quote: Original post by JSwing

So the fulcrum is the game mechanics (rules and constants), the lever is the game tokens (pieces and resources used by the player)?

So to use your Monopoly example, getting $200 for going around the board is one of the rules - it''s part of the fulcrum. The $200 itself is part of the lever, being a resource the player decides how to use.

Is this correct?

Spot on, the dice are also the fulcrum as you don''t actually have any control over them, same goes for the peices that you move around the board. The get out of jail free card could be considered part of the lever even though your use of it is very limited.

quote: By Lubb
- It''s been attempted, for economic purposes.
- Two books I can recommend: Prisoner''s Dilemma by William Poundstone, and the heftier and (very) technical tome Theory of Games and Economic Behavior by John Von Neuman and Oskar Morgenstern. The first book mentioned is a much lighter treatment of the subject, and provides useful "real-world" examples besides.

I believe these come under "Schools of Thought". I''m not quite sure on the definitive different between a School of Thought and a Philosophy. If anyone wants to make a distinction then i''m listening But yeah, i''ve been to the web page where John Von Neuman makes an example of his work in a game involving 2 thieves and a police interview. It''s based of a point system. I believe that it was an attempt to explain how people play a game under changing circumstances.



One more time for the dumbies
ar+gu+ment n. A discussion in which reasons are put forward in support of and against a proposition, proposal, or case; debate.

quote: John Von Neuman makes an example of his work in a game involving 2 thieves and a police interview. It's
based of a point system. I believe that it was an attempt to explain how people play a game under changing
circumstances.

The prisoner's dilemma?

Back to your article - if the fulcrum is the game mechanics, then the original proposition at the beginning of the thread would become: the difficulty of balancing a game is proportional to the complexity of the rules of the game.

So is the article targetted at someone who might not have considered the time spent game balancing as being important (i.e. a newbie), someone who needs to have a rough idea of how much to add to the project timeline (beginner), someone who's had to issue patches to cover game balance issues because they didn't plan well enough (everyone else), or ...?

You mentioned that you had changed some of the things you planned to discuss so I'm not sure if the summary still holds.



Edited by - JSwing on November 19, 2000 2:40:58 AM

http://www.lebow.drexel.edu/economics/mccain/game/game.html

http://www.lebow.drexel.edu/economics/mccain/game/game.html

I''m not sure if that is what you are looking for, in fact, I''m fairly certain that it isn''t. But it is about game theory and includes the prisoner game and other similar games, interesting read I must say.



Trying is the first step towards failure.

quote: By JSwing
Back to your article - if the fulcrum is the game mechanics, then the original proposition at the beginning of the thread would become: the difficulty of balancing a game is proportional to the complexity of the rules of the game.

As much as i like this i got to say that its wrong. Just becuase a rules system is com-plex is doesn''t actually mean that its going to be hard to balance. This is becuase we are generalizing, which is extremly dangerous. Think about this in relation to what you said. If this system is complex but all the elements are highly relative to each other and operate cohesively as an intergrated system then the likelyhood of it being hard to balance diminishes. Where as a simple system can be hard to balance if all of the elements are corresponding to each others relevence and grasp highly abstract concepts - likelyhood of ease of balancing diminishes with each irrelevant concept.

When i first started on this a few weeks ago i realized that trying to decribe how a fulcrum can operate in relation to the difficultly of trying to balance was going to be hard indeed. So what i did was to merely devise a model - then say that understanding of this model in itself is a tool to help balancing a game. Note: that i haven''t pasted the later changes to the doc.

quote:
So is the article targetted at someone who might not have considered the time spent game balancing as being important (i.e. a newbie), someone who needs to have a rough idea of how much to add to the project timeline (beginner), someone who''s had to issue patches to cover game balance issues because they didn''t plan well enough (everyone else), or ...?

Yes, but not just newbies. It''s aimed to give every game designer material to converse quickly about designing competitive games. At the moment we all have to say things like "Well i think that the more you chuck in then the longer it will take me to knock out the inconsistancies in the game".

The model will allow all game designers in the future to say- "Well we''ve got 2 interactive elements, but the fulcrum still has a little grit in it". This in itself is a comment that the game designer "knows for sure". Knowing something for sure as a game designer is bloody hard (we all know that ). It''s basically a model that gives hard fact to allow game designers to have more confidence in their work. Here at gamedev most members respect game designers work but if you leave here and go out into the street then it becomes very difficult to argue what you actually do when talking with ordinary people. This to me is also very important. Game Designers need to be able to know what they are doing and be confident to know that they can get into an argument about game design and believe that they can produce a resolution "in a professional manner".



