Patterns in Game Design

Aeonite writes "The quote on the cover of Patterns in Game Design proclaims that this book is "that rare sort" that is actually "useful." It is perhaps somewhat presumptuous to disagree with someone like Greg Costikyan, but nevertheless I have my doubts as to the book's overall utility. While this book certainly seems like the sort of be-all, end-all of game design theory, what it amounts to is little more than a list, each item on the list referring to the other items like bloggers hawking each others' hyperlinks. What could have been a sort of cookbook for gaming turns out to be less a book of recipes, and more a list of ingredients: "a loaf of bread, a container of milk, and a stick of butter." Read the rest of Michael's review.

Patterns in Game Design
author	Staffan Björk & Jussi Holopainen
pages	448
publisher	Charles River Media
rating	4
reviewer	Michael Fiegel
ISBN	1584503548
summary	A comprehensive compendium of game design "patterns"

The book is broken into two Parts and 15 Chapters. Part I, "Background," explains the overall approach that the authors took in creating the rest of the book, exploring four different categories of gameplay (holistic, boundary, temporal, and structural), explaining the template used for the game design patterns that follow, and suggesting means for identifying patterns and applying them to the design of a game.

Part II, the bulk of the book, is where the Pattern Collection itself lies. The collection is broken into eleven chapters, each covering a grouping of patterns that share a common element. Chapter 5, for example, covers "Game Design Patterns for Game Elements," which includes Game Worlds, Objects, Abstract Objects and Locations. Each of those categories is further broken down into the Patterns themselves; for example, "Abstract Objects" includes Patterns such as Score, High Score Lists, and Lives.

Each Pattern is laid out in the same fashion. First, there is a one-sentence summary of the Pattern, followed by a more detailed description, and any relevant examples. This is followed in turn by examples of Using the Pattern, Consequences of its use, and its Relations to other Patterns. Relations include a list of other Patterns that fall into five categories: "Instantiates" (causes other Patterns to be present), "Modulates" (affects other Patterns and thus gameplay), "Instantiated by" (is caused to appear based on other Patterns being present), "Modulated by" (is affected by other Patterns), and "Potentially Conflicting with" (can cause other Patterns to be impossible within gameplay).

This all sounds a bit scholarly, and it is, but once you get the hang of it, it's not all that hard to slog through. However, it is indeed a slog -- each Pattern is in great part made up of references to other Patterns, which means that for a full understanding of any one Pattern, you must consume many other portions of the book. In their introduction, the authors do point out that this was their intent, and that you can "read the patterns in any order, similar to how a dictionary or encyclopedia is used." Indeed, reading through the book in any fashion is about as entertaining as reading those books. Which is to say, it's occasionally enlightening, but not really easy to do for any length of time. Here's an example from the "Surprises" Pattern, where any italicized word is a reference to another Pattern:

"One requirement for Surprises is the absence of Game State Overview or the presence of Imperfect Information or Limited Foresight. Because of this, Surprises are most often achieved by having Dedicated Game Facilitators such as Game Masters. Never Ending Stories are a way of overcoming the problems of Narrative Structures by combining Surprises with Replayability, thus making the narrative continue and change forever."

At the end of many subcategories are references to "Additional Patterns," which are only explored on the CD-ROM that accompanies the book, apparently having been left out for lack of space. Their omission (they do not even appear in the book's Table of Contents or Index) makes the book itself somewhat less useful than it otherwise could have been, since the Patterns within the book so often refer to Relations with Patterns that are not actually found in the book itself. The net result is that if (for example) you are reading about Surprises, and you want to learn about Never Ending Stories, you have to put the book down and pop the CD-ROM in. Not only is this disruptive, but it's impractical at best.

