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The Pinnacle Theory

Started by November 15, 2000 11:27 AM
39 comments, last by Paul Cunningham 24 years ago
I''ve been asked to do a contribution for GIGnews on game design. I thought i''d post it here to see what sort of positive or negitive comments that it deserves first. Call me gutless but it quite important to me so if you people would help me out once again i''d be in your debt (which probably totals around 5 million or something ). Anyhow, here it is in quote form so feel free to speak you mind or hold you peace forever. Btw, this is obviously not the entire thing, it''s the topic covering that i''m requesting feedback on.
quote: The Pinnacle theory of competitive games By Paul Cunningham Balancing a game has always been one of the major issues that every game designer has had to contend with. But what determines how hard one game from another will be to balance? Well one way is to examine a game is in terms of its two basic structures: The pinnacle and the balancing beam. The pinnacle is an easy part to overlook in game design because it’s often the first and no one likes going back to the drawing board to change this after doing a lot of work later but sometimes it’s necessary. So what is the pinnacle? Well all you have to do is have a look at one of the oldest games in history to see what I’m talking about - the seesaw. The pinnacle of every game is the rule set devised by the game designer that can not be changed by the player no matter what they do, it just stays put whilst everything else swings to and fro overhead. Generally the pinnacle is the foundation of every game design, the foundations that every game designer must work off. A constricting set of rules as seen in the game Snakes and Ladders will end up leading to lower achievable skill levels in the game whereas Quake or other 3D Arena FPS will an almost unlimited flexability will naturaly lead to a high achievable skill level within the games parameters – this is the pinnacle at work. It’s not always this easy to see what the pinnacle rules in a game are as this is just pure theory, they are more a virtual set of rules that are laid out when a group of developers get together to decide what the game will be allow often not realising that they are laying out how hard the game will be to balance later on, of which the pinnacle is responsible for.
Ok, that''s the speil. Thoughts? Definition of Progress: Durability control (see Financial interests of stockholders)
Well, aside from a few grammatical errors...
quote:
the game will be allow often not realising


I think it will be a pretty good article.

Where''s the whole piece?

Regards,
Jumpster
Regards,JumpsterSemper Fi
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Hey Paul. Kudos to you for trying to nail such a nebulous concept. I have a few problems though (non grammatical, the editor will fix these).

First, the pinnacle metaphor is lost on me. That''s the biggest difficulty (I could be alone here, tho'') If you''re talking about balance, then the ruleset does become important. But pinnacle (highest point) doesn''t seem to apply in a way that I can figure out. Are you talking about the most difficult challenge the game offers? Say, the victory condition, or boss monster, or whatever? Is it the core aspect of the game (like "0 hitpoints ALWAYS equals death" in Quake, or whatever)? I''m not clear.

Secondly, if you can, I''d avoid inventing terms as much as possible. You have to invent if the area of knowledge is undefined, but if you can apply known terminology your audience will grasp your point more readily.

Finally, can you give examples of poor design as well as good design. For example, I can imagine it would be incredibly difficult to balance a game with 10 victory conditions, 100 units, and a random number of players. How does the pinnacle concept apply. For ex., what did I do wrong?



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Just waiting for the mothership...
--------------------Just waiting for the mothership...
quote: The pinnacle of every game is the rule set devised by the game designer that can not be changed by the player no matter what they do, it just stays put whilst everything else swings to and fro overhead.


I am not sure what you trying explain, but it may look like you are portraying games and films .
I must admit that I am very much confused about the article.
quote: ...balancing beam.


What is that?

If you could explain the article a little more maybe I could help my self to understand it better. Could you put it into a context? What are you actually talking about? And is there more of the article?

Please do not misunderstand me. I am writing my dissertation for third year in Animation, Media and Society; and I can tell how difficult it is to explain to someone what videogames are all about. Especially these old punker's from the 70's; how games have advanced since 'SpaceInvaders'.

Anyway, continue your research...

Regards Ben

Edited by - Gocontact on November 15, 2000 8:22:59 PM
I think he means that the pinacle is the pivot for the seesaw... I would call it a pivot as the pinacle tends to refer to the finale or a build up to the finale anyway .

Good concept though...

-Chris Bennett of Dwarfsoft - Site:"The Philosophers'' Stone of Programming Alchemy" - IOL
The future of RPGs - Thanks to all the goblins over in our little Game Design Corner niche
          
This will sound quite stupid but i was strugling to put a word to the object that sits under the board the people sit on when they are riding on a see-saw (the centre peice). Also is there a correct word for the board that people sit on. Just another quick point, i don''t want to create new words here, i''m using an analogy to help explain this theory. Thanks

Definition of Progress: Durability control (see Financial interests of stockholders)
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fulcrum?

_______________________________
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yeah, fulcrum.. And Lever as it were. The lever has a fulcrum and can balance two loads on the fulcrum (not necessarily of the same weight).

I was struggling for that word too... Pivot was the closest I could think

-Chris Bennett of Dwarfsoft - Site:"The Philosophers'' Stone of Programming Alchemy" - IOL
The future of RPGs - Thanks to all the goblins over in our little Game Design Corner niche
          
I see what you''re getting at now, the problem I had with the metaphor is that a see saw is that it doesn''t seem flexible enough, as in , you can''t really change it much. I''m not sure, but the first thing off the top of my head as a different metaphor would be like the telephone exchange, the players are phones and they communicate with the exchange which will communicate with all the players. The people at the telephone exchange can change things, they can decide what to send to players and all that, while the players can''t change how the exchange works.

Maybe I just missed the point completely =)

But it looks good from what you''ve shown

Trying is the first step towards failure.
Trying is the first step towards failure.
Yeah, where can we expect to find it once its done?

-Chris Bennett of Dwarfsoft - Site:"The Philosophers'' Stone of Programming Alchemy" - IOL
The future of RPGs - Thanks to all the goblins over in our little Game Design Corner niche
          

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