Hello designers! Firstly, my sincere apologies if this post does not belong here. If so, get it moved asap! Basically, I created a wiki page thats meant to be home to many small elements that are common in games. This can be gameplay elements, story line, anything game design related. I don't have enough game design experience or knowledge to fill this myself, so I was hoping that if someone has some spare time, it would be great if you could add your own patterns to the list.

A link would be nice :lol:

Hahah, well - it is in my signiture, but here it is anyway Game Design Patterns. :grin:

By making this a wiki, you have invited the mighty doom upon it.

Just FYI.

Hi you might want to check out my interaction design patterns page (its not a wiki) http://www.eelke.com/research/IDP/index.html but it has some common usability improving elements of gameplay.

Just FYI, there's already a book out "Patterns in Game Design" which has a fairly expansive listing of game design patterns, including pretty thorough academic discussion. I believe the intent is to turn this into a wiki once the book-form has satisfied its initial run.

Not wanting to dissuade you from your pursuits, but considering you've got only one pattern and they've got (if I remember the table of contents well) damn near a hundred, you might be fighting a losing battle.

Well according to the "inventor" of patterns Christopher Alexander a pattern is
Each pattern is a three-part rule, which expresses a relation between a certain context, a problem, and a solution.

The patterns in the Game design patterns book are not patterns by this definition. They don't describe solutions to recurring problems, they just use the pattern format (e.g. readability through consistency) to describe "common" elements of gameplay. I'm not saying these description are bad but this just leads to more confusion about what a pattern is and what not.

Quote:

A pattern is a form, template, or model (or, more abstractly, a set of rules) which can be used to make or to generate things or parts of a thing, especially if the things that are generated have enough in common for the underlying pattern to be inferred or discerned, in which case the things are said to exhibit the pattern. Pattern matching is the act of checking for the presence of the constituents of a pattern. The detection of underlying patterns is called pattern recognition. The question of how patterns arise naturally is dealt with by the scientific field of pattern formation.

The book says patterns in game design but its actually talking about patterns in games. Two fundamental different things in my opinion. When you are talking about game design you are talking about finding solutions to game design problems right? For example how do we balance gameplay or how can we make sure the game delivers stunning performances. By your pattern definition words are also recurring "patterns" in languages. But no one picks up a dictionary when he/she starts writing a book. I like the patterns in the game design book but they do not address game problems and do not guide design in anyway, they are just "recurring" patterns in games. Can we design a game by randomly applying patterns from this book? I don't think so.