Were the CD-ROM itself more easily and logically laid out, it might have overcome some of the problems within the book. Containing everything within the book, plus the many additional Patterns not found in print, the bare-bones HTML allows you to browse either alphabetically by Pattern name, or "by chapters." This latter is somewhat misleading, for the list of Patterns within each Chapter is alphabetical on the CD-ROM, and not so within the book. On the CD-ROM, Chapter 5 starts with the following Patterns: Alarm, Alternative Reality, Avatars... In the book, however, Chapter 5 contains the category Game Worlds, and then Patterns such as Game World, Reconfigurable Game World, Levels, etc., in that order. The lack of consistency can make for some maddening moments trying to toggle back and forth between book and CD-ROM, like reading a dictionary that's in part alphabetical, and in part organized by, "nouns," "verbs," "adjectives," etc.

The CD-ROM is also inconsistent when it comes to the book's two Appendices. Appendix A, "Further Reading," contains a list of over fifty articles and books referenced elsewhere in the text, and appears only in the book. Appendix B, "About the CD ROM," appears in both the book and on the CD, where for some curious reason it's in Word DOC format. There are also an assortment of images, including colorized versions of those found in the book, as well as a set of PowerPoint presentations.

Overall, the book does succeed in compiling an impressive list of Game Design Patterns. Whether the list can ever amount to anything more than scholarly masturbation is another question. The thick language, combined with the definition of Patterns by reference to other Patterns, means that overall this book is probably about as useful in the realm of Game Design as a Dictionary is in the teaching of the English language. Which is to say, it's undoubtedly a useful tool as part of a much, much broader toolset, but in and of itself it leaves quite a lot to be desired."

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You can purchase Patterns in Game Design from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.

What Incredible Progress

1994: The computer scientist and game programmer Andre LaMothe [wikipedia.org] writes the quintessential book on game programming, "Tricks of the Game Programming Gurus [amazon.com]". The book is dense with useful information, humor, and actual theory on game programming. Millions of Game Players are transformed into real-world Game Programmers overnight.

2004: Staffan Bjork & Jussi Holopainen attempt to bring all the wonder and excitement of development patterns from the business world into the Game Programming world by releasing an utterly boring book full of confusing terminology. (2.5 stars on Amazon.) Programmers everywhere are unimpressed, and budding game makers are left confused. The bright side is that the book explains what an Avatar and High Score List are.

My, my, my. How far we have progressed. :-(

Non sequitur?

One is a book for programmers, the other is a book for game _designers_. So the relevance of that comparison is...?

Even if you're of the arrogant school of thinking that programmers are the alpha and the omega, and everyone else is an idiot, the program code itself _isn't_ the alpha and the omega. A game isn't just a collection of clever rendering/AI/collision/whatever subroutines. And knowing how to write clever code doesn't make you a game designer, any more than knowing how to lay out a brochure makes you a marketting expert, or than knowing how to assemble a telescope makes you an astronomer.

At any rate, designing the game and programming game code are two very very different things. Some people may be able to do both -- though a lot less than people who _think_ they could do both -- but still, they're different activities. So exactly what is the relevance of programmers or game programming books there? No, seriously. It's like saying that we don't need a new chemistry book, because a better written gardener's handbook already exists. Yeah, and the relevance of that is...?

I'm not saying that this book is particularly useful. In fact, it sounds like a major waste of time. But I _am_ saying that it addresses a whole different subject and targets a whole different audience. That's all.

I remember!

"a loaf of bread, a container of milk, and a stick of butter." Nice Sesame Street reference! Haven't seen one of those here since someone compared Jack Thompson to Oscar the Grouch...

Weight of opinions

FTS: " It is perhaps somewhat presumptuous to disagree with someone like Greg Costikyan"

Not really. There is no reason in particular why his views should be considered more valid than yours, or anyone else's who is familiar with gaming. In fact, I'd say that some other's opinions tend to be more valid, since Costikyan is dependent upon his writing and his rep for funding.

The best opinions out there are the ones that are well-informed, but have no personal stake in the topic at hand, IMO.

That said, Costikyan has expressed some valid opinions covered in previous slashdot threads.

Patterns

"...it's not all that hard to slog through. However, it is indeed a slog..."

It's not meant to be read through like a piece of fiction. Design Pattern books are more of a quick reference guide than a gripping narrative. You don't give a good book at 4/10 just because you aren't reading it correctly! Personally, I found this book an excellent addition to the GoF book, targeted specifically at game designers.