One more time for the dumbies
ar+gu+ment n. A discussion in which reasons are put forward in support of and against a proposition, proposal, or case; debate.

Ha, i just realized what the GUI is. It''s neither the fulcrum nor the lever but the axle. Axle - Allows a smooth transition between the game mechanics (fulcrum) and the interactive elements (lever). Who mentioned the GUI, Jswing, thank you

One more time for the dumbies
ar+gu+ment n. A discussion in which reasons are put forward in support of and against a proposition, proposal, or case; debate.

Hmm. I would have put the user on one end of the lever, and the state of how close the user is to winning on the other. The user then applies the lever action to increase the winning state. The GUI would be the handle the user hangs onto.

So the article will be more about establishing some terminology for common discussion? I''d say we need it given the confusion generated during this thread. Good luck!

Here''s an update of the doc. I hope someone will critically examine it for me Please.

quote:

The Fulcrum, Lever and Axle Theory of Competitive Games

By Paul Cunningham

After playing many competitive games from modern day computer games like Quake to the old board games of yesteryear like Monopoly one can start to wonder where the similarities start and finish. This is what the theory of the Fulcrum, Lever and Axle hopes to answer. The reason why I attempt to do this is purely to give all promising game designers some kind of foundational knowledge to understand the game they are planning or hoping to make before they start on their journey into game design madness. Try to remember that this is all targeted at the competitive game design.

The trick to understanding most competition based game design concepts is to be able to distinguish the interactive game elements from the non-interactive game elements first. In order to do this you have to understand what makes a game element truly interactive. To spill it out quickly for you, “An interactive element is something that the player can use with deliberation to change the direction of the game” – to interact.

There are many game elements that appear at first sight to supply the user directly with the ability to interact that don’t actually do this. To avoid this misconception earlier rather than later here’s a case example: Monopoly – presuming you have played this game I’ll skip the finer details. Monopoly major interactive element is “Money”. Money being the game element here that the player can actually use deliberately. Other elements like the dice, pieces, rent etc are all non-interactive as the player can not use these to change to direction of game flow deliberately.

Next we have the mechanical operations of a game; these are the game structures designed to dictate the functionality of the game. Rulesets from open mechanic games like board games are a perfect example of Game Mechanics. Game Mechanics are separate to interactive elements.

Finally we get to the middle ground. Here we find the third and final link that exists in all competitive games. The middle ground is where the Interactive Elements are joined to the Game Mechanics. Examples of the middle ground is a GUI for a role playing game, here is a game structure (GUI) that doesn’t hold the value of Game Mechanics and it isn’t an interactive element. The GUI acts like an axle between the Game Mechanic’s and The Interactive Elements.

So hopefully we can all now see that every competitive game is made of the 3 basic parts: The Mechanics, Interactive Elements and the Middle Ground. Now by renaming these basic game parts appropriately – Interactive Elements to “Lever”, The Game Mechanic’s to “The Fulcrum” and The Middle Ground to “The Axle” we can see how this Fulcrum, Lever and Axle model operates and what each part represents. To help visualize this model here’s a diagram.

I''m thinking that this should be somewhat more comprehensive.


One more time for the dumbies
ar+gu+ment n. A discussion in which reasons are put forward in support of and against a proposition, proposal, or case; debate.

Very-well done.I think I will rethink my game under these terms.It should provide new insight.Good work Paul.

Runemaster, the Keeper of Knowledge
The Hall of Secrets
"I feel that posts of this nature are a perversion of the internet."-johnnyfish

I think your ideas are solid. The only comments I could make would be style or word choice.

Since this isn''t really a forum about editing articles, I won;t post my suggestions here. Check your email in a bit.

quote: Original post by JSwing

I think your ideas are solid. The only comments I could make would be style or word choice.

Since this isn''t really a forum about editing articles, I won;t post my suggestions here. Check your email in a bit.

Wow, thanks for going to all that effort to help me JSwing. Now i''ve got 2 friends helping at the same time. It amazing what happens in 24 hrs. I''ll be going through what you did in the next couple of hours. Shall be back!





One more time for the dumbies
ar+gu+ment n. A discussion in which reasons are put forward in support of and against a proposition, proposal, or case; debate.