The Pinnacle Theory

Paul Cunningham · 2000-11-22T00:52:28

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)

Game Design and Theory Game Design

Started by Paul Cunningham November 15, 2000 11:27 AM

39 comments, last by Paul Cunningham 24 years ago

Paul Cunningham

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November 22, 2000 12:52 AM

The though has been passed onto me that the fulcrum isn''t the best thing to use to describe a rule set/game mechanics. The reasoning behind this is that a rule set is dynamic <these days>. I sat on this for a 5 hours or so and i still think that it is. Why? Because i believe that this issue (using a complex fulcrum) is out of context. The model is a generalization where as using more descriptivness like having something that represents the game mechanics as a mechanical operation in itself is not relevent. Also i believe that a games rule set (fulcrum)doesn''t have to be mechanical or technical anyhow.

I was hoping that someone would be able to give some more weight to either side of this interesting debate. Any thoughts?

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.

The Pinnacle Theory

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The Pinnacle Theory

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