Presumptuous?

I don't think so. Find his list of games. There is one game of actual note (Paranoia), and that's not so much a game as a drug induced interactive story.

No, at first glance this looks like yet another entry into the "Those who don't, teach; those who can barely teach, write buzzword motivated instructional books" category.

Oh, c'mon, one whole book?

Can be summed up in one sentence: Make it a First-Person shooter, or a Realtime Strategy game. Or a sequel of something.

Or did you see anything else hit the game market last year?

I heard a bee

"One requirement for Surprises is the absence of Game State Overview or the presence of Imperfect Information or Limited Foresight. Because of this, Surprises are most often achieved by having Dedicated Game Facilitators such as Game Masters. Never Ending Stories are a way of overcoming the problems of Narrative Structures by combining Surprises with Replayability, thus making the narrative continue and change forever."

Continuing on:

"The quintessential Nomenclature for Nonsubstantiating Ideosyncracies has expanded the market share of the Gamer Image in a direct correlation to the Space-Time Continuum"

Buzz buzz buzz buzz...

Amazon has it cheaper than BN

Amazon [amazon.com] has it for $32.97 new, 22.89 new
vs $44.95 from BN

I agree with this review...

I'm not a game designer, but I own this book based on personal interest. I would say this book is more useful in a classroom and a theoretical sense than in front of a keyboard. It's hard to read, but as some level, there are very few other places where you can get this sort of high-level theory regarding game patterns.

Looney Toons

The ingredients list reminds me of one of my more favorite Looney Toons, featuring Porky Pig. He'd been instructed by his mother to go to the store and buy "a loaf of bread, a container of milk, a stick of butter, come straight home." Which he repeats to himself over and over again (surprisingly stutter-free, for the most part, I might add) until he reads the sign on a movie theater. Of course, this changes his repeated mantra to include the title of the film (which escapes me), and he ends up spending the shopping money on the movie ticket.

Nevertheless, when making a trip to the grocery store or composing a shopping list for someone else, I'll often find myself using that same line.

Piggy back on the gang of 4

...what it amounts to is little more than a list, each item on the list referring to the other items like bloggers hawking each others' hyperlinks.

There are an increasing number of books on design patterns being published, all trying to ride piggy back on the success of the gang of four [awprofessional.com], and each taking more liberties on what a design pattern is. The result is a profusion of 'faux patterns' that obscure real ones. Most of these newer books are catalogs of the obvious. The fact that the original patterns book was published in 1994 and has not had a newer addition should tell you something. It is a timeless trove of good ideas that are independant of the programming subject matter or the OO language du jour. New patterns are pretty rare.

Book lacking space? Just add paper

At the end of many subcategories are references to "Additional Patterns," which are only explored on the CD-ROM that accompanies the book, apparently having been left out for lack of space.

And all this time I thought it was CD media that would leave things out due to 'lack of space.'
But this will all be explained in the sequel "Patterns II: The Missing Pages"

Yesterday's games vs. today's games

I remember an old c64 game, "Pogo Joe". It had this guy on a pogo stick that had to step on different squares to change their colors. Meanwhile, he had to run away from these monsters or you would lose a life. But you could crush the monsters' eggs before they hatched.
All of this while you wer hearing a really funny (or fun) melody.

So, was it a puzzle game? Yes.
Was it a platform game? Well, kinda, you had this guy jumping on platforms. I guess it could be applied. And you had to run away from enemies, too.
Was it fun? WAY YES! I remember spending hours playing this game.

Another fun game was Lemmings, too bad psygnosis doesn't release sequels anymore, and sues cloners out of existence.

In contrast, today's games have nearly zero replay value, and most of the time you spend is trying to get to one zone from the other while battling endless monsters: Castlevania, Silent Hill (to an extent), Final Fantasy, all apply, and most of the time the areas are plain corridors (or streets / plains) with no variety between them. Forget a puzzle element and you spend useless time trying to find where the puzzle element is than actually figuring out the puzzle. This was called the "metroid syndrome". Fortunately, metroid did have difficult areas to go thru, you had to jump, dodge, avoid lava streams, hang onto ledges... it was fun. It wasn't just running around and hitting x or o whenever you encountered a monster. And then came the speed-run challenge with SuperMetroid, this is a real innovation, get 100% items under 3 hours by using secret techniques. w00t :)

But in today's games, remove the moving time from one area to another, and your hours of play are disminished a lot. To think we spend about $60 on EACH of these games.

