is a game. Gaming requires strict needs for rules. Within most definitions, rules make up the unnecessary obstacles (For example, in sports, not being able to do certain things, even if outside of the sport they would be the most logical solution eg. not being able to handle the ball with your hands in football). Gaming is a somewhat creative activity in any situation as the player needs to adapt to the rules and how to achieve a goal. Even in games without strictly attainable goals (such as Tetris ), the player understands the rules and deals with them.

  Summary Factorio is a game about a crash-landed engineer on an alien planet who must build a rocket as their way out of there, one technology at a time. While upgrading his factory apparatus, they must also build defences to keep the hostile local wildlife at bay. Character The player character is represented by a small figure on screen. The player character can move around dry land and harvest materials or interact with objects close to them. Camera The camera is always centred on the player character, though the player can use the map view to observe areas covered by radar dishes remotely. Controls WASD keys are used to move the player character. The player can left click to place structures, and use right click to harvest resources or remove structures. The player can drag and drop items into their grid-based inventory or hotbar at the bottom of the screen. Core Mechanic The player needs to build up more complicated machinery to get to the stage of creating a ...

Video games are often divided up into different genres, much like film and television.  Much like in film and television, genre helps to compartmentalise and organise the market of games to make it easier for consumers to find games that appeal to them. Individuals gamers can find games from genres that they enjoy, while filtering out genres that don’t interest them as much. Gamers can also specialise further through subgenre, finding niche games that appeal to their tastes. Developers can also use genre to help them. By following trends in a specific genre, they can see what they might do in their own games to better perform in the market. While not hard-set definitions for what a game must be, genre should be used as a useful tool to guide players and developers towards a common ground for what type of game they want to play or make. For video games, many genres can be very broad, or very specific. Some may present a technical aspect of the game (eg. first person shoote...

There are three main categories for organising rules in video games. While somewhat applicable to other analogue games, they are organised more with video games in mind. They are as follows: - Operational Rules: Obvious rules to the player, such as the limits of the player character’s abilities and controls. - Structural rules: Technical rules that dictate functional parts of the game that don’t readily need to be known to the player. These can be as trivial as how fast a player is allowed to move or how large a level is. - Implicit Rules: Good or intended player behaviour. Whether told to the player through in-game instruction or demonstrated through the player’s own trial and error. To demonstrate examples of these rules, we can break down a game like Team Fortress 2 . Team Fortress 2 (made in 2007) is a multiplayer team-based first-person shooter with many gameplay nuances and rules. - Operational Rules: In Team Fortress 2 the player has the choice of nine classes to p...