Perhaps a flaw has been the "pseudo-3D maps" in games like Castlevania. Gone are the old days of 2D platformers. But what do we have instead? Top-down runners! It's *NOT* 3D! They replaced x and z with x and y. Sure, it looks 3D in the screen, with all those nice renderings and everything, but a 2D map can describe a level perfectly, even when some areas are "above" others. (An exception to this is the Prince of Persia series, it is a true 3D game, but the levels are not many or as long as one would wish).

So, what happened to the creativity of game designers? :(
It seems they want to try new formulas (3D renderer + 2D top-down maps = profit!!), but bury their old formulas so nobody can use them anymore. I want my lemmings with level editor! :(

Learning by doing...

After glancing at the table of contents on Amazon, you would be better off looking at what others did in actual game content and just plunge into the editor to learn how to incorporate their ideas into your own "design pattern". Learning by doing is probably better in some cases than other.

Missing the point of the patterns movement

The concept of a patterns book is to facilitate communication between designers, *not* to teach people how to program. The idea was started by Erich Gamma et. al. with their seminal book Design Patterns and taken up by other leading authors like Martin Fowler in Patterns of Enterprise Application Architecture.

While these books may contain hands on examples and therefore be useful in teaching people how to design, their real utility comes when I as a software architect say to a new developer "We're using a Plugin object controlled by the Data Mapper to control this behavior". If you know patterns, You know exactly what I'm talking about.

Whether game design is as amenable to splitting into patterns remains to be seen, but don't criticise this effort because it is not a good tutorial; Design Patterns was not a good tutorial either but it was one of the most useful books I ever read.

The true pattern in game design

As much as I hate to say it, this is the pattern I have seen for the last 2 decades:

1. Revolutionary breakthrough game arrives
2. Everyone else clones said game
3. Profit
4. Stagnation while everyone waits for #1 to happen again.

couldn't read it

Being an ol' fart, and keenly interested in anything like this, I didn't find much value in this book. People keep saying its something for designers to use to facilitate communication, which is a noble cause and good in any other aspect of software engineering; however, the level of complexity to explain the obvious is high, and as soon as you start making up complex terms to explain simple things, you loose the ability to explain it effectively.

Not to mention that most game designers generate their own language that often models an architecture that is creatively delivered. Most game development is highly iterative.

I've got to say it

The book sounds like a maze of little twisty paths....

Why does Hollywood suck? Because its movies must all be produced in accordance with movie design patterns. There's an alternative word for design patterns: formulaic. Fine when looking at engineering or software design (we want some assurance that we can analyse this thing and gain some assurance that it will work consistently, and that we can find other people to work on it). But to create something with artistic merit we need to transcend the formula. We live in a world which recycles everything, to the extent that just about everything vaguely cultural has to recast, relocate or make ironic reference to something else. But it's self consuming and ultimately sterile. I suspect that nothing new and exciting will come out from anyone who has to seek guidance from the book. Ex nihilo nihil fit.

A few patterns

Here are a few game patters: 1) Company A hypes a game, rushes it out the door and it sucks. 2) Company B hypes a game, never gets it out. 3) Company C creates a great game, and gets bought out.

Re:my eyes!!!!

How ironic that a class designed to teach proper use of the language (which would be communication, one would think) does the opposite. Eschew obsfucation!

If spleing end grammer are coreckt, then an developped vocabularly be no ass important is.

are you Aeonite?

Or perhaps another big word and awkward phrase fetishist?

> Perhaps a little less caffeine might help, too.

You can't even write 8 words without adding bullshit? Hint:

Less caffeine might help.

Re:Is this a first?

Maybe the he was using a 5 point scale. 4/5.